Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this special meeting of the Board of Trustees of KDISD to order. Today is Monday, March 22nd, and the time is 536 p.m. As you can see, I'm having a little technical difficulty. Sorry for the delay. Dr. Gagorski, will you verify we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act with regard to this notice for this meeting?
Katy ISD · Special Board Meeting Budget and Staffing
March 22, 2021
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Madam President, I do confirm we are in compliance with the provisions of Texas Open Meeting Act for this meeting this evening.
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 this Board Policy, the first 10 speakers who signed up by 2 p.m. on Monday, March 22, 2021, and have provided their first and last name will be allowed to address the Board. A maximum of 30 minutes has been allocated, with time divided equally among those who have signed up. However, the maximum amount of time for any one speaker is three minutes. If you're not finished speaking at the end of your three minutes, your audio will be turned off. If speakers wish to share written material with the board, you must email a copy to the Secretary of Board Services for board members, the superintendent, and chief communication officer and permanent record. If a speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through 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 Sections 551.074 and 551.821, 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 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, CKE local, or GF local. Our speakers will be called forward in the order they signed up to speak. And I'm sorry if I do not say your last name correctly, but our first speaker is Mary Ellen Kuzela.
Thank you. Good evening. My name is Mary Ellen Kuzela. My husband and I moved to Katy over 21 years ago. Our three children have gone to Katy ISD schools for over 13 years. We are vested in this community and want to see it flourish and thrive. Thank you for serving on our school board and for this short time to speak to you. I'm here tonight to ask you to make face coverings optional for in-person instruction in all Katy ISD schools as soon as possible and not wait for a convenient juncture like the summer. Now is the time to serve all 86,000 students and 5,600 staff not just the vulnerable or those with fear of COVID-19. As of this writing over 68 Texas school districts have made masks optional. It's It's time for KDISD to follow suit. Taking away masks is like taking a pacifier away from a toddler. There's no easy way about it. It's never a good time to begin, but it's a necessary step. The longer you wait, the harder it gets. There will be a lot of kicking, screaming, and long nights, but you must go through it to help the toddler grow. Over the past year, we've learned a lot. It's time now to be responsible, reassess whether face coverings really played a role, and lead people out of fear and confusion to truth and confidence. It is difficult reasoning with people who are afraid. I ask you to face this uncomfortable situation and lead our families with courage and fortitude and make face coverings, masks, and face shields optional for in-person instruction. You will be serving the entire Katy ISD community by doing this, not just the fearful or vulnerable. So please stop managing fear and start leading with truth and facts. If a mask has a chance of filtering anything, it's supposed to be an N95 grade or higher, should be properly fitted to the individual with no gaps, they should be clean, should be changed out periodically due to moisture buildup in the mask, which makes them ineffective. It's a fact that the micron size of the COVID-19 disease is much smaller than any pore in any mask, no matter the grade. Also, dirt and moisture trapped by a mask continually used results in bacterial infections people would not have had otherwise, especially children who likely wear them longer each day than any segment of the population. Does KDIC employ anyone educated in mask fitting who also understands the risk associated with long-term mask wearing by a child? I know of no child who was fitted for a mask whose parents were given the risk associated with mask wearing. This is negligence. I'll now just cite a couple of sources of information. This is from surgeon Dr. Jim Meehan, who's also an editor of a medical journal. He, in his article titled Surgeon Destroys Myths, if masks don't work, why do surgeons wear them? them. Based on extensive review and analysis, Dr. Meehan says there is no question in my mind that healthy people should not be wearing surgical or cloth masks. The recommendation is not supported by the highest level of evidence. Thank you. Your time is up.
We'll now call our second speaker, Jamie Alford.
Hi, thank you all so much for having me speak. I am a sub. I've been working in the school district for two years. We have a military family, and my son's in third. We love it here. And I'm walking the walk, so I'm not just talking the talk. I've been in there, and I can see what's happening. So I'm here to talk about child development and what's developmentally appropriate. Who sets the developmentally appropriate guidelines? pediatric mask wearing has been found to have discernible effects on fear and anxiety and language development. It's been recommended by many pediatric doctors to limit the populations of children that are required to wear masks. The duration of mask wearing and the settings in which the masks are required yet most states and school districts disregard these doctors recommendations including my son's own doctor. My son's had a doctor's note since September stating that the face covering exacerbates his anxiety. We were referred immediately to the school district's attorney and he quoted the governor's mandate and we were told we would need a 504 which labels him disabled. Now that it's lifted, do we still need a 504? If not, we would like to move forward without exemption today. This stress is impacting their short and long-term well-being. Adults need to take this weight off their children's backs. Our most vulnerable population has been vaccinated and serious illness from this virus is lower than ever according to our governor and his team of experts. I'd like to quote our governor March 20th today uh 2021 today the seventh COVID seventh day COVID COVID positivity rate dropped to 5%. This is the lowest since May of last year and the second lowest recorded in the last 12 months. Hospitalizations continue to decline to below 3%. The number of Texans getting COVID shots continues to increase, always voluntary. I got mine yesterday because I'm in the schools and I care. Deaths from COVID for children are less than 1%. proper mask use as someone else stated says that they can't collect moisture or they're not effective trust me when i say pre-k is soaked by the end of the day i mean it's this is not an opinion this is science the full day mask use should be evaluated for developmental impact this is lowering our children's quality of life it's slow in their brain development and in my son's case breaking his spirit. Safety and well being needs to be balanced with likelihood of transmission and hospitalizations that we know about now. Our school system should not inflict harm on Children for an uncertain benefit to adults. Adults are being vaccinated. They now have that option. We're doing all of this to our Children.
Thank you, Miss Alfred. Your time is up. Our next speaker is Brandon Taylor.
Good evening. My name is Brandon Taylor. I'm a former KDISD ESL lead teacher who taught for six years at the OAC in Raines High School. I resigned my position in 2018 and I took a position in Dubai as a curriculum director at a private school. school. After that, I worked for McGraw-Hill, touring throughout the Middle East training teachers at over 75 private schools. Currently, I reside in Katy and recently started my own company. I'm here this evening to discuss a lack of accountability that this board and that you, Mr. Superintendent, have allowed to prevail in this district as it relates to some building principals and their ongoing pattern of bullying behavior towards their teaching staff. When I resigned in 2018, I submitted a letter to then-Superintendent Hint and Dr. Robertson outlining very serious accusations against my then principal Ms. Finison. Madam President, Madam President, this is information that
should be directed to the appropriate administrative channel. Mr. Taylor you're
not you're not allowed to identify employees of this district by name so you have you have one warning if you do it again you'll be asked to be removed.
Okay. One year later while living and working in Dubai I was contacted by staff and parents who had either students who attended or worked at Seven Lakes High School these people asked me to use Adam president sorry you
didn't you identify a campus so we're gonna have to conclude your your time at speaking right now thank you very much our next speaker is Trevor cave
Okay.
Here's Mr. Cave is not here, so we'll move to our fifth speaker, Claudia Turcotte.
Thank you. I'd like to cede my time to Mary Ellen Kuzela.
Madam President, we do not allow for that here in Katy, Texas.
So you can speak or you can give up your time.
Claudia Turcotte, KDIC Mom, I'm here because I'd like you to remove the mandatory mask from our children. I'm going to continue what Mary Ellen started. started by keeping kids in masks despite the facts we are conditioning them to be afraid not seek the truth and comply just because we are not developing critical thinkers instead we have created an atmosphere of blind compliance making kids wear masks despite the facts is like child abuse it is a physical maltreatment of a child for the comfort and feelings of safety for the adults in the child's life. The burden of wearing a mask is placed on the child so that the adult feels more comfortable. It is okay to disagree. When two parties cannot reach an agreement, great leadership finds a compromise or allows individuals the freedom to decide for themselves based on what they know to be true. I appeal to you tonight to make all face coverings and masks optional in KDISD and allow families and teachers to decide for themselves whether they think wearing a facial covering is best for them or not. By making facial coverings optional for in-person instruction you will be serving all 86,000 students and 5,600 teachers and staff not just the subset. I'm begging you all to stop this. This is not healthy. It is not normal. This is not not okay. You are destroying our children's lives. You're destroying their futures. They should not be forced to live eight hours a day in a mask. They do not see other people's smiles. They do not interact appropriately. Your website is full of all the stuff that you want to, you want Katie ISC to be about. None of that is happening right now because our children cannot see each other's faces. They cannot see any of their teachers faces. One minute. They do not have proper, normal interaction. We are teaching them to be sheep. We are teaching them... Your website says you want them to be critical thinkers. This is not critical thinking. Nothing about this is critical thinking. It is blind following and it's not science, it's not facts, it's superstition and voodoo. That's what it is. is. None of this is based in reality. None of it is based in fact. We are kowtowing to a small segment of the population that is living their lives in fear. Our Children should not have to pay the price for adults who are scared and are not willing to do the research and look into the facts. Please do not make our Children pay the price for adults who are not interested in informing and educating themselves and want to live in fear our children deserve better than that so please lead with courage thank you thank you mr
thank you mr rickott our next speaker is bonnie anderson
Good evening. Thank you for your time today. I've addressed this board several times. And same issue, face coverings should be optional for children. The district making personal medical decisions for children, not knowing their medical history, not understanding what wearing a face covering does to these kids. It's just inappropriate. It's draconian. I don't know how many of you have kids still in school, but I have three still in school, and I hear every day when they come home the issues, the headaches, the dizziness, running track and a mask, swim meets and a mask. Put it on, get up on the block, take it off, throw it down. When you get out of the pool, put it right back on. I don't understand, I can't even figure out how this happened and how we got this far and how I have to come here every month and ask for choices that should be between parents and pediatricians and children to be that, just to be that, to be a choice instead of a requirement. Equal access to public education is something that all children in this district are eligible for under the law. And instead of KVA being something that you guys came up with, it's beautiful, but you came up with it last year and this year for people who weren't ready to send their kids back to school, it has now become a punishment. So if a child has, if a child is unable to wear a face covering, then they're not allowed to attend school. My eight-year-old has, he's reached his limit. He can't wear it anymore. So he's gone to school three times now and has had to be picked up So I'm forced to make the choice between physically harming my son or emotionally harming my son. The principal told me today that if he does that two more times, he will be enrolled in virtual school. I mean, I just, I don't understand when this is going to end. Thank you for your time.
