Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this regular meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order. Today is Monday, July 27, 2020, and the time is 5.32 p.m. Dr. Grigorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to the notice for this meeting?
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Madam President, I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act for this meeting tonight.
At this time, the Board of Trustees will give members of the public an opportunity to speak in accordance with KDISD Board Policy BED Local. As defined by the Board Policy, the first 10 speakers who signed up by 2 p.m. on Monday, July 27, 2020, and have provided their first and last name will be called individually on the phone number they provided and allowed to address the Board through audio only. A maximum of 30 minutes has been allocated, with the time divided equally among those who have signed up. However, the maximum number, 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 audio will turn off. If speakers wish to share written material with the board, you must email a copy of Secretary for Board Services for board members, the superintendent, the chief communications officer, and permanent record. If a speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through the proper channels as stated in board policy, the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to seek resolution through the appropriate policy. Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code 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, DGBA local, or GF local. Our speakers will be called in the order they signed up to speak. Madam President, can you all hear me? Yes, sir. Madam President,
we have 18 speakers tonight, so the speakers, we have a total of 30 minutes for all 18 speakers, so each speaker will get a minute 40. I'm going to start calling them. As a reminder, I'LL CALL EVERYBODY TWICE. IF I DON'T GET AN ANSWER ON THE SECOND CALL, WE'LL MOVE ON TO THE NEXT SPEAKER.
MAY I SPEAK WITH PARKER, PLEASE? YES, I'M HERE. HEY, PARKER, THIS IS JUSTIN GRAHAM WITH KDISD. YOU'RE ON LIVE WITH OUR BOARD OF TRUSTEES. YOU HAVE A MINUTE 40. YOU MAY BEGIN SPEAKING.
OKAY. DEAR MEMBERS OF THE BOARD, HOW ARE YOU? I'M PARKER MAY. I'M A SENIOR AT THINK A RANCHO SCHOOL. AS WE TRANSITION INTO AN ONLINE SCHOOLING PROGRAM, I WANT TO ENSURE THAT THE STUDENTS WILL HAVE THE RESOURCES NECESSARY TO SUCCEED ACADEMICALLY IN THE VIRTUAL CLASSROOM AND OUTSIDE. I KNOW VIRTUAL LEARNING CAN BE DIFFICULT FOR FOR STUDENTS AND I WANT MY PEERS TO BE ABLE TO SUCCEED. FIRST REQUEST I HAVE IS IN CREATION OF AN AREA WHERE STUDENTS CAN PRINT OUT RESOURCES FREE. LAST YEAR WHEN WE TRANSITIONED INTO AN ONLINE PROGRAM, MANY OF THE DOCUMENTS NEEDED TO BE PRINTED OUT. HOWEVER, MANY STUDENTS DON'T HAVE PRINTERS. AND SINCE WE'RE ALL ACCUSTOMED TO HAVING OUR DOCUMENTS PRINTED OUT FOR THEM, IT CAN BE REALLY HARD TO READ DIGITAL FOR PEOPLE. I PERSONALLY HAVE HAD STRUGGLES READING LIKE A 40-PAGE PACKET FOR ENGLISH. So if we're already going to be spending like eight hours in front of a computer or phone, I think it would be wise to give us like a physical medium to engage with if we can. And we all know that learning doesn't stop outside or once we leave the classroom. So in order to be well-rounded, students must have like engagement both in and out of the classroom. I'm asking the board to provide like more enrichment resources. Don't mistake me. I appreciate the resources that KDIC provides via like the library and the MyKDCloud website. However, in light of our circumstances, I think we should like increase and revamp these resources. This can already build on previous infrastructure like the MyKDCloud website such as like upgrading like the JSTOR subscription to the next tier or adding new content such as a video subscription learning service. Thank you for my time and I hope you have a great day. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your time.
Mr. Graham, can you share the name of the speaker before you call again? Yes, I can. Thank you.
Our second speaker we're going to call is Yongyin Huang. Hello? Hello, is this Yang Yin? Yes. This is Justin Graham. I'm here with the KDISD Board of Trustees. You now have a minute 40 to address the board you may go ahead okay thank you um hi my name is young
ying huang I'm a student within KDSD and I'm senior at single ranch high school as a student in the KDSD school system I feel that the opinions of my peers in school faculty members are extremely underrepresented and that we have been given no voice to express our opinions and concerns relating to your own safety and education while opinions of the parents matter I feel that KDSD should should also consider the opinions of those that are more directly affected by the reopening policy. For example, KDIC sent out a survey in late June regarding the premise of the polling school year, but they have yet to formally address the students and faculty members. Although I understand that KDIC is not the only school board within the nation facing these difficulties, as the school board, KDIC still holds the power and responsibility of making decisions decision for all KSC staff and student safety and education. The school board is responsible for using their powers in order to reflect what students and staff want. Throughout this time of confusion, our students have been left further disoriented as the information presented by the district is constantly changing and throughout these changes, students have no say in their own concerns of education. One current issue is the inconsistency of of information regarding online and in-person school. For instance, although students are given the ability to choose whether or not they want to take classes in-person or online, they are still certain classes that are classified as in-person only. This undermines the actions of what students do. Yes, ma'am.
That's the end of your time. Thank you for signing up. Our next speaker is Gia Few. Hello? Hello? Hello? Is anybody there? Okay, I'll try one more time.
All right. We've tried that number twice. We're going to move to the next number. Our next speaker is Lillian A. Jimmy. I'm sorry, I'm not very good with these names.
Lillian A. Hello?
Hello, may I speak with Lillian, please? Yes, this is Lillian. Hey, Lillian, this is Justin Graham. I'm with the Katy ISD Board of Trustees. You will now have a minute 40 to go ahead and address the board. You may begin.
Good evening, board members and our superintendent. My name is Lillian Adyemi, and I am a teacher here, a teacher at Seven Lakes High School in Katy. I just wanted to address the board about the changes that we need currently in Katy ISD. It really hurt my feelings to be a teacher of color that in the time that we're living in to have no statement that was given out by our communications director or our superintendent concerning our state of the nation and the affairs that we're dealing with right now when it's, when we're talking about racial climate of our country. So we have just began an active group amongst teachers, parents, and students called Change Agents for Katy ISD. Right now in our district, our black indigenous people of color represent 62% of our district right now. Unlike our staff, which is only 7.2% African American, 14.6% Hispanic, and 2.9% Asian, what we want as members of Change Agents for KDISC is that the board starts to work along with the superintendent and the human resources department to make sure these equities that our district is more equitable and matches what our student population has as of right now. From the top to the bottom, starting from the admin all the way to teachers in the school building. We're asking the board to look into starting a DEIJ department.
Lillian, I'm sorry, that's the end of your time. Thank you for addressing the board. We appreciate it.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Nishat Tasneem.
Hello.
Hello. Hello.
May I speak with Ms. Hatt, please?
Yes.
This is Justin Graham. I'm with Katy Independent School District. I've got you on live with our Board of Trustees. You will now have a minute 40 to address the Board. You may begin.
Before I present my proposition, I'd like to express my gratitude to the administration educators for the long student representation and for their voices to be heard. I'm speaking today with the hope to insinuate improvement within our district and for this change to be sustainable through future generations after ours. With the Black Lives Matter movement resurfacing, students of the district have collectively acknowledged racial injustice present in the education system, in KDIC schools, and students of the community. Today, we represent our student body when I say that the issues that require attention and be on our own. KDSD has 67.3% students of color, meaning 36,762 students. That many students who spend 40 hours a week having to sit on comfortable under skin, and that many voices desensitized by a district with a non-discrimination policy. As the diverse proportion of students gradually increase, it is in the inclusivity that increases. When racist hate speech and actions go unattended, the number of students facing detrimental prejudice is guaranteed to increase. To be direct, students often feel the ministry can fail multiple times to properly handle and recognize serious bigotry. Further, it's tough to normalization. This ultimately resulted in city high schools and the other schools to make people more in that football game. While majority high schools report to our schools as ghetto, or even the city times refuse to report on the minority majority schools. These are instances with students publicly report virtual discrimination to the district. And the response they receive then recommends to the student to speak about. So basically when we wish for the district to hold these students accountable for such behavior, we're going to an app that's not our first instinct when we had access to direct communication with the district. This is yet another way students feel that the district is marginalizing the voices that cry to people of color. Alongside this, many other students continue to use partisan language or publicly act with racism without respect in the district. Here are some unpleasant examples.
Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, but that's the end of your time with the Board of Trustees. We appreciate your phone call.
Okay, thank you. Thank you.
Our next speaker will be Kyle Jordan.
Hello?
MR. May I speak with Kyle, please?
MR.
Yes, this is Kyle Wood. MR. Hey, Kyle. My name is Justin Graham, and I am the General Counsel with KDISD. I've got you on with our Board of Trustees at this time. You will have a minute 40 to address the Board. You may begin.
again. Fantastic. Yeah, I just wanted to point out that if we as a district decide to ignore the CDC and health officials with their advice on how to deal with a pandemic, then we as a district are putting the functioning of the district above the lives of our staff, staff, students, and parents. It makes no sense to start the school district, to start face-to-face instruction this early. I know that we bumped it back three weeks and we will be continuing to look at the data as it comes in. But if we are reopening, it should not be reopening face-to-face instruction until we have a system that we know keeps kids safe and potentially a vaccine. what I feel as a teacher in the district.
Okay. I rescind my time. Thank you. Thank you, sir, for your time. We appreciate the phone call. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. Our next speaker will be Megan Rodriguez. No, I'm sorry. She did not give us a phone number. Our next speaker will be Belissa Neal. Hello? May I speak with Ms. Neal, please? This is her. Ms. Neal, my name is Justin Graham. I'm with Katy Independent School District. I have you on live with our Board of Trustees. At this time, you have a minute 40 to address them. You may begin.
Okay. Hi, I am with Neal. I have a special needs daughter who will be entering kindergarten she was recently in ecfd and had things gone um without kovitz who would have been in the summer program um so nora's uh inspiration where she regrets is pretty not having therapy school any kind of intervention because of of how impressionable her age is. And I was wondering if Katie has anything in mind for the special needs kids who really cannot do virtual. She not only can't read, but she can't have that kind of attention span. I can't do the therapies that therapists need to do. I can't wear that many hats. It's just not possible for me. I've seen other school districts who do things like have, in learning, in a very structured atmosphere, for just kids who absolutely need it, who cannot be reached virtually. IS KD PLANNING TO DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT FOR THE KIDS WHO ARE JUST SORT OF GETTING LOST ALONG THE WAY?
NEW SPEAKER Yes, ma'am. Is that a question or do you have any other comments?
NEW SPEAKER I MEAN, MY ONLY COMMENT WOULD BE THAT THIS HAS BEEN VERY DETRIMENTAL TO THE SPECIAL EDUCATION SECTION OF KDISB. AND I KNOW THAT A LOT OF THAT IS OUT OF YOUR HANDS, BUT IT DOES SEEM LIKE THEY'RE GETTING FAR LESS ATTENTION THAN WHAT'S NEEDED IN THAT SITUATION.
Okay. Well, we appreciate the phone call. Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is going to be Ashley Rhee.
Hello?
May I speak with Ms. Rhee, please?
This is her.
Ms. Rhee, my name is Justin Graham, and I'm with Katy Independent School District. I have you live with our Board of Trustees. At this time, you have a minute 40. You may address the Board. You may begin now.
Hello. My name is Ashley Rhee, and I'm a rising senior at Southern Lakes High School. On June 24th, I posted a picture onto my Instagram page asking my peers to sign a petition which will soon arrive in your inboxes to ask KDAC to adopt the hate speech policy and to diversify our curriculum. In a span of 40 hours, over 2,000 students, alumni, parents, and teachers, both current and retired, signed the petition indicating their solidarity with my request. I do not speak to you today with a policy of my own, of a truster experience in the field of education to make a better detailed and comprehensive resolution than I, a 17-year-old, ever could. However, when creating the policy, I asked you to consider the following. To publicly publicly announced the KDAC condemns racism, racial violence, white supremacy, hate speech, and bigotry in all shapes and forms inside and out of schools, to increase school involvement in hate speech that occurs off campus, especially digitally, to create an absolute ban on slurs that attack a person's identity, to mandate an apology from a student involved in hate speech that affects a student, to understand that students may not know better, and for this reason, to create education programs for firsthand hate speech offenders, but to continue to show the severity of hate speech through harsher consequences for students that share repeated offenses additionally i understand that the curriculum is not entirely up to the school board because of the requirements in the takes program and college board however without districts to support them these organizations have no power i asked kdac to be a leader and to take part in trying to change these many of the curriculums to reformed inclusive ones while i understand that our district is meeting the challenge of how to safely return to in-person and instructions is not an excuse to knock on progress. In order to attend to schools safely, the district must meet the moment and address two of the virus damaging our community,
COVID-19 and racism. Yes ma'am. Thank you. That's the end of your time. Thank you for your call. Thank you. Our next speaker will be John Sariega. Sariega. Hello. Hello, may I speak with John, please? Speaking. John, this is Justin Graham, and I'm with Katy Independent School District. I've got you live in front of our Board of Trustees. At this time, you now have a minute 40, which you may address the Board. You can begin, sir.
Okay, thank you very much. Good afternoon. My name is John Sirica and I'm the Director of Field Services for the Texas Municipal Police Association. We are a professional police association representing over 30,000 Texas police officers, including 69 Katy ISD personnel to include police officers and telecommunications officers. I'm addressing the board today to discuss COVID-19 and the effects on the officers, specifically hazardous duty pay or disaster pay. I would like to be clear that I am not speaking on behalf of all of the officers. nor on behalf of the police association, but rather on behalf of the many officers who feel very strongly about this issue, but who also wish to remain anonymous. KDISD policy provides that non-exempt, non-contractual employees are required to work during a, quote, emergency closure of the district shall be paid disaster pay. The officers were, in fact, paid disaster pay for one week, and they haven't been paid since. The response from the district is that the reason the officers aren't getting the pay is that the district is not in fact closed. Well, I would argue that point. Teachers are not on campus. The students are not on campus. And now we find out that the opening of the school year has been delayed another three weeks. I'd like to be very clear that disaster pay is in your policy and it is 100% reimbursable by the CARES Act. The district can do the right thing. They can pay the officers the disaster pay per policy, and they can get reimbursed 100% of it without any impact on the local taxpayers. So I am making a plea today that the board direct district staff.
Yes, sir. That's the end of your time. We appreciate the phone call. Thank you. Thank you, Mama. Our next speaker is going to be Selena Howard.
please. This is she. Ms. Howard, my name is Justin Graham and I'm the General Counsel for KDISD. I have you live in front of our Board of Trustees. At this time, you will have a minute and 40 in which to address the Board. You may begin. Thank you. As many parents are looking
for information to make an educated decision about continuing virtual instruction or transitioning to in-person learning after September 8th. I would like the board to share with Katie parents and families information on detailed plans for classroom spacing and number of students in each classroom to account for necessary social distancing or upcoming in-person instruction. Another consideration that has not been addressed is what happens when teachers get sick? Where do the students in their classrooms go and how will this impact social distancing standards? And finally, how will students and families be notified when those in the school contract COVID-19? And how do we handle contact tracing for secondary students who have multiple classrooms as well as hallway passing and cafeteria activity? Please make plans to specifically address these items with students and families prior HIGHER TO THE DEADLINE OF AUGUST 5TH TO MAKE A DETERMINATION ON GOING BACK TO IN-PERSON
LEARNING. NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENTS. WE APPRECIATE THE CALL. NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER I DID WANT TO PROVIDE A BRIEF ACTUAL RESPONSE. KDISD YOU'LL HEAR MORE IF YOU STAY ON AND LISTEN TO THIS BOARD MEETING TONIGHT ABOUT OUR REOPENING PLANS. BUT KDISD HAS STARTED A WEB PAGE CALLED SMART restart where you can find many questions, many answers to the questions which you may have about the reopening of schools. Our next speaker is Kathleen Pittman. Ms. Pittman? Ms. Hello? Mr. May I speak with Ms. Pittman, please?
Ms. This is her.