Thank you, Ms. Anderson. Our next speaker is Peter Kolb.
Oh, technical problems. Thank you. I'm not here to debate the efficacy of wearing a mask, a gaiter, or other makeshift face coverings as protection from COVID-19 or any of the other thousands of viruses we are exposed to each day. From a purely medical and scientific standpoint, there have been enough studies that have been peer reviewed and published prior to 2020, which have been completely ignored in favor of the new narrative. What I would like to discuss and receive an answer to is the following. Governor Abbott has rescinded his statewide mask mandate. The CDC has continually recommended that children under 10 do not wear masks, although this was changed under pressure from lobbying groups in September of 2020. 20. there is zero evidence in the u.s and europe of students spreading covert 19 to each other or their teachers less than 10 percent of cases worldwide have been attributed or partially attributed to children under the age of 12 transmitting the disease the recovery rate for children that do that do test positive for covert 19 as 99.98 percent again that's not all children that is children that have tested positive for the disease the compelling evidence of emotional, physical, psychological, long-term damage being done to children required to wear masks for up to nine hours per day multiplies each day. We will be dealing with much more severe health concerns than our children long after the COVID-19 fear is gone. We will have permanent irreversible damage being done likely more likely the longer the children are living with the arbitrary masking policies. With this information and the current minuscule risk of COVID and children I would like to know what the board specific numbers needed that will trigger the removal of the mask policy or this plan to continue forever no one has presented an exit plan if you will and I'm asking for that today lastly as parents we are just we have to make decisions with our children throughout their lives from early decisions of what to eat what to wear what movies to watch and the more important decisions what doctors to use what classes to take, what age they can have a sleepover, which sports to go out for, which colleges to apply to, and even what gender to identify as. We can never make life 100% safe for our children. What we can do as parents is to make choices that best meet the needs of our children in the short term and long term. That is a job we have signed up for. Let us make those decisions for our children starting immediately. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Kolb. Next up we have Vishalakshi Magdam. I apologize if I absolutely butchered your name. It's a beautiful name.
Thank you. Good evening, and I'm Vishalakshi Magdam. Actually, I've already sent all the studies and medical articles in which the experts have debunked the theory of mask effectiveness. I would like to request you all to take time and read those studies and articles. CDC and WHO have flip-flopped several times regarding recommendations of masks and its effectiveness in preventing the spread of infection. The narrative that they have come up with, my mask protects you, your mask protects me, is totally manipulative. So I would request everyone to stop using those manipulative words because they affect the children's psychology and they will make children feel that they're guilty and they're not considerate and they're not compassionate for not wearing a mask. and then they're called grandma killers so I think it's enough of all that and I'm a dentist and I understand all the mass studies so I'm gonna try and explain one last time how masks don't work when you cough or sneeze through mask it will not hold the droplets or viruses hundred percent those drops let droplets work with viruses are expelled with great force which they escape through the gaps between the skin and the mask. So it doesn't protect anybody. Even if there is no sneezing or coughing with normal breathing, it still doesn't work because the cloth mask and surgical mask only filter the particle size of three micron or greater. And the viruses, this virus in particular is less than 0.1 micron and will be expelled through the mask, any kind of mask. Masks may hold the moisture of the droplets, but not the viruses, because droplets are the body fluids and masks are meant to hold only the body fluids. All this information and facts are available on the OSHA website and also on the manufacturer's manual. So even on the mask box, it's clearly mentioned they don't help. So not to forget the harmful effects of long-term use of masks on health and psychology of the children. So I request you please get rid of this mask and harmful chemicals sprays you are using to sanitize and temperature checks. I don't consent to any of these practices. Now if you are recommending face shields as an alternative option then where's the science and study of efficacy of the shields in protecting children from viruses? Do you see like how contradictory it sounds and inconsistent it sounds? So totally positive why masks were required in the first place. So facial don't serve the purpose and so are masks. All these are useless. Then there is only one reason left why these are enforced and why we know and we all know it's not about the safety and it's about control. Thank you your time is up I appreciate
your time tonight. Our next speaker is Jenny Alexander.
Do you all know that your oaths of office and the district attorney's oath of office say nothing at all about maximizing your funding from the state or federal government? Do you know that your oath and the oath of the district's attorney and the Katy ISD police officers bind all of you to honor and defend the constitutions of Texas and the United States and that laws that dishonor either constitution are outside your ability to honor? Do you know that neither of these documents cedes the responsibility of health care choices to any governing body? Do you know that the word adversive and prohibitive adversive techniques means harmful, which means Texas law already acknowledges masks are harmful? Do you know that according to the CDC, 94% of the deaths marked as COVID-19 were really from people with two or more underlying conditions, that over 40% of the deaths take place in nursing homes that 90 90 of severe cases are in people with insufficient vitamin d go outside folks do you know that over 600 children drown every year and that over a thousand children under the age of driving die in auto accidents do you all know how many kids died this year with cobin 19 marked on their death certificates 313. dig up your swimming pools Do you know how many children CDC, do you know that three major studies have shown asymptomatic spread is non-existent? Three more have shown that being around children protects teachers from contracting the coronavirus. Do you know that dozens and dozens and dozens of studies have shown that masks don't work to limit the transmission of respiratory viruses, including COVID-19? Do you know that there are dozens of known and documented harmful effects to children and adults wearing masks? It's in state law already. Do you know areas with mask mandates report 34% more cases of COVID-19? Do you know, Mr. Gorgorski, that attorneys are obligated to defend their clients' position? Is it your position that you have the right and the license to compel medical interventions acknowledged to be harmful by state law? Do you know that children are not responsible for making adults feel safe and protected? Do you know that children are not a pestilence on the land? They are a heritage from the Lord. Is this board honest in its public mission statement to disentangle the district from conditional state and federal funding? Is that why you continue to harmfully mask our children? Do you know that a love of money is the root of all evil?
Thank you, Ms. Alexander. Our last speaker of the evening is Ross Patton.
Hello. Look, I'd like to say thank you all. I really respect the positions that you guys have here at the district. I know this is not an easy topic. We're talking masks. That's obviously the topic of conversation tonight, so I'll stay on it. But I've sent all y'all emails. I don't know if anyone reads them or they just continue to listen to the mainstream. Completely up to you guys. Let's talk about aversive techniques. It's in the Code of Conduct. It's in the Texas State of Law. It clearly states, I'll read it verbatim in this particular section here, B, obstructing the student's airway. This is an aversive technique that we couldn't do for five minutes. All of a sudden, now we can do it for eight hours. ! I'm going to read it to you. It says obstructing the student's airway, including placing an object in, on, or over the student's mouth or nose, or placing a bag cover or mask, it physically says mask, over the student's face. But we're okay doing it all day. My kids don't wear masks. They wear them to school and they wear face shields. That's all they do. And they have since this whole thing started. Guys, death and disease is part of our story, okay? Six and a half million people died every year from the number number three and number four leading cause of death in the world, which are respiratory diseases. They group them in many different categories. OK, all of a sudden in April of 2020, the CDC put out guidance. It's on the website. I sent you the link. It's on their website. Guidance on how to rewrite the death certificates. You can go look at them. They give you three examples. One is possible. Covid possible. We're going to write it up as Covid two with acute respiratory distress or whatever else you want to categorize it. At the end of the day, y'all, it's freedom of choice. Y'all, someone responded to me and said that the safety and health. Listen, that's not y'all's job. Y'all's job is to provide my students an education. I went to Katy here as well, okay? So I love the district. I want to stay in the district. But I'm going to put it on record that I have three kids that will be unenrolled from Katy next year if the mask mandate's not gone away. And that's a threat or whatever you want to call it. It's the facts. I've already enrolled them into another system, and I'm on a waiting list. And if I have to, I will homeschool my kids. That's how passionate I am about the whole situation. At the end of the day, I respect your position as school board members, and I respect, Dr. Gregorski, your recommendation to the school board, but just know that's a recommendation from the superintendent who you guys hired. So at the end of the day, it's a recommendation. Look behind you. I mean, where's the ones fighting? for the mask to stay on. There's not anyone up here fighting for that cause, but we're fighting for our kids. And I'm not fighting for my three kids. I'm fighting for every kid in the district, your kid, your kid, and everybody else who has a kid up here as well. It's a little bit absurd that we have, I went, I can go to main event over spring break and literally go shoulder to shoulder with no mask or optional, right? Go to Home Depot, optional. I can go to HEB, optional. But when I come to Katy ISD you better put your mask on for eight hours a day. I know many people in the medical industry and they claim to oh we wear them no you didn't you didn't wear them all day long and they'll admit that they never wore them all day long they were partly here partly they're never for eight hours a
day. Thank you Mr. Patton I appreciate it. This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting. The board, and I can speak for them, appreciate your input. The board will now convene in closed meeting as authorized under Section 551.001 of the Texas Government Code of the following purposes. Texas Government Code 551.071, 551.129 and 551.074. The Board will now reconvene in open meeting. Today is Monday March 22nd and the time is 6 58 p.m. On behalf of my colleagues I welcome everyone to this evening's regular board meeting. Each board member received an agenda and documentation for this meeting on Friday March 12th 2021. The 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. First up, we have action items. Consider Board action regarding construction subcontra prevailing wage complaint presented during open forum at the February 22nd, February 22nd, 2021 regular board meeting. Presenter, Ms. Elisa Kassman.
Good evening, President Vann, Trustees, Dr. Gagorski. So a complaint was made during the open forum session by Mr. Jimmy Garcia back on February 22nd. Mr. Garcia is a licensed journeyman plumber who stated that he did not receive the prevailing wage rate for his trade per the contract documents on the Junior High 17 project. He stated the claim that the plumbing subcontractor, Leon's Plumbing, misclassified employees and paid standard wages to unlicensed plumbers and apprentices. He also stated that another licensed plumber, Gerald Herandez, was also not paid per the bailing wage rate. So our responsibility, per Texas Government Code 2258 and Board policy, upon receiving the complaint before the 31st day, I need to report back on my findings. And we had to come this week because the next week, the 29th, would be too late. And if something was found in error, the subcontractor owes us $60 per day for each worker that was underpaid. Sorry. All right, so my findings. I'm going to start off with contract documents, the general contractor, the restitution, and monitoring. So the prevailing wage rate was published in the contract specifications. And there was also a separate section in the instructions to offerors which listed all the wage rates. And for everyone's information, the prevailing wage rate for the journeyman plumber is $31 an hour. The general contractor was Jamala, as indicated at the open forum. The subcontractor was Leon's Plumbing, and we did check the subcontract to Leon's Plumbing from Jamala, and it did address the prevailing wage rate. So restitution, Mr. Garcia was initially paid $25 an hour versus the $31 he should have gotten paid. He worked for three days on the job. the Leon's plumbing issued a check for the difference on 226 21 and the subcontractor is going to be charged to the general a penalty of $180 for three days at $60 a day mr. Hernandez even though he was mentioned there the restitution has been made to him as well in summary the subcontract acknowledged the error in his wage rate and has made restitution as I stated we are going to continue to watch the wage rates by getting certified payrolls from Leon's plumbing to make sure that the current prevailing wage rates are played to each employee and that's the end of my presentation and before I go to
questions from the board I would just like to thank you miss miss Cassman and dr. Gorski for following up on a community members complaint in and reconciling an issue that needed attention. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Do we have any questions from the board?
Madam President. Mr. Cotter. Ms. Kassman, was this an administrative error?
Yes, it was overlooked by the subcontractor. Okay, thank you.
Any other questions? I'll entertain a motion.
Madam President.
Mr. Redman.
I move that the Board of Trustees make a determination regarding a subcontractor prevailing wage complaint on the junior high school number 17 project and direct any appropriate further action by the
administration second a motion has been made by mr. Redmond a second by miss guess off we will now proceed to vote all those in favor please raise your right hand and say aye motion passes 7 to 0 5.2 consider board approval of an amendment to the 2020-2021 instructional calendar to add a student and staff holiday on April 5th
to 2021. Thank you, Madam President, and I just want to say a few words about this one that we've asked a lot from our employees and our students and our families this year and we truly appreciate that flexibility and willingness to change direction at a moment's notice or throughout the year with a lot that we've had to to handle this during this pandemic and our employees work This fall and spring has been tough and I know at times very exhausting and this commitment to students and families has been the driving factor, allowing us to stand up both in person and virtual learning programs at a time when many school districts across our country are still struggling to open their doors for the first time this academic year. And with that said, I'm bringing forward a recommendation to the Board of Trustees to add an additional paid holiday into our school calendar for April 5th, 2021, which is that Monday after Easter Sunday. And I think the paid holiday would be for all staff and students, and I think they greatly deserve this as another break. Thank you.
Thank you for bringing this to the board. Dr. Gaworsy, do we have any questions from the board?
Madam President.
Ms. Champagne.
I have a question. I've understood that the star test is on I think April 6 for Seventh graders and fourth graders just the next day is that right is correct. There's I believe dr. Caskey
It's the writing exam that's on the Tuesday
fourth and seventh grade yeah exactly oh I just is there any special accommodations for the teachers that are trying to meet that or I mean I'm just wondering because I've heard from some fourth grade teachers about this the concern of that I mean, I think they're great. They're very grateful to have a day, but sure they're just wondering about the timing of it
So if the question is will we be prepared to take that star test while the preparations be in place? I've talked to dr. Caskey about that and she's ensured us that the plans are in place to have everything ready to go Although we'll have a holiday today before we'll walk in and take a test for those two grade levels But we will be well prepared if the question is will the students be well prepared for that test. I believe so so students prepare year long for the test. But if the question is, would one more day of preparation on that Monday prepare our kids for the writing test the next day? I don't I don't think I really don't think that that one day is going to be necessary.
Okay thank you. You bet. Madam President. Ms. Gashoff. I just wanted to make a general comment as somebody who was in a KDISD classroom for six years and have has worked in other other industries and for Fortune 500 companies and teaching is the hardest job I ever did. Without a doubt, it's a hard job. It's exhausting physically, mentally, emotionally. It's a wonderful job, but it is exhausting. And I cannot imagine, however, I've talked to many of my old colleagues and current teachers about what it's been like this past year. And so you take a hard job and you make it even more challenging. And so, you know, we had a lot of discussion about this at our team building and we all expressed our gratitude to the staff and the teachers and our concern for their mental well-being and so um on behalf of all of us who had that conversation i appreciate you guys taking it forward and look helping us look after the
teachers and the rest of the staff couldn't agree more i any more questions okay i'll entertain a
motion madam president mr red i move that the board of trustees approves an amendment to the 2020 2021 instructional calendar to add a student and staff holiday on april 5th 2021 second i have
a motion by mr redmond a second by miss gusoff we will now proceed to vote all those in favor please raise your right hand and say aye aye motion passes seven to zero now i move on to the report section of our agenda 2021 2022 budget updates mr smith
all right well good evening uh president van superintendent gorgorski and trustees um Real quick, excuse me, we've done January and February and here we are in March to take an initial look. Now these are initial and you'll see little under construction signs throughout because we're working on this as we speak. Of course it doesn't have to be adopted until August but we're wanting to give you an update as you're going to be looking at the staffing plan later. An important part of this presentation is the fact that they're 87th legislature, we're in the middle of it and who knows what will happen and hence the the the map of unchartered territories when the legislature meets you know last time they met in the 86 legislative session they passed House Bill 3 which was major changes to not just school finance but several areas of schools we're dealing this time with some more economic uncertainty when it comes to the the national and the state economy and the local economy. Property value growth, you know, we don't know what that'll do, but as you'll see in a couple of slides, the more that a property value grows in a district, that it could have implications, positive implications on downward pressure on the maintenance operations tax rate. ESSER, the federal monies that we keep hearing a lot about, the rules are not ready for ESSER 2 and 3 and the big question will be is it supplant or supplement and I'll talk about that on a couple of slides from now. Enrollment, what's our enrollment growth going to do? You know we have a little, we did grow from this year to last year to this year. We didn't grow as much as we thought and you know there is a national, that's a nationwide trend of that we are bucking a little bit but we are under and what we projected this year as we've talked at length but they did release just a couple of weeks ago now the fast growth allotment you've talked you've heard me talk about the importance of this this is a part of House bill 3 we're in the middle there of the districts 517 districts have received this in the past we're one of the 118 that have received it every three years we're gonna receive it next year the point I'm trying to make here is is enrollment growth we've We've seen a lot of it. It's important to keep it because this alone is worth $20 million to our budget from the fast growth allotment. And if we fall out, and we are subject to fall out and be one of those districts that pop in and pop out, although we haven't been close, it could happen, and it would be a pretty big hit to our revenue budget. House Bill 3, the long-term sustainability, you heard me talk about that, especially now that we're in COVID. And then there has been on-going rulemaking. In fact, there is a cleanup bill, and I don't remember the number, that is an official bill that's been filed to clean up some House Bill 3 language and just kind of fine-tune it because it's so complicated and it still is. Esther, I mentioned this a minute ago, Esther 1 was announced. It was 1.25 billion for Texas schools, Katy ISD got 5.3 million dollars of that. We actually didn't receive any. We received the same amount of money so just if we were going to earn a thousand dollars from the state of Texas for for funding purposes we still got a thousand dollars but ten of those dollars came from from these ESSER I monies. They just supplanted those funds. funds. The ESSER II, the rules are not written yet, but it does appear to be about four times the amount that's allocated to Texas. We don't know what KDISD's portion would be. We assume it would be distributed the same way based on number of free and reduced lunch children. So we don't know that yet and we don't know how they're going to use it. Is it going to be supplant again or is it going to be a supplement or a combination? nation that is completely unknown and then of course a couple of weeks ago now even more than twice the size of that we have answer three and we're expecting that to be again twice of the other amount which is four times the other amount and in that case it would be around 40 million dollars again that would be our portion and would that be supplant where it would be the same way I told you earlier if we were going to get a thousand dollars or we'll be be getting a thousand and ten dollars in that case. Don't know. I mentioned this about our property values and what they're going to do and this is a whole lot of information that basically says if your property values as a school district grow it pushes down on the tax rate. So just like last fall when people were adopting their tax rates we adopted a smaller, lower tax rate, maintenance operation tax rate, a significantly lower maintenance and operation tax rate. We around those will be varying from district to district depending on what their property values do assuming we're under the nothing changes in this session the initial budget draft under current law if the little section at the top there that I just highlighted may be the most important part in my opinion of what what happens here because our maintenance and operations budget or our general fund relies on this and this was this this was put in the law in June or May of 2019 so we're on our third year of these numbers so at 19 20 was up there would be those same numbers six thousand one hundred sixty dollars and ninety eight dollars and fifty six cents that's how school districts are funded that is the primary way we were funded so if you have and there's some some some spin-offs on this based on the type of students that you're counting, but if you have a thousand students, you're going to get a thousand dollars times that basic allotment, no matter where you are in Texas. So if you're in the Panhandle or on the Gulf Coast, you get access to $6,160 for your basic