Mr. Ms. Pittman, my name is Justin Graham, and I'm the general counsel for KDISD. You are live in front of our Board of Trustees. At this time, you will have a minute and 40 in which to address them, and you may begin
in now yes sir thank you good evening my name is kathleen pittman and i am the new kitty council pta's president for the 2021 school year this summer we welcome two new ptas to our pta family peter mclewain elementary and jordan high school ptsa to bring our total to 64 fabulous ptas despite the challenges of copic 19 our ptas are still hard at work with the help of district guidance leading ways that we can still fulfill our mission to make every child's potential a reality by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all children. We would like to join your local PTA and to remember that you can always join more than one. Your membership really does make a difference. Thank you for your time and thank you for to our board and our superintendent for their leadership during this time. I KNOW THAT THERE ARE NO EASY DECISIONS, BUT I'M ALSO CONFIDENT THAT KGISD WILL DO WHAT'S BEST FOR NOT ONLY OUR STUDENTS, BUT ALSO OUR STAFF.
NEW SPEAKER Okay. NEW SPEAKER THAT'S ALL OF THAT. NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENTS.
NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU SO MUCH.
NEW SPEAKER OUR NEXT SPEAKER IS JANNA MILLER.
.
Hello, may I speak with Ms. Miller? Yeah. Ms. Miller, my name is Justin Graham, I'M THE GENERAL COUNSEL WITH KDISD. I HAVE YOU LIVE IN FRONT OF OUR BOARD OF TRUSTEES. AT THIS TIME YOU WILL HAVE A ONE MINUTE AND 40 SECONDS IN WHICH TO ADDRESS THE BOARD. YOU MAY BEGIN NOW.
THANK YOU. HELLO, BOARD OF TRUSTEES. THANK YOU FOR THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK ON BEHALF OF MY SON WHO CANNOT SPEAK. I HAVE A SON WITH SEVERE NONVERBAL AUTISM. WHILE HIS TEACHERS HAVE HAD GOOD INTENTIONS and tried their very best. Virtual schooling has been a complete failure for my son. He needs to be in a classroom with a teacher and aides to help him. As you know, according to federal law, schools must provide a free, appropriate public education to all students with a disability, regardless of the nature or severity of the person's disability. I would like to request that you please take a look at opening the schools for in-person education for students with disabilities who are not effectively served by virtual schooling. The classes impacted would be small in number but offer tremendous benefits. Thank you.
Yes, ma'am. Thank you for the call. Our next speaker is going to be Tanya Swindell.
Thank you.
Your call has been forwarded.
All right, we'll try that number one more time.
Your call. Okay. We will now move to our next speaker, Shannon Dworziak.
HELLO. HELLO, MAY I SPEAK WITH SHARON, PLEASE?
YES, MR. SHAKES.
SHARON, MY NAME IS JUSTIN GRAHAM, AND I'M THE GENERAL COUNSEL WITH CAYTIE INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT. I've got you live in front of our Board of Trustees. At this time, you will have a minute 40 in which to address them, and you may begin.
Thank you, and I appreciate the time. I've struggled with how our community has been responding to the decision that the district has made in regards to starting back to school. I appreciate the countless hours that everyone has put in. Looking at our district, we have a very top-heavy 16-member administrators from the super on down. down. We have countless numbers of principals and vice principals all the way down to our amazing teachers. I was fortunate enough to be on the Strategic Design Committee and be a part of the process from day one. I have met the skilled people that you've hired in this district. I'm asking that you put trust back into your teachers. Think of this as a challenge for KDIC that as just like the Apollo 13 experience, dump what we have have on a table and let's sort this out. I pray that we can put the trust back into our teachers. They were hired as expertise and I do believe we need to put it back in. I know that they were given a questionnaire as three questions only versus the parent one that was several pages and that's not enough. And from what I've heard and read, teachers are not feeling valued in our district. And this is an exclusive to KDIC. This is around the United States. So I challenge our district to, as far as being a district of innovation, there is no reason we are not out there leading the United States in what can be done. Again, put the trust in the teachers and let them come up with the ideas. We can offer places for kids to go and do our virtual work for those families that have no other options. None of this is perfect. We can encourage pods of kids within each classroom who can work from a home. And log in. Thank you.
Thank you for the time. Thank you for your call. Our next caller is Serena Wingarden.
Please leave your message for...
Okay, we will try that number one more time.
Hello?
Hello, may I speak with Ms. Wingarden, please?
Yes, this is Ms. Wingarden.
Yes, ma'am. My name is Justin Graham. I'm general counsel for KDISD. I have you live in front of our Board of Trustees. At this time, you will have a minute 40 in which to address the Board. You may begin. Sure.
Thank you so much for your time. Board of Trustees, I appreciate you allowing me to speak today. I am not only a teacher in the district, but I'm also a parent to four children who currently attend and one who will be soon. And my main concern right now is the equity in the learning styles or the platforms that have been set forth and that will be available for our students in KDISD. I like that originally parents had the choice to stay home and I like that the parents had the choice to send their kids in person. I don't love how it has led to two different platforms and two different methods of teaching these children now that we're all going to be having to do the at-home learning experience. I feel like children whose families have chosen for them to have in-person learning will now be in some ways getting the short end of the stick because they are not going to have the SYNCHRONOUS EDUCATION THAT THE CHILDREN WHOSE PARENTS CHOSE KVA WILL BE HAVING. I'D LIKE FOR YOU TO PLEASE CONSIDER HAVING ALL CHILDREN WHILE THEY'RE DOING ONLINE LEARNING EXPERIENCES BE TAUGHT SYNCHRONOUSLY VERSUS SOME SYNCHRONOUSLY AND SOME ASYNCHRONOUSLY. I THINK THAT THAT IS GOING TO PUT A LARGE GAP IN BETWEEN OUR STUDENTS' EDUCATION.
NEW SPEAKER Okay. WELL, WE APPRECIATE YOUR PHONE CALL. THANK YOU, MA'AM.
NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR TIME.
Our next speaker will be Natasha Reid.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello, may I speak with Ms. Reed?
Hi, this is she.
Ms. Reed, my name is Justin Graham and I'm the General Counsel for Katy Independent School District. I've got you live in front of our Board of Trustees. At this time, you will have a minute and 40 seconds in which to address the Board. You may begin.
Thank you very much. The definition of community is simple. It's a feeling of fellowship as a result of sharing a common attitude, interest, and goals. I think as a part of the community in KDISD, we all have a common goal. We want to have safety as that forefront on everyone's mind when sending kids back to school, when sending teachers back to school, or when even involving the faculty and the staff. Right now, I think it is very, very important. Matter of fact, it is imperative and I urge the school board to put safety at the forefront of their mind when they think about sending students and teachers into an area that may not necessarily be safe. If we truly care about our community, we will make sure that the public health of the community is a priority for the community leaders and this should be a paramount concern. I feel as if KDISD should really consult with the teachers and the admin and the staff in trying to move forward and input those innovative ideas. One thing that you cannot escape is that KVA does not have accessible access for students who are in lower income households. I think that this could be at the forefront when the district is thinking about how to maintain equity inside of our school district. One device is not going to help a family of four people. I love the option of being able to have my students at home during this time. This is not an easy place to navigate. And I do appreciate everything that has been done, but I do ask that they consider all of the ramifications and not just one. We cannot just blatantly say that the death of a student or a faculty member or a...
THAT YOUR TIME HAS ENDED. SO WE APPRECIATE YOUR COMMENTS. THANK YOU.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
ALL RIGHT. OUR LAST CALLER OF THE NIGHT IS BETH MAJOUX.
Your call has been forwarded to an... Okay, we will try that one more time.
Your call has been forwarded.
Madam President, that's it for the callers tonight.
Thank you so much, Mr. Graham. This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting. The board will now convene in closed meeting as authorized under Section 551.001 of the Texas Government Code for the following purposes. Texas government code 551.071, 551.129, 551.074, and 551.076. The board will now reconvene in open meeting. Today is Monday, July 27, 2020, and the time is 744 p.m. On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's regular board meeting. Each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Thursday, July 23, 2020. The board will receive information and recommendations from staff, administration, and the superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting. Board members will be able to ask questions, receive answers, and should be prepared to take action this evening. The board has just reconvened from closed meeting in accordance with chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code. Any action arising from discussions in a closed meeting must be taken in an open meeting. We will start with our Pledge of Allegiance. I'd like to welcome Sergeant Howard of the Katy ISC Police Department to lead us in the Pledges of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and individual
all right we'll move to agenda item 6.1 superintendent's update and discussion on opening schools for the 2020-2021 school year dr gregorski thank you madam president
We've got a few updates for the board and for our community and for our staff members that I want to try and get through tonight about the reopening of schools. Hopefully it'll be informational for all. But in short, we've fought this coronavirus for close to five months and we may continue to fight it for many more. It's become very cliche to say it and has been used more times than I can remember, but I'll say it anyway. We're in these unprecedented times. and before us are many polarizing issues related to the reopening of schools. Nobody has all the answers and nothing is easy. I know for many of you the answers don't always come quick enough or they're not the answers you want to hear and the anxiety is high. Important decisions take time. There are pros and cons to each and each decision we make weighs heavy on all of us. For this informational update I've segmented the information into several topics first We're starting with KDISD Smart Restart website information. So I often hear feedback that we're not responsive or as responsive as some think we could be or that we don't adapt our plans as quickly as some think we should. And my response to that generally is usually if we adapted our plans to every bit of guidance that we've received, we do carefully analyze it. But if we changed our plans every time I received guidance, I think we would be on probably our 10th different plan by now. And that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid is this constant changes in plans, changes in calendars, changes in instructional models, all of these that will lead to even more frustration than the plan itself. So much work has gone into planning what we're calling the Smart Restart for school to begin in August, and the website includes back-to-school and back-to-work plans. The original plans called for an option of in-person and virtual instruction, and that continues to be our plan for the 2021 school year. All the information for these two instructional programs can be found on the website. And we do, as we have asked and will continue to ask, that if there's something that's not addressed on that website, staff and community can use the link and submit those questions and we will make sure we provide that feedback. back and the website is always being updated pretty much daily on that. Talk a little bit about in-person instruction and the common message I continue to hear from people is please don't offer the in-person instruction until it's safe to do so. And as I do my best to read information, talk to experts in the field, it appears that everyone has their own definition of until it's safe to do so. So while it's been on a smaller scale since the pandemic started, we have had people working throughout KDISD. We've had summer programs, sports and activities. And with that, we have had the COVID-19 brought into the workplace, into our programs. The promising part about what I'm sharing is 100% of the time that employees followed the enhanced safety procedures, no COVID-19 was spread from person to person. And what we found out that when there was spread between employees, it was because they had not followed the safety protocols. I think that's important to note that we do have good protocols in place and we're going to continue to follow those protocols and enhance them at any time we can. So when it comes to in-person instruction, if the definition is until it's safe to do so if that definition includes that we have a vaccine or COVID-19 is 100% eradicated, then that's not something that I can support right now. So beginning the school year in a 100% virtual environment. So that's the next topic I want to talk a little bit about. The purpose of this flexibility to start schools, which was communicated by our governor, was to ensure we examine local conditions and then we make decisions based upon those conditions. What is happening in one area of the state may not be what's happening in another area. So TEA has given school superintendents the authority to start the school year 100% virtual instruction for up to four weeks and continue to receive funding. And to quote what TEA says, that's to facilitate a safe, effective return to on-campus instruction. With board action, the district can continue in that 100% virtual environment for up to eight weeks. weeks. So as you know, with a few communications I've put out, last Monday, superintendents received a letter from Harris County last Monday with recommendations that schools in Harris County delay in-person instruction for up to eight weeks. And then four days later we received an order from the same office with several mandates, including not offering in-person instruction until September 8th. So this is a perfect example of what I mentioned previously, mandates and guidance change frequently and it's challenging to make the plans as rapidly as things change. So some people have asked why do those of us outside Harris County have to follow the orders? Okay, KDISD, we expand 181 square miles. We sit in three counties. So what I do is what we do for KDISD, we do for all KDISD. I can't recommend that we implement plans that are different for each school located in each of the three counties but I do acknowledge it is going to be challenging as we forage and move forward that we do sit in three counties and we may be operating under three sets of orders and then if you add in a extra set of orders from the state of Texas that's that's another thing we have to follow so we need to think about that and plan accordingly for all of our schools information that supports starting a temporary delay of in-person and instruction and I know this is very near and dear to some folks the kovat 19 community spread indicated larger spikes trending upward from the end of June and through July which is much different than what we saw in April and May Harris County moved their risk a set assessment from level 2 to level 1 which signifies a severe and uncontrolled level of kovat 19 in the community Fort Fort Bend County has advanced to level one, what they call code red, the highest possible COVID-19 threat level for Fort Bend County. Texas Medical Center data as of July 15, 2020, stated that the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 in the greater Houston area is four times what was observed during the peak in April, and stated that their ICU bed configuration and staffing under phase one is full. Although many people want to open schools to in-person instruction, we can't ignore these facts, nor can we ignore expertise of our local health officials that have communicated we're in a severe stage of COVID-19 right now. We desperately need to see the levels of COVID-19 in our community start trending downward again. While we cannot ignore the advice, we do need to scrutinize their decisions as equally as we would scrutinize our own decisions. and then chart the best path forward. I understand that many of our parents want children to attend in-person instruction when school starts in August, and we're not ignoring those requests, but we are going to do a temporary delay of in-person instruction. So, next topic is returning KDISD to in-person instruction. What I'll tell you is we cannot eliminate all risk, and I'm not going to promise something that we can't deliver. Just as I have not ignored the factors that indicate high levels of COVID-19 spread in the community, I can't ignore other factors about the need for in-person instruction. American Pediatrics Association makes a compelling argument as to why schools must open for in-person instruction. Virtual learning is an option, but it needs to be temporary. We can't expect to suspend in-person instruction until COVID-19 pandemic is over. nor can we make a decision today on July 27th to suspend in-person instruction for eight weeks as recommended by Harris County without analyzing future data. So without further metrics and future data, I would not blindly recommend to this board that they should approve the additional four weeks of virtual only instruction at this time. I've been working closely with both Harris County, Fort Bend County officials, and Harris County has assured me that they are developing metrics METRICS THAT WOULD GUIDE THE REOPENING OF SCHOOLS TO IN-PERSON INSTRUCTION. SO I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING THAT GUIDANCE AND WHAT THOSE METRICS WOULD BE. WHILE IN A PANDEMIC, IT'S DIFFICULT TO PUT DATES ON WHEN IT'S SAFE TO RETURN TO IN-PERSON INSTRUCTION. BUT YES, I DO CARE ABOUT ALL OF OUR EMPLOYEES, AND I ALSO CARE ABOUT ALL OUR FAMILIES. AND WE NEED TO BALANCE THE TWO. AND TO DO THAT, WE NEED TO LOOK AT THE DATA, CONSIDER THE METRICS OF WHAT IS HAPPENING in our community and then we create as safe an environment as possible with those advanced safety measures that we put in place metrics that i think would be helpful in evaluating if in-person instruction can resume with the enhanced safety measures would be decreases in hospitalizations decreases in the number of active covid cases in our community and decreases in the positivity rate percentages. So in closing, I'll say that we must have the in-person instruction when the time is right and we must all then follow those safety measures that will keep us all safe. The decisions we're making at the highest level, I own them all, and they're based on facts, information, and knowledge, not opinions or speculation. But I do appreciate having the opportunity tonight to share some information with the board and our staff and community and the members of our executive cabinet are prepared to answer any questions the board might have about our upcoming transition to reopening our schools
thank you thank you dr. Gorski are there any questions okay Matt madam president
I have some questions okay okay um dr. Gorski as you know I have submitted you a list of questions and there's 25 of them you know and they have questions within questions do you want me to ask you those questions now or would you like for me to ask you to please submit put those online and and include them in a fact because these questions have come from community members and they are feeling the pressure to have to make the decision by august 5th and so since this is our one and only meeting until that time this was kind of their opportunity to be heard and as per board policy it's my duty to share the questions with you which which I did and I have the questions here and you know and a lot of the questions I well I went through I cannot find the answers to the questions I spent lots of time trying to find answers to the questions before I posed wrote down the questions so if I knew the answer to the question, I provided the answer. If I didn't know it, I wrote it down
to ask you. Certainly makes sense. And I don't want to dissuade ever any board member from asking questions that are important to that board member. That's what we're here for. And I would provide those answers to the board member. So I don't want to talk anyone one way or the other into how we do those questions and answers. I'm more than willing to answer the question I have like I can get answers to them I can put them out on the web and I can do some things so let me just talk generally about the questions that you submitted in there those questions that you have are a value to somebody I'm sure somebody has submitted those to you you know they want answers to these questions but we have what I would ask our community to do whether they're community member or a faculty member is if they have specific QUESTIONS, THEY CAN SUBMIT THEM THROUGH THE WEBSITE. THAT'S KIND OF HOW WE SET IT UP FROM THE BEGINNING. AND I'LL GO ON THE RECORD HERE SAYING IF A STAFF MEMBER SUBMITS A QUESTION, WE'RE GOING TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION FOR THAT STAFF MEMBER AND GET THEM AN ANSWER. WITH THAT SAID, WHAT WE'VE BEEN TRYING TO DO IS BEFORE WE JUST PUT THE QUESTION AND ANSWER ONTO OUR FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION, WE TRY TO LOOK FOR A THEME IN THERE OF SOMETHING THAT IS ASKED FREQUENTLY. I DON'T KNOW IF ALL THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU HAD SUBMITTED are frequently asked questions or if they're kind of one-offs of somebody. But I would be, I do want to get those people those answers. What I will commit to, and I don't always make a whole lot of guarantees, but I make a few every now and then, and I've told a few people this. I don't want any family member to have to choose between the two options of KVA, KD Virtual Academy, which we'll hear a presentation on tonight, versus the in-person instruction. I don't want anyone to have to make that choice without having their questions answered. So we can do that and we can answer that, but at the same time, some people are going to need to understand that some questions they ask either can't be answered today or are those kind of what I call rabbit hole questions where they kind of go down, what if this happened and what if this happened and then what if this happened and what if this happened? And those are more challenging to answer or not. but some of the questions are pretty easily answered. I think some of it can be found on the website. If employees are looking for answers of what the exact rules are going to look like, and I call them rules, protocols, of what the in-person instruction looks like, we've been very specific about putting our workplace rules out there. So our employees won't find the the protocols yet for September, BUT WHEN WE RETURNED BACK INTO THE WORKPLACE IN JUNE, WE RELEASED THE JUNE ONES BECAUSE STUFF CHANGES. THEN WE RELEASED THE JULY ONES, AND THEN WE'VE JUST RELEASED THE AUGUST RETURN TO WORK PROTOCOLS, AND THEN SOMETIME IN AUGUST WE'LL RELEASE THE NEXT MONTH. SO WE TRY AND GET THEM OUT THERE AS QUICKLY AS WE CAN, BUT NOT SO QUICKLY THAT IF THE INFORMATION CHANGES, I GOT TO PULL STUFF BACK OFF THERE. AND I THINK THAT GOES TO BACK KIND OF LIKE WE WERE TALKING ABOUT OR WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT FROM THE BEGINNING. It's a real challenge sometimes to put information out there because that information might change and then I've got to pull it back on some of those things. So I guess that's a long-winded answer to your question there. Like I said, I don't want to take away anyone's opportunity to ask questions, but I do want to get those answers to all those people who want those answers. I want to make sure they have those answers.
Okay. Can I ask a question then? It's about, okay, because my questions were frequently asked questions. And one of them is, if a teacher is exposed in quarantine waiting for their COVID testing, do her personal or his personal children stay home while they're being tested or while they're waiting for the results? And or do also their own students that are in their classroom also need to remain quarantined?
Yeah, there is some specific guidance we're working from, and some of that can be found on the Smart Restart page. It may not be as detailed to the extent that the folks need it right now, but it does talk about what we're talking about, positive tests and what you need to do, and it talks about what an employee should do should they have a positive test. It also talks about what a family or employee should do if they've been in close contact with somebody who has a positive test. And we define what we consider close contact. So I would say if I'm living in a residence and someone in my household has COVID, that's probably a close contact. There's a good chance that that COVID has spread within that. So there are some things they can do. They can start getting tested. They can do some isolation. They can do some self quarantine within the house, but that's kind of one of those questions that I would struggle with giving a full on answer. Because I don't know what's happening in that household. You know, I mean, I'd like to tell the employee, hey, go get a test. If you don't have COVID, let's come back to work. But if they're not self quarantine within that household, well, their test is only good for that one day. The next day they might have COVID. So there are a few factors in there, but we do have some some general guidance what people are going to need to do and how they can handle that should they be in close contact with somebody who has COVID.
What about the students that they've been in contact with?
Sure, we define them the same way if there are. We will have protocols in place, and we've touched upon it, but we haven't said exactly what that will look like for each campus. If, let's say, we open up... our buildings to in-person instruction and now we have covid in the building what does that look like well how much of a spread have we had we need to determine that we've got teams of experts you know i mean who do this and they look at what's going on and they've talked to our local health officials there will be guidance from local health officials and they'll probably uh and this is past history talking now what they do is they tell us how what has happened and they'll tell us how long we should close that building and who should stay home at that point. And that's going to be determined by people who may have had close contact with the person who came positive. So we know that's going to happen. We have systems in place. We've got self-reporting systems for employees so we can track that. And then we will have notification systems that go out to the families who we believe had close contact, which is something very different than somebody I might have just been in the building with that person, but didn't have close contact with them.
OK, can I go on? I have a few questions. So if if if you see a child, if somebody at the school sees a child or a student that they think has symptoms of COVID, I mean, is there a guidelines for at what level did they test? You know, I mean, if it's just a sniffle or a cough or I mean, does it have to be two or three different things or is it, you know?
Yeah, that's a that's a tough one to answer. But I'll start off by saying that when we can reopen for in-person instruction, we're really counting on the parents to know their child. and we are especially counting on every parent to do the self-screener and we put information on our website of what the self-screener kind of looks like does your child have new symptoms of whatever that might be if your child has some new symptoms you also got to think where's that child been have they been out have they been around others have they been around family members there's a lot of things the parents will have intimate knowledge of that we won't about that child. But I'll speak frankly as a parent. I've got two kids. They're going to come back to school one day for in-person instruction. And if either of my two kids came down with symptoms, I'm probably getting them tested, you know. But I would know my child best to know, is it something that's new or is it something that's really not new to them? But why not be on the safe side and just have your child tested?
But what about the teachers? The teacher, you know, because kids get sent to the nurse for sniffles or whatever. And who makes the call at school? They've come to school now. Who makes the call as to when the child needs to get tested?
Well, for a child, it's not going to be the school who makes the call whether or not a child gets a COVID-19 test or not. I mean, that's a family decision, and that's a parent's decision. decision. But I don't see it any different than any other day when a kid is in your classroom. If the teacher thinks a child is ill, they send them down to the nurse, certainly. Now, we do have very specific protocols that have been written into our guidelines, and we spent a lot of time on that with our emergency management team and our district nurse, that if we think we have a covid case in the school that we have procedures in place to kind of put that that school uh for lack of a better term kind of a shelter in place until we can isolate that child and then and then make the best decision we can for that for that parent to pick that child up and have them tested i don't see it as any different than any normal day that if if a if a child's not feeling well and a teacher doesn't think they're feeling well well let's
getting down to the clinic and find out. Okay. And if a teacher does test positive for COVID, and so the teacher has to be out, or do we have enough substitutes, or are we going to combine
classes? Yeah, yeah. That's one of those questions I would, I can answer it generally, but it's kind of what if, what if, what if. So we have a very robust sub pool. Will all the subs come back this year? Okay, we don't know. Will they take all the jobs? I don't know. You know, I MEAN THOSE ARE THINGS BUT WILL WE TRAIN ALL OF OUR SUBS WHO ARE GOING TO TAKE JOBS IN KDISD TO FOLLOW ALL OUR PROTOCOLS ABSOLUTELY THEY'LL KNOW WHAT TO DO SO IT'LL IT'LL ALL DETERMINE YOU KNOW I MEAN HOW HOW QUICKLY OR HOW MUCH WILL A SUB POOL GET STRESSED BY HOW MANY PEOPLE BEING OUT IT'S ONE OF THOSE QUESTIONS I COULDN'T ANSWER TODAY IF 10 OF OUR FACULTY IS OUT COULD WE MANAGE IT PROBABLY 50% illness, maybe not. You know what I mean? That's one of those things that I don't know how far the sub pool would stretch until I knew how long somebody was going to be out. But once again, there are some things on the SMART restart webpage for teachers to see about should they come down with COVID, what do they need to do, okay, about getting a test. I see Lance Nauman out there, Director of Risk Management. He's done a fantastic job with our teams in having having a site dedicated to Katie ISD that our employees will be able to get a test. COVID-19 test the same day they need the test. Now, they can also get them through their own health care provider. I don't want to take that away from them. Or they can go down to the county websites and they can go to those sites as well. I don't want to force anyone to go into that. But those employees who need one that day, sure, they get one. and then there are specific bits of information on the website, what the employee needs to do in terms of absenteeism, putting their absences in, taking sick times. There's a few different things that apply to workers, workplace things, not just teachers, but workplace. Guidance coming through the CARES Act, and that's all on the website, and any employee can read about that.
So if they're sick, and I know that there's a federal FMLA act for the 10 days, can they use that first and then their 10 days with TRS or do they need to use their leave?
Yeah, so I don't want to put two or three different scenarios together in that. So there are specific rights that have been given to all workers across the United States that are part of the CARES Act. and we've been very specific HR has put that on our website so they understand those rules those are different than what you're talking about with the family medical leave in so the guidance I would give anybody who thinks they qualify for family medical leave or would like to be considered for family medical leave is they call HR to their leave specialist and they're assigned by last name and you call that person because it's one of those questions I I couldn't really answer because you can qualify for FMLA for many reasons. And the specialist would have to know the reason why you're qualifying for FMLA and then guide that employee to the best strategy.
Okay. Do you still want to continue through the list?
I can just send you the rest of the questions.
I think that's best because we're on 10 minutes of just questions on this and we still have a pretty full agenda. You initially sent those questions saying that you were going to ask them all tonight, and then I shared with the board that it was actually a total of 43 questions. So I think it would be unreasonable for us to sit here tonight, unfortunately, and answer every one of those. I know that Dr. Gagorski, though, and the staff want to make sure that if there are questions that have not been answered on the frequently asked questions page, that whomever sent those to you will get the correct answer that they're searching for. So can we can we maybe look at getting these answers to you? Sure and another time board members. Are y'all okay with that? Okay, I just wanted to make sure if y'all wanted to continue we certainly can but I'm trying to be aware of our time as
Well, madam president, mr. Lacey just to reinforce. I believe in miss champagne I think it's very valid questions and I think we all are in agreement of that I think if the public has the opportunity to see the questions and the extensiveness and the depth that Champaign's questions go into. I think it'll be very informative for him, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think Dr. Gorkoski and his staff would be happy. I'm putting words in his mouth. I know they'll be happy and much, much easier to answer them and do the research to be able to do
the thing. So I agree with you wholeheartedly on that. Would it be, are we in agreement that maybe in the Friday info, give him a couple of days to get the answers, get the administration to get the answers together and then report back the answer to these questions to the entire board mm-hmm sir I do so thank you okay awesome Thank You
miss champagne thank you I'm sorry I'm sorry just ask one yeah miss guess we're quick sure do you know do you have a view for and maybe I missed it maybe I missed it on the website but what happens with the teachers during this interim time when we're all virtual are they going to come to campus or are they
not have you made that decision yet yeah we put out some information today that's why you hadn't seen it yet i think it hit our website at about 5 30. so uh once we made the decision that we are 100 virtual for those first three weeks of school through september 8th we've put the guidelines out that go from august 3rd to september 4th that gets us right up to labor day and um for uh for our employees we have uh we still work a mod what i call a modified work schedule you may have known and we talked about that one months ago, where we've got some flex scheduling going on. Here's one of those things I'll throw out with two different types of orders. If you read the governor's orders, workplaces can have up to 50% of their staff in the building at any given time. If you read the most recent Harris County order about schools, it's 10% of the capacity of the building that can be in there. Now, our buildings are pretty big, you know what I mean? You take one of our high schools, you can put 4,000 kids in there and 300 faculty members. So I don't have any problem meeting the 10% threshold, but it's just one of those things that we kind of have to do now. What the guidance we have told people is we would like our employees to return to work, and we would like teachers to teach from the classroom, and there are many good reasons for that. I could probably go into an hour discussion on that, but I won't. But there are good reasons to return to work and teach from the classroom because it just basically provides a better experience for our kids. But we also understand people have challenges. People have their own kids. People have their own situations. So once again, that's going to be flexible. And teachers can teach from home should they need to do that, especially if they were self-quarantining. That would be a good reason to be teaching from home. So the teachers basically in a roundabout way saying that we've given them pretty much the ultimate flexibility to work in different environments.
Thank you very much. Thank you for the answer, and thank you for giving them that flexibility.
Yeah, I think it's going to be good for him and I think they are going to support what we've put forward.
Matt, Mr. Keller.
Dr. Grigorski, you've been great about answering my questions. I'd like to do the same thing if it's more efficient that Ms. Champagne is going to do is send you a few questions. And maybe we can, if you feel like they're appropriate, put them in the frequently asked questions section because more people will be able to have access to them, frankly. but and I know we're running a little long but if you could just explain one thing I get a lot of hey I sent an email to return to school and some people hear back actually on their email and others don't and it's my understanding that some of those questions that you may not respond to them because you're putting them in the frequently asked question section could you just explain a little bit about that because I don't want people to think that their emails are being ignored
which I know they're not. They're not and if they are you know I mean we need to know that and I will sit here and challenge our team of experts out there who answer these questions you're looking around the room and you see them all who those go to depending on what it is if it's HR related Mr. Schuss grabs it if it's curriculum rated Dr. Caskey grabs those so they go to different areas for those answers if it is something that a lot of people are asking we see a theme kind of developing along that we may not answer it just specifically to a dozen people that sent in the same thing it might just appear on our frequently asked question sheet and then you go in and find that the risk of that is maybe we answered it but we didn't answer it as well as you had just push it back in again and say listen I noticed you answered it on here but it didn't answer this part of that and I've seen that before the one-off questions generally we try to just give a quick answer to if it's a very specific question that doesn't make the sheet thank you you bet and and I want
to clarify Duke if you have a couple of questions I'm not I'm certainly not telling any of you board members that we can't ask you know a reasonable amount of questions I'm just miss champagne started out by saying I have a list of 25 questions we've all seen the questions and when broken down we were looking at more like 43 though I would love for us to sit here and each one of us have an opportunity to ask 43 questions i don't think the administration the community that's watching um i don't think anybody wants to sleep here tonight and so please understand i am certainly not deterring you from asking a couple of questions when you have questions as in-depth as ms champaign's it is maybe a better opportunity to give dr gregorski some time to answer those and and get those back to us and with those answers we can certainly share those like what but Ms. Champagne's saying I received these from specific people, then that gives her the tools to then turn around and answer the community members that have reached out to her. So I just want to clarify that as well.
Madam President, I completely agree, and I do not feel cut off. I think it would be better to be able to reflect on what these answers might be and formulate a response so the entire community can see them on the website.
Okay, great. Any other questions? Madam President, I just have a follow-up to something Ms. Gassoff said.
Sure, go ahead.
Because I didn't see the last email about the return to school for the teachers that you said was sent out today. So they can choose to teach remotely. Is that just until September 8th?