allotment. And then for those enrichment pennies, also also known as golden pennies that's a that's index now off the basic allotment and that again is going to be scheduled to be currently ninety eight dollars and fifty six cents per wata for every one of those enrichment pennies what I'm saying on that is is prior to House Bill three those were called the Austin yield they were also known as the Austin yield and as Austin's ISC students went down and their property value shot up it enriched that austin yield significantly so much that for several years that's how school districts across the state used to pay for salary increases because they would get enough money generated from that that they were able to pass that along in salary increases that's now part of the and indexed off the basic allotment so if it doesn't change in the legislative session moving forward in 22 and 22 23 and 23 24 we'll have those same numbers and we will have basically on it beyond a fixed income at that point for for five years enrollment we're showing a modest increase in enrollment that's something that we you know it boss vacillated between about about 88,000 and 87,695. We just don't know. We settled on the 87,695 based on the way we are growing enrollment now and how we've trended over the time. And we think that that's about our best estimate. And that's all it is, is an estimate. That's 662 student enrollment growth over what was budgeted last year. Remember, we didn't hit what we budgeted last year at 87,000. and we're at just over 85,200 now. So we're short of where we were last year, and that's why we're not showing as much enrollment growth this year, or less than 1%. Not going to talk about belabor property values again to the maintenance and operations budget. That doesn't mean much, but we're budgeting a 2% increase in our taxable values. Our teacher growth, what Mr. Schuch will be bringing you tonight is the organic growth and the new facilities that we're talking about just at the campuses and so these numbers include some other spin-offs on that's like some basic department growth as we grow as a district those will come later this summer but for now this is a budget and our first blush at it so those numbers will change slightly but the teacher growth that that mr. Schuss will will be bringing to you later tonight, is going to be very close to that. Because unless that enrollment number changes, that teacher growth number should be relatively flat. What we're showing there is an increase. I'm not showing anything there for salary increases. That's what was approved last year at 1%. And then the 1% for both people tied to the salary schedule, the teacher salary schedule and the non-salary schedule. Right now, we're leaving that blank. And the numbers that you'll see on the bottom line reflect that being blank at this point in time. So revenue estimates we did have an increase and we're estimating an increase based on that 2% growth in our taxable value but you see a decrease in state funding that's because those two things intertwine it's the combination of which brings you up to six thousand one hundred sixty. If you can raise more than that in taxes you get less state funds if you can raise less than that you get more state funds. So those counterbalance to equal $6,160 by and large. So that's why you're not seeing an increase in state funding because it's counterbalanced by the tax increase in tax revenue. Our local funds are down. That's interest primarily. Interest rates on our investments have been decreasing. We budgeted for that decrease in the year that we're in and we're budgeting that to be continued downward and are at at the load that they are now, which is extremely low at this point. And then the TRS contribution, that's a wash. You'll see that on the expenses, and I'll highlight that in blue when we get to the expenses part in a minute. But the campus staffing plan that's going to be presented tonight is going to have the new campus, Haskett Junior High. It's also going to have the adding additional grade for Jordan High School. It's going to also take organic growth that we're having district-wide, growth in our special ed population growth, and then the ancillary positions associated with the new campuses such as food service staff, security, police, etc. As you know, and you've heard me belabor this over the years, that we're very labor-intensive. This is what our current budget looks like from a percentage standpoint. point we're about 88 percent in salary and benefits so we're extremely labor intensive. New positions with those numbers I showed you on the assumptions side to add up to is about 13.4 million dollar increase in new positions. Again there's so there's a there's nothing showing for salary increases at this point until we get closer along in the budget process and again I haven't pointed out my under construction part but you know this is still early and we're still under construction on a lot of this but this is a graphical look of what you just saw and then this is the non teacher pay group again the majority of that right now is is a placeholder at that 2.5 million dollars for the growth of the district nothing showing for the salary increases or the one lump sum for for the non-teacher pay group as well. Sorry, I'm not. And then a graphical look of that slide. All right, so this is what our other compensation looks like. Not much changes, again, mostly due to the organic growth that the district is having or the new positions that we're having because of growth. A graphical look of that. Wanted to talk about this. We're having an increase in TRS. that's going to cost us some money because the TRS rate is increasing from 1.6 percent to 1.7 percent. I do expect TRS stat minimum there at the bottom, a second from the bottom to go up as well. That was not included in this calculation. That'll come as we move forward in the budget process, but that rate does increase from 7.5 percent to 7.75 percent, and I would also note on that, I think it's important for everybody to know or to be reminded of that the last legislative legislative session that we went to said that the staff, all staff members in school districts across the state's contribution to teachers' retirement system is going to increase from 7.7% to 8% in September. So as an employee, that's my money, but my net pay will go down because the amount that we're required to take out to give to TRS to fund the retirement is going to go up from 7.7% to 8%. Again, a graphical look at that prior slide. So subtotal of the payroll budget looks like about $715 million. Again, I talked about the blue line on the revenue. That's a wash that those numbers should equal from the revenue side. That's an accounting thing. Graphical look at that slide. Again, an increasing budget because we have increasing students. When we increase students, you need more staff to supervise those students, obviously teachers, etc. Non-payroll costs, again, we've done with the campus allocations. They only increased by $200,000. It doesn't sound like much. Again, those campuses are all treated fairly and get the same amount per student, but that's not the biggest part of the budget. The biggest part of the budget comes from departments such as utilities. Those are budgeted centrally. Another big one would be fuel for buses and fleet software. Those are the big expenses and those are budgeted not by the campuses but by the departments. Graphical look at how that looks. So bottom line, again this is the original budget just like the assumptions were. We budgeted just at a surplus and we had a healthy fund balance. I did change that to what the fund balance actually was and so we're about 35% of our expenditures, which is a good healthy fund balance There was a law that's a bill that's been filed It's gonna look at fund balances our fund balances do not exceed the amount that was in that bill So we would be protected from that so we have a healthy fund balance But we don't have too healthy of a fund balance that that would affect us But that second column would be where we're projecting right now So the numbers that you just saw on those previous ten or so slides so a bottom line of a deficit right now again we're getting revenue for our growth but we had to cut back on some of our local revenue because of the interest rate environment that we're in and then we're adding staff to accommodate the new students and then moving on to the right would show if you you added 1%, essentially 1% for both the teacher salary schedule and the non-teacher salary schedule would be about $12 million, $12.4 million. I'm sorry. Yes, $12 million. I'm confused. $6 million. It's $6 million. $6 million for a 1% total, for a 1% that's recurring. and it's the one time one percent lump sum which is where the other 6.2 million comes in. So got confused there for a second, but essentially so every one percent recurring increase that you're looking at adds about $6 million. So 3 percent, $18 million is what that would cost. And so those three columns show that. Again, take a mix of one time lump sum or a 2 percent salary increase. either way I think those columns represent what that would look like and do to our bottom line so again future values property values and then get maintenance and operations it doesn't matter as much you're still going to get those basic allotment amounts are those amounts tied regardless of the of how that all works in that nowadays it's just what what percentage comes from the state and what percentage comes from local but it's still the same size of barrel for per student. Organic growth, are we going to be slow like we were this year? We're going to be robust like we've been the last 40 years or 30 years. Property value impact, again there's the ratio that I talked about, could affect the tax rate if it increases five six percent. I would downward put downward pressure on the tax rate which is a good thing. It means the state would be contributing a little bit more towards the educating our kids. Enrollment growth in special populations. There's some cleanup bills that could affect that and we're also having very robust special needs continue at a very high rate, much higher than just regular enrollment. State funding, the state funding form is again the legislature's in session what's going to happen. We really need across the state for those basic allotment to increase that would help things that are subject to inflation that I've mentioned several times. And then the sustainability of those funding formulas, and then how is ESSER II and ESSER III going to impact them again? Are they going to, if we're owed $1,000, are they going to now give us $900 and give us $100 from Feds or $800 and $200 from the Feds? or is it now going to go 800, 100, and then an additional 100? Nobody knows. Pre-K enrollment's down. It's down nationwide. They're calling it, with kindergarten and pre-kindergarten, they're calling it their red shirt year. You know, those of us that know about college athletics, that makes it familiar. They're just sitting there now. And how's that going to look when they get back into the game? The 2021 enrollment is currently 85,280 or just over to 85,300. I'm sorry. And so we're short of the 87 that we budgeted this year. I think we'll rebound past that 87, but to what level, who knows. Address COVID slide or the learning lag that we've had with what we've all, as a country or as a world, have gone through these last year. and again what's going to be necessary for our special population students special needs free socioeconomically disadvantaged students etc ongoing expenses related to the pandemic PPE custodial supplies staff the social distancing things facility needs air filtration we spent a lot of money getting those things up to where we needed to make our students and our staff feel safe those are there will those continue probably but what to what level is very much unknown now at this point and so you that's kind of where we are we're gonna be able to check March off and then you'll hear from me again in May or June and I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have at this point.
Do you have any questions?
Madam President?
Ms. Champagne.
I have a few questions. First of all, great presentation. I don't like all the information that's in the presentation, but we can't be, I know you can't help that. But one of my questions is about the incentive lump sum. Are we still tied to the law of House Bill 3 on that? Are we still required to give the 1.4% as an incentive?
The 1.4%? Ms. Champagne, if I can clarify that. Which incentive are you talking about?
The attendance incentive.
Okay, teacher, yeah, the teacher attendance incentive.
Are we still tied?
I didn't want to confuse that with the lump sum, the 1% we gave of lump sum right before the semester break. Right. Two different things, okay. Okay, so if you're talking about the teacher attendance incentive, there's nothing in House Bill 3 that requires us to do that.