Correct. Correct. Our goal, once we resume in-person instruction, our goal is that every teacher is teaching from their classroom, whether that be KVA, KD Virtual Academy, or whether that be in-person instruction to those students, that we bring everybody back. but we also know the challenges that are going on and not just in our district we do have employees that reside outside the district and if you look across the Houston area just about everybody has suspended in-person instruction well if you're in Harris County for sure for being County and wall are a little bit different but we do know people travel for from many miles and their district may be closed in person instruction so we want to help our folks out with that ultimate level of flexibility right now while we're while we're closed for in
in-person instruction. Any other questions? I do have one and it maybe is going to come up in the presentation a little bit later about KD Virtual, but just to clarify, and you and I spoke about this earlier, if you are a returning student to KDISD, do they need to go on the website? Do they need to be doing anything at this point? Yeah, let me address that one, and that one
is going to be on the frequently asked question because it has come up several times. We want to get that one out there. If it's not out there already, it's coming real soon. So our original plan, as we said, you have a choice. Parents have a choice for their child of the in-person instruction or KD Virtual Academy. That choice still exists. If you want the KVA, that's where you click on the link and you sign up for KVA because you're making a commitment now for at least one grading period. You remember our grading periods for secondary are six weeks, for elementary they're nine weeks. So you're making a commitment there to KVA for that grading period, and then you can either stay in it or get out at that time, when that time comes. If you're planning to send your child for in-person instruction, you do nothing. You're going to get assigned a schedule like you would normally at school, a teacher, or if you're in secondary, seven teachers, you know. And you're going to have those teachers, and they're going to teach you virtually online. You didn't have to do anything. They're going to teach you virtually for those three weeks. And then hoping everything is good and we've returned in-person instruction, you keep the same teacher. That's part of doing it this way is we want to ensure whoever you sign up for, if you want in-person, you get the same teacher virtually and when you step into that classroom. and if you want kva you're getting the same teacher that you would have from the start all the way through kva for the whole school year hopefully that
makes sense it does I just wanted to clarify that if you know it's a good question a current student and you are not choosing the kva route you're gonna go in person though it's delayed three weeks you have nothing that you need to be doing at nothing you'll receive your schedule just like you do every other
year and things like that okay exactly so all right board members are we ready
to move on okay thank you again dr gregorski next agenda item 7.1 planning for growth attendance boundary modifications for the 2021-22 school year mr ted beerling
all right good evening president doyle board members dr gregorski uh we're here tonight i'm I'm here tonight with Chris Poole, with the Population Survey Analyst, to talk about attendance boundary modification for next school year, the 21-22 school year, specifically for junior high 17. So just to give you a little brief rundown of the process, we work directly with PASA to develop these attendance boundary modifications. You will see this on the agenda, board agenda several times in the coming months because we'll be coming back to you with discussion topics on the ABM. The boundary modification option will be made public through various media, through the parents and the public. Families who are impacted will be able to provide feedback as well as the general public in all sorts of different ways, email, phone, electronic surveys, things like that. and then our goal is to bring a recommendation to you for a final attendance boundary modification in October of 2020. So the objectives for for this particular attendance boundary modification is we started by reviewing the attendance and capacities at Katy junior high and Stockdick junior high and so then we prepared an ABM which you guys have in front of you tonight you've We've got in front of you, you have the current maps as well as the proposed ABM and then some overlays for the current high school and junior high zoning as well. So you have those with you can look at those as we go through or even later on. We want to make sure that as we adjust attendance boundaries, we are thinking about the way we use our schools making sure that they're not overcrowded and that we fill up junior high 17 appropriately and then obviously you know when we're developing abm and most of you have been through this we're looking long term as well we're not just looking for the next couple of years but we're looking for you know five to seven years out so the timeline for this abm so the obviously the presentation tonight is where it starts. July 28th, the survey goes out I believe tonight, so July 28th through October 13th the ABM survey will be out there for folks to provide feedback on the ABM. In September board meeting we'll come back to you with K-12 insight who runs our survey for us and they'll provide some preliminary data and then we hope to, if everything goes well, October 26th at that board meeting we'll have a final ABM for you guys to discuss and possibly take action should you choose. Communication for the ABM there's an education process that's obviously July that's tonight we start tonight participation is the survey portion through October and then notification November through January of 21 we want to let parents know and kids know know if they've been affected by the ABM and any new boundaries that have changed. And then the communication tools, of course, parent emails, media releases, website and social media as well. So Chris Poole is going to talk to you a little bit about the maps and some of the decisions we made to bring a proposed ABM to you tonight. And you've got those in front of you if you'd like to look at those as we go through.
Good evening. I'd like to begin again, as we always do, with the data as we have it in the current attendance zones here for the junior highs. These are geocoded students. I know that most of you have been through this process, so you understand the difference between geocoded and enrollment. We do talk a lot of times about transfers, especially on the northern side of the district or at the elementary level or something like that, and about how transfers transfers can impact things, but the transfers at Katie and Stockdick are very small. I think right now or this past year, we had about 18 students transferring into Stockdick and about three leaving Katie in the net, and so I feel like the geocoded student population count here is a pretty good ruler to use. This also shows the May 2020 data revision. It's up there at the top, and I did want to mention just briefly this data is a little different than what we presented in October. The district did have us come back and take a little bit of a snapshot look in May just to see what all was going on between oil and COVID and see if there was any adjustments that needed to be made for staffing. Oddly, what we actually ended up doing is turning a few of the subdivisions in the northwest up a little bit because they were already ahead of schedule. And so there were another few little places we turned things down. So this is a little bit different. And this is the May 2020 data. But what you do see is that Stockdick and Katie are both projected to be well over capacity by 2021. Stockdick at 1542 with a capacity of 1400. That's not sky high. We've certainly had other situations in the district. We've had more students in those large 1400 student junior highs. But Katie is projected by 21, for example, to have 1469. And it's got a capacity of 1232. And so it puts Katie right there at 119, 120% of capacity. So in this situation, it was almost Katie Junior High that's driving the need for the new school as much as Stockdick, with all of that growth up there in the northwestern portion of the district. So the next slide shows the recommendation. I think it's a relatively straightforward recommendation. It only impacts there with Junior High 17. It only impacts Stockdick and Katie. And it allows really, I think, for a good balance over the next four or five years. You can see that in 2025 we're projecting Stock, Dick and Junior High 17 to both be around 1,500 students. So in other words, both around 100 over capacity. And the same thing with Katie. At 1,325 and a capacity of at 1,232, it's around 100 students over capacity. We'll see if we need to still go in and tweak Katie in the long term. We do have another junior high expected to come online in the northern part of the district. It's almost off the map there, right at the tip top of the map. but that additional junior high then should be able to take care of the expected growth in junior high 17 and Stockdick there in the future so these next couple of maps show sort of what you all have I think you have overlays that Ted showed me a lot earlier the bold black lines on this particular one show the junior high boundaries for Katie junior high and for Stockdick and so you can see that we're pulling from both both of the schools need need some relief there and so we're pulling the 11 a and d and those 20s there from stock dick and then we're pulling everything west of katie hockley cutoff and north of morton road out of katie junior high into that school the new school there is in 10b right there at the bottom part of the the green there so we feel like the area that we're pulling out of stock dick most of them are really probably a lot closer to that school in 10b than than driving up to stock dick and then katie needed the relief and so we're pulling everything there that's right around the school right around that new junior high 17 there sending all of those kids to the new school in 11a and 11d we've got camillo lakes and marcello lakes the 20s we've got like lake crest forest katie oaks morton creek ranch south williamsburg parish it's that area that we're pulling and then like i said for katie it's Morton Road and Katie Hockley Cut-Off will be the dividers. The next map here shows the black lines as the high school attendance zones, so that way you can sort of understand how Junior High 17 will split to both Pato and Katie High. We're not changing or pulling anybody or affecting anyone in the Morton Ranch area. That's just that the Morton Ranch zone happens to go ahead and lop over into Katie. So really 17 will be sending some kids to Pato and some kids to Katy. What we do also have to remember is we've got another high school site in the area and that additional junior high site so these these zones and feeder patterns are going to be changing over the next several years as that area continues to build out. And then the last slide here just wants to sort of emphasize that this ABM does not impact where everybody goes to high school. It's very rare situation that we do a junior high and tweak a high school along the way we actually did it you know here just recently but in this situation we're not making any changes at all to the high school zone we know that there is going to be additional high school change there in the northern part of the district and so at this point in time we're expecting to leave the high school attendance zones alone.
So in summary there, we've worked with PASSA closely. We've worked with them over 20 years. We want to do the best we can when we're talking about balancing schools and we know that this is hard, very difficult to do, but we do want to do it in the sense that we bring balance to the campuses out there on the northwest side and they're going to keep growing but we think that this if done if if done the way we think we can do it we can we can bring some balance out there for the next five to seven years and we'd be happy to answer any questions that you have
madam president ms champaign i would just like to thank you very much for keeping the high schools intact. I think that is very, very wonderful, and I look forward to having an easy time at this. I
think it'll be good. Thank you very much. We've had a couple of tough ones, and I think any time you move a kiddo, it's not easy. I can speak to that personally and professionally, but if we can do that with the least amount of movement, I think that's a good thing.
Are there any other questions? Okay. Thank you so much. Next, agenda item 7.2, 2020-21 budget update. Mr. Smith.
Mr. All right. Well, good evening, President Doyle, Superintendent Gorgorski, and trustees. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the 2021 budget that we are to date. You, of course, heard all this through May. I gave you a break in June. We're going to talk about the preliminary budget of all funds and hopefully cover some of the stuff that we won't have to cover in August because we will have covered it tonight. And then we have next month where we actually do adoption of the actual budget. and before I get going too much I've got Miss Butterfield and Miss Feitinger who are gonna help me to kind of break up the monotony of having to hear my voice the entire two hours I'm playing no the entire time but as you know we want us we want to have a balanced maintained budget that's our objective we might want to maintain competitive compensation for our staff competitive health care we put always put a higher priority on student and staff safety We're opening two schools this year, McIlwain Elementary and Jordan High School. And then of course we're planning for opening Junior House 17. The general fund, just to speak about some of the variables and remind you that what I've highlighted there in the basic allotment, those two numbers are the same from Amarillo to Texarkana down to Brownsville to Katy. It doesn't matter if you're urban or suburban or rural, those numbers are what school districts get per student to operate, $6,160 per belly button. So the more belly buttons you have in school, the more money that you get through this allotment, and obviously the more students you have, then the more teachers you need. But as long as that number is static, and you can see that that's the same as last year, as this year, those are new as of House Bill 3. But if those two numbers or one of those numbers doesn't move, then there's no inflationary issue in the budget. So anything that's related to inflation, such as increase in fuel prices, salary increases, increase in insurance premiums on property insurance, et cetera, anything that's subject to inflation is not taken account for when we get new students. We get more money, but those have expenses with teachers associated with it. There's not additional funds for inflation. And with that, we are expecting from budgeted last year this time to this year this time, a 4,244 student increase or a 5% from budget to budget. We ended the year quite a bit more than 3,308 last year, which reduces it. but again this is budget to budget so a 5.1 percent increase and i was glad to hear dr pool again mention that that our numbers uh especially in the north were showing uh uh aduptic because uh you know we're so much associated with new students because we've we've hired the staff for those students um teacher growth again that teacher growth is associated with jordan high school and McIlwain Elementary School and then just organic growth or new students to the district and then you can see that we're working on pay raises as well those of course have been adopted and moving forward and again when you're looking at a basic allotment that hasn't changed it's tough a crop for schools districts across the state so I want to talk about I'm required to talk about this slide it used to be a little different and I'll talk about why it was different but I'm required to talk about this slide not the basic allotment part I'm gonna that I want to be clear about the basic allotment but I want to just say that and if you'll look at the little person when I hit the next button you're going to see the green and the blue change but if local property values increase or they're high the state share of six thousand one hundred sixty dollars decreases so no matter what color scheme makes up that little graduate there it we're only going to get six thousand one hundred sixty dollars so the wealthier a school district is or the more it can generate in tax dollars the less state funds it gets and the more or the the poorer it is when it comes to generating tax dollars the more state funds it gets so as property values decrease or are low the state share of six thousand one 160 will be higher. So again, I wanted to point that out and 43% of, and going back a couple, 44% of our budget is comprised of the state and 54% is local. So we do rely on several hundred million dollars coming from the state to make up for our inability from a tax base to get 6,100, generate $6,160 per student. With current year values, and again we moved to current year values as part of House Bill 3, these changes are immediate. There used to be a one-year lag, so if you had a big increase in property values, you got that benefit for a year. Now it's an immediate decrease of state funds, so that that one-year lag is no longer there. So talk about the tax rate. I've got good news here, and I've mentioned this before. Our compressed tax rate all compressed tax rate across Texas are scheduled to go from 93 cents down to ninety one point six four cents so we are going to see a reduction in tax our tax rate down to a dollar two six six that is a reduction of three point I'm sorry of two point six five cents so it's an interesting week in that we're given I'm giving this tonight because today and as of around six o'clock we We still had not received all three counties, but we're waiting on one county. We're getting the information to talk about what this tax rate is going to end up being. We have until Saturday at midnight to get our information to the Texas Education Agency, and the Texas Education Agency is actually going to set this tax rate there on the top, the .9164, on our behalf. and okay they're gonna set that as part of House Bill 3 so right now miss fighting er on our next agenda item will cover the notice that y'all are going to be asked to approve to put into the paper and it will show the tax rate scheme that we're seeing here on the green column which does show the 2.6 five-cent tax decrease tax rate decrease but I am optimistic that it will be a greater tax rate decrease after we get the information from all three counties and are able to move forward with the education agency as a reminder 88% of our budget is in salary and benefits but we're very labor-intensive and then non-payroll is only 12% of the budget and the vast majority of that is in fuel and then utilities in our buildings and I'm going to turn it over to miss Butterfield to give you a synopsis of what our general fund is looking like some 45 days 40 days before we need to adopt the budget so here you're seeing
the entire general operating fund put together not only the projected beginning fund balance but the revenues and as Chris just said in the assumption review this but this revenue budget is built off of 44 billion in values where where local revenue is comprised of collections and other local revenues, things like our interest earnings and facility rentals and such. You see our state revenues coming in there at $383 million. That includes the TRS on behalf, the $46 million that you've seen all along in the expenditure side of the budget. And then federal revenues at $9.6 million. The largest contributor to the federal revenues is our SHARs at $6.7 million. Indirect revenues are in there and some very minor budgets for others. Expenditure budgets we continue to state as payroll and non-payroll. and they are just like the pie chart showed at 88% and 12% of the GOF budget and the split between those two categories. We continue to budget 2% under spending. We actually reduce the budget so we're not over budgeting or overstating the budgetary need. and for transfers out we have a three million set aside there to transfer out to our self insurance health care fund and finally a transfer in five hundred dollars it comes into the general operating fund from the terse waterfall you can see that there's a slight increase of eight hundred thousand to fund balance or in other words a balanced budget in gof
miss butterfield and now transition over to our next budgeted fund our food
service fund okay the food service fund budget presented this evening includes local revenues which are made up of meal pay from students interest earnings and other local revenues a small amount we receive from the state each year and then federal federal reimbursements for free and reduced breakfast and lunch meals that we get reimbursement from the federal government for in addition to the value of commodities that we receive in the form of actual food. Expenditures reflect additional costs for opening two additional campuses as we've mentioned earlier. This primarily affects our payroll costs for additional personnel and our supplies and materials for food and disposables to serve that food. There's also services for equipment repair and other costs such as mileage and registrations for trainings we normally utilize trend information to develop revenue and expenditure budgets for this fund but with the harvey disruption and the new covet uncertainty this has become a real challenge the fund has historically produced better financial results than in the past and what's been budgeted however covet changes are adversely affecting this fund we are working on estimating the final effects for 1920 and you will see those brought to you next month with the final amended budget we anticipate a significant use of fund balance and we'll be adding a transfer in from the general fund to keep this fund in a favorable financial position going into the 2021 school year and we will need to continually monitor this fund as we go forward because as things change we're just going to have to react to how that is going to affect this fund
okay and our third budgeted fund is our debt service fund
So in review of the debt service budget, this slope of growth graph that you're looking at is important as it indicates the corollary relationship between increased outstanding bonds and increased property values. The debt service budgets you see projected here with revenues and expenditures. This is a balanced budget. The expenditure budget is sufficient to cover all of the debt service needs for next year and contemplates $9 million in defeasances where we actually pay off debt and another $700,000 that will be budgeted towards interest payments on the outstanding authorization available for issuance next year, also a balanced budget.
And then next month we'll be asking you to adopt all budgeted funds, and this is a picture of all budgeted funds.
Okay, so the 2021 summary slide reflects all funds, and budgeted for 2021. As you can see, the revenues at $1 billion, $40 million, are almost exactly balanced with our expenditures. Our transfers out will reduce by 2.3 for a net effect of $2.2 million decrease. As we mentioned earlier, this is primarily attributable to the food service fund, and we will need to continue monitoring that.
Okay, future considerations. You've seen this early, cartographers, and heard me talk about that enough, but I want to say that this board and the administration have a proven track record of doing a pretty good job putting the budget together and proved pretty good job of fiscal management over the years, but these are very unprecedented times and as as Ms. Feitinger talked about in the food service fund, there's a lot of changes that I expect to happen because of all the unknowns that are in the general fund. The general fund, well, all funds are going to have those type of changes. And I would just let the public know and you know that we are in unprecedented times. Of course, you know that. But it's extremely challenging as we've been putting this budget together with all the what ifs. I would say that the administration and these two ladies especially are kind of like a saddle bronc rider that grabs that handle and he goes out and they have a very firm grip on that handle. I'll be honest with you, these last few months and moving forward, it's going to be kind of like grease marbles as we're putting this thing together. There's so many marbles with the questions and they're greasy because some of the answers, especially when you start dealing with federal relief and grants and everything associated with all the accounting rules when you're given all the PP&E from the Texas Education Agency, that's a financial transaction that we must record and that's the first time that's happened so it's extreme challenge as we move forward. I'm going to talk about our enrollment as i mentioned earlier the 6150 60 dollars per belly button or per student determines our funding there's different types of students that we have whether it be bilingual special needs or and gifted and talented etc those type of students to also affect that as well there is a 2021 hold harmless that was recently changed i think it was changed about eight nine nine days ago from the education agency that could affect us. If it does, it would be a very big backstop, meaning that we probably, the budget numbers from a revenue perspective would not be where they were if we have to have that hold harmless hit. But there is a hold harmless in there that was made into effect 10 days ago. The hold harmless prior to that would have never come even close to ever affecting a district like Katy ISD. We're still dealing with House Bill 3 that was adopted some 15 months ago or 14 months ago now. It's being implemented. There's still some ongoing rulemaking. And as I mentioned earlier, the tax rates are going to vary. That 91 cent tax rate that is the minimum that we are all going to have is going to be different from district to district depending on their property value growth. That's why ours is going to change. And I think ours is going to be driven down lower over these next five or six days. but they're going to be different from from district to district moving forward or those tax rate decreases are going to vary across the state state funding you know I've got and I'm not going to read through them y'all probably all read the the comments that that comptroller Glenn Hager mentioned last week to the legislative budget board about the impact of the covin 19 on and the oil and gas glut on the state's budget and the fact that we are now in a 4.58 billion dollar deficit we under current law are pretty much protected from a state funding perspective from that meaning we're still going to get 6 160 dollars per student property values and the tax rates may be still unknown at this point but it's going to be 6 160 dollars per student through the end of the 2021 21 school year but moving forward in our budget the numbers that we showed you today there's the fast growth allotment and that fast growth allotment is because Katie is a fast growth school district but it is worth twenty three point four million dollars in next year in this next budget or the budget numbers that you've seen from a revenue perspective that's in there that could be something that may not be in there in the future don't know maybe something as as I mentioned to this board before, not all districts are guaranteed to get it year after year. We're probably pretty safe based on our growth, but it is a volatile thing, and it's worth $23.4 million. NIFA, the new instructional facilities allotment, we didn't get that back in the 15-16 biennium. That is now worth about $2.5 million to the KDISD. This is the money we get for operations of opening new schools, about $2.5 million. That is something that I've been told is potentially something that could not get funded in the deal. And then, of course, we've all heard about the 5% reduction. Again, that didn't affect public education. That's still $6,160. But the legislature will be meeting in January to discuss that, and that's something that's been on our minds. and that would be worth you know about 40 million dollars to Katie ISD if that were to happen and I'm not been trying to be an alarmist I'm just trying to give you a number that says if that were to happen it would be significant there's a lot of uncertainty on the economy post COVID-19 how quick how long is this window that we're in gonna last the sooner we get out of it the better whatever it will be for our economy, but we just don't know. And then local revenues is something that's been already downward dialed in our local budget. We know we're not going to record in this year that we're currently in, the 19-20 school year, any athletic ticket sales. Our interest income budget is way down. interest income budget is reflected as way down in next year's budget but the athletic budget is the same as it would have been because we'll get those monies most mostly during the spring and summer of next year so there's a lot of moving a lot of greased marbles that we're dealing with but I always try to show you guys what it looks like one year out and under current law under House Bill 3 law we would have a deficit next year that's probably because I've in these numbers will show a very modest another very modest salary increase but as again because we operate efficiently or historically have operated very efficiently we wouldn't be seeing a deficit that would be too bad under current law and again law could change but that's why we have the fund balances and you can see those fund balances at the bottom 30% of our spend that's just just over three and a half months, or just around three months, and you want it to be around three months, as we all know, we've talked about. And so, but you have some fund balance in excess of that, so we can make, we don't have to make draconian changes, we can use some of that fund balance to get us through some tough times. And with that, that's our schedule moving forward with our August meeting, where we're gonna adopt these three, we're gonna ask you to adopt these three budgeted funds, and then in May in September we're gonna ask you to adopt it to the tax rate and that's just the notice that we're required to show that we're gonna have our next meeting to talk about the budget in this room on August the 24th at 630 and we've done with that and that and with that I appreciate your time
very much thank you mr. Smith board members do you have any questions
Madam President. Mr. Lacey. Not any questions because Chris, excuse me, Mr. Smith, you answered them all and I really want to say thank you so much for addressing the 21 to 22 school year. That is what has been, you and I have discussed it, it's very heavy on my mind with not knowing what's going to happen with the economy and with the reduction of what the state is looking at. Thank you very much for at least putting that out so that we can start to look and and plan for that. Appreciate you greatly.
Any other questions? Madam President? Ms. Champagne? I have two questions. One is about the food service because I actually looked at last year's and I saw that the balance was over $3 million. And I know that you said that this is due to the COVID and the two new schools. And so can you just explain to me how the COVID has affected the food service fund? I understand how it could affect other things.
There are several things that have affected it. One is we are, of course, we're continuing to pay employees, but we don't have the students in there buying meals. And so you don't have the income coming in. In addition to that, we are doing the grab-and-go meals, and we are getting federal reimbursement for those, but they're nowhere near the magnitude or the, you know, we're not going to, those also have to be accounted for separately. So it's very complicated the way the summer feeding program is required to be peeled off in a counter course separately which is why we're not bringing that until next month because we're trying to get where it's that going to end up but the expenditures have continued but the
revenue is not there okay thank you I think that's it I'm happy that we can do the mills for the kids so that's awesome miss champagne I wouldn't I will say
that when we show you the final amended budget next month you're gonna see a a transfer out of the general fund, a recommendation anyway, to transfer money from the general fund to cover the hole that was put in the food service fund. And that will be a significant amount that will be necessary to keep that fund whole.
Any other questions? Okay, let's move on to Agenda Item 8.1, Discuss and Consider Board Approval of the Notice of Public Meeting to Discuss the Budget and Proposed Tax Rate. Ms. Smith. Ms. I'm sorry. Ms. I'm sorry. Ms. I missed my name. Ms. That's okay. Ms. I didn't realize you had sat down. I'm so sorry.
Ms. Item 8.1 is to discuss and consider the approval of the notice of the public meeting to discuss the budget and proposed tax rate. The State Comptroller's Truth in Taxation Guidelines require that the Board of Trustees approve the maintenance and operations tax rate and the interest in sinking tax rate that will be included in the newspaper publication of the notice of public meeting to discuss budget and tax rate each tax rate is to be published separately we will publish that we are getting that ready to go as soon as we get the numbers to be able to create that we will be putting that into the newspaper to be published on the 6th and we will have that to them by Monday noon and if you have any questions the format is here for you to see what it will look like
that impressive mr. Lacey I move that the Board of Trustees approves the the publishing of the notice of public meeting to discuss budget and proposed tax rate. This is a mouthful. And a maintenance and operations tax rate of $1.0266 per $100 valuation and an interest and sinking tax rate of $0.3900 per $100 evaluation. Second.
I have a motion by Mr. Lacey, a second by Mr. Redman, that the Board of Trustees approves the publishing of the notice of public meeting to discuss budget and proposed tax rate and maintenance and operations tax rate rate of $1.0266 per 100 valuation and an interest and sinking rate of .3900 per 100 valuation. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Agenda item 8.2, discuss and consider board approval of a non-objection letter for establishment of a foreign trade zone, FTZ, by Pepper and and Fuchs Incorporated and associated contribution agreement. Mr. Smith. All right. Well, thank you,
Ms. Doyle. I guess it was about 50 months ago or just over sometime in the early part of the summer of 2016, I presented this item to you with this very same company, Pepper Oil Fuchs, with the establishment that they are in a foreign trade zone. Pepperell Fuchs came to Katy in 2017. If you recall, they opened just before Hurricane Harvey hit, and they were hit by a tornado just there north of Buc-ee's. And they've been here back since 2017. We established, or this board approved, a non-objection letter back in 2016. for their foreign trade zone qualified product. Pepperwell Fuchs makes, manufactures products for fabrication and process automation, and it specializes in sensor manufacturing. This is a partnership, a foreign trade zone is a partnership with the Port of Houston and the Federal Trade Zone Board, and the federal government's program has a program where items that qualify to be that are going to be manufactured in the United States as part of a foreign trade zone and if they're going to be moved out of the country and sold to companies out of the country they can be qualified for tax exemption for federal purposes. Having a fire and trade zone status excludes the qualifying inventory from appraisal rolls and therefore from advert ad valorem taxes is my understanding that pepper old fugues expects about a 25 to 30 million dollar inventory of items that will sit in their warehouse that they're manufacturing that will then ship to items to in ways necessary to qualify for the foreign trade zone in order to do this the company needs to have a non-objection letter from the the taxing entities and in this case KDISD. As part of KDISD's potential participation, we have attached an agreement that you have attached that if executed would hold the district harmless to any lost revenue. So what my task was back in 2016 and again is to have something set up where we can offer this or we can participate along with the company and the economic development board where we don't lose any money income and revenue is too important to Katie ISD and its students and debate the opera operation that is integral that we don't lose any money and so we've arranged this to where we don't think that we will lose any money I've had some outside consultants look at this as well again and and the agreement that we came up with recently has changed somewhat because of House Bill three but not majorly but it does protect the district's interest. We would require that the school that the Pepper Elphiux pay debt service and anything above that a compressed rate to us so we would not lose any money. The amount of the compressed tax rate is essentially paid for by the state of Texas. It's not shown on our property values and therefore it acts as if it isn't existent and so we're not getting any taxes on it, but they're not holding any state funds on it as they would through a regular tax abatement. In addition to this, just like in 2016, the company, Pepperell Fuchs, agrees to make an annual payment to the $15,000 to the Katy Education Foundation, and the best part of all this is at any time if the district feels in any way that it's negatively, it's negative to the district or if we're losing money based on this arrangement, we can get out of it at any time.
Are there any questions, board members?
Madam President. Ms. Champagne. Mr. Smith, what does this company produce?
They make sensors and things that go into, as I understand it, chemical plants, like operating rooms, operating operations rooms, sensors and stuff like that. That's how I understand it.
Any other questions? Madam President. Ms. Vann. I move the Board of Trustees approves a non-objection letter for establishment of a foreign trade zone by Pepperell Fuchs Incorporated and an associated contribution agreement. Second.
I have a motion by Ms. Vann, a second by Mr. Keller, that the Board of Trustees approves the non-objection letter for establishment of a foreign trade zone by Pepperell Fuchs Incorporated and an associated contribution agreement. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed? motion passes thank you so much mr. Smith next discuss and consider board approval of the district's participation in the elementary and secondary schools emergency relief grant ESS er miss fighting her again thank you okay item
8.3 is presented tonight to meet recommendations within the elementary and secondary schools emergency emergency relief grant the districts discuss this application with their boards the grant which I'm gonna call because it is quite a mouthful, is part of the Federal CARES Act funding, and it's only one piece that we're talking about tonight, and the district's preliminary allocation is just over $5.1 million. The State has chosen to utilize the additional ESSER funding to offset reductions to State revenues that districts were to receive. Each district will receive their full amount as calculated with the State aid formulas. However, the revenue will be provided in two funding streams, one State via the funding formula and the other Federal via the ESSER funding. To reiterate, this results in no new net money to KDISD, and if approved, a reduction to the general fund revenue, you will see that reflected in the final amended budget that we will present next month that would be offset by an increase by the federal funding that we would receive in this grant. Of note is that expenditures charged to this grant must fall under one of the allowable uses outlined in the grant guidelines, and those costs must meet applicable federal cost requirements, even though these were things we had already budgeted. The district has identified things such as utility costs, additional distance learning costs, and personnel costs to be the largest expenditure areas of the budget. could fall under one of the allowable activities of the grant. The rules as they pertain to allowable activities are still being interpreted. And just at the end of last week, we attended a training and we received some revised interpretations of some of the guidelines from TEA. These revisions should allow salaries to be charged to the grant while meeting the necessary allowable use guidelines. And they removed some of the additional requirements that were going to be required to fund salaries. So that does seem to have helped us in identifying costs that we will be able to allocate to this grant. The grant application will be completed and submitted based on the latest information we've received with the intent to maximize funding available to the district. In other words, we don't want to pick up things that other grants will be coming down the road that we are aware of that we that we could claim in those grants. The application is due August 24th and with that we're asking the board to approve the district's participation in the ESSER grant and I'm here to ask your attention. answer any questions you may have are there any questions
madam president mr lacey i move that the board of trustees approves the district's participation in the elementary secondary schools emergency
relief grant essr i have a motion by mr lacey a second by miss van that the board of trustees approves the district's participation in the elementary and secondary schools emergency relief grant esser we will now proceed to vote all those in favor please raise your right hand and say i'm all those opposed motion passes Are you staying with us for 8.4? Yeah, you sure are? Yeah. Okay, go ahead.
Item 8.4 is to consider the approval of District's May 2020 financial reports. We have our four reports that we normally have, our financial statements, which are in two parts. At this point, expenditures are broken down and we're through May, so we're at basically through fourth of the way through the year. You'll see that we should be at 75%. Several of those budgets are running lower. Again, you'll see that next month when we do the final amended budget as we start to recognize those things that are not going to reach 100%. These are primarily due to COVID-19 where costs just aren't there. The construction report presents projects through May for projects funded with the 2017 and 2014 authorization along with E-rate funding and TERS funding. The tax report shows property tax revenues received through May. You can see that the value adjustments have decreased anticipated revenues and those reductions are included in the budget amendments that you'll see presented tonight. The check register indicates vendor payments for the month of May. And so these are the financial reports we have for you this month. If you have any questions.
Are there any questions? Madam President. Ms. Vann. I move the Board of Trustees approves the District's May 2020 financial reports. Second.
I have a motion by Ms. Vann and second by Mr. Lacey that the Board of Trustees approves the District's May 2020 financial reports. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. aye all those opposed motion passes agenda item 8.5 miss butterfield discuss and consider board
approval of the july 2020 budget amendments thank you we have several revenue amendments tonight like ms feitinger just mentioned in the general operating fund local revenues are decreased increased $8 million due to reduced values, reduced collections, our current interest rate environment, and other reductions due to the impact of COVID closures like summer school, athletics, concessions, facility rentals. The general fund's state revenues have increased $12 million, recognized primarily student numbers submitted to the state through PEMS and by Senate Bill 7 funding received related to Hurricane Harvey claim. General Operating Fund federal revenues are decreased $89,000 due to the reduced E-rate revenues based on actual anticipated funding. funding. All these revenue amendments move us closer to final amended budget. Like Ms. Feitinger said, we'll be presenting that next month. General operating fund expenditures increased $750,000 to provide for additional COVID PPE and equipment. And the remainder of these general fund expenditure amendments are direct offsets between different functions. Approval of these amendments results in a three $3.2 million increase to the general operating fund fund balance. Debt service fund has some revenue amendments as well. Local revenues decrease $1.6 million due to reduced collections and the depressed current interest rate environment. Debt service state revenues increased slightly at $82,000 due to increased hold harmless state aid related to the increased homestead exemption. Approval of this amendment in debt service will result in a $1.5 million decrease to the debt service fund balance. Finally, we have one construction amendment. amendment. Construction fund expenditures are amended by 450,000, which establishes additional funding for the district-wide rolling gate replacement project. As discussed last month, this amendment will be funded from 2017 project savings.