Okay. All right. So, and because of this year during the COVID and all that, I've heard from teachers that would like to have it considered to be paid in a different way. And obviously, you know, this probably is every year, but especially this year with COVID. and I was just wondering if we could do some sort of, you know, because if you take the $6 million that we have allotted for it and divide it between all the teachers, it's $950 each, but we don't really know, do the teachers really, do they want $950 each, or do they want to try to earn their $1,200, and so I was wondering if we could do some kind of survey or something for the teachers to see which one they want, and also the other question could be, instead of having it received as a lump sum could they do they want to add it on to their salary which would also help them for the retirement benefits in the future
yeah so let me tackle a few of those and then I'll have mr. Smith maybe chime in where he might have to on the budget but I also I want to make sure that let me make sure that mr. Smith in the budget presentation you just did in the budget you started to build for next year you do have the teacher attendance INCENTIVE IN THERE AS A LINE ITEM? YES, SIR. DO I REMEMBER SEEING THAT AS $6 MILLION?
TOTAL $6 MILLION. THERE'S A PORTION OF IT IN THE TEACHER'S SALARY SEDUAL ON THAT PAGE AT THE BOTTOM, AND THEN ALSO NON-TEACHER BECAUSE IT CURRENTLY IS IN PLACE FOR INSTRUCTIONAL CLASSROOM AIDES.
THAT'S CORRECT. I DON'T WANT TO FORGET THAT IT'S IN THERE FOR TEACHERS, CLASSROOM TEACHERS AND CLASSROOM INSTRUCTIONAL PARAS ARE THE TWO GROUPS THAT CAN EARN THAT INCENTIVE. SO THAT'S THERE. It's in this year's budget and it's going to be it's currently as a placeholder in next year's budget yet to be adopted so the question would be Just to formalize that or understand it just miss champion you think that the teachers could possibly Abandon the the opportunity to earn $1,200 of incentive money on the attendance the way that those things are drawn up now now and just take that $6 million line item and convert that to permanent salary increase? Is that what you're asking?
They could want that or they could want $950 or they could want to try to get the $1200. I don't know which one everyone wants. I don't know what the majority of everyone wants. The people that I've heard from would prefer to have it added to their salary. I haven't talked to all 6,300 teachers. Sure. So I don't know what everyone wants. I just know what the people who talk to me want.
Okay. So some people have brought forward the idea of a discussion and possible survey of how we allocate that line item. And I will clarify this one because I think I misunderstood this as well. And when I talked to Mr. Smith about this last time we had a conversation about it, And Mr. Smith, explain that a little bit better for me about the credible compensation that the teacher attendance incentive does count in the salary, but lump sum payments do not.
That's correct. Okay. When we give our lump sum payment that we've done the last couple of years in December, that's given to everybody and it's 1%, and there's really nothing. They're earning it, but there's nothing that they're doing extra to earn it, if you will. And so when we report that, TRS, that 7.7% is not taken out of everybody's 1%, and nothing is sent to TRS on their behalf. So those wages are not TRS reportable either. either. When or if a teacher earns say $1,200 for the teacher incentive, they've earned that over time. And so when we pay that out, we did withhold TRS from it, the 7.7, that's going to be 8%, but that went to their account at TRS. And so that's going to their calculations for their
retirement. Okay. But it's not added onto their salary to make it a cumulative thing. So in other In other words, if they were making $55,000 and they got basically another $1,000, they're now making $56,000. So next year when they get their raise, it's going to be based on $56,000 versus $55,000. And the fact that they got the $1,200 doesn't add up onto their cumulative salary and doesn't help them in the future when they get close to the retirement age. So that's one point. But also for this year, are we done? We can't change or modify anything? for them to be able to maybe get something else rather than the incentive plan?
So before I answer that question, I want to walk back just a little bit of what you just said about that because I think there's still a misunderstanding there. When it comes to TRS and you get towards the retirement, they're going to take an average of your best three years if you're under one set of rules or a best five years under a different set of rules. It gets pretty complex, but I'm just going to use three and five right now because those are the two systems most people are under. These monies that they are earning, as Mr. Smith said, under the attendance incentive, let's say they got $1,000. That does count in their actual salary. So if this was one of their best five years for retirement purposes, that $1,000 counted in on their average.
I understand that, but if they're 25 years old and they're not going to retire for another 30 years, so the extra $1,000 they're receiving now isn't probably going to help them later. But if they had it onto their salary now, let's say they're making $58,000, but now they're going to make $59,000, that'll help a future raise in the future.
Yeah, and I understand where you're going with that, but what I would argue is if a teacher is at right now at age 25 and they're not going to retire for many years that whatever we give them now isn't even going to be close to one of their highest five-year averages so if we if we gave them 58,000 or 59,000 or 60,000 or 62,000 those are still going to be the lower years because they have so for so few years into TRS as credible years of service your big years are going to come towards 28 years, 29 years, 30 years of service. So I'll give you an example. For my wife, she's a teacher in the district. This is her 29th year. So I think her salary is somewhere around $68,000. So when you think about it, you mean that $1,000 back in year when you're 25 years old really isn't going to matter.
Well, but if it was $1,000 every year, so $25,000 at 25, and then it's 26, 27, 28, 29, and then plus every once in a while they get a percentage raise on that, it's going to affect them 30 years down the line what their salary is.
Sure. It just won't be one of their highest five years of average from age 25 to, say, let's say age 55. It won't be one of their highest.
I don't think that's what I'm saying. I'm saying if you start out at a higher level and then you keep getting a raise, a little raise on that, that makes that higher level from 30 years ago, it adds up because you started out at a higher base. Sure.
Sure. Yeah, you would build a percent salary. Like, for example, we did a 1% raise this year. You would have got an extra 1% raise on that $1,000. Yes. Accurate.
So is there anything we can do this year if the board wanted to, to try to help people get something different this year?
Sure. Okay. So, all right, we have the money in the budget. Okay. So there's $6 million in the budget. And if the board would like to give me some input on how we change that. Now, we did adopt a budget with that line item in there. I don't know how much we're held to that actual line item, Chris, in terms of can I allot that money differently because you line itemed it in the budget and we approved that budget. and it may be more of a legal question for Mr. Graham, would I have to get board action to change how we adopted that budget? And I don't know the answer to that.
I think the answer is yes, to change it from where it is now. You need board action to change it. That's a paradigm that I've not encountered from a legal perspective, But I do think it would, since we're taking it from an attendance incentive to straight salary, if that were the case, it would need to have board action.
Okay. And I think so, Chris. I've never done that before. That's why I do ask for Mr. Smith and Mr. Graham's expertise on that. I've never moved a line item that way. But with board action, it could be moved. Anything could be moved with board action. So now gets us back to the larger discussion of what would we do with that $6 million?
Can I just jump in? Sure. Just to follow up. I totally agree with what you're saying in the, you know, cumulative nature of the salary and the percentage increases. What I don't remember, or maybe I didn't ever know, was why did we do it that way? You know, that was the year that we gave the 6% increase and then the additional 2 that could be earned. Sure. So maybe it would be helpful to have the background of why that decision was made in the first place.
Yeah, so we made that decision. We had looked at data for a number of years, especially our climbing substitute budget. I don't have those figures on top of my head, but I bet Ms. Butterfield could speak to it a little bit if we put her on the spot. She's shaking her head. But I can tell you this. Over a period of years, we've watched it grow exponentially of how much we are spending on substitutes. So one strategy would be as if teachers are not absent as much, we don't need to spend so much on substitutes. The other driver on that is if we want academic performance to improve, what do we do? We give access to our children to their teacher more often. So there's a benefit in that, an academic benefit. So those were some of the big drivers in that. There was a discussion in House Bill 3, although it has nothing to do with, like I answered Ms. Champagne earlier, House Bill 3 has nothing to do with this attendance incentive, but the whole goal behind House Bill 3 or much of the discussion on House Bill 3 was put more money into the pockets of classroom educators. You might recall a lot of the discussion going on at first from a legislative standpoint, they said they were going to give teachers $10,000 raises. Then they said, oh, we're going to give them $5,000 raises. Then they said, well, we're not even going to give you enough money for $5,000 raises. So we saw this as a solution possibly to many problems. Lower our number of substitutes. Help us also with the number of the substitute rate, the fill rate, because we wouldn't have so many subs going in. And put more money into teachers' pockets and reward those folks who come to school most regularly. So that was the driver behind it. So if we abandon that now, okay, so let's say we make that decision and we take the $6 million and convert it, say by board action, we convert that to some sort of salary percent increase for teachers or para and instructional paras. parents. That's who qualified for this. We kind of throw all the things out it was designed for in the first place. And do we want to do that? And I'm not saying we do or don't, but I'm well, I welcome the board's discussion on that. Do we want to abandon all those good things that we thought it was doing and just say we want to convert it to salary?