Are there any questions?
Ms. Vann? I move the Board of Trustees approves the District's July 2020 budget amendments. Second.
I have a motion by Ms. Vann, a second by Mr. Lacey that the Board of Trustees approves the July 2020 budget amendments. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you so much. next on our agenda 8.6 discuss and consider board approval of parent notification for students at risk of failure waiver our presenter is miss
Terry Murphy good evening president Doyle dr. Gregor ski and members of the board Texas school districts and open enrollment charter schools are required to provide early notice to parents or guardians of students in grades seven and eight I'm sorry in grades four and seven identified to be at risk of failure on the first administration of an assessment required for grade advancement in the next school year such as the fifth and eighth grade star assessments the parent notification is required to be sent at the end of each school year under Texas Administrative Code the superintendent must establish the instruments and procedures to be used to determine which students are at risk given that the star administration's were cancelled in the spring the at-risk determination would have to be made through some other means if a district is not able to or does not have sufficient information to make a determination about a student's risk of failure at this time the district may apply for a waiver the parent notification for students at risk of failure waiver allows school districts to delay the notice requirement until the end of the 2021
school year are there any questions
madam president mr lacey i move that the board of trustees approves the waiver for parent notification for students at the rip students at risk failure thank you second i have a motion by
mr lacey a second by mr redmond that the board of trustees approves the waiver for parent notification for students at risk of failure. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you so much. Agenda item 8.7 discuss and consider board approval of the House bill 3 five-year goals and targets for the district elementary campuses and high school campuses. Dr. Kasky and Ms. Martinez.
Welcome. Thank you. Good evening President Toil, board members and Dr. We're here this evening to present the goals and targets required by House Bill 3. You heard Chris mention House Bill 3 several times. The companion to that is accountability, so we're here on that end of it. Specifically, House Bill 3 requires school boards to adopt goals and targets for early childhood literacy and mathematics at the elementary level and college, career, and military readiness goals and targets at the high school level. Mrs. Martinez, who is our new Executive Director of Research Accountability and Assessment, Her first day of work was actually March the 16th. She's been very, very busy the past few months working with her team and also working with our campus principals to develop our recommendations that we're bringing forward this evening. This time I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Martinez.
Good evening. It is a pleasure to meet all of you in person today. I'm actually excited to share with you information on House Bill 3 goals. Tonight I'm going to give you some background information and details on the newly required required House Bill 3, board adopted goals.
That's not mine. I'm not budget and I'm not KVA either. You want me to speak to it?
Okay.
It's just caskies.
We had it on the desktop earlier. Oh, I did, yeah.
So Natalie, your very first presentation and look what happened. No pressure. No pressure. Deliver now.
Well, it's a good thing we practiced this afternoon. So I think it's on the desktop, at least on one of those computers it is. Otherwise I can just speak to it, but it is better with visuals.
Ta-da.
Here we go. Awesome. So in 2015, Texas set a goal that 60% of Texans would have a certificate or a degree. This is known as the 60 by 30 Texas. Soon after that, the school finance commission recommended establishing two checkpoints within our public education system. And this led to our House Bill 3 board adopted goals. House Bill 3 defines specific goals for elementary and secondary. At the elementary level, you'll notice that we're measuring STAR at meets and masters level in the third grade for reading and for math. And for high school, we're measuring college career military readiness for annual grads. These should be familiar to you because they are part of our accountability system. Our last accountability rating was in 2019 and I wanted to remind you of our of our ratings in 2019 overall we read in 92 a extremely extremely high which we're super proud of domain one was at an 89 B domain to a school progress sitting at an a for 91 and closing the gap at a high 95 we were very proud of our students teachers and staff for their dedication to individual growth and progress I want to focus in a little bit more on student achievement in domain 1 In this chart, you'll see that KDISD exceeded the state in all three indicators. For reading, when we look at students who met approaches, meets, or masters, we exceeded the state by 13 points. For math, we look at students who met approaches, meets, or masters, and again, we exceeded the state, this time by 9 points. For CCMR, we are reaching the mid-90s and still exceeding the state. This is accountability and the biggest difference between this and House Bill 3 is with our content areas in reading and math. I want you to notice again that for each content area for accountability, we looked at students who reached approaches, meets, or masters. To narrow the focus on House Bill 3 goals, you'll notice that performance levels now include only meets and masters. Approaches is no longer counted as a positive for calculations. You'll see, however, that KDISD still outperforms the state in all three areas. As a reminder, there are three performance levels on STAR, which include approaches, meets, and masters. For House Bill 3, however, we will only report on meets and masters. CCMR is unique in that it reports a component score and a scaled score. The component score is the actual percent of students who meet that CCMR indicator. TEA then scales this score to fit an A through F system, and so you'll notice that we have a 74 and a 94, still well above the state. Numbers aside, you'll notice at the top, school boards are required to review and approve plans on early childhood literacy math and CCMR. These plans are created for each campus and the district and include annual goals over a five-year period. Targets are also set for each student group evaluated under domain 3 which is closing the gap. Plans are written in the campus improvement plan and the district improvement plan and will be reviewed by the school board annually. These plans will also be posted on the district and campus websites. As part of the monitoring process a calendar of reports will also be outlined for the school board to monitor progress throughout the year. Tonight the board will be asked to adopt goals and targets for our campuses and district. The five year goals are aggregate data, which represents a whole third grade elementary or annual grads in high school. Numbers represent all students, not just the accountability subset. set. For targets, we have identified two student groups per campus and district to focus on each year. Since overall performance is relatively high, the idea is to close the achievement gap and focus on specific student groups at each campus. Equity is the key to student group data and these targets will allow us to focus on achievement gaps in reading, math, and CCMR. Our first goal at At the district level, KDISD will increase the percent of students achieving meets or above in reading from 59% to 66% by July 2024. You will notice our baseline data is 2019, and 2020 is omitted from the chart due to school closures. The student group results are shown in the green section above and include annual targets up to 2024. Each year we will choose two student groups to focus on. Because KDISD has already met the federal targets in Domain 3, we chose the two student groups in most need to support and ensure that we are closing the achievement gap. Each year this focus may change. Areas with a dash did not meet minimum size of 25 students, and although we still review this information internally, it is not publicized. minimum size holds true for campus level data as well as you can imagine when we get down to one grade level at a campus numbers may fall below 25 students and will not be publicized we do however still review that data and we may still create goals on that student group if it is identified the most important part of House Bill 3 is planning to support reaching these goals this year you will find House Bill 3 action plans within the elementary campus improvement plans plans as well as the district improvement plan. Our second goal, KDISD will increase the percent of students achieving meets or above in mathematics from 60 to 67% by July 2024. The student group results are again shown in the green section and include annual targets up to 2024. The math and reading focus groups do not have to match, but for our first year they do. Again, areas with a dash did not meet minimum size of 25 students, but we have reviewed that data internally. It just will not be publicized. Our last goal, KDISD, will increase the percentage of students earning CCMR credit from 74 to 81 by July 2024. Remember, the top line represents the component score, which is the actual percentage of students, and underneath that is the scaled score which is what you would see in accountability after TEA scales the results. Student results are again shown in green and again we already met the federal targets set in domain 3 so we chose two student groups in most need to support ensuring that we are closing the gap. Each year that focus may change. In addition to these district goals the school board must also approve campus goals and targets which were provided to you in board docs. Once campuses complete their campus improvement plans you will find annual goals and targets within their plans and addendum will also have the five-year goals and targets. Progress measures will include assessment information from Dreambox for mathematics and for reading we will use Texas Kia, TPRI, Tejas Lee and F&P. For CCMR we will include early summary data for 10th grade, 11th grade and 12th grade and these progress measures again will be provided to the school board throughout the year. I'd be happy to answer any questions that the board may have or I will turn it back over to you school board president. Are there any
Any questions? Madam President. Ms. Gessach. Hardy, I think I understand the answer. I asked Dr. Gagorski. I was looking at the data, and you said that the two groups at each school, I'm just looking at the literacy for elementary for what was provided to us. You said that the two groups in most need are the ones that are represented in each. But some have three or even four. Why is that?
OK, so the data that you have, it it may not show the student group that we actually chose because of minimum size. The only ones that are showing up in your data are the ones that had at least 25 students because that data is publicized.
Okay, so looking at this, we don't even know which groups you chose.
The way that you would look at that is if you see a change from the 2019 to the 2021, you'll know that that is a student group that was identified. If you don't see two of them, then it's because one of them did not meet minimum size and we're sharing that information with the campus specifically, but not publicizing the information.
And if I see three of them, I just take the two lowest ones? Yes. Yes. All right, perfect. Thank you.
You're welcome. Any other questions?
Madam President.
Mr. Lacey.
I move that the Board of Trustees approves the House Bill 3, HB 3, five-year goals and targets for the district, elementary campuses, and high school campuses as presented by the administration.
I have a motion by Mr. Lacey, see a second by Ms. Vann that the Board of Trustees approves the House Bill 3 HB3 five-year goals and targets for the district elementary campuses and high school campuses. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next agenda item 8.8 discuss and consider board action to pre-approve the superintendent to submit a virtual learning plan in accordance with TEA
requirements for the Katy Virtual Academy. Dr. Caskey. I'm sorry I was like
go ahead. It's okay I was gonna wait till you're ready. We were letting Mr. Graham finish his sneezes. I needed my backup to come in so. You are distance. As long as these okay start whenever you're ready we're ready for you all right great back again this evening um to present to you our kd virtual academy plan and i want to preface this by saying that this is a collaborative work of everybody in this room from setting up the administration of kva to crafting the enrollment procedures for kva to selecting the teachers for kva to helping us develop the budget for KVA and then publicizing to our students so every single cabinet member in this room has been an integral part of this and I am not here to present on every single component of that what I'm here to present to you this evening is the instructional component so I know that you will have lots of questions as we go through this we've got back up here for that but again I'm here tonight to present the instructional components of Katie virtual Academy all right good Dan and we got the right one up here all right I want to begin this presentation by talking a little bit from about the spring and how we're transitioning from instruction in the spring virtual instruction to virtual instruction this fall how we plan to start school I'm also going to go over the TEA requirements there are certain requirements that we have to submit to the Texas Education Agency which are are required in our plan, which we are calling our KD Virtual Academy. You see that there are four boxes up there on the slide. That is what TEA is calling their key requirements within the asynchronous plan that we will have to submit to the state. So this evening, I'm going to cover the instructional structure and the framework. I'm going to talk about our instructional materials that we've selected for KVA, how we're going to go about monitoring and tracking our student progress, and then lastly the implementation of supports supports for our families supports for our students and also supports for our teachers and then lastly we'll talk about next steps and timeline so if we look back to March the governor shut us down the whole state of Texas closed all schools and within one week we transformed public education from brick and mortar to online in one one week. So in that time we had a very robust device distribution process that you all probably witnessed and saw online all of the devices that we put in the hands of our students. We provided instructional support their curriculum team flipped that curriculum straight into online curriculum for our students and for our teachers. Teachers students logged into canvas which thank goodness we have canvas as our as our learning management system within Katy it is a very robust system that we've had for several years so we were able to capitalize on that tool that we already had in-house for students to access their learning materials we all know that parents played a major role in that they played a major role in the supervision and the assistance with making sure that their students logged on and that their students accessed the curriculum in some cases they did not instruction was not provided by teachers on a consistent schedule And we know that these are the things that were true among other things that happened in the spring lessons learned, right? So transitioning to fall Texas is giving us or TEA is giving us two options We must require in-person instruction as dr. Gregor ski mentioned earlier and we also have an option of providing virtual instruction Like most districts across the state of Texas. We are definitely taking advantage of that that virtual instruction model, which we have developed and what we have termed our KD Virtual Academy. So we're gonna make a transition. We're transitioning from supporting students or supporting instruction to actually instructing students. And I think that's the key takeaway from moving from the spring into fall instruction. It is a shift. We will now be providing direct instruction to students. KVA is gonna be available to our students in KDISD in grades pre-k through 12th grade we're selecting our own teachers who are experts at using technology to instruct students and we have some amazing teachers already in kdic that do that we are right now in the process of selecting those teachers it's been posted and we're working on that process instruction will be delivered on a defined schedule unlike the spring elementary students will have a daily learning schedule our secondary students will follow their course schedule teachers will be teaching virtually from their classrooms students will have virtual face-to-face direct instruction from their assigned teachers and attendance and engagement and performance will be continuously monitored again as I mentioned there were four TEA required components or key requirements as they call them within the plan that we have to develop and submit again that is the instructional schedule or framework the materials that we are selecting how we're monitoring and tracking student progress and then what how we are supporting our families our students and our teachers and I'm gonna go into a little more detail on each of those four key requirements so looking at the instructional framework what is that going to look like students will be engaged in two-way real-time live instruction between the teachers and the students delivered through their devices teacher in a vac interaction and availability is going to be predictable planned and clearly communicated with our families students can access support from their teachers when needed and they're going to know how to go about accessing that support they will receive clear instructions on how and when to engage within their academic material on a daily basis the instructional schedule will be designed to meet the minimum number of daily required of daily minutes we cry required by tea in order for us to receive full funding at the elementary level that is at least three hours of instruction and at the secondary level that's four hours and I want to be clear that that does not mean that students are going to sit continuously for four hours in front of a computer monitor nor three hours in front of a computer monitor the way that we're structuring this it will be a combination of synchronous time that means when the student is logged in in real time with their teacher and asynchronous time where students may have learning opportunities where they may not be logged on in real live time and I'll go over some examples of the schedules with you in a minute. So instructional materials design, what instructional materials are we using? We're using our KDISD curriculum. It is 100% aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. We have a very robust curriculum and as you just saw our students perform very, very well in our district. So that is the curriculum that we will be utilizing. We will continue to utilize Canvas as our district learning management system. We learned a lot through Canvas in the spring and teachers have received a lot of training throughout the summer on Canvas and how to be better users of Canvas for virtual learning. Our instructional materials are going to be adaptable to accommodate our students' special needs as well as our English language learners and materials will be distributed to students students on an as needed basis. This is an example of a early elementary pre K to 2 schedule. We posted the schedule and we've gotten some feedback. Oh my gosh, it's back to back time. That's a lot of time for my kids. It's not back to back time. It's a sample schedule. Our teacher, our teachers will be crafting what that learning looks like and sharing that information with our students and also with our parents so it isn't that the students will log on first thing in the morning and be sitting there all day long. You can see that we have breaks that are built in. We have brain breaks that are built in. Some of this is going to be synchronous, and some of it will be asynchronous. DreamBox is a product that we use for elementary mathematics. As a matter of fact, it's the product that we use that generates the data that Natalie just shared with you on our House Bill 3 goals for mathematics at the elementary level. So that is a product that we use where students will be logging on, and they'll be working at their self-pace. So there's a combination of different types of activities that will be happening throughout the day. This is, again, a sample schedule of grades three through five. The minutes are a little bit different, and that is what's required by TEA. At the secondary level, our students will be following their regular course schedules. Again, this does not mean that they will be sitting at the computer. It may be that they engage with their teacher at the beginning of a period. The teacher may do some whole group lessons, some whole group teaching, and then the students may break off. into some small group work or some individual work it does not necessarily mean that they will be there for that entire period of time so what are the students going to be doing when they're online they could be conferencing with their teacher one-on-one that's a possibility they could be working as a whole group it could be a whole group lecture they could be working in small groups one of the things that one of the functionalities that we're going to have and the the technology that we're using are breakout rooms. Some of you that have been using Zoom would be familiar with breakout rooms. But the beauty of this is that teachers will be able to co-host in a room. So if I'm the regular classroom teacher, and let's say I'm an intervention teacher, if we're both serving as co-host, then the intervention teacher could actually break off her four or five intervention students within that classroom and do very specialized work with those students same thing in an ell setting a gifted setting wherever we have students who need to come apart and be a part of a different group for some more specialized instruction to meet their individual needs excuse me so to reiterate students will be provided live instruction with our kdisd teachers every day they'll be able to ask their teachers questions daily via zoom or through canvas they'll be able to access support teachers during the school day and teachers will have defined office hours that are communicated to our students and also to our families. At the secondary level, the majority of our secondary courses will be offered in a virtual format with a live teacher on a schedule. Some of our secondary courses will be offered in a virtual format with a virtual teacher before or after school, and this is to allow students to participate in their co-curricular or extracurricular programs such as athletics and fine arts and then we have some secondary courses that we categorize as a hybrid course meaning that the majority of the course will be in the virtual setting however there are some teaks that we cannot deliver in the virtual setting for some of our CTE courses as defined by TEA and some of our higher level lab based courses in these cases the students may have to come in for some of their specialized work welding is a perfect example of a CTE course where it just can't be done virtually online all of it to prepare students for their certification exams. Next section is student progress monitoring and tracking. Again this is a part a piece that did not happen in the spring but we are required to do this in our new virtual learning plan, Katy Virtual Academy. So teachers will be utilizing our grading and reporting guidelines. They will be assessing for learning gaps to plan appropriate instruction. I do want to pause a little bit here and talk about those learning gaps because we've heard a lot about learning gaps. I will tell you the curriculum team has worked very, very hard and diligently to identify where those gaps may be within the curriculum, where our curriculum spirals. For example, math and ELA. And we are taking those considerations into account when looking at the next grade level. And we have built those strategies into our unit plans. So we have taken the steps to do that. We are also building in assessments where teachers will be able to assess where those gaps are and to plan the appropriate instruction for our students who may experience gaps. Excuse me. I should have water up here. Teachers will be utilizing frequent formative assessments, again, to gauge student progress, using those results to track their progress, providing students feedback on a regular basis. They will also be administering our district learning assessments in an online format and monitoring engagement and progress and staying in strong communication with our families so what supports are we putting in place for families and students they will be provided again with clear communications and i think this is the key here it's that clear and constant communication with our families and with our students about what those expectations are for students to participate in instruction all students including students with disabilities are english language learners gifted and talented will receive instruction virtually and will be provided their appropriate accommodations families will be able to transfer between in-person and kd virtual academy at the end of the grading periods teachers will have office hours as i mentioned previously and students will be able to check out devices and other instructional materials such as calculators take home math manipulatives and books to meet their learning needs we have a very robust technology support system that we put into play we will continue with our device checkouts we will have internet support for our students we will have two support systems one for teachers and staff the other for students and parents and the technology team has already outlined during the month of august parent trainings where parents will be able to log in and get access and to for assistance with how to use their devices how to get their devices set up those types of things so there are already 10 of those that are slated and with us So moving to virtual instruction for the first three weeks, we're looking to probably add more of those for our families as well. We realize that these are traumatic times for our families and for our students and how important it is to address our students' social and emotional needs. As the district, we have adopted Character Strong as our character trait program. We've been receiving training in Character Strong all throughout the summer, virtual trainings for this. So our KVA teachers will be trained as well in how to implement some of those activities and some of those strategies within the online learning environment. They will also be trained in trauma-informed practices and how to recognize and report potential behavioral threats. And we will have counselors and LSSPs also available to students and to families within the virtual learning environment. Let me transition now to support for our teachers because teachers are our key. So teachers will teach from their campuses. In this way, they will have access to all of their instructional materials right there in their classroom. They'll also have access to their colleagues and to other teachers, whether that be an instructional coach, whether that be a GT facilitator, whether that be a library media specialist right there with their colleagues to have that support there. They will be trained and supported to provide high quality virtual instruction. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that training here in a minute. They will have the equipment and the technology that they need in order to deliver this type of instruction. They will receive ongoing job-embedded support to continuously improve their practice in virtual learning, have time to plan and collaborate with other teachers, and again, I mentioned character strong and being able to support the social and emotional needs of students. So our August training schedule is very robust, and it is in development, and we are right now having to consider take into consideration our in-person teachers who will also be required to teach virtually so these are some of the some of the components that we've included we have some self-paced guides because we have teachers who are experts in canvas and we have some that are novices and beginners in canvas so we've stratified that training so that teachers can click in to where they need to have their training at their level one of the other things that we lesson learned from the spring is that that relationships are important. And sometimes it's hard to develop relationships in an online virtual environment. So we'll be spending a lot of time on how teachers can go about building relationships with their students in the online environment, how to use Zoom to engage students. Another component of this is working within their professional learning communities. How are they going to go about doing that? Attendance coding is going to be critical, because it drives our funding. And so the teachers are going to need to under- There is a 17-page document on how to track attendance, but Jamie's going to talk to you about that in a minute. So attendance training is going to be critical here, and also supporting our special populations, our special groups in the virtual environment. So next steps, we are here this evening to ask Board Action to pre-approve Dr. Grigorski to submit our virtual learning plan. We also will be submitting tomorrow a letter of intent to TEA that has to be submitted prior to the first day of instruction. We are then going to work to develop our learning plan in accordance with the TEA guidelines. They were just published last week. So this presentation was put together with little guidance. We have more guidance now from TEA as to their rubrics and what that instructional plan will look like. It's a very detailed plan. There are many attestations within that plan that we have to attest to the fact that we are meeting those requirements and It has to be submitted prior to October the 1st, and then we will be publicly Placing the plan on our district district website before I move into questions. I have asked Jamie Hines to join us this evening to talk a little bit about the attendance and Attendance reporting and how that's going to look within this learning plan
All right. Good evening. President Doyle, trustees, Dr. Grzegorski. First I just want to thank Dr. Caskey and her team along with Darlene Rankin. They went through and did a lot of research in selecting this instructional plan. From what we've seen so far, this provides the absolute best possible scenario for both our staff and our students. provides us with the ability to engage students, record attendance accurately, and accurately report average daily attendance, which is what's mandated by TEA. This gives our students the most options for engaging, not just in the core academics, but also in those CTE elective courses, athletics, and the extracurriculars that are important for Katy Virtual Academy to become a great experience for our students. Although we'll primarily utilize the synchronous or the real-time method for taking attendance at Katy Virtual School, certain courses and activities will be able to continue at specific times before and after school, while others allow for students to engage anytime throughout the day. TEA has provided guidance for what is required for virtual learning and what is necessary for attendance to occur. There's got to be a defined expectation for student daily engagement, a system for tracking that student engagement, and expectations consistent with the progress that would occur in an on-campus setting. Dr. Caskey's plan meets each and every one of those. Additionally, the teachers will be able to use the same attendance taking method, tools, methods and tools that they've always used, and that means taking less time away from instruction. The goal of this group and this plan was to create the best possible learning opportunities without making the process cumbersome for teachers or students and adhering to the guidelines offered by TEA and the remote instructional method they chose and the learning plan they built absolutely fit that goal if you have any questions about the attendance I can take those there any questions madam
president I have a question mr. Kettle dr. Kessky if it's okay to ask you a question not ignoring you yeah okay um it's my understanding that we had a lot of device check out in the spring and we were able to meet all that demand um do do we anticipate the demand in the in the fall being more because it's a different situation than we had in the spring and how are we planning for that because one of the questions i get is if i need a device am i
going to be able to get a device right so as i mentioned this is a joint effort i'm the the instructional gal but but we've got experts here who can talk device I don't know John you want to take it from the back I didn't mean to go out of turn oh no no it's a joint effort here oh excellent question so we did check out
about 12,000 devices in the spring we anticipate more students needing devices this time around because it's a longer term checkout and so we've ordered we placed an order for about 8,500 devices or devices we already have about 20,000 devices that we can check out we use 12,000 in March so we have still some some, but we still went ahead and ordered more devices. With being totally online, we think a lot of our students, especially families who were satisfied maybe with one device, may need more than one device this time around. So I think we're going to be in good shape. And by the way, we've given out more devices probably twice as long as many as most of the districts who are much larger than us. So we do have the capacity to meet that need. Thank you.
Are you ready for questions, Dr. Bates?
Yeah, I would like to say, too, that this is hot off the presses. our KD Virtual Academy resource guide it was just posted I believe today if your constituents have questions this it does a nice job of really outlining the roles and responsibilities of students of parents how to get started on day one all of our technology support is linked in here our health numbers are linked in here emails are linked in here but it it contains a lot of information that you may be asked it's available in English and available in Spanish so hot off the the presses but yes I'm available now are there any questions board members
yes madam president miss champagne dr. Caskey thank you for your work I can't believe you know you did all that in one week and I appreciate all that but I do have a question a couple questions one of them is about the students who are choosing the in class but they're gonna have to go online and they're gonna receive virtual teaching from what I understand but it's gonna be through canvas rather than so I don't know what the difference of that is how will that that look to the student, the difference in that?
I'm going to give you a high level overview of that, because we found out on Friday about this, and today's Monday. So we've had a lot of conversations about what that intermittent is going to look like, knowing that it's virtual. Our curriculum is housed in Canvas. It's already there. It is online. So teachers can access that. So right now, what we're talking about, making sure that we have enough devices, right, so the students can access that. that, but we see that it would be a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning. So very similar to what we're talking about for KVA, we could also be providing for our students who are in that transition period, because this is a three-week transition. It could be longer, or once we get back into school, we could have a classroom go down, we could have a campus or the district go down again. So we have developed the curriculum to be flexible enough so that teachers will be able able to transition to that virtual environment with their students. Not like the spring. It needs to be more robust in the spring, and we know that, and we understand that. Again, it's going to be teacher training, a lot of teacher training.
So it will be virtual still. Part of it will still be synchronous, and part of it will be asynchronous. Yes, ma'am. Okay. My last question is, on the classes that the secondary students have to take, they've chosen virtual school at SAC. like and they have to come to campus to get their lab or their CTE course but they've also been told not that they can't come onto the campus during school hours but they could come before after school so how will that teacher have to stay before after school to meet the needs of those students in that particular class a lot of those are singled in courses so there was those
would be more asynchronous courses so the teacher would have some time in their schedule so they may be teaching an in-person class and then they may be teaching an online class and so there would be times for the students to come and go for that instruction we are looking at that being before or after school you're right and scheduling that after hours those are things that we're working through right now okay madam president sorry
miss guess i could i heard it but not a tiny little voice y'all are so spread out um dr caskey I'm thrilled to hear that all this training is coming, and I'm sure a lot of the teachers are too, because while we have a lot of digital rock stars that are digital natives, some of us older digital immigrants, it's very daunting. So I know there's a lot of stress, but listening to this presentation, you are filled with confidence. Hopefully our teachers are listening and knowing that there's going to be a lot of training for them. one question and dr. Gorgorch you mentioned it and maybe I heard it wrong but you were talking about if I'm in a virtual environment and I have a teacher but then I transition to an in-person environment I'll have the same teacher did I just hear that wrong that's not the way it's gonna be no that's not how
it would be there's a chance of it because some schedules obviously when we build them a teacher may have some classes that are in person and some that THAT ARE VIRTUAL. A TEACHER MIGHT HAVE A SPLIT SCHEDULE. THEY MAY NOT BE VIRTUAL ALL DAY LONG. SO IN A CASE LIKE THAT, POSSIBLY THEY COULD HAVE THEIR SAME TEACHER AS THEY COME BACK IN. IN OTHER CASES, IT'S NOT GOING TO BE THAT WAY. OKAY. THAT THE WAY WE'VE DESIGNED IT, THE WAY WE TALKED ABOUT IT IS TO ENSURE WHEN WE PIVOT TO IN-PERSON INSTRUCTION THAT YOU KEEP THE SAME TEACHER. THAT YOUR TEACHER AT THAT TIME WHO WAS DOING THIS TEMPORARY VIRTUAL INSTRUCTION IS STILL YOUR TEACHER.
you walk into their classroom. Perfect. Thank you very much. Could I ask a clarifying question to that though? But if you choose Katie Virtual Academy, I mean, I'm just going to make sure I'm understanding this right. If I choose Katie Virtual Academy, let's say for my third grader, he's going to get a Katie Virtual Academy teacher that may not necessarily be a teacher from Randolph where he is zoned, correct? That's correct. We're going to try. We're going to try. We're going to try, but you're correct. Understanding that he may not get a Randolph teacher. Correct. I choose to do that for the first nine weeks. The nine weeks are over and and I choose for him then to go back in person. Let's hypothetically speaking say he has Ms. Smith at Randolph. He gets a Randolph teacher for third grade. After nine weeks, I choose for him to go back in person. There's no guarantee that he's going to be put in Ms. Smith's in-person classroom. Am I correct? Correct. Okay. And especially if he got Ms. Smith who comes from Stanley, and then he goes to Randolph, he, of course, isn't going to have the same teacher. So, Katy Virtual Academy has its own set of teachers, and when you go back into in-person, if you so choose to, within this school year, after a grading period, you are not necessarily insured the teachers that you have been using in Katy Virtual Academy.
That is correct. And that is why it is so important that our teachers are following our Katy ISD curriculum, whether that be through KVA, whether that be in-person, or whether that be intermittent, minute because we have to ensure that that curriculum is being taught but yes
ma'am you're correct another question just for clarification because we are all now virtual for this first three weeks whether we choose in person after that three weeks or we choose Katie Virtual Academy the curriculum is the same yes ma'am and the structure is going to look the same for those first three weeks for every student in Katie I said that is our intent yeah okay and And devices are checked out one per family or per student in the home if so needed. By the way, these are rock stars right here.
Any curriculum questions? Bring them up. Technology questions?
And I'm asking you these questions. I've got some of these answers, but I want to make sure that we're asking the questions for the community that's been anxiously waiting to hear some of this.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it gets pretty complicated. just in the scenario that you presented before asking this question, you know, if our students decide to go back to regular in-person school, then, you know, we also have the teachers that need to transition back, too. So it just gets real complicated real fast. But to answer your question about the devices, our intention for KVA is to give a dedicated device to make sure that they have a dedicated device. Now that dedicated device could be a personal device. You already own several laptops at home or desktop computers at home and the student could use their own personal device at home. home. If they don't have a dedicated device for KVA, then we definitely want to provide them that dedicated device. Going back to what Dr. Caskey said earlier about the in-person online for these three weeks, we're going to make every effort to give everybody a dedicated device to make sure that they have that. But there's still a few things to be worked out on what that instruction looks like we're hoping that it that each student would have a dedicated device in order to be in sync synchronous instruction online with their teacher based on their schedule or I mean I don't know y'all
y'all found out Friday I mean come on ladies it's Monday and general right I was like if somebody else asked me about it I do want to say that and I think i'm speaking on behalf of of the board members as a whole the work that y'all have done is absolutely incredible and i know that parents are have just been chomping at the bit like tell us what this is going to look like we want more we want more but i appreciate that it's methodical and that you're taking your time and and i know based on working with you guys for the past six years you are not going to deliver something that is not top-notch so i just want to say i know you're probably losing sleep over this and as dr grigorski mentioned earlier the target keeps shifting and moving and so i think on behalf of the board i will just say thank you all very much and uh we appreciate the work that you're doing thank you thank you that's very much appreciated and by this team as well board members does anybody else have any questions i have one more question i'm so
sorry it's for the attendance guy um on the secondary school are the students going to have to like re-login to each teacher and when is their attendance going to be counted? Is it going to be accounted for each class or? At the secondary level in order
to have synchronous attendance accounting, yes the answer would be they would have to log in. They don't have to be logged in for the entire class. It could be a 10-minute lecture with with 30 minutes worth of instructional time that needs to be done on their own. But in terms of them actually taking that attendance that face-to-face for kva for katie virtual academy the goal is yes that they would log in at least for that the time while the teacher takes the attendance and and sets some
okay great thank you all right anyone else just real quick matter of course and i echo what madam president said great job this hot off the press packet where is this it's on the website yes it
It's called the KD Virtual Academy Resource Guide. Great.
Thanks a lot. Great job.
All right. So, Board members, we will entertain a motion. Madam President.
Maybe.
Mr. Redman.
I move that the Board of Trustees pre-approve the superintendent to submit a virtual learning plan in accordance with TEA requirements for the KD Virtual Academy.