Well, Dr. Gregor, see, I'm not saying forever. I'm just for this year because of COVID and and all that our teachers have gone through. And, you know, like we're giving them the day off, and I think that's awesome. But, you know, the teachers that I know have worked twice as much as normal, and, you know, I just can't even believe how hard they've worked, you know. And I would just love it if we as a board could do something where we, you know, And I don't want to discount the people who may have been saving their days off to get the $1,200. But also, you know, we're trying to be very, very sensitive to them if they're sick. And we want them to stay home, you know, because it's not just a sore throat anymore. It could be COVID. And I just think that this year, I guess this is just my opinion. I'm only one board member. but if we could do something you know to give to the teachers all of the teachers
sure yeah I understand where you're coming from that I'm not sure the best strategy you had mentioned surveying the teachers which we could certainly do so let's say I put together a survey and we ask all teachers in instructional classroom Paris so classroom teachers and the start the people who who qualify for the attendance incentive I should say and we ask them a few questions about how they would like that money structured differently. Would you recommend that at the end of that survey we go with whatever the majority rule is? So let's say we say you can either keep it as is, an opportunity to earn 1,200 bucks, or take the six million dollars convert it to a one-time payment for teachers, or one-time payment for those who qualify for this in the terms of a set amount and then whatever the majority is on that one the percent the majority that's what we
go with I mean that's what I think but I mean like I'm saying I know I'm not everybody I'm not the whole board but that's what I would think yeah and so I guess we would have to vote on that
but um yeah it's it's not really a vote at this time it would be more of a an action item possibly later when we if we were to move the money over to be paid in a different way that's when the action would come I'm just more looking for feedback and direction from the board right now if that's the direction the board would like to provide me the feedback on I'd certainly take it I think the risk you run in that is the the rules for the attendance incentive are have been in place for two school years now last year in this year I do worry about the perception and I know it would be their vote but the perception that we change the rules kind of midstream because we might have a number of people out there that say hey I've been working hard to get the 1200 I want the 1200 and now you're telling me in in March or April I'm only going to get maybe not have to count that out Chris I don't know if you could do that math close in your head or with your pocket calculator over there what do you think it would come out to with the number of people who qualify for that incentive divided by $6 million. About how much money are we talking about? And I'll give you a minute to calculate that.
$6 million divided by... Why don't we let our COO answer the question.
And I will say this one, Ms. Champagne. What I said earlier, and I think I did tell the board there were about $6,300. Chris corrected me today and said that figure was a little light.
Oh, was it?
There's a little more than that, than $6,300. because I asked him to make sure he could have those figures.
Well, and when I posed this question to you a couple weeks ago, I'm pretty sure you responded to me. Didn't you tell me kind of how many people were in line for that incentive, like who were on track to get that incentive? It's a pretty high number.
Yes. I don't have those figures in front of me, but I do remember providing the board with some information. I'm going to look back there at Mr. Schuss. I don't think he's committed this to memory yet. but we can send it to the board again i know uh what i do remember mr shuss reported to me when i had him look at the attendance overall that the attendance this year has been so far for teachers better than last year question that i have piggybacking on that information and comments
that have been made um and i was thinking before you made the comment that there's you know employees that have worked for this intended attendance incentive um and now it's march and and we're saying, oh, we're going to cut that down and do Fund Fair positive, kind of spread across, which I also agree with your statements about it being a hard year. We've all seen that on our campus visits. It's been a hard year for everybody. But when would this take it all off the table? This is going forward. Teachers and parents have worked hard to keep their attendance at a certain level to receive the financial benefit. when would they normally receive that June 1 I believe I know mr. Smith is
over there calculating the teacher attendance incentive payout payments come in the June 15 or June 30 paycheck in 15 June 15 so we're pretty close I
mean honestly quarterly as far as close to that out to make that decision and
that change but but then again I have heard from a lot of teachers that say that, you know, we did send out the reminder in February, but that was, you know, I'm not blaming anybody, but for a lot of people, I guess that was the first time they realized it because it was, last year was the first year of it. And so maybe some people didn't realize that it was a continuous thing, you know, or they got so overwhelmed with all the COVID things that they had to do that they put it on the back burner and just didn't really pay attention to it or for whatever reason. And so we really, I mean, unless he has numbers, we really don't know how many people knew about it. But also you had said something in our Friday update about, I think Mr. Smith provided the information that we had 12 extra days, you know, that we're required to have the 90 extra days coverage in general fund. But we have 12 extra days. I don't know how much 12 extra days of money is. So, I mean, I don't know if we could use that money.
Let me clarify that one, Ms. Champagne, in terms of general fund. I believe you're talking about the fund balance, that we're required to have 90 days' worth of fund balance. That's a general rule of thumb. And, Chris, is it accurate we have 102 days?
It's 102 or 107. Somewhere in that neighborhood. I'm sorry.
Dr. Gorski, if I may, I'm hearing some good discussion tonight on this topic. topic, I will remind you that this is part of the budget adoption process for next year's budget. It's one of the things that Chris does a really good job of updating you all year long and trying to get you prepared. These are discussions that a lot of boards don't have this early. They have them later in the school year. If you do want to do something to amend your budget for the current school year before that pay date it's going to be a pretty compressed timeline to get all those numbers run and then to have it in front of you for the board to consider it and take action just as a reminder this is a pretty big ship we're driving and which is why we start the budget process so many so many months in advance which is why you know we're here mr. Smith's here at a special meeting in March looking
towards next year's budget yeah I appreciate that mr. Graham is good note to take and I do think it's been a very good discussion and very robust and my goal is I want to do what's best for all our employees including our teachers there was one of the reasons we created this whole entire allotment was to get an opportunity to reward our our classroom folks and give them a chance to earn additional dollars each year so I'm not opposed to anything we're talking about I just don't know the best strategy moving forward because either Either way we go has some significant risk.
Can I ask just one more clarifying question? So the attendance incentive was not part of what the state, what House Bill 3 required us to give the teachers. You know, there was a required pay raise, right? We did this. KDISD did this. Yes. And I know two years isn't statistically significant, but we have seen attendance improve.
Yes. Two years.
Okay. Okay, one last question. The instructional coaches are not part of this?
No, not in the teacher attendance incentive. It's classroom teacher and classroom paraeducators.
They're on the same pay scale, though, right?
Correct. Well, they're in the same pay range.
Okay.
Madam President, if I remember correctly, so Hospital 3, it was a performance incentive that it was designated for classroom teachers, teachers, paraprofessionals, and then the state did not give us the framework around how to reward it. And from what I saw at that time, was that May of 2019, June of 2019, is it was almost as if they were wanting us to reward teachers based on the performance of test scores of their kids. And so as a district, again, I don't think I made all this up in my head. I'm trying to remember back years ago we said what what do teachers have control over so that they can get this incentive and how can we make that even if it's not to the letter of the what what what the government wanted it to be as a performance incentive we said what did they have control over they can control the days they come and I understand that to be able to say they have control over over the days they make it to school is a stretch. The days my kids woke up sick and my wife couldn't make it to school to teach, I get that. But as I'm going back, I thought there were some requirements that you were required to offer an incentive, and we tried to figure out how to do that in a way that was most accessible to all.
Yeah, you're not just imagining that, Mr. Fred. There was some discussion on that through House Bill 3. They did talk a lot about performance incentives, so let me separate this out so i don't try to confuse people we decided to go in the avenue of this teacher attendance incentive but we didn't have to we chose to do that as a district there is something through this process through house bill 3 about a teacher incentive allotment which could be or should be tied to like growth measures for students based on star scores and other standardized test type data i don't want to just say it's the only thing now we've been carefully analyzing the teacher INCENTIVE ALLOTMENT. WE CALL IT TIA. THAT'S THE EASIEST THING I CAN SAY. AND MR. SCHUSS' TEAM HAS BEEN LOOKING AT THAT VERY CAREFULLY. WE'RE NOT QUITE THERE YET, BUT WE'RE SCHEDULED IN APRIL, WE ARE SCHEDULED, TO HOPEFULLY BRING A PRESENTATION TO THE BOARD ON THAT AND SHOW YOU HOW WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO DO SOMETHING EVEN DIFFERENT TO PUT MORE MONEY INTO TEACHERS' POCKETS BASED ON HOUSE BILL 3. And that is supposed to be funded through the state, no additional monies from our budget. But we're not quite there yet.
But you're right.
I understand that. And then the second thing Ms. Champagne brought up was how we use the one-time lump sum. And in regards to the budget next year, the way I use that in my business or the way that I feel like we've been using at the district is if we don't believe the money is going to be sustainable in the future to continue those pay raises, we give it as a one-time lump sum because we would rather give it to our teachers, our employees, as opposed to sit in our pocket and go, well, we can't guarantee we're not going to be able to give this to you. So by using the one-time lump sum, they get to benefit now and we don't have to go back to them next year and go sorry it's a negative one percent and and i think even then the insurance money that came in the year before last instead of us just sitting on it we did give it as that beginning of the year lump sum so i as we look at the 20 21 22 i do support keeping that one-time lump sum because i if we have it and it's maybe not sustainable i mean the the way things, I mean, we've talked about the edges of the map, what's going to happen. Well, if we know right now we can give that to someone and benefit our teachers and all our positions, I think we keep that tool in our tool belt and not get to a point where we have to go back and say, sorry, the money's not here anymore, right?
You raise a good question with that, or a statement with that, Mr. Redmond, and that is a pay strategy. We've used it for several years here. THE TWO LEVERS THAT WE HAVE ARE THE LUMP SUM THAT WE GIVE, AND WE HAVE GIVEN IT, I BELIEVE, A LUMP SUM THE LAST FOUR YEARS, CHRIS, CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG, AND THIS ATTENDANCE INCENTIVE THAT WE'VE DONE THE LAST TWO YEARS. THOSE ARE TWO LEVERS THAT IF EVER THERE WAS ANY VOLATILITY IN THE STATE FUNDING, IF THERE WERE ACTUAL REDUCTIONS COMING FROM THE STATE MONIES, THOSE ARE TWO THINGS WE CAN PULL BACK. back. Once you convert these to salary and they're permanent in the raises, the only way to pull that back is to reduce teacher salaries, which is very dangerous. I wouldn't recommend that at all, that we ever reduce anyone's salaries, but this does give us those during turbulent times, especially right now, some different levers if we had to pull them
back. But just to clarify real quick, I wasn't asking for it to be a permanent salary. Yeah, just for this year. Yeah, I was just talking about just for this year. I wasn't asking could we amend it for this year? I just meant just this year since it's a special hard year.
I think it brings a good point in that, Ms. Champagne, that if we're going to do something this year that would require a board action to move those monies, and we can get the data to the board on that, if we're going to do it permanently, nothing we have to do today because it's a line item in next year's budget, but next year's budget has not been adopted yet. we can move anything in that next year's budget between now and adoption date in August so I think that's kind of where we're at a standstill on that like I said I don't know the best strategy on that in terms of surveying the teachers because once you survey them we own that decision because once we survey them and we ask them the majority is going to rule on that one there and we may not like the outcome we may look to me the the impact is the same it's it's six million dollars in the budget anyway we slice it up that's the way we're gonna spend it I'm more than willing to survey teachers and ask them for this year would we like them do it differently but like I said once I get those survey results and give them to the board the board's gonna have to make a decision on that to move that forward or not and ultimately it is the board's decision
regardless of survey. Yes, correct. Thank you. And then President, is the survey, is the attendance incentive, is it all or nothing or is it like scaled down where hey if you get a hundred percent it's 200, if you get 90 percent or it's it's a thousand, if it's a scale down eventually I guess it gets to zero but what is the what's the high and low and what's the range and what's the participation rate that is how many people are getting into the sweet spot where they're getting something. Sure, the way it works is the simplistic way
to describe that is it starts at the beginning of the year with twelve hundred dollars each time you take a day off whether that's a local leave or a personal leave today is deduct one hundred dollars so you work away enough each teacher each employee i should say everyone gets 10 days per year for absent time uh whether that's sick or personal so even if you spent all your 10 days allotted this year you still got 200 bucks you know I mean so there's still something there if you took more than your allotted days uh if you don't have those days stored up you're going to get docked plus you lost all the attendance incentives so uh there's some money in there for everybody but that's basically how it works any more questions okay we'll move on to agenda
item number seven discuss and consider future board approval of the campus staffing plan thank you mr smith thank you um staffing plan for the 2021 2022 school year mr shoss
good evening president van members of the board dr gorski have dr nita hill with me uh this evening she is our executive director of human resources she plays a very large role in in staffing development so she can keep me in line if I forget something or help out with any questions. So this is something that we bring to you in March of every year and something that has to be done especially in a fast growth district and just to remind everyone of the of the timeline we get our enrollment projections mid-january for our business business intelligence group they're excellent what they do they do great modeling great analysis we kind of pour over those projections through January. This year instead of getting the final projections at actually the end of January we did bump that up a week because we knew this was going to be a very unique year. There is some uncertainty. I should have used Mr. Smith's map. I know everybody likes that. But and so once we get those final projections we create staffing reports for all the campuses and all the departments and then we hold meetings with the assistant superintendents, with all the department heads to finalize those and make sure that we're seeing everything appropriately and that we're getting them everything that they feel they need if we have to make any adjustments. And then board approval comes at the end of March. And so that will come to you a week from today. So 2020-2021 growth, and this is as determined in January for our projections year over year, our projected growth growth was 5.1% and at that time in January the district growth was currently 1.1% elementary enrollment had actually decreased by 1.4 secondary enrollment had increased by 3.4 and you'll see a reflection in the next slide and the actual uh staffing members that were requesting we had this year it'll be reflected in those numbers and just to kind of paint that picture a little more so the 2020-2021 projected enrollment was 87,033 actual enrollment is currently 85,307 and that was actual enrollment not in January but right before spring break so we're a little bit you know we probably gained a little over the over the past couple of days but but that's really close to where we are 21-22 expected enrollment 87,695 so for we were already staffed for 87,033 students uh for this year and so really all we're staffing for for next year is just that net increase of just over 600 just over 600 students so how that unfolds elementary additional staff about 40 units and so that does clearly show that in large part we were staffed this year for next year just because of you know everything that we know happened uh covid during this year Secondary additional staff, about 232.8 units, but that includes opening Haskett Junior High and also includes adding 11th grade at Jordan High School. So you can see down at the bottom, that's about 135 units. So of those 232 at secondary level, 135 of those are opening a new campus and adding 11th grade to Jordan High School. And you have the backup information in your agenda that has the campus personnel listing, that has all the detail, and also some campus support staff. And so for this year, the additional staff that we requested was 605 units compared to 2122, 318.5 units for next year. And again, remembering that 135 of those units are opening a new campus and adding a grade to Jordan High School, which we would have done in a high growth year or in a low growth year. That would have happened regardless. And this is actually a two-part presentation. We have the second part of this is Dr. Gwen Coffey is going to give the campus a special education campus staff request, and then after Dr. Coffey gives her presentation, we'll be here for any questions.
Hi, good evening. President Vann, Superintendent Gorgorski, and trustees, Thank you for letting me come and talk to you about our special education students and staffing this evening. So as was mentioned earlier by Mr. Smith and by, I believe, Mr. Shush, we have seen pretty significant growth in the area of special education across the last several years. This slide specifically depicts two points in time when we take a snapshot of special education enrollment in KDISD. It looks at the October PEIMS date, which is when the state captures the PEIMS demographic information for our students, and that's reflected in blue. And it looks at the orange, which is the end of the year enrollment for special education. Of course, special education is a program that lays on top of general education. These students are all general education students first, and they're included in that general education projection. But these students have been determined to have a disability that qualifies them for special services under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. And therefore, they receive some additional supports and targeted learning as a result of that. And so as you can see across the years from 2013-14 all the way through to our projection for 2021-2022, which is a little bit of magic combined with some logic, we are seeing nothing but continued growth. You see that first hit in October and then moving forward at the end of the year. So over the years that percentage of special education students has represented beginning in 2014 and then 2014-15 about 9% and we see that slow growth begin to start. So it's gone up incrementally and even into this year we've seen a 0.6% growth in special education students. students. So we are currently in around October, November, we're sitting at about 13.6% of projected enrollment for special education of overall enrollment. We're special education students. So we're still seeing that growth and seeing students qualifying under those rules and regulations through IDEA. So our campus staff requests, we basically have two sections for special education campus staff requests. The first is the instructional staff, the teachers and the paraprofessionals who work directly with students to implement the specially designed instruction that are calculated and designed by students admission review and dismissal committees and that's what this slide represents So in looking at the instructional staffing recommended for the 21-22 school year Our in-class support we're recommending that we add 69 teachers to in-class support These are teachers that push in to our general education classes most often and support students in that setting sometimes they're pulled into small group settings and you will see a decrease there of paraprofessionals and I'm going to explain kind of what that is in just one second our specialized programs in KDISD we have a continuum of special education supports and services that include a variety of different service supports and specialized programs are programs where students are spending a large percentage of their day in a specialized environment that is tailored and designed specifically to support their individualized needs and And we're looking at recommending an additional 15 teachers and 27 paraprofessionals in those areas. And part of that reason is for the same reason that Mr. Schuch just mentioned. We're opening a new campus, which opens several programs at that campus, adding additional units and grade levels. For example, Jordan High School, WBL, is an example of they've not had the grade levels for that. And so we're adding that along with those grade levels. So the net add in instructional staffing is 84 teachers. and then we're looking at a decrease of 17 paraprofessionals. What I want to say right off the top is that this is not people losing their jobs. These positions will be absorbed as part of the natural staffing process, but there's a twofold piece. Sometimes, depending upon the needs of our students, we need to add more paraprofessionals than teachers, and sometimes it's the reverse. And what we've seen, especially over the last several years, is that as we're moving forward and we're adding paraprofessionals who do an unbelievable, they perform an unbelievable service to our students in these special education programs and populations. We also need to then add teachers because teachers manage caseloads and they're also responsible for the primary first teach piece. And so we want to make sure that we have a manageable opportunity for teachers to be able to do this, prepare for ARDS and do the diagnostic pieces that are needed for that. But then also they have time to do that first teach and supervised data collection and things like that. So this year we're working on adding additional teachers and seeing a little bit of a decrease in paraprofessionals But again, nobody's losing their job. This is a very common level of just natural attrition if you will for people In in these roles and so those will be absorbed and moved around as necessary But I don't want anyone to be concerned that there's a job loss associated with this number The second part of campus staff special education staffing is assessment staffing staffing. These are our ARD facilitators, speech pathologist, licensed specialist in school psychology, diagnosticians, and then our special education diagnostic clerks. And you can see the recommended additions there. We are doing pretty well. We staff these positions, usually on end of the year expectations because they serve students that come in throughout the year. So we were very well staffed in these areas. Thank you to the board for last year and so we feel like we just need a few tweaks here and there to fill some of those specific areas but are doing I think very well in that area and so in looking at those two pieces those are the recommendations that we have for 21 22 staffing in the area of special education and I know that mr. Schuch was willing to answer any questions as am I should you have any related to staffing at this time
One thing I would like to point out, and I forgot to mention, in my totals, the special education totals are included. No, go ahead. In the totals that I presented, the special education numbers are included in those totals. These are not additional. We just broke these out for the separate presentation.
Or do we have any questions?
Madam President? Okay, on the licensed specialist school psychology, is that an additional two? Yes, ma'am. Okay, and how many do we already have?
So I believe it's about 60 across the district. We have some that are specialized in certain areas, but about 60.
Okay, and where do they work? Are they all during all the different campuses?
Yes, the one thing I say very often, if you spend much time with me, is there's never an absolute and special education. So everybody has a tailored job. So traditionally they share campuses. So for example at the elementary you might have an LSSP that supports two elementary campuses Where you might have a dedicated LSSP at the high school because of the size and then we also have some that are on Specialized team that help do things like crisis response
Okay, and then what were the social workers because I know that we hired additional social workers Last year and I couldn't find them on this list And I don't know how many, I can't remember how many we have.
And where do they work? So they don't fall under special education. They fall under a different department that we all work together. I would defer that question to Mr. Sush.
The social workers are in the campus personnel listing. We did not add any this year, to answer your question. We have added the past two years, but we did not add any this year, and that is based on the department request. And I think a big reason for that is because of what we have seen in enrollment, you know, and staffing up last year for that large enrollment and not quite hitting that mark and moving forward next year. So we will continue to evaluate.
So do they, is it five or six of them or something like that?
I believe there's three.
Okay, and they just go from campus to campus as needed?
Where they're needed.
Okay, thank you.
You know what, Brian, I might have Dr. Caskey jump in on that one there. She works closely with our district social worker, Ann McHale-Miller, or that's now under Leslie, you're pointing over there. Mrs. Hack, can you confirm, I believe it's Ann McHale-Miller is the lead, and there are four social workers, and they divided the district up?
Yes, Ann McHale-Miller is our coordinator for our social workers and services, and she is one of the coordinators with the school leadership and support team with the wraparound services there is Ann McHale Miller and there are five social workers we do have two at our special sites between Katie Flex program OAC and range which that is something that we're evaluating right now and then we added three last year and have built out that team and they follow their feeder patterns along with the dropout recovery facilitators and support team
And just to remind the board, Katie Flex is the former Simon Youth Program. It's now housed at Miller and it's called Katie Flex. Katie Flex. Cool. But since it's not part of the Simon Program anymore, I just want to make sure you all knew that. Because I know we all understand the importance of that program, but that's what it's called now.
All right. Thank you very much.
Madam President, real quick. So the special education diagnostic clerks, 22 of them, what do they do? What do the diagnostic clerks do?
Great question. So our diagnostic clerks support our assessment professionals on campuses. They help to do things like schedule the ARDS, check to make sure that we're holding ARDS within timelines, reserve and send out invites, file, do those kinds of things so that our diagnosticians, our speech language pathologists, and our LSSPs can work on evaluating students and report writing. But isn't that a little bit of what the ARDS facilitators do? That's a great question. So an ARD facilitator is conducting an ARD. So we added that model. It's been, I guess, two years ago now. And the reason for that is because we found that it's very difficult to find diagnosticians. And so as a result, what we were trying to do was maximize. So an ARD facilitator facilitates an ARD meeting, an admission, review, and dismissal meeting, where new assessment is not being discussed. So if we're having a meeting and we're going through the agenda for an ARD meeting, the ARD facilitator will help make sure that we hit all of those agenda points, that it's appropriately documented, that we have considered all of the various pieces required for compliance and planning for the student, allowing the diagnostician, if they're not needed in that ARD because there's no new assessment, to conduct the assessments.
So are these professionals? Yes, ma'am. Whereas the diagnostic clerks are probably more admin? Yes, ma'am. That's correct. Great. So it's an optimization of the staff, right? So you let the highly paid people be used in a more optimum way. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, I am, you know, again, having been in the schools, I know how our special ed staff spends so much time in those situations, and it takes them away from the classroom. So I think these things that you have put in place in the past couple of years to allow the teachers to be face-to-face with the students more and some of the administrative stuff taken off of their plate I think is excellent work and also I just wanted to put in a plug I've recently heard from constituents a lot about the social work the social worker team and especially how they delivered through the recent winter freeze so I think those folks are greatly appreciated
yeah questions board members I mean everyone quick question is there a target density looking for on the staffing like if you have X amount students is there some ratio that obviously it's a little bit of science and art right but is there is there a target that you're trying to hey if we are way under this target you know we have too many teachers if we're way over this target we I'm assuming there's some kind of metric that you're trying to both for the special ed and for the regular teachers right yes sir and
that's a great question and there's no way we would really be able to do it without it in a district this large so a lot of what you see tonight is formula especially at the elementary and the secondary levels when it comes to teachers, administrators, paraeducators, many of those are formula driven. When it comes to maybe my bilingual department, dyslexia, they have their ratios as well that are formula driven, and those come as recommendations to us. But, yes, sir, great question, and in large part this is all formula driven.
Are those ratios, are they district ratios or are they like state ratios?
No, no, no, they are district ratios. So, for example, at the elementary level, classroom ratio of 22 students to one. And then at the secondary level, we're at 24, 25 to one. So just as a simple example. Thank you. Thank you.
Madam President, I have one more question. To piggyback off of what Mr. Schulte said, and maybe Mr. Sess needs to answer this one. I'm sorry. So when you're opening a new school, I just thought of this, when you're opening a new school, who you're going to hire is based on projections of what you think it's going to be. So that would have come from our demographers and things like that, right? Yes, ma'am. So you're trying to guess at it kind of, right?
Yes. I would say it's a very educated guess. I mean, especially our folks in business intelligence, they're phenomenal. And they have so many models. They've been doing this for a long time, and they always get pretty close. But yes.
I have one more quick question on the ratios and stuff. So when you get the demographic information, are you taking the low end, the medium end, the high end? Are you better to be understaffed or overstaffed? Or what's kind of the strategy on your staff? Because obviously things are pretty volatile. Like this year, if you just staffed for the high end and it came in a lot less, you'd have way too many staff. And then what do you do if that happens? Just curious what your... How's that managed?
Okay. Okay, so again, our business intelligence folks, they model this year-round. And continuous updates. Yes, continuous updates. And a piece of that is the PASA information that has all the demographic information and their projections. So they do take that into account. So there's many data points that they use to take it into account. And, of course, should we be understaffed or overstaffed, we'd love to hit it right on the button. you know you know if you're if you're just a skosh over you know it that that's probably a little better because being understaffed and getting into it in in October and November and then trying to hire folks because you really miss the mark that that gets a little tough but again you know being overstaffed and then that's a that's a drain on the budget so it's a there's a a lot of moving pieces to something like this. And it's a big process when you're talking about 88% or so of the district's budget on a pretty truncated timetable. But it's an excellent question. And again, hopefully we just hit it on the mark.
Thanks.
Any other questions? Madam President? Ms. Wilson. Thank you. My question is really more, I think, directed at you, Ms. Coffey. So when we're talking about increasing special education teachers and decreasing paras, are we also decreasing the numbers of special education students that are necessarily going to be in some of those classes? I speak as a special ed parent who lives in that world, so I know sometimes that one teacher can have a handful of students and we still have paras assigned to them just because all of their needs are different, the minutes that are addressed, all of those pieces and parts but we're not I guess my concern is are we now going to have potentially more of those students in one classroom and then now are we also taking away
that para like one of the questions I think so I just want to make sure I understand so you mean like in an in-class support situation yes we've got 20 kids in the class are we gonna now have 12 special ed kids instead of 10 exactly no there's no plan for that what I would say is that we use general numbers to help campuses we make recommendations for campuses when when they're scheduling students. But as you know, special education is individualized. And so there's nothing, we don't mandate this many, that many, part of the reason we wanna increase the number of teachers is because it does allow us to have that more individualized approach. And our district has historically been, and I've worked in a lot of districts, our district has historically been incredibly supportive of our special education students and staff. And I think this is another example of that. What do we need to do to ensure that kids can learn in the best possible way and so I think looking at the staffing and trying to optimize that staffing as we were talking about is part of that piece right what helps the general education teachers what helps the special education teachers ensure they're working in partnership to support our students right and that's what we're looking to do but it's not about a ratio within a classroom it's about the needs of the students as determined by the art
committees okay I just have that concern no worries all right madam president one One more, sorry. So to follow up on that, I know it's late, so my brain might not be firing on all cylinders, but the minus number for the paraprofessionals, you said that's not job loss. What are you going to do with paraprofessionals if they're not supporting special ed kids?
So there's a fairly high, and I'm going to use the term turnover, and somebody may cringe because I don't live in the HR world, but there's a fairly high change out, if you will, each year. And I know just being a campus administrator that multiple people on campuses move. they go they change jobs or their family moves or they decide to retire so we have a fairly high attrition rate in that area and so part of that will just be natural absorption and then other other pieces we're opening several different areas you know different programs at different schools that's part of the growth on the program side where you're seeing a decrease on the in-class support side and the reason that we're doing that like I said is because teachers teachers have a multitude of responsibilities that are are taking their time. And just as you were speaking, getting teachers in classroom with kids, right? That's critically important. But they also need to go to ARDS to represent and be a part of that specially designed instruction. So what we need to do, if you have a caseload of 30, that's very difficult to do because there's just not enough hours in the day to get it all done. So we're trying to increase those teachers. We want to keep those paraeducators in place as much as we can because they're critically important to what we're doing in special education. But we also need to have that balance. So last year, and I don't have those numbers in front of me, but for the last couple of years, we tend to add more paras than teachers. So this year when we were looking at it, we thought we need to really look at the balance, what's needed, what our students are needing. This year we needed to add more teachers than paras. And we did see a little bit of a loss, but it's 19 paras across the district. And I don't have the number in front of me, but I want to say we have something like 500 special education paras. So it's a pretty small percentage of the total number of paras. I don't want anyone worried about jobs. It's going to be just fine. No, I appreciate the explanation. Thank you. Yeah, no worries. Absolutely
Any more questions? Okay. Thank you. Mr. Chefs, dr. Coffee and dr. Hill Agenda item 8 future meetings a regular board meeting will be right here Monday 20 the 29th of March 2021 Be held in this room and being no further business before this board. This meeting is adjourned. The time is 8 21 p.m
Thank you.
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- No speaker on this page is named. The automated attribution available for this recording was derived from names spoken aloud in the transcript, and a surname inside a turn is not evidence of who is speaking. Every speaker is therefore left unresolved.
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 5.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees make a determination regarding a subcontractor prevailing wage complaint on the Junior High School #17 project and direct any appropriate further action by the administration.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |
MOTION 002 · AGENDA 5.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approve an amendment to the 2020-2021 Instructional Calendar to add a student and staff holiday on April 5, 2021.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| susan-gesoff | Yes |