Second. I have a motion by Mr. Redman, a second by Ms. Vann, that the Board of Trustees approve the superintendent to submit a virtual learning plan in accordance with TEA requirements for the Katy Virtual Academy. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you all very much dream team back there. 8.9 discuss and consider board approval of the memorandum of understanding for operation of a juvenile justice alternative education program JJAEP with Harris County. Welcome Miss Ashhorn. Thank
Thank you, President Doyle, Dr. Gregorski, members of the board. I bring you something not COVID-related, but familiar and annual. Tonight, I present before you two Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program Memorandums of Understanding. These JJAPs accept mandatory expulsions for students who commit certain offenses, and the district may reserve seats for any potential permissive placements. So the first MOU is with Harris County. County. And the administration is requesting three seats for potential permissive expulsions. This is the same number we've previously requested. The price has also not increased for the JJAP. We do prepay and they refund us if we do not use those seats. Do you have any questions about Harris County? Are there any questions? Okay.
Madam President.
Do you have another? I do. I have Fort Bend. I can go ahead and go through that one too. The next agenda item.
That's two separate items.
Oh, I'm sorry, guys.
Go ahead, Mr. Lacey. Thank you. I apologize.
I move that the Board of Trustees approves the memorandum of understanding for the operation of a juvenile justice alternative education program within Harris County.
I have a motion by Mr. Lacey, a second by Ms. Vann, that the Board of Trustees approves the memorandum of understanding for operation of a juvenile justice alternative education program jj aep for harris county we will now proceed to vote all those in favor please raise your right hand and say aye aye all those opposed motion passes now you may proceed thank you moving on
to fort bend county there is a change that looks a little different than previous years the fort bend mou juvenile board has added flexibility for the district previously the district had access to two permissive seats this mou gives us access up to five permissive seats the cost is still the same we would not pay for these seats unless we utilized them i will tell you historically just due to the small number of students who actually are zoned to that fort bend area we have not utilized or had to pay for a seat in many years do you have any questions about the fort bend mou any questions
Madam President. Ms. Vann. I move that the Board of Trustees approves the Memorandum of Understanding for Operation of a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program, JJAEP, with Fort Bend County. Second.
I have a motion by Ms. Vann, a second by Mr. Lacey, that the Board of Trustees approves the Memorandum of Understanding for Operation of a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program, JJAEP, with Fort Bend County. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
All those opposed? The motion passes. Thank you so much. Agenda item 8.11, discuss and consider board approval of a contract for renovations to both the Outdoor Learning Center and the Pavilion Annex, former L.D. Robinson Pavilion building. Ms. Cassman, how are you?
Good. Good evening, President Doyle, board members, Dr. Gagorski. This evening I have three items for your consideration. The first item is the recommendation that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to Joris General Contractors for renovations to both the Outdoor Learning Center and the Pavilion Annex for the amount of $10,121,600 for a total project cost of $12,550,575. Seal proposals were received on June 25th for the renovation projects. Three were received and Joris ranked first overall. They are a new contractor to our district, but they're well known for their K-12 work, especially in the San Antonio area. Approval of the contract at this time will ensure that the Outdoor Learning Center will be complete in time for the Folklife Festival and the pavilion renovation complete so that the Raines High School project can commence.
CHAIRPERSON WONG Are there any questions?
CHAIRPERSON WONG Madam President.
CHAIRPERSON WONG Mr. Lacey.
COMMISSIONER LACEY I move that the Board of Trustees awards the contract to JORIS, General General Contractors Limited for renovations to both the Outdoor Learning Center and the Pavilion Annex, formerly the L.D. Robinson Pavilion Building, as presented by the administration. Second.
I have a motion by Mr. Lacey, a second by Mr. Keller, that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to Joris General Contractors for renovations to both the Outdoor Learning Center and the Pavilion Annex, former L.D. Robinson Pavilion Building, as presented by administration. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed? motion passes you may proceed thank you the second item for your consideration is
the approval for the design of Raines High School Peril Vias with Stantec architectures here this evening representing the architectural team Raines High School currently occupies the second floor of the OAC building the bond provided 7.3 million for a building addition to Raines High School that included 10 classrooms and some cafeteria expansion during the planning and design phase for the Raines addition the need for a new standalone building became apparent the rain's maximum seating capacity is 231 students which is far below the number of annual applicants thus requiring students to be placed in the same room as the students who are in the same room. on a waiting list. A new standalone facility will increase the maximum number of available seats to between 500 and 525 students. It will also allow for the opportunity to offer flexible scheduling to meet the needs of Reigns High School students who choose apply to attend Reigns due to extenuating circumstances that place them at risk of not graduating. The new facility will offer in-person virtual and hybrid learning environments that are appealing to students interested in attending an academic setting that is innovative and different from a traditional comprehensive high school. Additionally by moving the RAINS program to a new facility the seating capacity for the Opportunity Awareness Center will increase. When the OAC was opened in 81 there were 10 classrooms and with the addition in 2008 an additional nine. In 2008 the district enrollment grew to 56,191 from the 10,000 that it would open in 1981 since the initial opening of the OAC in 81 total student enrollment has increased by over 70,000 students and seven campuses have opened I'm now going to present to you the design presentation acknowledgement of all the design team that participated and once again kind of what I just spoke about you know the recommended scope and the new vision for Raines High School we're We're going to propose a CSP, which will be the next board item. We're presenting to you design development, construction documents in November, and we hope to bring in January the cost of the Entitled Project. So first we're going to talk about the program summary. We're going to have 23 instructional spaces, 14 core content, science, multidisciplinary, LOTE, art classroom, and health fitness. And the depictions are coming up here. The site plan, it's going to be located just east of the existing facility currently where the portables are. So we'll have a visitor entry in the front and we'll have entry for students on the side and from the back. The building plan, this is going to be a two-story facility. on the first floor in the blue you'll see the classrooms we have two administrative areas typical admin in the front and in the Commons which is kind of the core of the heart of the building we have all the counselors and other support staff and the Commons and the media library is more like a student union there will not be a kitchen there we're going to have a pantry where students can purchase items we'll have a refrigerator available so they can bring their own lunches there's a learning steer that will take them to the second floor and the second floor will have the additional classrooms on the educator station there will be no classroom assigned to a teacher they will have a cubicle space in the second floor area so make the building very flexible there's a fitness center instead of a gym it's going to be more like a planet fitness and I want to go back one more the locker room on the first floor it's going to have lockers and showers that will also help support some of our homeless population that will be given an opportunity to store items and and and take a shower if needed. And here we're talking about the circulation. You know, the red arrows show how administration can keep an eye on everything. The blue is everybody kind of rotates to the center of the facility. Same thing from the upstairs. And we have an inside-outside connection. We have an outdoor back patio for the kids to have lunch or study. and now move us on to the exterior interior views so the building we took a lot of the elements for the existing facilities and particularly the stem building to give it this look overall view the back of the building and you can see there's an outdoor play area so So physical activity could be taking place out there. Courtyard seating. And kind of a cut through so that student union, the library is to the left, the learning stairs going upstairs, and the dining and pantry area in the center. And the educator stations up above with the large windows overlooking. Once more view of the tables. schools, students looking down, and the library, kind of more of a Starbucks collegiate setting where they can study and do collaborative work. And that is it.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
Are there any questions? Ms. Vann?
I have two questions. That is incredible. Yeah, we're very excited about it. Yeah, the detail and the thought of the students and the staff in that is just amazing. I have two quick questions. What's the scope of completion? I know a high school is over two years. Would it be closer to a junior high or elementary?
Closer to an elementary because it's only 52,000 square feet, so we're hoping to have it open by the end of 21 going into 22.
So for 21, 22? Did I dream this or is Simon Youth going to be transitioning or will it stay at the mall?
Yeah, so that's one of the considerations that we had. We've got the dropout recovery program of Simon Youth that's over at the mall. We had a five-year agreement with them, MOU, that next year will be the final year on that. But we've looked at what we can provide at Raines, and we think we can provide the Simon program over there and do it even better than what we have currently going on. So, yeah, our goal is to move the Simon program into this program.
Any other questions? Madam President? Hi. Thank you for the presentation. But I want to ask you, so this is going to be in place of where the portables are now? That's correct. Okay. And so what's going to be in the other building?
Well, that's going to give an opportunity for the OAC to expand into the space.
So that will just move into the second floor and everything? Yeah. Okay. That's all I wanted to know. Thank you.
Any other questions?
Okay. Do I have a motion? Madam President. Ms. Vann. I move the Board of Trustees approve the design associated with the construction of a new building for Raines High School as depicted in the design presentation prepared by Stantec Architecture dated July 27, 2020.
Second.
I didn't hear. Okay. I have a motion by Ms. Vann and a second by Mr. Redmond that the Board of Trustees approve the design associated with the construction of a new building for Raines High School as depicted in the design presentation prepared by Stantec Architecture dated July 27, 2020. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Go ahead, Ms. Caspin.
The final item as a recommendation is the approval and change of delivery method for the Raines High School project. The board approved delivery methods in December of 2017 for the bond projects. At that time, we recommended construction manager at risk when it was going to be a building expansion. Subsequently, as the design commenced, the scope of work has evolved into a new facility. As a result, the competitive seal proposal is now the recommended construction delivery method for this project.
CHAIRPERSON WONG.
Board members, are there any questions?
CHAIRPERSON WONG.
Madam President. CHAIRPERSON WONG.
Mr. Lacey.
I move that the Board of Trustees approves the change in construction delivery method for the Rains High School project.
CHAIRPERSON WONG.
I have a motion by Mr. Lacey, a second by Ms. Vann, that the Board of Trustees approves is the change in construction delivery method for the Rains High School project. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. All those opposed, motion passes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next on our Agenda 8.14, discuss and consider board adoption of the order calling for a regular election of the school board trustees to be held on November 3, 2020, and authorization of the administration to provide official notice of the election as required by Texas Election Code. Mr. Graham.
Trustees, thank you for your time this evening. What you have before you is an election order. This is unique. This is the first time in my career that I've had to order the same election twice. So if you'll recall, we ordered the May trustee election in early 2020, earlier this year, and then the pandemic hit and then we had an order from the governor of the state of Texas to push all of our elections from early May into November. So you have an order in front of you. I think it's pretty straightforward. I will tell you for those of you on the die and those of you taking keeping track at home it does mention exhibits A and B. We don't have those exhibits yet. I cannot provide those to you because unlike the May elections which my office runs, the November elections are run by the counties and we are i will remind you we are in three different counties waller fort ben and harris county so we are waiting on final polling sites from harrison fort ben county along with early voting times and as soon as i have those which we will have in the next month we will have those before august 17th we will update this board and we will put that information on our website so that everybody has it but because this is the last meeting that we will have the last board meeting that we will have prior to that August deadline I felt it important for us to go ahead and order this election with the caveat that exhibits a and B will change once we get that final information from the county later this month I'm happy to take any questions or any questions board members I do believe
that the governor did extend a sing October 13th for early voting today
day earlier so again the early voting location dates and times it will be in exhibit B we don't have those yet from the county so if it has been extended then that will be reflected there in and I promise I'll give this board all of our candidates and update and that information will be reflected on our website and we'll do a good job of blasting it out so that we can get as as much participation in the election as possible.
Any other questions?
Madam President.
Mr. Lacey.
I move that the Board of Trustees adopts the order calling for a regular election of the school board trustees to be held on November 3, 2020, and authorizes the administration to provide official notice of the election as required by the Texas election code.
We'll have a second. I have a motion by Mr. Lacey, a second by Ms. Vann, that the Board of Trustees adopts the order calling for a regular election of school board trustees to be held on November 3rd, 2020 and authorizes the administration to provide official notice of the election as required by the Texas Election Code. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
All those opposed, motion passes. Agenda item 8.15, discuss and consider board endorsement of a nominated individual for the Texas Association of School Boards, TASB, Board of Directors for Region 4, Position B.
Madam President. Mr. Lacey. Being on the board representing KDISD, I've had the opportunity to work closely with Paige Rander. I would highly recommend that we consider her. She is a fantastic lady, very well educated. educated, represents Clear Creek ISD, as I recall, and knows quite a few people around the region and is very strong. I think she would be a wonderful representative for us to endorse.
Okay. Are you making a motion, Mr. Lacey?
I would love to make a motion. I just wanted to kind of emphasize that before. So I move that the Board of Trustees endorses the candidacy of Paige Rander to fill the the board position for Region 4, Position B, on the Texas Association of School Boards, which is TASB Board of Directors. Second.
I have a motion by Mr. Lacey, a second by Mr. Redmond, that the Board of Trustees endorses the candidacy of Paige Rander to fill the board position for Region 4, Position B, on the Texas Association of School Board, TASB Board of Directors. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Agenda item 8.16 discuss and consider board approval of a delegate and alternate delegate to the 2020 Texas Association of School Boards TASB delegate assembly. That is one of us guys. I will entertain a motion. Anyone want
to be i'd like to nominate lance redmond i've moved at lance redmond be appointed as the official kdis the voting delegate as the 2020 tasby delegate assembly and we need an alternate i'm willing to be the alternate there we go and susan gussoff
is the alternate awesome it's late all right i have a motion by mr lacey i need a second I have a motion by Mr. Lacey, a second by Ms. Vann, that the Board of Trustees approves Lance Redmond as the official Katy Independent School District voting delegate to the 2020 TASB delegate assembly and approves Susan Gesoff as an alternate delegate. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed, motion passes. Finally, 8.17, discuss and consider board approval of the minutes from the June 2020 board meeting. I need a motion, please.
Madam President.
Mr. Lacey.
I move that the Board of Trustees approves the minutes of the board meeting held in June 2020. Second.
I have a motion by Mr. Lacey, a second by Mr. Redmond, that the Board of Trustees approves the minutes of the board meeting held in 2020. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. All those opposed, motion passes. Donated items, agenda item 9.1, the board has approved, provided a copy of those donated items. Agenda item 9.2, the Board was provided a copy of the quarterly investment report. Future meetings. The next regular Board meeting will be held on Monday, August 24th, 2020. There being no further business before the Board, this meeting is adjourned. The time is 1018 p.m. Thank you all.
Official documents
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Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 8.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the publishing of the Notice of Public Meeting to discuss Budget and Proposed Tax Rate, a Maintenance and Operations Tax Rate of $1.0266 per $100 valuation and an Interest and Sinking Tax Rate of $0.3900 per $100 valuation.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 002 · AGENDA 8.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Non-Objection Letter for Establishment of a Foreign Trade Zone by Pepperl+Fuchs, Inc. and an associated Contribution Agreement.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 003 · AGENDA 8.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's participation in the Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief Grant (ESSER).
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 004 · AGENDA 8.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's May 2020 financial reports. Not Present at Vote: Lance Redmon
6 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 005 · AGENDA 8.5
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's July 2020 budget amendments.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 006 · AGENDA 8.6
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the waiver for parent notification for students at risk of failure.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 007 · AGENDA 8.7
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the House Bill 3 (HB 3) 5-year goals and targets for the district, elementary campuses and high school campuses.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 008 · AGENDA 8.8
PassedIt is recommended that the Board pre-approve the superintendent to submit a Virtual Learning Plan in accordance with TEA requirements for the Katy Virtual Academy.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 009 · AGENDA 8.9
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Memorandum of Understanding for Operation of a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP) with Harris County.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 010 · AGENDA 8.10
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Memorandum of Understanding for Operation of a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP) with Fort Bend County.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 011 · AGENDA 8.11
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to Joeris General Contractors, Ltd. for renovations to both the Outdoor Learning Center and the Pavilion Annex (former L.D. Robinson Pavilion building) in the amount of $10,121,600 and approves the total project cost not to exceed $12,550,575.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 012 · AGENDA 8.12
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the design associated with the construction of a new building for Raines High School as depicted in the design presentation prepared by Stantec Architecture dated July 27, 2020.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 013 · AGENDA 8.13
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the change in construction delivery method for the Raines High School project.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 014 · AGENDA 8.14
PassedIt is recommended that the Board adopts the Order calling for a regular election of School Board Trustees to be held on November 3, 2020 and authorizes the Administration to provide official notice of the election as required by the Texas Election Code.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 015 · AGENDA 8.15
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees endorses the candidacy of Page Rander to fill the Board Position for Region 4, Position B on the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Board of Directors.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 016 · AGENDA 8.16
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves Lance Redmon as an official Katy Independent School District voting delegate to the 2020 TASB Delegate Assembly and approves Susan Gesoff as an alternate delegate.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 017 · AGENDA 8.17
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the minutes of the Board meeting held in June 2020.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bill-lacy | Yes |
| courtney-doyle | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |