I call this regular meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order.
Katy ISD · Regular Board Meeting Agenda
Katy ISD Regular Board Meeting, September 27, 2021
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September 27th, 2021, and the time is 5 p.m.
Dr. Grigorski, will you confirm that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to the notice for this meeting?
Mr. President, I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act for this meeting this evening.
Just to let everybody know, we're going to go out of sequence.
The Pledge of Allegiance leader is delayed in traffic, so we're going to do the open forum first,
and then we're going to revert back to the Pledge of Allegiance once he arrives to give him a chance to do that.
So we're going to move to Agenda Item 3 first.
At this time, the Board of Trustees will give members of the public an opportunity to speak in accordance with the KDISD Board Policy BED Local.
local. As defined by this board policy, the first 20 speakers who signed up by 2 p.m. Monday,
September 27, 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 the time divided equally among those who
have signed up. However, the maximum amount of time for any one speaker is three minutes.
If you are not finished speaking at the end of your three minutes, your audio will turn off.
If speakers wish to share written material with the Board, you must provide 10 copies
to the Secretary for Board Services before the meeting begins for Board members, the
Superintendent, the Chief Communications Officer, and Permanent Record.
If the Speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through the proper
channels as stated in Board policy, the Presiding Officer's designee shall advise the Speaker
to seek resolution through the appropriate policy.
Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.074 and 551.0821, the Board will not permit the presentation of personally identifiable information regarding a student and will not discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee or to hear a complaint or charge against an officer or employee.
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 that they signed up to speak.
So the first speaker that we have tonight is Alexander Rosenfeld,
and the speaker after that will be Travis Mansfield. Good evening.
Should I start?
Good afternoon, KISD board members.
Thank you for allowing me to address you.
My name is Alexander Rosenfeld, and I'm here today to provide information for your internal consideration on the KISD solar opportunity and policy.
As background, I'm a community member of 10 years, have two children in the KISD system,
and am a business owner representing several companies advocating for energy resiliency.
I'm also fed up with losing power at my business and having lost power at my kids' schools.
Given that background, I'm very glad to hear about the Haskett Junior High School project.
School districts around the country are actively embracing the advantages of solar,
and I'm glad to see that we're doing that here.
But unfortunately, as you may or may not know, Texas ranks 18th based on installed kilowatt hours.
hours. We have a long way to go. So why is solar important? Why am I reiterating the point that
you've heard before? First, it saves the school district significant amounts of money. It's good
for the environment. It also creates STEM and vocational opportunities in a field that is
growing faster in Texas than oil and gas jobs. And last and very importantly, it creates resiliency
for our community by both making schools cooling centers and heating centers during the natural
during storms that we seem to be having more and more often. With respect to
point one, my team believes there is between a one and a half million and six
million dollar potential annual savings the district can achieve over time so
this is significant in times of difficult budgets. And most importantly
solar can now be installed without a bond or capital commitments by the
school district. We would like to encourage KSD to be seriously
considering options and looking at a variety of solution providers that can
save you money accelerate through a transition to clean energy and improve
job opportunities and resiliency in our community thank you next speaker is
Travis Mansfield the speaker after that is Cameron Samuels Thank You members of
the school board my name is Travis Mansfield my wife Anna is here with me
me today we have four students that attend Katie ISD to it attend May Creek
High School and to the attendance smalls elementary I'm here today to address the
board about the issue of vehicle access to May Creek High School I teach an
early morning religion class for the young men and young women of our church
class begins at 5 30 a.m. and ends at 6 45 at which time the students leave for
school this class used to be held from 6 a.m. to 6 55 until last year when the
start time for the high school was moved up 10 minutes so the students were not
tardy we move the start time to 5 50 a.m there are 17 students that attend my class of these 17
students six attend wharton ranch high school which is 3.6 miles from our home one attends
langham creek high school in the cypher isd which is 6.7 miles from our home another student attend
begins her day at the miller career and technology center which is 9.7 miles from our home
the remaining eight students attend maid creek high school which is 1.4 miles from our home
Even though May Creek is 1.4 miles from our home, access to the student parking lot is currently through one entrance.
The students that ride to school with my daughter have been tardy four times in the past two weeks, even though they have left our home 30 minutes before the tardy bell rings.
By comparison, those students that travel 3.6 miles, 6.7 miles, and 9.7 miles respectively have not been tardy once this school year.
Access to May Creek High School is via Delaney Road, a narrow road with one lane for traffic in each direction.
There are no sidewalks along Delaney Road, and it can flood when it rains.
This causes there to be foot traffic from high school students walking on the road and
it's not safe.
My opinion is that May Creek High School was never designed to handle the amount of traffic
that currently goes into that school in the mornings.
In the six years in which we've lived in our home, there have been at least six apartment
complexes in multiple neighborhoods of single-family homes built within the boundaries.
Ms. Cobb, the principal of May Creek High School, has come up with a temporary solution
for our daughter and the others who ride with her, but this doesn't change the fact that
there are roughly 2,800 other students who are being impacted by the situation.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Cameron Samuels, and the speaker after that is Carrie Richardson.
Cameron Samuels?
Carrie Richardson?
Carrie Richardson?
Philip Haddad?
And the speaker after that is Ling Li?
Hello, thank you for allowing me to address you this evening.
Mike, what brings me here this evening is the Thursday night football program.
I'm a big supporter of extracurricular activities.
My son who goes to Morton Ranch High School participates with me as a junior.
My wife and I have volunteered with the marching band for the last three years and will continue
to do so to get graduates.
The problem I have with Thursday night football games, and it's been my problem since he started,
as my son told me, why don't you do something about it, so here I am tonight, is the fact
that you know they get to school at 7 20 in the morning didn't get home almost 11 o'clock
at night this past uh thursday night football game at morton ranch had was a homecoming game
well the problem with that is after a homecoming game that's when the band goes out and does a
performance so not only on a thursday night late but then they have to stay after the football game
to perform to quite honestly there's no one left in the stadium i know who they're performing too
i think the thursday night football games need to be re-evaluated i don't have all the answers but
but you have at your disposal tens of thousands of teenagers,
I'm sure they all have all the answers for you.
But it's very concerning, these Thursday night football games,
how I feel they impact the academics.
Next morning, he's back at school at 7.20 AM.
And under the way that the Canvas program works,
a lot of teachers have a 12 midnight deadline
on their homework.
It's due that night at 12 midnight.
I don't know why.
But with that being said, you get home 11 o'clock at night,
you have one hour to get your homework in.
I think the Thursday night football game program
should be re-evaluated for many purposes, one of which
which is the academics.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Ling Li.
And the speaker after that is Kara Lawrence.
Thank you, board members.
Good evening, everyone.
My name's Ling Li, a mother of two in KTISD.
Today I'm here to raise my deep concerns about a Zoom meeting
with Arthur Jerry Craft scheduled on October 4
throughout KTISD.
Kids as young as third grade are invited to purchase, read, and discuss his books, New Kid and Class Act.
However, these books are nothing but all about critical risk theory, which is toxic, dangerous, and should not have a place in our schools at all.
I'm asking, before the author was invited, did the person in charge ever read his books?
If not, this is ignorance and irresponsibility.
If yes, this could be a much more serious problem.
I'm requesting cancellation of the Zoom meeting and investigation into this.
As a minority, I can tell you, America does not have systematic racism.
The beauty of this country is that she provides equal opportunities to everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, and nationality.
My company hires me not because of my race, but because I'm the perfect fit for my job.
America's problem is not race, which has been used in dividing people in many years.
It's never race, but common values that hold people together.
America's problems are the radical ideology, the propaganda pushed by the government and the media,
Korea politicians and the ghost of Marxism haunting every school, every church, and every community.
I could give you a million examples, but I am not able to due to the time limit.
Rather than critical theory, our kids should be taught critical thinking and the real history of America.
In America's history, there was beauty and ugly. There was right and wrong, but they are all fact.
Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, may I ask the name of the book and the author?
I didn't understand.
I didn't write it down.
Ms. Lee.
Ms. Lee.
Ms. Lee.
Jerry Craft.
Jerry Craft.
Got it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Kara Lawrence, and the speaker after that is Mary Ellen Kizella.
Hello.
Good evening.
I am really just here today to talk to you about the vaccinations in children.
As a parent and as a medical professional, I'm a speech therapist.
I am highly concerned with these vaccines in children.
I appreciate you guys making it a consensual thing for parents to make that decision.
I think that is awesome.
But I'm really here to discuss and let you know that the FDA Advisory Committee met last week
and allowed kind of an open forum for independent scientists, researchers, and doctors to meet
and discuss concerns they have with these vaccines. You know, lots of different doctors
and researchers got together and discussed a whole host of things. But one of them that
concerned me the most was a researcher named Steve Kirsch. He talked about how the cost-benefit
analysis in children is upside down. He presented a lot of great information at this advisory
committee. It's on YouTube. I'm shocked it's still up because a lot of other scientists and doctors
who are independently going against the narrative are being banned, censored, deplatformed. I'm sure
you know about that. If science is the pursuit of all truth, I do not understand the CDC and Dr.
Fauci banning these scientists and doctors who are raising concerns. I am very concerned as a parent.
I have worked with children who've had strokes.
I have worked with children who've had Guillain-Barre.
I've worked with children who've had myocarditis.
These are not simple things that we want to see in our children, and they're very, very scary.
And for people like professionals and doctors to say that the cost benefit is upside down in children,
it's up to us to push back on our legislators and say we need more data.
We need more independent research that isn't funded by the WHO, the CDC, the NIH, these vaccine companies.
There are multiple conflicts of interest.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Mary Ellen Kozella.
The speaker after that is Rebecca Trahan.
I'm grateful to speak to you again tonight.
Thank you.
I want to thank you again for the mask optional policy.
I feel like it's going really, really well.
Now you're serving all KDISD families, not just the ones who prefer wearing masks.
You also are respecting constitutional rights and allowing parents to make health decisions
for their children.
Thank you for standing firm on this.
Tonight I'd like to address the need for a basic audit of our libraries.
Last week a mother found a book at the Haskett Junior High Library that has sexually explicit
illustrations and dialogue. It's actually a graphic novel. It introduces also a keg
at a party for kids. This book is available to sixth, seventh, and eighth
graders. It's called Losing the Girl by Mary Naomi. There's a picture of dogs
having sex. There's a conversation between a young boy and a young girl. He
asks, are you a virgin? She says that's personal. She's visibly disturbed. He says
says I can seal the deal, you know. And he says if you don't think I'm the right guy
to give yourself to, then maybe I'm not the right one. There's a discussion. She later
says I can wait for the right one. He doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be for love
or anything. I just want it to be memorable and hot. There's a picture of students at
a party with a keg in the corner. We must not only remove this book from Haskett Junior
high but parents should be assured that smut like this is removed from all
schools and we must understand how it got there so we don't have this happen
again isn't there a decent agreement on what's appropriate or not appropriate
for children I would suggest a basic audit of our school libraries on a
consistent basis to filter these books out no political ideological nor
religious beliefs need to be used I'd suggest using the natural law which is
is a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct thank you
thank you the next speaker was rebecca trahan the speaker after that is cassandra lopez de garcia
can you hear me okay i'm a little bit tall for this okay my name is rebecca trahan
i am actually i was uh raised in the katie area going to katie schools i'm a former city
commissioner I am a election judge now but most importantly I'm the proud
mother of a sweet little kindergartner at Franz Elementary so first thing I
want to do is just say something really positive and just I can't tell you
enough wonderful things about Franz Elementary and the teachers and the
staff they're just going there as a parent every day seeing their positive
attitude seeing the smiles on their faces and seeing the way that they treat
the kids is so heartwarming. I was raised in a family of five generations of
teachers so that's something that I really look for and the teachers and
staff there are so special so I just want to let you know that what a great
job that the staff at France Elementary is doing. I also want to thank the board
for giving parents the choice as to whether or not we want our children to
wear masks. I ask that you continue to empower our children's health and our
our constitutional right to decide what happens with our children's health.
I also want to implore you that despite what may be coming from the county
and from all the way up to the President of the United States
with them now trying to press vaccinations on the children, please do not do it.
I can say firsthand, I happen to be one of the first people in the state of Texas to get COVID.
I was a case study with the CDC and the Texas Health Department.
I got the vaccine.
Not only did it make me sick, it sent me into anaphylactic shock.
I nearly died.
I can also say firsthand that the vaccine does not protect against COVID.
It does not protect against the Delta variant.
Even after I got vaccinated, I still got the Delta.
I was very, very sick.
Thank you time is up. Thank you. Thank you the next speakers Cassandra Lopez de Garcia
The next speakers Ellie Vega
Ellie Vega
The next speaker is Victor Perez and the speaker after that it's Kathleen Pittman
Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Victor Perez. I have raised, my wife and I
raised three kids here at KISD and we currently have four grandkids in KISD. So thank you
so much for your time. By way of background, I also moved from Cuba when I was seven years
old. So in 1960, so I was, I'm very aware of Marxist ideology. I'm here to speak out
against Jerry Kraft speaking to our intimate elementary school kids. The
underlying theme of his books is about white privilege. The underlying theme is
about inherent racism in schools and in society. Make no mistake these books are
a critical race theory. It's an insidious sneaky style to get critical race
theory in our schools. White families are depicted as privileged, unaware of their
inherent racism and with moms who don't work and spend their days playing tennis
and doing yoga. Right at the beginning of New Kid, that's one of the books, it
depicts a white father picking up the kids in what looks like a Range Rover
and a kid being dropped off at school by a chauffeur, a chauffeur in a uniform. The
book to me is a generalization, a stereotype, a character, it's ridiculous, a
caricature. Class Act continues depicting children of color, continuing to struggle
with the privilege and lack of understanding from the white students
students and teachers. In Class Act, the jerk football player, as he's depicted, wears a red MAGA hat.
Critical race theory seeks to look at everything through the lens of race. It is racist. White kids are made to feel they are privileged and are perpetually oppressors,
while black kids are perpetually the victims and the oppressed. Under critical race theory, equality is no longer the goal. That's not good enough.
The buzzword is now equity. These books are written to make the white kids feel
guilty about their so-called privilege and to try to atone for their whiteness
which of course they can never do. Our kids need quality education. They don't
need social engineering or political ideology. This ideology is Marx. Thank you.
Time's up. Thank you.
The next speaker is Kathleen Pittman.
And the speaker after that is Bonnie Anderson.
Good evening.
My name is Kathleen Pittman.
I am the president of the PTA,
Katy Council PTAs for the school district,
proudly representing 65 PTAs in Katy.
We added our newest PTA, Haskett Junior High,
this past spring.
We have over 18,000 members so far.
and still growing which also still makes us the largest council in the state even though there's
a whole bunch more that have way more ptas than we do um i wanted to recognize this evening three
campuses that received the school of excellence award it is a national pta award and that is
the award is designed to recognize schools that build an inclusive and welcoming school community
um to strengthen school and parent family school partnerships so there's three that have achieved
this award this year we've had several others in the past it's a two-year distinction the schools
are bonnie holland um jinks elementary and davidson elementary but i just wanted to recognize those
three schools for that outstanding family school partnership and i just wanted to say thank you to
the board and to dr gregorsky and mishak for um continuing to help us keep our families and our
our engaged in our schools thanks thank you the next speaker is Bonnie Anderson
and the speaker after that is the Shawn Dolan
hi feels like book night so my kids came home with the flyer about the the
Jerry Croft visit with over 30 Katie elementary schools and so I read the
books new kid and class act and and I emailed superintendent Gregor ski he
said that that neither these or any material the district pushes contain
critical race theory but we know that's not true because we took the ESSER
buttons so the books are filled with critical race theory they push the idea
of it's the unscientific and harmful idea of microaggressions which are the
Simply, white people are so privileged and unaware of the inherent struggles of people of color due to systemic racism
that the things white people say or do to people of color, even if they aren't perceived as harmful and racist, are harmful and racist.
Both books teach children the preordained conclusion that white children have wealth, status, and race privilege,
while children of color must suffer the racist ignorance of these privileged families.
families. Is microaggression CRT terminology? CRT is critical race theory. Yes, the founders,
or as I like to call them, the inventors of critical race theory coined the term to describe
their theory of the existence of daily subtle verbal and nonverbal forms of racism. Is the
author really discussing microaggressions in these books? In a March 2019 interview,
interview, author Kraft discusses his book's message. Quote, a lot of the daily microaggressions
came from watching my sons in a similar situation. I did need to inject a lot of humor into the
books so that it wouldn't be seen as anger. Close quote. I have a petition signed by hundreds
of KDISD parents requesting the district cancel the event with the author permitting the introduction
section of critical race theory material to students in Texas violates House Bill 3979.
This has...
Thank you.
Thank you.
Your time is up.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The last speaker tonight is Sean Dolan.
Good evening.
This was sent to me by an employee in the district to share with you.
Several of us are angry that the district is spending money on a criminal defense attorney
for three individual employees.
The taxpayer funds are collected for the sole purpose of education and as such all funds
are to be used in a manner that contributes to the education of students.
It's also important that all money spent by a district serves a public purpose and not
that of an individual.
IN ADDITION, IF THE DISTRICT ENTERS INTO A CONTRACT OF ANY KIND THAT RESULTS IN SPENDING OF TAX DOLLARS, THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES MUST VOTE TO APPROVE THE EXPENDITURE.
BUT MR. I CAN'T SAY HIS NAME, BUT HE'S SITTING RIGHT THERE, HAS ONCE AGAIN COME INTO ANOTHER SECTION OF KDISD UPPER MANAGEMENT TO TELL US HOW TO DO OUR JOBS.
AND THAT FROM THIS POINT FORWARD, WE WILL IGNORE THE PRIOR RULES AND PROCEDURES AND REPLACE THEM WITH HIS NEW POLICIES ON LEGAL SPENDING.
He claims there's $300,000 written into the budget to cover legal expenditures that wouldn't need to be disclosed,
but that is not true, and we would never be able to do that as a school district.
Mr. Him has inserted his own rules and is ignoring rules of finance for independent school districts, which are complex and strict.
Also, they sent an opinion letter from Ken Paxton to Mike Murath specifying why that's illegal,
legal. And then evidenced in a recent filing on September 3rd in the McClellan lawsuit
was a motion to quash deposition of a defendant. And the reason the request was made was because
there's a co-occurring investigation by the DA's office into the district's activities.
And it was signed by Chip Lewis, who is a criminal defense attorney. So I'm curious,
And if the board doesn't know if you guys can maybe investigate how we paid for Chip Lewis. He's not cheap
he's he's a big-time criminal defense attorney and
I don't remember you guys voting on it, and I'm told it came out of payroll
And if that's the case that's a that's a big problem. Thank you
Looks like as we have our pledge of allegiance leader here perfect timing
Let me close this. This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting.
And now we'll proceed to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Dr. Gorski.
Thank you, President Schulte.
You have a special guest with us. We are glad they were able to make it over here.
But we've got a young man from Memorial Parkway Elementary School, fifth grader Abraham Afana.
And his principal is Norma Martinez. Parents, Atif and Heba Afana.
He's got some siblings also here in KDISD. Yousef, ninth grader at Taylor
High School, Malik and Malak, seventh graders at Memorial Parkway Junior High,
and Rose, a second grader at Memorial Parkway Elementary. Abraham likes to
explore, construct, and build new things. Math is his favorite subject because he
deals with all different techniques to get to the correct answer. And a quote
from Mrs. Abraham is a very bright student and a joy to have in class.
He is always looking for opportunities to expand his learning and is always participating in classroom activities and from Miss Benton Court
Abraham is such an amazing model student
He always comes in the classroom with a smile on his face and ready to learn
Abraham is a leader in the classroom during discussions and class activities. He demonstrates fifth grade excellence in the hallway
It is such a joy to have Abraham in the classroom and he always brings a smile to our face
So welcome Abraham glad to have you and if you will go ahead and lead us in that Pledge of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic of which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.
Abraham, you had some message you wanted to share with the board as well?
Yes.
Okay, go ahead.
Good evening, President Schultz, board members, and Superintendent Grugowski.
My name is Abraham Afana.
I'm in fifth grade at Memorial Parker Elementary.
I've been at Memorial Parker Elementary for seven years in pre-K.
My family has been a part of the MPE community for ten years.
I have an older brother who actually came to MPE, but now is in ninth grade at Taylor High School.
I have two sisters in seventh grade at Maura Parker Junior High and a little sister at
Maura Parker Elementary in second grade, and there's still one more coming.
What I like the most about MPE is the teachers are not only nice, but how they all concentrate
to help you learn and discover new things all the time.
MPE is a place for everybody.
Thank you very much.
Great job.
Go ahead.
Go ahead, Ms. Wilson.
Okay.
Thank you.
under section 551001 of the Texas Government Code for the following
purposes Texas Government Code 551071 and 551129 thank you everybody could
take their seats we're gonna get started here in a minute oh thank you the board
will now reconvene an open meeting today is monday september 27 2021 and the time is 6 14.
on behalf of my colleagues i welcome everyone to this meeting's regular board meeting
each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on friday
september 24 2021 the board will receive information and recommendations from staff
administration and the superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting board members
Members will be able to ask questions, receive answers, and should be prepared to take action.
The board has just reconfirmed from closed meeting, in accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code,
any action arising from discussion in a closed meeting must be taken in open meeting.
We're now going to proceed to Agenda Item 6, which is Action Items.
6.1, consider board approval of the proposal for a chiller rebuild at Seven Lakes High School.
Board members, are there any questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move the Board of Trustees approve the proposal for a chiller rebuild at Seven Lakes High School to Hunton Services in the amount of $345,443 and the total project cost not to exceed $360,443.
Second.
We have a motion by Ms. Mann and a second by Mr. Redman.
We will now proceed to vote.
All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
All those opposed?
The motion carries 7-0.
Item 6.2.
consider board approval of a blanket electrical easement to Centerpoint Energy Houston Electric LLC
associated with the construction of Elementary School number 44.
Board members, are there any questions?
Mr. President, I move that the Board of Trustees award Centerpoint Energy Houston Electric LLC
a blanket electrical easement associated with the construction of Elementary School number 44
as depicted in the attached easement document.
Second.
Okay.
I have a motion by Mr. Redman, a second by Mrs. Vann.
We will now proceed to vote.
All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
The motion carries 7-0.
We'll now move to agenda item 6.3, consider board approval of the minutes of the August 2021 board meetings.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move the board of trustees approves the minutes of the board meetings held in August 2021.
Second.
We have a motion by Mrs. Vann, a second by Mr. Redman.
will now proceed to vote all those in favor rise your right hand and say aye
aye the motion carries 7-0 well now move into agenda item 7 which is reports the
first agenda item is 7.1 Katie independent school district education
foundation and a report the presenter is miss Janet Tice executive director of
partners in education and miss Robin pie vice president of Katie is D education
Foundation Board of Directors. Good evening. Good evening Mr. President, Board
members and Dr. Gavorsky. It's my pleasure on behalf of the KDICT
Education Foundation to direct this report to you in compliance with our
July 12th 2012 Memorandum of Understanding between our two
organizations and as you mentioned leaving the report and presenting it on
behalf of our amazing Board of Directors is our Vice President Robin
Robin Pye.
Hi, I'm Robin Pye and I'm the KDISD Education Foundation Board Vice President.
As the KDISD Education Foundation enters its tenth year, we celebrate 2.3 million awarded
in Inspiring Imagination Teacher grants.
In nine years of grants, we have awarded 585 grants, benefited 2,189 teachers, and currently impact an average of 35,818 students per year.
Our success is fueled by excellent board and district leadership, a supportive community, and landmark fundraising events, but even more by the incredible innovation and passion of KDISD teachers.
As you know, the KDISD Education Foundation is a stand-alone 501c3 non-profit led by an independent board of directors.
The foundation is specifically charged not only by our KDISD Memorandum of Understanding,
but also our own bylaws, policies, and procedures to enhance teaching and learning in KDISD
classrooms, generate strong community support for the district, support the educational
mission and functions of the district, realize gains in excess of any support the district
provides cause the records and books of our organization to be audited annually
and provide that audit report to your board in compliance with the above our
foundation has requested and received annually from an independent CPA firm an
audit of our financial position the related statements of activities and
cash flow and all related financial statements our most recent foundation
audited financial statements and IRS form 990 have been provided in your board docs and are readily available to the public on our
foundation website
Our foundation is led by a highly engaged board of directors and supported by a dynamic committee structure
Our board has in place both a long-term strategic
Organizational plan and a five to seven year financial plan
which includes an eye towards staff support and increased funding for
foundation initiatives the KD ISD Education Foundation's vision is to
unite the community in making targeted investments in our schools the greatest
fulfillment of that vision is our groundbreaking Keystone and KD ISD
legacy investor programs a group of individuals businesses and KD ISD
employees who pledge annual support for our foundation. Our investor family is
led by BP, our sole cornerstone investor. BP joined the foundation at a critical
juncture in our formation and has been a faithful friend and supporter for eight
of our nine years. We recently welcomed BP's Kim Coomber-Hallam to our Board of
Directors and are deeply grateful for her service and leadership. Kim, can I
recognize the rest of the board members that are here so we have a small group
of KDISD board members that are here y'all want to stand wave say hi other
fundraising fundraising sources include landmark KD West Houston events such as
fireflies and food trucks groove and our new limelight run formerly known as
reason to race like all non-profits our foundation faced new and unique fundraising challenges during
the 2020-2021 school year even so thanks to the continued support of our community the kdisd
foundation exceeded our fundraising goals for the fiscal year ended august 31st 2021.
our 2021-2022 teacher grant applications have launched and the foundation office has already
received its first grant submission. We look forward to awarding grants and
celebrating Katy ISD teachers next May. We're grateful to you, the Katy ISD Board
of Trustees, for your continued support of our foundation's work. Special thanks
to Mr. Duke Keller, who serves as your representative on our Board of Directors,
and to Dr. Grgorski and his leadership team, who are exceptionally supportive of
our work thank you
board members any questions i have something um thank you so much for
all that you do and i just want to say i'm looking at the numbers here and
despite the year of pandemic and all that i am so impressed that we were or
you were able to raise that much money and to
to provide services to 34,951 kids this year.
So, you know, there are some good, a lot of good things that are still continuing to happen,
and I think this is evidence of one of those things.
So I really appreciate your work through this difficult time.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'd like to speak, too.
I was going to say some words in the other forum before this, but we ran out of time.
But I've I was been in the district for 20 years, but I was never really I've heard of this program
But it was never really involved in it and since I've been a trustee obviously getting a lot more involved
I've been to several of the fundraisers and what I was impressed as the fundraiser is just a passion and
the commitment of the people that are on this on this committee of the board and everybody you guys got several committees and
Everybody there and they just they just live and breathe this
Trying to make it better trying to make a difference and a really passion
I said everybody I talked to had sparkle in their eyes.
They were just, they really did.
I always said, you know what your why is, why are you doing this?
And everybody that was at that event, they were just on fire.
And it was intoxicating to me.
Of course, we were at a brewery too, so that probably helped.
But it was really refreshing to meet all the people.
So it's a great program.
I regret that I haven't been more involved in it, but I am going to be.
And certainly to the teachers that take the time.
I read through all the grants that everybody's getting this year,
and the teachers that take the time and the creativity to think of ways
to to enrich our students and make it better it's just I can't think of a
better program so hats off to the board and all of the committee and to the
teachers that took the time to submit an application and for those lucky enough
to get it I can only wait to see it's all good stuff so thank you guys all
very much mr. president yes there is a an investor program that you can get
involved with I'm sure they would love me to hear well luck would have it my
wife is now on the investor committee so she was she was she she got she got the
bug at the at the last thing so i've already been asked for what my donation is going to be this
year so but anyway great work thank you mr president yes thank you for allowing me to to um
talk about this 10 years 10 years i remember when it was a dream right when we had the idea and we
had the dream and we tasked mr fraley to be like we want one of those round rock had one all people
people had the people who had one it's like it was hard hard work and lots of
research and putting it together and and making it sing like it does is a
testament to the commitment and hard work of all of you all and I know that
you represent a small group of us you are a small group that reprimand
represents a huge number of people who care about making a difference directly
directly to the classroom.
And as a, when I think about making donations or giving something that makes an impact,
I was a groundbreaking investor and have continued to be because of the success that you have.
And watch and going to the grant when they actually do some of their activities.
And it's incredible to see and how excited and engaged the students are.
And in a day when automated curriculums and all the
curriculum they have to teach, but the teachers who have such
a creative spin and want more, and here's an idea, and here's
an activity, and here's a hands-on that will really tie
what I teach to enrichment for students.
It's a ton of work to apply, to come up with an idea, apply,
and then the other things that happen to make that work.
It's a huge impact and I am so impressed
with how much you get done with it.
So limited of people and I'm thrilled to be a little part.
All right.
Any other comments?
Okay, we'll move on to agenda item 7.2, planning for growth,
review of the preliminary results of the elementary school number 44 attendance
boundary modification feedback server the presenter is dr. Andrea grooms chief
communication officer good evening
we're president mr. Schulte trustees and dr. Gorgor ski as you indicated I'm here
this evening to present the attendance boundary modification survey for
for elementary 44.
As you will recall, this past June,
our Chief Operations Officer, Ted Verling,
presented a proposal for this new elementary school,
which will be located in Kane Island.
This survey was administered to parents
who are likely to be impacted by that proposal.
And tonight you will hear the preliminary results
of that survey.
That survey has been open since June 29th
and has remained open until September 14th,
at which time we briefly closed it to collect the preliminary results,
and then it then reopened and will remain open until October 8th.
I am reporting these results on behalf of K-12 Insight, which is our partner research firm.
They created the survey, they distributed the survey,
and they analyzed the results that you will hear this evening.
Again, the survey went out to about 348 potentially impacted parents,
parents. 122 responded to the survey, which is about 35% response rate. Anything above
33% in terms of response rate is considered statistically significant. The majority of
our respondents were parents and most of them have also lived in our district anywhere from
1 to 15 years. This particular slide, we asked parents the grade levels of their students,
even though we're focusing on an elementary ABM.
This provides context later in the presentation
where you will learn about the parents who indicate
that they've been through an ABM process before.
And you'll see there's a spread across kindergarten through 12th grade
with most having children in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade.
Typical of all our KDIC surveys,
we try to get a sense of awareness about the district
through the perspective of the respondent.
We asked in this survey, were they familiar with school bonds and how those processes unfold in KDISD and how those bonds are used?
We also asked the participants to rate their awareness of the quality of education in KDISD.
So you'll see in both cases 80 to 90% of participants indicated that they're aware or somewhat aware of these two items.
We also ask the question about how their student commutes to school, with most riding the bus
or being driven to school by their parent.
Earlier I mentioned that a later slide would provide some context to that question about
the grade levels of the participants' students.
Here you will see that about 26 of the participants have been impacted by ABM before.
So some of those parents with older children have experienced this in the past at some
point in their KDISD experience.
And then we also asked them to describe the experience with 26% saying that was a positive
experience for them and 39% indicating that it was negative and 35% neutral.
same question was asked about their child with 58% indicating overall is a positive experience
once they had entered the school environment engaged with their parents and overall they
felt good about that process the impact of the ABM on the school commute 80% indicating that
that was positive.
Then finally we asked participants to indicate whether or not they would support the ABM
and here you will see that overwhelmingly the majority of the participants, 90% indicated
that they would indeed support the proposed ABM based on the preliminary results as of
September 14th.
We also asked our participants to cite some reasons for their support.
Many are just excited about a new school.
They feel it balances enrollment.
They like the feeder patterns.
They're happy with the transportation options and some other items in there about stabilizing enrollment.
And you can read through these individually.
We asked the same question, opposite of that, really.
really, what are your reasons for not supporting it if the participants indicated that they
did not support it, but again, very few did, but out of those very few who indicated they
did not support it, seven to be exact, these are the reasons for that.
Something you may also want to read later.
We also provide in our surveys an opportunity for participants to provide open-ended responses,
which somewhat reiterate what we've heard already,
excited to be a part of a new elementary school,
shorter commute, children can now walk or ride their bike to school
as reasons for why they're in support of the ABM.
And then again, that other question about why it might be a negative impact,
about eight participants responded to that
and pretty much reiterated what you saw previously.
Obviously, children enjoy their current school or they do not want to disrupt the child's
current educational experience.
And then some suggestions were also provided by about 30 of our participants.
You'll see those here.
These are pretty similar to what we hear with other attendance boundary modifications.
applications, suggestions about zoning, allowing certain grade levels to stay where they're at,
consider different rezoning options, and that is it for the preliminary results as of now.
Any questions? Thank you, Dr. Grooms. Any questions, board members? I would like to make a statement.
Dr. Grooms, thank you so much for your work, but I think it's so interesting that
that 100% say that their concern is that their child won't be able to adjust to the new school.
I just think that's so interesting because as parents, you know,
that is what they all have in common for the people who are, you know, negative about the thing.
But I hope that parents always realize that your children that live in your neighborhood are all going to go with you.
So when we got rezoned, that was something that helped me to know that, you know, our next-door neighbors and everybody is still going to go to the same school.
And so you're still the same parents in the same school and all that.
It's all going to work out good.
I just wanted to make that point because I just thought that was interesting.
Good point.
Any other questions?
Thank you very much.
We're going to move on to Agenda Item 7.3, House Bill 3, Five-Year Goals and Targets.
for the district elementary campuses and high school campuses their presenter is
miss natalie martinez executive director of school improvement good evening
good evening
Good evening, board members. Dr. Grogorski, tonight I would like to share with you an
update on our House Bill 3 board adopted goals. It's been a year since we've spoken about this,
so I'll give you a little bit of history just to bring you back up to speed. In 2015, Texas set a
goal that by 2030 60% of our Texans ages 25 to 34 would have a certificate or
degree this is known as the Texas 60 by 30 it was then recommended that two
checkpoints be established within the pre-k through 12 system the two
checkpoints landed in third grade and with our annual graduates the state
mandated that districts establish a goal in elementary centered around early
childhood literacy and mathematics the measure used would be third grade star
at the meets and masters level remember there are three cut points within our
accountability system approaches meets and masters when I speak to you about
accountability we include all three but for a house bill three we only include
meets and masters so the numbers do look very different than what I presented to
you with accountability the state also mandated that districts establish goals
in high school centered around college career readiness for annual grads.
The measure used is similar to accountability domain one, but it goes further by including
student groups similar to our domain three.
Remember with CCMR, the goal is for students to earn one indicator within the state list
that includes meeting standards on assessments like SAT, ACT, TSIA, but also includes AP,
dual credit, along with earning an industry-based certification and advanced degree in work
course ready for our special education students ccmr is meant to give choice to students but it
also ensures that they are ready for their post-secondary journey
the kdisd school board adopted our house bill 3 goals on july 27th of 2020. as you can imagine
we had quite a year in the year of 2021 but we did meet all the requirements for house bill 3.
plans are created for elementaries and high schools and house bill 3 performance objectives
are included in each campus performance plan at these levels. Annual goals and
targets were created for a five-year period and today serves as our annual
update and public meeting. The SIPs and DIPs are being finalized
and we anticipate those being on the web by the beginning of
October. In addition to our annual public meetings, school board members, you all
all receive updates in your quarterly reports. For elementary, we report out twice a year in July
and January, and for high school, we report out at the end of year in July. So let's jump into our
goals and targets. As a refresher, your goals represent the aggregate student performance. This
means all kids are reported together. Targets represent student groups to support closing the
achievement gap the approved goals and targets were set for the 21 22 23 and 24 school year
as you can imagine a lot has happened since these goals were created tea has not given further
guidance on house bill 3 so we are not allowed to update the goals or the targets and that means
that you're going to find some interesting things within this report it is possible that a school
has already exceeded their 2022 goal or target but we are not allowed to change it it is also
possible that a school fell a little bit more than expected and so the growth seems a little bit
out of reach in either case we've not been given permission to change these goals or targets
i will tell you that with our central teams and our principals we explain that goals and targets
merely point you in the right direction it is the strategies underneath those goals and targets
where the magic really happens.
Those are the action steps that campuses in Central are taking,
and that is where our focus will be.
Our five-year goal for reading states,
the percent of KDIC students who achieve meets and above
on the third-grade reading star will increase from 59% to 66%
by July of 2024.
Remember, this is at meets and above.
You'll notice in 2019 our score was at 59. This is how we determine the goals for the rest of the
five-year period. Remember that the state did not give star in 2020 so you'll see that column
missing but for 21 and beyond we decided to increase by one percentage point for the first
year and two percentage points for each year after that this methodology holds true at the campus
level as well you'll notice that for the 2021 school year our goal was 60 percent of students
would meet this standard we actually earned a 57 but we will still hold true to the 62 percent goal
in 2022. we are all aware that the 2021 results were an outlier across the state and we also
understand that interruption to our students education will result in a
multi-year recovery effort. We know that data-driven personalized instruction is
needed now more than ever. We are confident in our campus leaders and our
teachers to reach that goal. The green chart at the bottom represents the
targets across multiple student groups. Student groups not listed on the chart
means that they did not meet minimum size. For targets, the accountability
system actually gives us federal targets to start with. The federal targets were
were determined by TEA used a baseline across the state to come up with those numbers.
As we look at our 2019 scores, you'll notice that we had already met all of the federal targets.
We do, however, still strive to achieve more. For targets, centrally and at each campus, we identify
two student groups to focus on. In the first year, we chose to focus on the two lowest student
performing groups which were special education and economically disadvantaged you'll notice that
we declined in both student groups but we are still above the federal target if you remember
from our accountability presentation numbers declined statewide and katie was no exception
to that we did manage however to not decline as much as the state but we still realize that there
is lots of work to be done for 2022 our two identified student groups will be asian and
two or more races after multiple discussions this year and a great idea from a high school principal
we decided to change that methodology the asian student the asian target is 74 percent you'll
notice that we earned a 73 percent in 2021 because we are now below the target we will certainly need
to focus here two or more races sorry two or more races um are when students identify with multiple
multiple student groups the target there was 56 and Katie earned a 60. since we're close to that
Target we're choosing to focus there as well and you'll notice that our 2020 targets are
on screen with Asians back up to 80 percent two or more races out of 63 percent
for math our five-year goal reads the percent of Katie ISD students who achieve meets or above on
the third grade math star will increase from 60 to 67 by july of 2024. again we start with our 2019
score of a 60 percent and that helped us determine what our targets would be for 21 22 23 and 24.
you'll notice in 2021 we targeted a 61 percent but actually earned a 48 percent again this is
that meets and above but we're still holding true to the 63 percent target in 2022.
the green chart at the bottom follows the same pattern as before you'll see our federal targets
here at the top these are set by the state 2019 scores showed that we were above the targets
for our 2021 our two identified areas were special ed and economically disadvantaged
that both of those did decline but again we're still holding strong with the
state for this upcoming year our two focused areas will be Asian and
economically disadvantaged the Asian group will have a target of 87% and
economically disadvantaged will have a target of 45% in summary reading showed
a two-point decline during the 2021 school year math showed a 12-point decline in the same school
year we do recognize that school interruptions due the pandemic was impacting our student learning
small group instruction was limited due to our covet protocols but the curriculum
instruction team has developed action plans for addressing the learning loss
our goals will remain the same so reading target is 62 percent and our math target is 63 percent
For high school CCMR, our five-year goal states that the percent of KDISD annual grads who
earn CCMR credit will increase from 74% to 81% by July of 2024.
Same pattern holds true.
We looked at our 2019 data with a 74% and increased by 1% the first year and two percentage
points each year after that.
Our target for 2021 was 75%.
our actual outcome was 72%.
For 2022, our target will be 77%.
Again, at the bottom, you'll see our federal targets listed there.
You'll also see our 2019 scores.
You'll notice that we are well above the federal targets in our CCMR area.
area. We originally for 2021 had identified African American in special education. You'll
notice a slight decline in African American, but a significant increase in special education.
For this upcoming school year, our focus is on Asian and economically disadvantaged.
You'll see that our targets there are 92% and 57%.
So in summary, our CCMR showed a one-point decrease for the 2021 school year.
We did recognize that for TSI testing spring of 2020, it was interrupted,
so some students weren't able to come and test.
But the secondary TNL team has developed action plans to target areas within the CCMR framework.
They do work together.
They have a roadshow at each campus,
and that really leads to campuses developing common plans to address
student needs so again our goal will increase from 72% to 77% for this school
year at this time I'm ready to answer questions from you are there any
questions mr. president yes Thank You miss Martinez I have a question so I've
heard I've heard of this before and I've obviously I've seen this before but why
Why are there different target rates for different groups?
And also, how do you determine which groups to focus on on which year?
Sure.
So you have to watch my hands because I speak with my hands.
And so I'll try to simplify it a little bit.
We always get the question on why are there different targets for different student groups
because it seems inequitable.
However, to simplify things, if we imagine that we look at baseline data for all of our student groups
and we know that we want them to increase. If we asked everybody to
increase up to let's say 80% but our student groups actually baselined at
different points below, we would actually be asking student groups, some student
groups to make a 20 point jump whereas we might ask a different
student group to only jump five points and that's not equitable. Instead we look
at our baseline data and say let's improve from our baseline data, let's
pretend I'm making this up five percentage points so every student group
is expected to make those incremental jumps all along the way thank you that's
a great explanation actually and also when you're picking your groups to
target do you just kind of do it on a rotational basis or no man okay no so to
pick our groups we did change our methodology after we presented our first
method methodology one of our high school principals questioned us on it
which I love, and we had our professional debate about it. And so the way we look at it now is
any group that is below the federal target, we're going to look at those first. And the lowest from
the federal target means they have further to go. We're going to choose the lowest first.
If everybody is on top of the target, then we're going to choose the ones that are closest to the
target because they're too close for comfort. The ones that are way up here, we're feeling
comfortable with, but if they're above the target but really close, that's the one we're going to
choose first so under the target we choose the furthest distance above the target we choose the
closest distance thank you so much for that explanation i think i've always wondered about
that thank you any other questions mr president yes this is great great information i was
Many of us were at Texas Association of School Board Convention conference this weekend.
TEA Commissioner Marath spoke at that presentation, and not all could be there because they were doing poor things, doing delegate stuff.
But it was so fascinating to hear his perspective of the state.
And he had a whole bunch of slides that I'll reference throughout tonight because he gets
where we are and how hard it is to grow from where we've been.
One of the statistics he quoted was how hard it is to catch students up when there's a
lag behind.
He used Hurricane Katrina as the example, and he said it took four years of intervention
intervention to catch students up on reading and language arts.
In math, they never caught up.
We've seen those same slides.
It's frightening to think that no matter how many interventions we're going to do, if they
get too far behind, they cannot catch up.
And so he had some ideas for how that might work and all of those take great people.
So we'll see how that works.
So I want to reference the, just those numbers, the reading, where we were last year, where we were before COVID and where we are.
Let's just do math.
Actual, 60 to 48.
Is that right?
From 2019 to 2021.
12 points.
We've had conversations, not conversations, we've had data given to us that says students
really struggle when learning math virtually, right?
So that, there's your evidence of that.
They also talked about students once they could do math really well when they're doing
numbers on a paper and they're adding and subtracting and dividing those things when they
lose ground in math is when the reading comes into play and there's a lot more reading to figure out
what they're even asking and so when you base when you put that importance of foundational reading
from our k through three grades how important that is because they can be really great at math but
once the reading catches up to them right so now we know the foundational importance of science
science-based reading on that. On reading, it wasn't as big of a jump. We were at 59 and went
to 57. Because we're continuing the virtual education for certainly already one quarter
of the school year and possibly more, I'm just so concerned that our boys and girls,
these children probably haven't been to school at all since COVID in March of 2020.
2020, just so very concerned about how in the world will we be able to catch them up.
So this data is very appropriately timed.
And I, too, had the questions Mrs. Champagne had about the two targeted areas.
And what you explained makes a lot of sense.
My last one, if I may, Mr. President, on the CCMR, kudos, stars, I wrote stars all around
it on the numbers right of the CCMR credits and how well everyone's doing
here what action plans based on your what does it say right here sorry the
secondary teaching and learning team has developed action plans to specifically
target and address areas within the CCMR framework any any little pieces you
could give us about what you're focusing on because it's college career military
readiness so where in those areas are you targeting I would tell you it's it
is all of them so we do a roadshow that we started last year and the secondary
TNL team teams up with our accountability team as well last year we
met with each individual school over three or four months the first month I'm
going to get these out of order but the first month was all about special
education and which indicators would be most appropriate we then talked about AP
testing and advanced academics with dual credit and then how do we ensure that
kids are getting in there every month was a different target and throughout
the whole thread we were talking about not every kid needs everything it is not
a fight to get more AP versus more dual credit it's not a fight it's a what is
the student need and so we met with the same team at the campus every single
month with a different team from TNL coming together so we could really dig
into their data at every single campus meeting. We also had that campus data for their CCMR,
so they could see where their holes were and where we could beef up certain areas of their program.
So it was very specific to the campus, but all TNL was involved in that conversation.
And I can add to that too, Ms. Fox. Great job, Natalie. It is definitely a team effort
between our teaching and our learning team, and also with Ms. Hack and her team. We were
We were just talking about the college and career readiness counselors that were also
part of the ESSER funding.
And so we've already seen them starting that TSIA testing on the campuses, what, May Creek?
400?
Over 400.
Over 400 in May Creek already.
So it's definitely a team approach.
We also learned that military readiness was not like, I'm checking a box, yes, I think
I'm going to go to military, or taking a test.
There's a test they take.
ASVAB.
ASVAB.
It has to be you're accepted and you're on your way to boot camp in order for it to count, right?
So that was something they changed that one actually is still on hold. So we can't get the data from
From the where defense people
Yeah, okay, I can't get that data yet so that one's still on hold
Okay, may I ask one last thing is it possible to get this information disaggregated by campus?
like I see these numbers and I wonder where are our high performing campuses
where our low socioeconomic or title one campuses is it possible to get that
broken down is that available I don't want to create work but so for the
half-hour elementary and for these at these statistics you've given us the
math star and the reading star yes so every campus has their own chart that
that looks like this.
So yes, absolutely.
They're actually in board docs.
Every campus, am I right now?
Every campus report is in your board docs.
It is.
And if they're not, we will get them to you.
So I'll look for the, it's campus by campus in board docs.
Thank you very much.
We'll double check it.
That was very quick.
Thank you.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I just want to add something.
So I haven't looked, I'm looking at all everything,
everything, but I have some real positive news. So there's, I counted them, there's 15 schools,
elementary schools, who have met, and there's a couple of them that aren't even on the thing yet
because they're new. So I just see so much positive also for the potential. I know it's
bleak, but it's like that everywhere. So I think our kids are in the best place they can be,
being here in Katy I see I know we're gonna catch them up and we already have
a third of a met so awesome thank you any other questions okay well we'll now
move on to the section of the call discussion and action items the first
item is 8.1 discuss and consider board approval of the campus performance
objectives and the presenter is miss Natalie Martinez okay good evening again
Each year the board is required to review and approve the performance
objectives that guide each individual campus improvement planning process. The
performance objectives are all aligned to the district strategic goals and are
created through three different processes. The legal requirements, the
narrowing of focus for campus work throughout the school year, and extensive
campus needs and assessments. The copy of the campus performance objectives you
receive begin with the district performance objectives the board approved
last month before then but then you will see the individual campus objectives
start at this time I would answer any questions that you may have about these
any questions board members I'll entertain a motion mr. president yes I
move that the Board of Trustees approves the campus performance objectives I have
a motion by mr. Redmond a second by mrs. van will now proceed to vote all those
in favor raise your right hand and say aye aye the motion passes 7-0 thank you
very much thank you we'll now proceed to agenda item 8.2 discuss and consider board approval
for the superintendent to prepare sign and submit a waiver application to the state commissioner of
education for elementary school campuses that exceed the allowable class size of 22 to 1.
in addition to campuses that could potentially exceed the ratio due to increased enrollment
during the 2021-2022 school year the presenters mr brian schuss just from the human resources
Thank you, President Schulte, members of the board, Dr. Gorski.
We are requesting approval of our class size waivers for the 21-22 school year.
Typically this has been grades kinder through four.
This year we've added pre-K, so now it's pre-K through four.
So this covers any class size that is over that 22 to one ratio in pre-K through four
at our elementary campuses.
We've got 204 waivers requested at this time.
105 of those are KVA, 99 are campuses that are in in-person learning, so 26 campuses impacted.
If you had KVA that's that's 27. For a little comparison, last year if you remember it was a
little more than double that. The reason for that was we had many more students in virtual learning
than we do this year and a lot of those sections were over the 22 to 1, so that's the reason for
the high number last year. If you're thinking well what what's a normal number, if we ever see a
a normal year again, it's probably 50 to 70.
So the year prior to the 400 plus was 72.
I think the year prior to that was 50 or so.
So that would be considered normal.
The big story this year is our enrollment growth.
We've seen a ton of growth.
As we sit today, our enrollment projections
are where we think we'll be in January.
As we sit today, we're 866 students over our projection
and 655 of those are in elementary.
elementary. So that obviously is going to impact the elementary class sizes, which of
course impacts the waivers. And I can take any questions. We'll be working with our principals
on the campuses as well as our assistant superintendents for elementary. Where there are concerns of
class sizes that they feel are too large, we do have additional growth positions available
that we can allocate to the campuses to assist and then also assist them in trying to find
to find the staff to fill those holes. I can take any questions. Any questions? Mr. President,
did I turn on? Can you hear me? Okay, so you address the fact that y'all can hire additional
teachers. So my question comes down to, and I suppose it's a little bit of a tie-in, but if
if HB3 put in the piece where if they did not meet their STAAR testing that we have to provide all of
these additional hours and now we want to put more students in a classroom how are we meeting
that piece there because i have concerns with bridging the gap that they're already behind on
plus now meeting that new resource and just an overburdening of what we have for our classroom
teachers that's a great question as far as the specific house bill three piece i could you know
defer to dr caskey um but as far as uh specific class sizes one of the reasons obviously enrollment
We've seen a lot of growth that was unanticipated, and so we're trying to manage that.
We still do have some vacancies at the campuses, and we do have a few more vacancies this year
than we normally do at this time.
So we're trying to work through that as well.
But I can tell you we are diligently working with our campuses to try to help them find
staff to bring down class sizes where needed, especially where there are vacancies or if
we provide additional growth units.
It's one specific way we are doing that, in addition to recruiting.
We're recruiting every week.
We have several student teachers through the colleges that are going to graduate in December,
and we're going to try to hire absolutely as many of those as we can and communicate that.
So I can speak to it from that level as how we're trying to assist the campuses
in getting staff to help these class size numbers.
But as far as the House Bill 3 piece, I can defer to Dr. Kask.
Can you repeat the question?
House Bill 3?
So, with the additional 30 hours that some of our students are going to need, it was
like a tie-in that if we're increasing the population.
Oh, 45, 45.
45 hours.
Oh, I was confused.
House Bill 45.
I'm sorry.
I jumped on that train too.
I apologize.
My bad.
That's my fault.
How are we tying in that extra time?
My concern is that with increased classroom sizes, with kids that are already behind,
and now we have to also meet that additional time.
How are we, I guess I just don't want to lose sight of that
because my larger concern is by approving,
potentially approving this,
we're putting a lot more burden on those educators
and those kids too.
That's absolutely correct.
It is a requirement.
I believe it's 30 hours for math
and some students 30 hours for reading,
so potentially up to 60
and then even more for some of our secondary students.
So the campuses are working through those plans right now.
A lot of it is before school tutoring after school tutoring
Maybe during a study period at the elementary level during their extended learning time
So there are only so many minutes in a day right and so right now the campuses are working through what that looks like
on each campus
And this is Wilson. Let me also add you know with with the approvals
I mean this specifically is is a compliance piece for for TEA right that we're acknowledging that we have more kiddos in these classrooms
in the 22 to 1.
But understand, when we staff, we staff at 22 to 1.
We're not saying that with approval, like, oh, this
is great, now we can have a lot of students in a classroom.
That's not what we're saying at all.
This is just a compliance piece.
And we'll continue to work with the campuses
to lower those class sizes where needed.
Thank you both.
Mr. President?
Yes.
OK.
So Mr. Shash, I've written something here.
But what it is is I read many, many sources pertaining
to the benefits of this teacher-student ratio and the lowering of that.
It seems that the student-teacher ratio has been found to be one of the strongest indicators
of student success and engagement.
I'm sure you are aware of this.
The fewer students each teacher works with, the more able the teacher is to adapt their
teaching to the specific needs of the learners in their class.
And also, they can develop more one-on-one mentoring relationships and better enables
enables them to focus on the quality rather than the quantity of their teaching and grading.
The more one-on-one attention the students can get, the higher the quality of the learning.
Also the better the teacher-student ratio is, the better the discipline will be.
And I've talked to a lot of teachers and they say that when there's too many students in
the classroom, they have a hard time handling the discipline.
And I've actually read some other research to show that that is true, that when they
have to handle so much discipline and their quality of teaching goes down there seems to
be proof of better test scores for your dropout students and higher graduation rates and i'm just
wondering um in the june of 2021 um board presentation of the esser funds um we said
that we were going to use these funds to try and close the achievement gaps by hiring extra
extra teachers and reducing the class sizes. I actually, you know, read and looked at it and listened to it. So that just seems to be in contradiction to what we're suggesting now.
Okay, so I completely appreciate the concern and the question. And we are going to continue to do what we can to try to lower these class sizes. Understand, you know, out of our 44 elementary
elementary campuses, physical campuses, this is 26, many of them on the sheet have one
or two waivers, so one or two sections on that campus that are over 22 to 1, so many
are not.
The three campuses that kind of stand out on the sheet, the ones that have double digits,
one of those is over their enrollment projection by 103 students.
So this is something that I think we can say we knew we were going to grow, we knew we
we were going to have this growth, but at the same time, unanticipated. And so we did
staff based on projection at 22 to 1, but when we have this unanticipated growth, you're
right, we have to try to find teachers to bring down those numbers. And that is what
we're going to try to do. But I will say with that said, we still do have vacancies. And
so that impacts some of these campuses as well. Some of these campuses still have vacancies
that we're trying to fill. And we're not the only district. There's many districts across
Texas and even across the nation that are dealing with these shortages I think
we're probably dealing with it a little less than some when you look at it from
a big picture as far as teachers we're 97 and a half to 98 percent staffed so I
think that's that's certainly a good thing but we are not going to stop
trying to find the best teachers to come to KDISD which will assist with these
class sizes
I'm just concerned that I think Ms. Wilson, I don't want to step on your toes, but I think
that by approving this, it kind of gives open forum to, because I've kind of seen this happen
before where we approve something and something could change in the future, but it didn't.
So that's just my concern with this.
Brian, I'm going to jump in a minute and just try to alleviate some of those concerns.
Brian and I have had numerous discussions about this probably over the last several
weeks in terms of the challenge is finding a teacher right now.
Here's the issue.
Any principal who wants another teacher who qualifies for a teacher for these numbers
can have one tomorrow.
They call up Brian and, hey, I need a growth unit.
Brian, how many growth units are we sitting on right now?
We've probably still got around about 35.
Thirty-five, and how many growth units do you think are we sitting on from ESSER?
I believe we had 50.
Fifty, okay.
If I could hire 85 certified educators tomorrow, I'd hire them all.
They're just not there right now.
Brian's doing his best with a couple of external options that we've discussed
to do a little bit better, broader search for us.
but the problem isn't that we don't want to allocate the teacher the problem is
finding the teacher right now I think school districts are in the same mind
we're in across the nation with this economy it's not just teachers if I ask
mr. Vierling to give us some numbers and put them on the spot we are way short in
operations at almost every position because people haven't returned back to
work yet in this country and it's it's a dynamic problem all across the nation
education, educators just being one of them in there. But rest assured, I'll put it on the statement right here tonight. If you can find me anywhere in this nation, certified educators, we'll employ them immediately. As long as they're qualified and ready to go, we'll hire them.
Okay, so as I understand, I'm sorry to continue, but as I understand, what we're saying is this is more of an availability problem rather than, you know, we're just not going to hire more people.
Yes, ma'am. And again, as I've stated, this is something that we are required to submit to TEA, acknowledging that we have more kids in these classes.
It's not the other side of that where we've said, okay, we're okay with these class sizes, so we're going to take this to the board for approval.
That's not what we're doing.
Again, it's a compliance piece.
As I've stated, when we look at our enrollment projections, we have a fantastic team that does that.
We staff our campuses.
When we bring you campus staffing in March, those numbers are staffing those campuses at 22 to 1 based on a projection for the following January.
So in a perfect world, which it doesn't ever work out perfectly, but in a perfect world, then in October we would be at 22 to 1 or less because we wouldn't have met that projection yet.
This year we've seen a ton of growth.
And it's a good thing.
but we're going to work diligently to find teachers, as Dr. Kragorski said,
and we have had this conversation many times,
and it's something that is very important to us because I do hear what you're saying
and do believe that with smaller class sizes.
I have one question.
Do we know what differentiates the hiring?
Obviously, everybody's limited pool of people, and you're trying to get them,
and obviously we're ranked pretty high, and that's certainly enticing,
but do we know when you're trying to entice people to come work for you,
what is the differentiator?
Is it money?
Is it culture?
Is it obviously a rank good?
Is it a challenge?
Is it, I mean, what is it that you think
would differentiate us to get,
give us kind of the edge
in getting some of those limited resources, if anything?
Honestly, it's every one of those things.
It is every one of those things.
You know, to different folks.
You know, money, a lot of times, sure, is a factor.
You know, we see folks, though,
that come to us from other districts
that even though take lateral moves
because of the culture in Katy,
because it is a great place to work,
because we do support our staff and have great supports in place so so really you
know I think we we have to continue to look at all of those things each and
every year but we also need to continue to tout how how good of a place
Katie ISD is to work and how you are going to be supported here and it sounds
like you're expanding it obviously you got a you got a hole you got to do
something different right so you guys sounds like you're reaching out
different hiring practices and stuff like that yes sir we you know there's a
There's a couple of things that we've been looking at for some time.
And, you know, as things materialize, I know Dr. Kogorski will be able to share that with the board.
But, yeah, I mean, but I don't want to.
It is a challenge.
It is very hard to do because this is a nationwide issue.
But, you know, this is a great place to be, and we think we can.
Well, the truth is there is no other option.
If you've got the students coming in and you can't hire the teachers, you can't reject the students, right?
So I mean, there's really, this is the only card we can play.
I mean, it's not the card we want to play, but there is no other option.
No, sir.
Except just to continue to do our best to recruit.
And I don't want to take away from that.
I mean, our folks in HR and our coordinators, they recruit every single week with colleges.
And again, I want to reiterate, you know, trying to get all of those student teachers,
you know, on staff.
And that'll be a semester.
And beyond our student teachers, more folks will graduate in December.
And we'll reach out and try to grab as many of those folks as we can.
Any other questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I'm sorry, Mrs. Champagne-Reed.
I just wanted to say something.
I saw this before that teachers don't do a good job at promoting their own profession, you know, within their classroom.
So, you know, we have such great teachers.
And I wish, you know, that the students could all want to emulate them and all want to be teachers, you know.
and I know there's different things, but I think that teachers, you know, can probably do a better
job at promoting themselves, you know, and what a great job that is, because we have a lot of
fantastic kids graduating high schools around here, and they could all choose to go into,
half of them could choose to go into education, and we'd all be set in four or five years, so.
Mr. President. Yes.
I have a few questions I think you'll probably answer quickly.
How many students are over in each of these classes?
So we're in the campuses.
We are looking, it's 23 to 25.
There are some outliers in the campuses in person.
We don't have any at 30.
They're all under 30.
I believe we may have one at 29.
But 23 to 25 is most of the overage.
29 in what grade level do you know?
I'm sorry, I can't hear her screaming all the way here.
But 23 to 25 is what we're seeing mostly.
Okay.
So with this waiver, is it, I mean, I'm looking at it in a new way than I have before because of the numbers.
And because we are losing teachers because of virtual school.
We are losing them to the profession.
They're going and able to work somewhere else with a whole lot less stress and a lot less
heartache on how they're losing their students.
They become teachers for the passion to make a difference with students and our students
aren't succeeding.
They are leaving the profession.
Those who aren't leaving the profession are leaving KDISD to go to a neighboring district
who pays significantly more than we do.
So we have money, we have positions available, but somehow it's not enough.
100 positions that are not KBA, I mean 204 with 105 of them are KBA.
I know those are temporary.
100 positions.
And I know you're right, the three or four campuses that are really growing,
Campbell's still growing, Bethke, McIlwain, I get those.
So what, can we put a limit?
Like you could go 23? I could give you 23. Or could we do like for 60 days or one grading period or something?
And then you would figure out a way to somehow fix that.
Okay, so that's a great question. And how we handle that is work closely with our principals, with our assistant superintendents.
And I'll be honest, Mrs. Fox, sometimes when a campus has 23, and let's say they have several sections at 23,
Let me say, hey, whatever they have going on on their campus, they have a great pod
or whatever, hey, things are working.
I don't want to get another teacher because I don't want to break this up.
So that does happen.
Again, I can't stress enough that we staff at 22 to 1 for a reason.
That's where we want to be.
State requirement.
Yeah, and that's where we want to be.
So, you know, I don't, if we're over that and there is a concern, especially of a large classroom, we need to do what we can to assist.
And that's what we look at doing.
Okay.
So when the KVA students return, 3,000 of them, what's that going to do to class sizes?
Okay.
So, and that's a great question.
And class sizes are going to go up.
right and and and we are already behind the scenes planning for that when we're
talking about okay how many teachers do we need how many teachers can we hire
miss champagne brought up the the the s or positions so so we are looking at
that depending on you know if and when that you know the kva students come back
we do have some campuses that class sizes are very reasonable and several
students under the 22 to 1 and tip in a typical year and not last year this year
but in a typical year we have an enrollment balancing process where if we
have a campus or a few sections at a campus that have really low class sizes
that will move some of those teachers around to assist but what we've seen is
a lot of the campuses with some of those lower class sizes have high kva numbers
numbers. So if we move teachers around, well, when the KVA students come back, we're just
going to have to go through that process again. And so, you know, it's difficult, but we are
managing, and as I've said, we are going to do our best to hire as many teachers as we
can to bring the numbers down. Again, you know, the other side of that, again, is this
enrollment growth that we've seen, namely in the elementary.
I appreciate very much how you said that a lot of teachers come to Katy for the culture
because we don't pay the highest.
We're not even that close anymore.
And they do come for the culture, but COVID changed our culture, right?
So I'm just really concerned about the absence of teachers.
I always say that observation for a trustee is a powerful thing, right?
Right. So on one of my campus visits, walked around the campus and saw some classrooms.
And I went into a kindergarten classroom where they were doing a free activity.
It allowed the students to move about as they were searching clues and things.
And I was like, are there 40 children in this class?
There's everywhere. One teacher.
And I think there were 26.
And I don't know how she was managing.
And it's just so many, just so many.
So what, the last question, what does your recruiting look like?
How are you doing?
And I ask because in that conference I went to, it was really valuable things I heard.
I know you are doing the best of anybody.
One of the things they talked about was how to recruit younger teachers because they don't
look at a jobs page and go, okay, let me look at a job listing.
thing. They want something that looks like, forgive me, TikTok, Instagram, bright colors,
and it's about their why. To make a difference in the life of a student forever matters more to them
than just about anything. And so to when you do your, I know your college visits and things,
that's what you're taking, dynamic people talking about the why. But so what kinds of recruiting
are you doing and how successful do you think it will be in the near term, especially when we think
about bringing 3,000 children back to school soon? Well, hopefully very successful. You know,
The main recruiting season is the spring, but there is a fall recruiting season as well.
And as we've gone to more virtual recruiting, there are many more opportunities to really recruit continuously.
And we're really starting to see that.
Some of the colleges are going back to in-person recruiting, especially in the spring.
But even if they're doing in-person, they're still doing virtual.
So we're doing both, both virtual and in-person recruiting with the colleges.
As Dr. Gorski mentioned, there are a couple of opportunities that we are currently looking
at and hopefully may materialize over the next maybe two, three, four months.
And it is targeted specifically at what you just stated as getting the younger teachers
and really finding them where they are looking.
So hopefully we can give some updates on that as it progresses.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Yes.
You said something that got to me, because I was thinking, this waiver's too much.
I don't know how I can support it when I know it's just going to get worse and worse.
But you said it's the card we're dealt.
It's not like we're saying no to teachers.
And Mr. Gregorski, Dr. Gregorski, I apologize, we want to hire teachers.
So I will it would it be possible to get in the waiver is necessary the compliance piece for the state knowing our struggle areas would it be possible to get an update at the beginning of maybe January and see where we are and how things are going or something like that that gives us I just want to see kind of where we are on this.
because it's a passion, but I am going to approve it.
Yeah, we could definitely.
I do agree as well with what Mr. Schulte said.
We're boxed in on this one, and I stand committed to it.
If I could hire 50 teachers tomorrow, I would.
Nothing's holding us back from doing it.
We have the money in the budget.
It's allocated for.
I would drop all those class sizes if I could find the people to do it,
but we're in a real bind on that one.
We can certainly do, and Brian will take note of that,
and we could do an update every 30 days, 60 days, 90.
all the way through January or throughout the school year to let you guys know what's happening on the
Recruiting and hiring front I will share a couple of pieces of data
And I'll share that with the board this Friday in our weekly update and I'll get that I don't have it in front of me
But mr. Smith shared some data with mr. Schuss and I this week
And I just want to clarify some of the things that you had shared miss Fox
We track with our most closest competitors on where our teachers go every year
And there's a report we can run on that because it's all loaded through the state
Because teachers are tracked that way of where they go within the state if they leave the state can't track them
But I think the last data that mr. Smith shared with us. We're about on a three to one
Difference for every one teacher that leaves Katie ISD. We pick up three from our competitors
so I
Don't want anyone to think that our teachers are leaving in droves and we're not gaining
all the things that Brian discussed there of reasons people come and there
are a variety of reasons they come and go and they come and go but the net gain
of our competitors is is I can't remember what it was exactly but I'm
gonna get those figures for the board but it is considerably larger the number
of teachers we bring in from our competitors then we lose to our
competitors so I think that's good information to have in respect to that
you know and I'll go out also I don't have the statistics yet on the turnover
report you know we give that to the board annually but I will say this for
the past three years that I've been doing this as superintendent in five
years when you throw in the deputy superintendent we've always had lower
turnover rates than anyone in there we have some of the best around there now
that might change things things could change in an instant on that but we
watch it and we monitor it and we think we're doing a pretty fantastic job
holding on to our teachers and they're not all going away and I think it's a
a lot to say about KDISD as a whole and our campuses and our principals and those folks
that are they're kind of doing their best to do that kind of goes hand in hand with
some of the stuff we've talked about with the climate and culture what we're trying
to accomplish with that of being a good listener to our teachers and our employees this year
and when we launch that to hear what their concerns are and try and react to those concerns
because that's important to us so I think the whole package speaks speaks to a little
different there thank you for that what is your assessment of teachers as a whole
leaving the profession. I know a lot of them retired because it's like the COVID at the
beginning of that and with kind of how teaching changed. I know a lot retired or left for medical
reasons. But that's across the country that teachers, there are less teachers, some left,
and we don't have enough to replace. Is that on target? Yeah, I don't have the data on that,
and that's not anything I've looked at specifically to see like a net gain, the number produced,
by colleges and universities and ACP programs last year
compared to how many exited the workforce.
We could probably dig something up on that
and share it with the board what that looks like.
I could speak more broadly to a statistics I remember seeing,
and this was probably six months ago.
And it was a chart that showed the number of parents who
thought they would like their child to be a future teacher.
And the chart started this way.
Yes, I would about 25 years ago and it is considerably went down like this today that
When you pull parents who are sending their children off to college the majority of parents now are polling
They would not want their child to be a teacher and very different than 25 years ago when teaching was a much stronger profession
I'll go out on a limb and say this one out there. This is I don't have any proof to back it up
but my feeling is if
If you look at what's been in the media for about the past five years, who's getting beat up on a whole lot?
And it's educators.
And it's every problem that's out there.
We beat up on our teachers the most as a society.
And I think that plays into it of whether or not people want to get into something that is very rewarding once you're in it and you see it.
But you don't know how rewarding it is because on the outside, before you get into it, you hear a lot of negativity about it.
And I think that is impacting it.
I have no data on that or research to back it up, but I see enough negative attention.
When scores aren't good, who do you blame?
When this isn't good, who do you blame?
When something else goes wrong, who do you blame?
The teachers take the brunt of that, and they are so undeserving of that kind of scrutiny.
But it's a realized pressure within them.
And if there are things we can do to help support our teachers, you know, bring it on.
I'm ready to do it.
Any other questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I'm going to go back and say again about I think teachers need to promote themselves.
I've gone to these little job fairs and things like that at schools, at high schools, junior highs.
I never see a booth for teachers.
You know, there's everything else.
But anyway, that's just a side note.
But I appreciate what you've said, Dr. Kroporsky, about that, you know, you'd be willing to hire if we could.
and I appreciate your input to that, Mr. Shush,
because today I received several texts and messages
or a couple phone calls that they were concerned
because the teachers have looked at the agenda,
but they didn't know what you're saying, so now you've said it.
They didn't know that it wasn't that we were never going to hire anyone.
They thought that this is just what it is.
So with the further explanation,
I'm hoping that the teachers will listen to this,
and hear that that wasn't what the issue was.
So I appreciate you all taking the time to explain that.
Mr. President.
Are you done?
Thanks.
And also, just all this is interesting,
and we're living in a very interesting world right now
with all the different issues we have at hand.
But historically and annually,
this waiver has typically always been brought to the board.
This has always been a way that this district has handled growth.
This is not new to a post-pandemic, pre-pandemic, mid-pandemic situation.
This has been the way of at least the eight years I've served.
We've always approved a waiver to help handle the growth that, as you said, we do the best we can in predicting it.
But we're fast growing. And this is one of the ways that we help the classroom situation.
So this is not this is not a new 2021.
Oh, my gosh, we've never had to do this before.
or there's always been, as far as my eight years,
and as long as you've been here
and been in this profession, I'm sure,
been a way that we handle growth on our campuses.
Is it ideal?
No, but I commend you and your department
and everybody else who does the best they can
to help the classroom situation.
And on top of everything else that's been noted here tonight,
I just wanted just to say that I appreciate it
and I know this is not a brand new way
of handling the problem.
This is something we've always done.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
I just would like to say, I don't know that we've needed 204 before, but how many is it typical that we need?
So last year, I believe there were 413, but that's only because of the KVA.
Typically, we're 50 to 70.
Now, remember, though, that said, it used to only be K through 4.
This year is pre-K through 4, and that's an additional 15.
So if you take the 99 and subtract the 15, we're not,
it's not, if you're just looking at the classrooms,
it's not hugely over where we've been before.
And we have had the unanticipated growth for sure, so.
Okay, thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Mr. President?
Yes.
So if, just so I understand this right,
this is currently the classes that are over that number.
So we have to submit this,
because that's where we're at now.
The brutal facts are, I'm sorry,
If you've ever read Good to Great, there's a Stockdale paradox that General Stockdale was in the Hanoi Hilton.
And when he was being interviewed, he was beaten 20 times over eight years, tortured.
And they asked him, who gave up first?
And he said, that's easy.
It was the optimists.
Oh, it's going to be better tomorrow.
Oh, we're going to get out next month.
And he said, well, who made it?
And I'm paraphrasing here.
But he said it was the people who who faced the brutal facts and reality
But never gave up faith that they would prevail in the end
And so as I'm looking at this is saying this is where we're at like these are the classes that are over the numbers
but the
Those are the facts
But the faith is we're gonna do everything we can to get these numbers down to address them
To provide the best education for our kids, but if I'm understanding correctly, we're already over this
We need to do a waiver because that's how it is
at the end of the day we don't have 204 teachers that are knocking on our door
wanting to come in now no matter what other decisions we made pulling from
other areas I mean I mean the entire administration like some other districts
is being sent in the classrooms if we're not doing that right so I mean there's a
whole there's a whole bunch of options but this is where we're at we're
approved if we were to approve it it just approves what we're doing and then
the district continues to try and backfill and hire those positions yes
Yes, sir.
All right.
That's all.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move that the Board of Trustees grants approval for the superintendent to prepare, sign, and submit an application to the State Commissioner of Education for a class-size waiver exception.
Second.
I think I had it tied.
So a motion by Mr. Redmond, a second by Mr. Keller.
I will now proceed to vote.
All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
Motion passes 7-0.
Thank you.
It's good discussion.
Thank you.
Now we want to agenda item 8.3, discuss and consider board
approval of a resolution to extend Katy Virtual Academy
for grades K through 6 through the end of the fall semester.
Presenters, Ms. Leslie Hack, Deputy Superintendent.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Good evening, Board President, Mr. Schulte, Dr. Gorgorzian,
Board of Trustees.
Yes, what we have to discuss tonight
tonight is the Katie Virtual Academy in an extension.
And of course, we all had come together on August 11th to approve Katie Virtual Academy
due to the continued pandemic.
Our recommendation is to extend through the end of the fall semester.
KVA would then end on Friday, December 17th, and students would return to in-person learning
on Tuesday, January 4th when we return from the break.
The reason being is that on August 11th, we approved a temporary KVA through October 15th
due to the vaccine not being available for our youngest students,
ages 11 and under.
And then also SB15 did pass,
and so at this time we do receive funding for the eligible students
in an online learning program.
But the vaccine continues to be the concern.
I thought you might find this graph interesting,
especially after the discussion with Mr. Shush.
We have had unprecedented enrollment,
especially since the first day of school,
school, which I think Mr. Smith and Mr. Jamie Hines, that works with our enrollment trends.
But from August 18th, the first day, 85,000 to today, 88,552.
That's almost a 4% enrollment growth that, as we said, we tried to forecast as best as
possible, but we are well over our projections.
With that, you can see exactly what our enrollment is and then what our KVA enrollment has trended
since August 30th, which that was the first day of KVA. It did start a week and a half after that
August 18th start date. So we started about 4,191 last Monday, September 20th. And again, today
we have moved 300 students last Monday and 300 students today back to in-person. And this is
out of KVA. So there is some natural attrition going at the request of the parents to return to
to KVA. So we are trending down. And we'll get into kind of how we, why we staffed KVA the way
we did, but I kind of want to keep, while this is out there in front of you, when we send 300
students back like we did today, they request to go back in person Monday through Thursday of the
previous week. Our KVA team gets them ready to go the following Monday because we did not pull any
campus classroom staff from the campuses. We kept this completely off the campuses. The seats are
are available when the students go back.
So it's a much more seamless transition back to in-person
than what we experienced last school year.
Our KVA priorities, just to kind of recapture these,
we continue with a centralized online learning model.
This minimizes the impact on campuses and in-person learning.
Last year, if you remember, our campuses,
they stood up both online and in-person,
and it was a real struggle for them.
We really wanted them to start the school year in-person
and not have KVA to deal with, so we did make it a centralized model. Upon request, at any time,
we return KVA students to in-person learning at their home campus, which occurred today.
Our KVA seat capacity, we do reduce it as students return to in-person. So that previous number,
we're at about 3,555. We now force any students that enroll late in KDISD after that August
August 18th deadline. If there's a medical reason that they need online, we will allow them to go
online via KBA, but we are not going back up with that number. So we'll approve about anywhere from
10 to 12 kids each week if they meet certain criteria to go online, and these are new
enrollees. So we do reduce that seat capacity. Our KBA students who elect to return in person,
like the 300 for today, they may not return to KVA prior to the end of the fall semester.
Once they make that commitment to in-person, they remain in-person.
And then our KVA administrative team continues to contact students at risk of academic success in an online learning model.
We sent letters on Friday to about 376 students that per Senate Bill 15.
They were in KBA last year or part of last year and did not meet that three-pronged criteria
of SB15, which was chronic absenteeism, a grade of C or lower in their core content
area or did not pass one or more of their STAR assessments.
Out of our 3,500 students in KBA, 376 meet that criteria.
Well, we sent the letters on Friday notifying their parents, and then our centralized KBA
admin team, our two counselors, started calling.
I want to make sure you got the letter.
We really need your student back in person.
This is why.
And we have about, as of today, 77 of those 379 kids back in in-person, and those calls
will continue.
This is our KB admin team.
We did centralize.
It's a combination of full-time staff here with KDISD, and we brought back some of our retirees.
I have to hand it to Mr. Schuch and his HR team.
They beat the bushes.
We contacted all our retirees, I believe five years back, and they stepped up and came forward and really provided us some help.
So this is some of our KB administrators.
Our KBA counselors, Mrs. Pam Burrs and Ms. Marcia Smith, they are – no, go right ahead.
They are the ones making those calls, come back, come back to in person and working with
those parents and I know the parents appreciate that.
And we have our KVA coordinator, Mrs. Carrie Sanguinetti, assistant superintendent for
school leadership and support, Mr. Ronnie Edwards.
Dr. Creech is back with us part time.
She just recently retired and she really worked with KVA last year so she brings that experience.
So we've got a really solid team, admin team supporting KVA.
To kind of give you the framework of how we quickly had to stand up the KVA temporary
teaching staff, it wasn't ideal.
We approved it on August 11th, in person started on August 18th, and then KVA had to start
August 30th because we wanted to get those kids started quickly.
And as we discussed, there wasn't a large teaching pool to pull from, and we did not
want to pull any elementary staff in junior high that had students associated with them.
It would have disrupted those classrooms.
So our classroom started on schedule just as the principals had planned and master scheduled.
We did ask our elementary campus principals to please give us one FTE per campus that they felt like could do KBA.
That did not have any students assigned to them.
It was up to the principal's choice, and they talked to them.
So it's either a combination of instructional coaches.
I believe we have one librarian that was selected.
They are all former teachers, so they are certified to teach, but they are campus FTE
and that gave us 43 right there.
We did have 17, one each from our junior high campuses that were non-classroom assigned
personnel.
We have four elementary classroom technology designers, centralized technology designers
that are currently teaching KVA.
And we have 16 certified teaching substitutes.
Ms. Erica Nugent in our HR department and Ms. Nita Hell worked diligently with Mrs. Sanguinetti to find those certified teaching substitutes,
and then they were quickly onboarded with KDISD and KVA to get them up and running with those classrooms.
So it's been a combination of staffing KVA.
We couldn't have done it without our district support staff, with our teaching staff.
It was a team that did it, KBA coordinator Carrie Sanguinetti.
Ms. Darlene Rankin jumped right in there with her classroom technology designers.
School leadership and support, our assistant suits are right there in the mix, working
with the campus principals and their staff and our KBA staff.
Ms. Gwen Coffey with special education.
Gwen, you have how many teaching in person?
Certain?
certain, about 30 of district staff teaching specialized special ed classrooms too.
And so again, we wanted to shoulder that.
And teaching and learning, Kim Lawson and Sinead Bell have been instrumental in supporting
the curriculum.
They will work with the curriculum coordinators.
They will put that curriculum into Canvas.
Ms. Darlene Rankin and the classroom technology designers will work with that curriculum and
and make it user-friendly in the online world to support our teachers,
and especially our certified substitutes who had to onboard them very quickly.
Ms. Sanguinetti just shared with me that HR did bring onboard this week three more certified substitutes.
So they are being onboarded this week, and they will go into KVA classrooms on Monday.
And our goal is twofold.
One is as we continue to bring in certified subs and get them ready,
we'll start pulling our KBA staff back to their original position as fast as we possibly can
without being too disruptive to our online KBA classrooms.
And so that is one goal.
And the other goal is as the kids come back, 300 per Monday,
each KBA teacher is teaching an a.m. section and a p.m. section.
We're going to really try to work to close one of those two sections
so they're only teaching one section.
and that will continue to be our goal as we move through the semester.
So that is our recommendation, is to continue through the end of the semester
due to the vaccine not being available
and that all our students return on Tuesday, January 4th,
and we're completely in person for the spring semester.
Thank you. Any questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I have a few questions, and I'll take a break if I need to.
How many students per teacher?
I've got it right here.
It runs.
We had the staff to get KBA open going on August 30th.
Kindergarten, the sections, a.m. and p.m., we capped at 30.
And that was kindergarten and first grade.
30 a.m., 30 p.m.
Uh-huh.
So a teacher would have 60.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Two-hour synchronous session in the morning and two-hour in the afternoon.
We have second grade through fifth grade, they were capped at 35 beginning on August
August 30th. As of today, we have only 11 sections that have 30 or more students.
They've all been reduced well under that 30 student capacity.
30 at a time, 30 in the morning, 30 in the afternoon, 60 total that a teacher is
responsible for making sure they're caught up. So if, how many hours of
instruction do they get a day, an online student? Synchronous, two hours in the
morning for the AM class?
Two hours.
One student doesn't do AM and PM, or they do both?
No, they just do AM or PM.
So each KVA student gets two hours of instruction per day
with a teacher in front of them.
Yes.
How do they get the five to seven subjects they need
throughout a day in two hours?
A lot of their coursework, their content, is loaded into
Canvas, and it's asynchronous.
Asynchronous means what?
It means without face-to-face time with the teacher.
Okay, on their own.
And so, okay, the instruction is in two hours they give them a little bit of, tell me how
a teacher helps a student get the content in two hours.
But is it broken like in 15 minute increments or how, what does that look like?
Yeah, I can't speak to Dr. Caskey.
What level?
I mean, one of these two ladies back here, which level, huh?
Eight through six.
Every single level.
Let's start with elementary.
So, Dr. Lawson, can you come speak to elementary?
How do you teach a student to do letters in kindergarten and make those things happen?
We will say this is a compromised learning environment, and she'll probably use that
term because I stole it from her earlier today.
It is not optimal.
Absolutely is not optimal.
SO THE CURRICULUM TEAM IS DOING AN AMAZING JOB OF WRITING THE LESSON PLANS FOR TEACHERS.
REMEMBER, A LOT OF THESE ARE SUBS.
A LOT OF THESE ARE TEACHERS WHO HAVE NOT TAUGHT THE CONTENT BEFORE EITHER.
SO THE CURRICULUM TEAM IS STANDING UP THE LESSON PLANS NOT ONLY IN ENGLISH, BUT ALSO IN SPANISH.
AND I'LL LET DR. LAWSON ELABORATE A LITTLE BIT, BECAUSE THERE IS A SCHEDULE.
WE HAVE DEVELOPED A SCHEDULE AS TO WHAT THEIR DAY LOOKS LIKE, AND SHE CAN ELABORATE A LITTLE BIT ON THAT.
AND THEN DR. BELL FOR THE SIXTH GRADE.
Great question. So the two hours of direct instruction is mainly dedicated to literacy and mathematics.
So science and social studies, music, art, and PE are the asynchronous times.
A teacher might pull a student a little bit later, you know, later in the day,
but the two hours in the morning is dedicated to the AM group for direct instruction,
and then the two hours in the afternoon for the PM student groups.
And the focus is literacy and mathematics.
Literacy and mathematics for the direct instruction.
And we can see how difficult it is to keep them on grade level when the amount of time they have.
Activities are varied to promote high engagement.
As Ms. Hack said, the curriculum folks as well as the technology folks are putting a lot into each section.
Again, our teachers have grown a lot for sure, but we try to aim for quality instruction with high engagement.
You all, I don't need to tell you this, but for people who might be listening tomorrow
and don't know me, this is not anything other than just information put out there, right,
for everyone.
I don't know how teachers are doing it.
I don't know how in the world they can do so much like if a, let's just choose something,
a librarian who hasn't been in the classroom in a bit is now pulled to teach all levels,
levels of maybe sixth graders in every...
It's a tall ask, right? And I know that
the lesson plans are put in and Canvas is available and everybody is
working as a team. I know that. And I know that
it's the best it could be in any school district.
100% I know that. I just want to
ask specific questions for information to be disseminated.
because I want our families to bring the children back to school.
Our children learn best with incredible educators face-to-face.
Our numbers are low.
I think our COVID numbers today are 500 maybe.
Is that what I saw?
Out of 100,000 people, right?
It's our children learn best face-to-face.
I'm just trying to make sure that we have the data and information out to see
And I understand it's a parent's choice to make that decision for their children
Our teachers are doing an incredible job with our students face to face and we're keeping them safe and we're they're learning and
So
What assessments so I'm gonna continue with my questions right here
What assessments do we have to monitor success of students in a virtual learning, especially because the nine-week grading period doesn't even end until October 15th?
How are we monitoring if they're learning?
Sure.
So the daily instruction is followed up with those activities.
Teachers are grading those activities.
We have assessments being built for the KVA teachers to then administer to students.
KDIC has a plethora of beginning-of-the-year assessments that we administer to all students.
Those windows are just now opening, and we're still developing plans on how to get those assessments to our KVA students.
So the curriculum is based on the TEKS, and we are monitoring their progress as they move through our curriculum.
A couple more, and then I'll hand off.
The HB 4545 is swallowing our people because we're still trying to deliver virtual instruction in a very restricted time,
and yet the House Bill 4545 I encourage people to look it up to see what the
requirements are it's intense and it's time lots of time with not enough people
to do those interventions to get children caught up from the 18 months
we've already been out so we identified those students better in KBA for
for Hospital 4545.
And at this time, the district is acquiring
some online resources.
Again, our families, we know they elected
the online environment, so we're looking for a match there
that they will have an online resource
to begin some of that intervention.
And that way, when they return to the campus,
they will have some of those intervention hours in place
and hopefully some gaps filled.
That would be our goal, to bring them up to speed
as quick as we can.
You know, I feel it's important to reiterate
that the Texas Education Agency Commissioner of Education said that even
after Hurricane Katrina which was a year not extended time that four years of
intervention to catch kids up to grade level on reading and never happened
never caught them up in math because face to face is that you don't learn
well in virtual can children return at any time the in-person in person
children can return at any time and children are doing that regularly.
Yes, we had well over 300 last Monday returned in person, 300 today as well.
And we're up to request today's 72?
62.
62 have already requested today to return next Monday.
We capture those requests Monday through Thursday.
They make the changes on Friday so that when they walk into their campus on
Monday morning, they return, they're on the roster.
Ready to go.
The students remained on their home campus rosters the Wednesday and Thursday when we started school.
And so when they elected to remain KVA, we removed them from those rosters so those seats became vacant.
But none of the staff at the elementaries was impacted so that those seats would be there when they came back.
So it's not a big juggling when they return on Mondays.
What are we doing to support teachers who are teaching KVA and who's doing their job
because they can't?
You're talking about for the campus?
That was a discussion with the assistant superintendents and Mr. Edwards and I with the principals
before school started on August 11th when it was approved.
We're like, we got to have teaching staff and our people are out on the campuses because
because there was no way we could get almost 70 certified subs to do it.
So in discussions with the principals,
you have a pool of people on your campus that a lot of them were ex-elementary teachers,
and they had been charged to do a new role or whatever their role is on the campus.
But what could you as a campus help us with with one FTE
that you could either A, make concessions for within your campus,
whatever that may look like.
We didn't tell them what position it had to be.
So they worked it out what worked best with their campus and communicated with that particular person they selected.
They provided the name, and then together with Dr. Lawson's group and with Ms. Rankin's group and Carrie Sangornetti,
they came together and started working with them to get them ready for August 30th.
And we promised them it would be for nine weeks.
We did.
That was initially through Friday, October 15th.
With the understanding back on August 11th, we anticipated the vaccine being available,
and that's what we shared with them.
Okay.
I'll yield.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I'd like to say a few things.
First of all, I have 100% faith that Dr. Lawson,
who I actually consider a friend, you know,
and the rest of the group are going to do the best that they can.
Everything I'm about to say has nothing to do with any blame or anything like that.
But, you know, I've looked at some resources,
and I've talked to lots of teachers, particularly KVA teachers, and they're just stressed out
to the entire mat, you know, more than what I could ever even imagine that they're stressed
out.
And so we can see that after more than a year of online or virtual schooling across the
nation, there has been a significant learning loss.
And I read a study by Horace Mann that more than 97 percent of educators reported seeing
seeing some learning loss in their students over the past year when compared with children
in previous years.
And a majority, or 57 percent, estimated their students are behind more than three or four
months in their social-emotional progress.
And just speaking from something from a local standpoint, in junior high, I looked today
and I don't know if this is right, but there's 367 students in the sixth grade and 17 different
junior highs.
this is an average of 21 students each but I happen to know that some junior
highs will have less than 10 kids so when you think about the let's say the
fifth grade teacher who might have 70 kids or 60 kids and there's one junior
high you know person has 10 kids I don't understand why I just don't see this as
being maximizing our human resources and our financial resources having one
one teacher teach 10 kids.
Why can't we consolidate it and have maybe, say,
10 teachers teach, you know, 36 kids each or something like that?
They wouldn't have to change what they're already teaching.
They would just be changing who they're teaching.
You know, another sixth grader, you know,
they'd have additional sixth graders,
but not the core subject or anything that they're teaching.
team so that is a question that I have but but I don't know so I'm gonna I'm
gonna go on but that's just one of the questions but also teachers tell me like
regular in-class teachers are telling me that they experience a high rate of
disruption when kids are coming back from kva you know because they not only
have kva kids coming they have the ish kids which I don't leave any talk about
that but you know the intermittent school and and i think that's a great thing but they they have that
where kids are out for five to ten days and then they come back and then all of a sudden they got
kva kids come back and i mean i've seen you know teachers crying to me about this and they are
so even the in-class teachers are are you know stressed out about that um so i'm afraid you know
if we do vote to extend this that you know some of these teachers are going to are going to leave
and i know that we're already having a teacher shortage and that that really worries me a lot um
so something else that leads into this is another reason why i think that this this is sort of a
separate subject but it's on it's it's just rationale for why i believe this that we really
I would really like to see us going back to two meetings a month because having one meeting and being able to process information and having the next meeting and being able to vote on it, I think would, you know, aid some of us in the decision-making process because now, you know, we have to vote on this tonight now.
now, you know, because this is going to start on October 15th or 16th and we don't have
another meeting until, you know, after that start date.
So it's a now or never decision that we have to make.
So also I was wondering this.
So I have a few little questions.
So in closing, the first question, can we combine the junior high teachers?
The second question, had you thought about doing a survey for the parents who are currently
enrolled in KVA to see if they have an intention of falling out after the October 15th?
Because if they had it already in their mind that they were going to only do it until October
15th, maybe they were planning on getting out, but we don't know, unless there has been
a survey that I don't know about.
And also, like Ms. Fox says, can we give some extra support to our current KVA teachers
who are struggling because although they are only doing two hours two hours but
they have 70 things to grade they have 70 parents to talk to they have 70 you
know so that that's all I have those three questions can we combine the
junior high teachers can we find out from the currently enrolled parents of
kva if they're going to continue after October 15th and what support can we
give to our KVA teachers? Okay. Sixth grade was staffed a little bit different. It's secondary
and it was one grade level. And so we started out with very low numbers in sixth grade. Although
it's a centralized campus, the assistant suits in discussion with the junior high principals,
they elected to retain their own students, even though they're in a different building code. And
so that's why the number varies between each. You may have 52 at one particular junior high,
and then you have two of our junior highs have nine each.
But they are retaining their own students.
They selected their KVA teacher who facilitates their lessons via Edgenuity, the four core content.
So junior high was staffed very, very differently.
The junior high principals took a lot of ownership of that and worked directly with Mr. Morgan and Mr. Stocks.
To combine that, that is something that we could consider.
It would basically entail releasing one junior high FTE or KVA teacher back to their original
position and then the other junior highs, I guess that would have the larger numbers
we could see about sharing that.
We haven't discussed that because they were, they liked having their own students and then
they are seamlessly moving them back in person and they take care of that themselves.
The second question was, remind me.
Thank you.
Second question is, can we poll the parents that are currently enrolled in KVA to see if they were planning on continuing after October 15th?
I think we can always survey and get feedback.
I would share that the feedback we're getting initially is that we do feel quite a few emails
and phone calls daily through the School Leadership Support Office and through the KBA office
with parents requesting that we do extend.
They share their circumstances, why they cannot return until the vaccine is available.
So we do already work with that.
Our counselors, our KBA counselors that are calling the families of the kids that because
of SB 15, we highly recommend they return to in person.
they are getting some no's on that because of the various reasons why they do not want their children to return.
It runs the gamut. It's the Delta variant. It's the family members at home.
It's the fear of COVID on the campuses. Even though I agree,
we've demonstrated that we've been able to manage COVID and mitigate where necessary.
So to say that we have not surveyed them, but we do get a lot of feedback both ways that they want their children back into in person.
A lot of it's because it doesn't look like KVA last year.
And we're very honest with that.
We're like, it's not going to.
The teachers, the workforce is on the campuses and in person, so they elect to go back.
But we also do have that other side that they do want their children to continue in KVA until the vaccine is available.
And they're very quick to remind us that that's one reason we approved it as well.
And another third one.
The third question is, can we provide any extra support to our current KVA teachers?
Absolutely.
I think that's where our district centralized personnel in our departments have provided quite a bit.
And that is very much where we can circle back with the teachers.
And I believe it was Friday on the PD day.
Do you want to share a little bit?
This is Mrs. Sanguinetti.
She is our KVA coordinator.
And she was instrumental in scheduling some PD and working with the KVA teachers.
So, hello.
So, on Friday, and this is not the first time we've done this,
We had a staff of technology designers and technologists in the district, as well as curriculum and instruction experts,
all got together and hosted Zoom sessions that were available throughout the day on the Professional Development Day.
They had a wonderful turnout of teachers showing up. Teachers expressed their questions that they had.
They got feedback and instruction on how to better support their students and how to facilitate the content that was available to them.
So we felt like it was a very successful day.
Darlene Rankin has a team of technologists, elementary classroom technology designers, who are on campuses with our certified subs every single day supporting them.
them. I actually did classroom observations last week where I hopped into zoom meetings
to monitor the progress of the students and how the teachers were interacting with the
students. And I was very pleasantly surprised to see that when I logged in as only my ID
number, I didn't have my camera on the teacher immediately who was a long time certified
sub immediately grabbed a technology designer and asked her to look me up to see who was
was in her Zoom room and not, you know, supposed to be there. And so she looked me up. And in the
meantime, I'm calling the technologist to tell her it's me. I'm doing observations. So they are
monitoring their groups. They are getting support every single day. I send a weekly email out to
them asking, what do you need? You know, we do a needs assessment. How can we help? And they are
very vocal i get texts at all times weekends days nights with things that they're in need of and
they definitely seem to feel comfortable expressing themselves to the staff that's in place to support
them thank you so can we do more always always to support but i just wanted her to share that we
have had a lot of support but it is a difficult job especially doing the two sec sex the am and
the pm and with the numbers can't get around that but i tell you we stood it up the best we could
in the short amount of time and we have some fantastic teachers working very very hard to
really support our kva students and their learning
mr president yes i have two questions uh number one okay so we saw the numbers but basically
what percentage of students have already elected to return face-to-face from our
original numbers because we don't have that no we started out on August 30th
with 4100 you're gonna test my math and so we're at 35 they have to do the math
for me so we were almost 4200 on August 30th k through 6 and so we've returned
returned almost 600 kids.
Okay.
8%.
Do we know why they're coming back?
Have they said is there a reason that they're looking at the dashboard and it's not as bad
as what they thought?
Do we have any teams?
That one comes up.
I think it runs the gamut.
The one is KVA is not what it was last year.
For lack of a better term, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles.
It's not tied to their home campus, and that's a big thing.
The other thing is parents, and they'll tell you that they wanted to make sure that we could stay open.
I mean, they were concerned about the no mask mandate and would classes be closing and going back and forth, campuses closing and opening, and that hadn't been the case.
And so, and you are right, we are down, I think we're 462 on active cases today.
And so that's low for us.
Now, that's not to say it won't go up.
We'll have every now and then a little spike and stuff.
but the EON team continues to do what they've been doing for 18 months.
Our goal is to keep all those classrooms open and those campuses open.
All right, Leah, you had more.
That's okay.
Yes, I have one more question.
So can we strictly allow KVA to exist for the population of students that have medical need for that,
whether it's obviously like y'all are doing for those kids that are transferring in that may have a medical need,
you're allowing them to move into KVA?
Is there any way that we could just potentially do that versus what we're doing currently?
We could.
I mean, you could do anything.
There are districts, and especially our neighbors, that did open it up and approved based on a medical hardship.
I think it proved very challenging for them when some were approved and large numbers were not.
There was a lot of angst with that upset parents and things like that because they all have their various, you know, medical reasons.
It may not even be the child.
It may be a family member living in the home that they want to protect.
So we certainly could look at that if we were to continue KVA, but our numbers are already so low.
They're coming back to us in person.
We just thought that we would continue to try to support the ones that wanted KVA through the end.
The vaccine we anticipate would be out.
before we go into the holiday break, and then they all return on January 4th.
Try to make this less disruptive for our families as possible in person and KDA.
Thank you.
Mr. President, a couple more if I may.
So could we consider doing a shorter amount of time?
Nine weeks is a long time.
It's a long time.
That'll be 50% of the year.
On top of the year and a half, they've already been out.
So could we do a three weeks?
Because, Mrs. Hack, what if the vaccine isn't available to the end of the calendar year?
If it becomes available in December, you know, it takes 60 days.
You get the first one, and then it's 30-day wait, and then the next one,
and then it's 30 days after that before it's fully effective.
Are we going to ask again?
Are you coming back to us in January and saying, okay, one more time?
Because I can't do that.
I can't do one more, one more.
and I think our teachers if they have an idea of that it's going to end and our
students the parents of these students understand that it's working it's
working for 85,000 children isn't that how many are at school 85,000 children
are there and 3,000 are at kva for 85,000 children we have 462 case plus
plus the 10,000 employees, right?
So if they know it's working and they come back gradually,
I don't know.
I went, so I have a question
about a shorter amount of time.
Also the observation piece,
when I did one of my campus visits,
we went to see the Katie virtual teacher.
She was in a closet, a tiny closet.
Computer.
And children who weren't paying attention.
Technology help is not what they need.
Their mental health matters.
Mrs. Fox, I agree.
It's not ideal.
It breaks my heart.
It's not, but it's the reality of the situation we're in.
We try to honor all families and where they are,
and that was the intent on August 11th.
And I'm not arguing.
No, you're not.
I'm just sharing that.
I'm not either.
We said we would go back on the 17th because we had every hope and intention that the vaccine would be available for our youngest children.
It's not going to be.
If we were to extend, if we just took, we could take away the caveat that is whether the vaccine's available or not.
January 4th, we're back.
I mean, it's what we're discussing.
But I do...
How are you getting feedback from principals and teachers about the impact it's having?
The impact of KVA?
On students and teachers?
Well, the impact as far as on teachers and the staff and the kids in person, I think
the assistant superintendents would share that the principal's like, this year is not
easier.
I don't even want to use the word easier.
No.
But it's different and it's perhaps better because they're not shouldering in person
and KVA.
Right.
And in some cases, by the end of the school year, we had teachers teaching hybrid because
we just didn't have enough in each and we had to keep that fifth grade class together.
So in that respect, our campuses have moved on and they are back in person.
The student programs are going.
It's good.
It's this small population that we have in KVA that for whatever their reasons are, where
they are in their life right now, they are in need of KVA.
And they do share, and some of the reasons, it is, it's tough.
So how are you getting feedback from them on if we extend this?
Like are we asking them?
We're not asking them.
They're very, we, once we started talking about getting closer to that October 15th
date we're hearing from them they're reaching out will we extend this is our situations i think the
kva counselors could share with you when they're calling like hey we need you to return you you
didn't pass all your star assessments you were chronically absent nine weeks we have nine weeks
grades coming up that's going to be our next push if our students in kva are not successful
academically at the nine week mark we're going to call them say hey you need to come back in person
It's not as if we extend, we extend because we're trying to do right by the families that
for whatever reason they're compromised and cannot return to in person.
But at the same time, we continue to reach out to the families and say, it's in your
child's best interest to return in person.
As they return in person, we'll make those adjustments with the KVA staff.
We'll get them back to what the job they were hired to do so they can go on with their school
year as well.
It's just kind of a balancing act until we get to that point.
How are we satisfying the special ed required minutes?
That is very difficult and very challenging, and I think Mrs. Coffey, Dr. Coffey explains
it very, very well, but it's one of those things, it's hard to provide it from House
Bill 4545, to their accommodations, to their minutes, to...
Because it's hard to provide for it for our virtual students, but some of our special
ed teachers are teaching kva so they're not able to provide it at the campus so none of our campus
with the exception if we had two campus teachers that had one or two students in their classrooms
for specialized programs so we did pull for example that particular teacher in for the
interim but my team is teaching all the specialized programs in kva to avoid pulling because special
special education as we've talked about teachers are very hard to find right now and that's
especially true for our special education teachers so we were very concerned about pulling
any special education teachers off of campuses so we have a whole lot of special ed cert
in the special ed department so we're working to provide those services in the individualized
manner according to their ieps for kva students so who's doing your jobs oh we are both you
You know, we're making it work.
More than 24 hours in a day.
We are making it work, and I think my team's doing a fantastic job all the way around.
Are you having to report minutes to the state and those kinds of things?
How are you reaching the virtual?
How many special ed students are in virtual?
Do you know that?
Total?
About 350-ish for K-5, and I think last count was about 30 for sixth grade.
How are you meeting their minutes?
MS. We're providing services in accordance with our IEP through there.
MS. Okay.
MS. Mm-hmm.
MS. Yes, ma'am, in small groups.
MS. Thank you for – thank you all for answering all my questions.
I know it's a lot.
I'm going to echo Mrs. Champagne's request for two meetings a month because this is long,
it's intense.
We've gotten a lot of information to assimilate and then make a decision right now.
And I don't know that I'm there, honestly, with some of the things I've heard.
I have a lot more questions.
I can sense that people are tired of me talking.
The last one, back to the,
would we consider a shorter amount of time,
like three weeks?
Let's see where we are and give people,
maybe call the families.
Or are we, are we?
set for nine weeks. Is nine weeks your only recommendation? I'll go ahead and jump in on a
few of those things. Ms. Fox, they're all good questions, and I think the dialogue has been
really good tonight, and I think what people can take away from this is there's really no easy
answer on anything we're trying to do here. We're trying to have school during the, hopefully,
the tail end of a pandemic. I don't know if it is or not. Every time we see a new variant come and
a spike comes up, we have to deal with that, and we've been dealing with that pretty well, I think,
through the course of these 19 or 20 months we've been dealing with it.
And this is another one that's just a really tough issue.
It's tough on our families who have to weigh possibly a medical issue within their own child
or their own family with an academic issue.
And there's no really good answer in there.
And everybody's comments have been very robust and very positive in way of trying to look at this.
Same discussions happen internally with our teams.
What are we going to do here?
How do we fix this?
is how do we navigate it in a really tough situation?
I wish it was different and we could just move on
and everything was back to normal and everyone would come back to school,
but that's not that hand we've been dealt in this case,
so we have to make some tough decisions.
So with that said, the board,
that's one of the reasons we bring things to the board is for that discussion,
and the board can give us any feedback they want of what we like to do.
So I heard two or three things here today,
and we can scratch those out into a new plan,
or you could tell us that's how you'd like to approve it or not.
So, for example, if let's say there's a consensus to continue KVA with medical exception only,
a documented medical something, okay, we put that in.
And those are the only kids that can extend beyond the October 15th deadline.
Okay, that's a possibility.
Or there's the possibility of if the board thinks it's the best decision to just go ahead
and return them all back.
No option at all to continue in KV8.
We can do that as well.
That on October 15th, it ends.
You had mentioned, would we continue it after December?
Well, that's a tough one to answer only in,
I don't know what variables are going to be happening
in November or December.
So that's a really tough one to say we'd extend it.
I'd love to, like I said,
I'd love to see all of our kids come back.
If the board has heard enough tonight to ponder a decision and give it a few more days to think through, an option could be we do have a special called meeting on Monday and that's our workshop with Engage to Learn about our strategic planning.
If the board always has that option to pull anything off an agenda and bring it forward for later, okay, so this could be one action item that we decide on prior to moving into our activities on strategic planning.
We could do that on Monday, but I would caution the board that I wouldn't do another hour or hour and a half discussion on it and then vote on it because we only have so many hours planned for the strategic planning session we're doing.
But that is an option in there. If the board likes what you had just said, Ms. Fox, about a temporary few-week extension, okay, you could extend it until the next board meeting, okay? October 15th is when it was scheduled to end. We'll keep it open, KVA, until we have another board meeting.
October I don't know have the date.
I'm sure somebody 25th.
Thank you Christine.
So on October 25th we make a
separate or different decision.
At that same time I could ask
Doctor grooms to get with our
friends over at K through 12.
They could survey some families to say.
Would you come back or not?
Or what's your intention?
Or do you want to keep it open
till the vaccine is available?
I'm not sure how we had phrased that one,
but we can certainly survey our
families that are in kva so i think with those three or four ideas that i've uh i've thrown out
there um board can just tell me how they feel about those things and what you'd like to do
look how easy we made your job i have one more actually are there other options for online
learning for our families who wouldn't come back anyway they're outside of kdisd for a temporary
amount of time right there statewide virtual options for six or seven that
there is on the list that there's no charge what if that would be one of the
questions we asked in the survey knowing that there are other virtual option I
don't want to lose any of these children from Katie ISD I understand that but I
want them to have the best education and that's in our classrooms so so we could
provide the one that mrs wilson talked about for our medically fragile and documented right that
makes sense and then those who want virtual because they're afraid of potential like we do
not have impending peril at our campuses that is there i feel like parents maybe are afraid of
something that statistics show hasn't happened at our schools uh it's it's not impending just just
just problems.
So I don't know.
What if we gave them an option?
And then if we don't have it, I think
they'll bring their kids back.
I have a quick question, and getting back
to what Dr. Rogorski said.
So how quick can you turn this off?
And we all think that, is it a light switch where, let's say,
we meet on the 25th?
OK, that was my question.
Is it that easy to turn it off?
There's no intended consequences.
just moved and created a new problem, created a different problem.
There is no consequential problem of turning it off.
You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think 48 hours we can shut it down.
Yes, because the staff would go back to their positions.
It's not like we pulled them out of classrooms and
we would be rebuilding classrooms cuz we're putting those teachers back in and
assigning students.
The campus staff, junior high and
elementaries, they would go back to whatever their role was.
You've got to absorb the 4,000 students, but they already had a home is what you're saying.
They had a home before.
And the system is already stressed out.
We don't have enough teachers.
So putting the 4,000 and absorbing it over the entire enterprise isn't going to make it noticeably,
oh, my gosh, we can't do this.
It's easier just to keep them here until we hire more people.
Putting them back into the system and dispersing it back to where it should be isn't worse.
It's probably going to be better.
And when I looked at Mr. Schuster's, when I saw the campuses that were, where we were
applying for the waivers, you can look specifically and see those campuses are well over what
they were projected, like by what, I think McElwain was one by 100, whatever.
But when you look at some of the others where we, I think of Jenks, where we have close
to 250 kids in KVA, there's seats available when they go back.
I mean so we can look at each campus and see based on where their waivers are
They're over their projection and so they're gonna have to get growth units no matter what whether we were putting KBA kids back or not
so
We could do it absolutely
I'm sorry. Yes. I'm sorry miss fan and patiently waiting
I'm just a clarifying question and I think listening to it. I pretty much know the answer, but I just want to put it out there
So we have currently three hundred and fifty five
3555 kids enrolled in KVA after this 300 last week and then whoever requested
this week correct yeah as of today we have 3555 okay yeah so out of our
September 27th enrollment of eighty eight thousand five hundred and fifty
two kids that's two point four seven percent of our students that we are
servicing for this I agree with miss Wilson's point that because I think my
My clarifying question was, people who are in it right now can stay, but the people who aren't in it who want to now join KVA have to only if they qualify for certain medical parameters and all that, right?
They're in person.
And I will tell you, our new student enrollment registration has gone online.
In fact, this is our second year to do it.
We are enrolling kids so quickly every day.
my team, I'll ask how many do we have in the queue?
We've never gotten below 400 kids in the queue still waiting to get into the seats.
And so as fast as we're trying to staff, we're enrolling more kids every day.
So it's just kind of one of those cycles.
Right, okay.
I'm just, there's a lot for 2.
Just less than 2.5% of our student population.
And I understand we said when the vaccine was available,
and now it's still not we don't know what it is and it sounds like a lot of
these students are choosing for medical reasons already is that correct okay I
mean we are aware of some pretty significant sure it's sure and before
before kva it wasn't even was in our terminology we you know gave special
private special ways for kids to learn remotely as it was because they couldn't
come in the classroom because of health reasons right right homebound thank you
I just think it's interesting when you look at the numbers that it's such a small proportion
of our students.
And yet, I think the impact on those that are teaching KVA is pretty extreme from what
we as a board have gotten feedback on.
I think they deserve a huge pat on the back of what they are shouldering, the number of
elementary kids and having that AM. I think it might take more than a pat on the back.
Well, I agree. But yeah, I commend them because it is a lot. Yeah. I just think this is an extreme
measure for a small percentage when it's very obvious that our campuses, as you stated earlier,
are where they're there. It's said it's not easy, but on all my campus visits, it felt much more,
and I don't ever want to use the term new normal. I just want to say normal. It does feel normal.
to be back. And the teachers are happy back and the principals are happy to have their
hallways full and it just, and having a student myself on a campus right now, it feels much
better to have those kids there. And I, you know, I just, I agree with the other, who
said the sentiment that our kids need to get back in face to face.
You know, it's interesting, when it was approved on August 11th, we didn't know what the interest
would be for KVA. It was approved on August 11th and we opened the application the next
day kept it open through August 18th what we were prepared for like we were
what we were holding our breath because a year ago August 20 July 2020 August
2020 we opened it we blew past 32,000 kids and then we were at almost a 50-50
split when we opened opened up school that's why we had to give it back to the
campuses and say y'all gonna have to stand up your online in your in-person
So fast forward to August of 2021 when we opened it up and we were only at about 4,500 when we closed it.
It was kind of a relief.
It was like, okay, we won't have to put this back on the campuses now.
Let's try centrally.
How can we support this and our students and our families that need the online learning for whatever reason and let our campuses go and do their input?
Well, and it seems like that 3,500 plus will be different next week, too.
It'll be even lower.
There's 300 kids in a block who choose at one time.
That's a significant number of those who are still doing it.
I could see if we do hold this until the next board meeting, it's going to be much less
than 3,500.
Yes.
Especially when we start calling students who, after this round of grades drop, that
are failing and aren't thriving, and the parents see that exactly it's not like the KVA that
we managed to pull off quite successfully last year.
it's it's a whole nother animal and like they said there's 72 that requested
today alone to go back in person next and in miss van you just created a
whole nother parameter you can throw in there should the board exercise that
that any student on kba that is not successful in their coursework as
evidenced by their grading report card has to return there is no more extension
for them you know those are options that we could certainly do the the board has
a variety of options so go ahead and turn over the group of trustees tell me
me what you want to do with it.
I guess to propose something, I mean,
we have a motion on the table, a recommendation
from the superintendent and his staff
to extend it through the end of the year.
It sounds like it's very lukewarm that the board wants
to do that.
But let me ask the question here.
And again, if I'm breaking, Mr. Graham,
if I'm breaking Robert's rules, let me know.
But I'm trying to figure out how to untangle
this, how to proceed, right?
And one thing I want to ask is, is the board
prepared to do a go, no go?
It's really the way the motion is written right now is it's black and white we either do it or we don't do it
So that that's probably my first question
Let me ask the second question a friend of the second question would be if you're not prepared to do a vote tonight of a go
No, go I like the idea of either postponing
It's a special board meeting which doesn't give us a lot of time to get any data or do surveys or anything like that
But there was a temporary thing. Hey, that's that's extend this to the next board meeting
Let's get a list of everything that we want done whether it be a survey or let's look at the grading
Let's look at just doing special look at all
Let's try to get all that organized and then make the go-no-go at the October meeting and then turn and then potentially turn it off
immediately
I'll throw that out there as a as a maybe way to get through this so a lot mr. Mr. President
Yes, so you've asked a question about
Procedurally, we don't actually have a motion. Y'all have a motion in your packet, but no one's made a motion yet
My question is can I take a poll on if we want to make the motion?
Is that possible or do I just make the motion and see who abstains and who votes?
No.
What I would say is you could put it to your board members to ask them for a motion.
Somebody could say, hey, I move that we table this agenda item until the next meeting or
our next regularly scheduled meeting and take a vote on that.
Okay.
Thank you.
And any motion from there on would require majority.
Okay, Mr. President, before you do that, I would like to suggest that, like Mrs. Vann has added in some things that I like to discuss, and I think we haven't heard from our two distinguished board members here who always have something really great to say, but maybe just more, now that we've asked all those questions from previous experience, having a discussion among ourselves of kind of where we are and what we value and what we're seeing before we take a motion on something that's written and we're not quite sure where we are.
like like you know i think you feel some of that from us but maybe more input and just more
discussion on the superintendent has given us a lot of options to kind of hash out just talk about
like the october 25th you know i think our parents need one of my views would be that i think parents
need a little bit of time and a notice that if kva doesn't i don't know what the survey might say
if it's not going to be you know kdsd is considering ending it here's some other options
will you bring your children back to school kind of things and by october 20th maybe extend it to
the 25th or maybe the end of the month some whatever the end of a friday is i don't know
something like that so we have they get a little more time to go where this is going away if that's
what we choose i like the october 25th idea that he said you like you're suggesting the
october 25th to end it not to revisit it and vote on it the october 25th but we we need a motion
right well i think there's just more discussion before i think what miss miss fox said is some is
there any more discussion i was trying to figure out a way in my in my mind how we're going to get
through this to get into a decision and and mr graham i agree with him that's the way to do it
I think what you're saying is before we make a motion, is there any more discussion?
And then we will entertain a motion.
So does anybody have anything else?
Is that Ms. Foxwood?
That's exactly what I said.
May I address Mr. Graham, please?
So earlier in the summer, we did something where we had a poll.
Do you remember that?
We polled the board.
No.
But what I was wondering if we could do a poll to see who would want to move this to October 4th
or who would want to extend it to october 25th no but i mean an actual poll like we actually
took a poll you know i don't know if we could do that again i think somebody would make a motion
to do that i think you could make a motion somebody could make a motion for october 4th
and if it doesn't pass then somebody could make a motion for all right then mr is that correct
mr graham so i would i would think that at this point time a polling is actually a vote yes so
So if somebody make a motion, y'all want to do October 25th,
you want to do the administration's recommendation,
or you want to do the 4th, somebody make that motion,
and then we'll see if there's a second.
We can either cancel that motion or amend it, I guess, right?
There's two ways to do it.
Well, if that motion fails, then somebody can say October
and throw out another date, certainly.
Mr. President.
Yes.
Do we as a board feel like we need more information or a poll?
If we don't, we could move it to the fourth.
And I agree with Ms. Fox.
We need to give the parents some level of notice so they can plan.
But if we don't necessarily need information we can't gather in the next week,
week, we could move it to the fourth and then maybe set the 25th as the ending date if it
doesn't pass, if that makes sense.
So are you, Mr. Cullery, saying defer making the motion until the fourth?
What I'm saying is it sounds like some members of the board feel like they want more information.
Others may not.
What I'm saying is if we don't necessarily have to have additional information, we could
move it to the fourth we could vote to have the decision on the fourth it sounds like that's the
motion what you're saying at the time so the path that path will be have the decision to defer the
decision until the fourth right at the fourth we would make a decision get any information that we
need anybody would need by the fourth at the fourth make a motion on whether or not we either
continue it or stop it on the 25th yes i think at this point we just need that motion thank you
I think we're getting there.
Maybe I just made it.
Okay.
Sure.
I think what we saw in May,
that the board did not support an elementary option for KVA,
because at that time the data we saw was that elementary KVA was not successful.
It was not effective.
As I look around the eyes in this room, I feel like everybody's wanting us to end this, not just to make their lives easier, but because this was best for the kids.
It was best for our team, the amount of work that people are doing here to support what Ms. Vann was sharing for 3,500 students, which we love those 3,500 students.
And there are students in that group that have medical necessity that it absolutely
makes sense that we want to figure out a way to make that option.
But as I'm processing everything, like when I said y'all are just looking for us to just
put an end to this, I felt like relief pop up in their heads.
I know if there was a teacher at home watching, they jumped up and said amen and started crying
and said please make this happen Lance.
But I think there is some more discussion,
maybe some more information.
I like the idea of being able to see what those parents are going to do
and maybe if we can figure out some other options for them,
because KDIC is really good at educating kids in classrooms.
And our teams have done the greatest job that they could
on the shortest notice that we've had.
add I mean what we said hey let's let's have virtual school like the day before
school started and then you'll head it up and running within two weeks like so
I think what I would like to do and I'll make the motion if that is helpful for
everybody I'm moved that we we postpone this decision into our special called
team building is that October when's that October 4th and then maybe we can
figure out that information we from today okay um you said you said make a motion or yeah i motion
i move i move and then miss wilson seconded it you made a motion okay and if sex do i have a motion
by mr redmond can you repeat it one more time so you're making the most i move that we postpone uh
this decision to the october 4th special called meeting that was on the schedule the i move that
that we postpone item, what is this, 8.3,
the resolution to extend KVA Academy for grades K-6
through the end of the fall 2021 semester to October 4.
OK, so I have a motion by Mr. Redman, second by Ms. Wilson.
We'll now proceed to vote.
All those in favor?
May I ask?
Discussion?
More discussion?
OK.
So real quick, I want to make sure
that Dr. Grugorski has the list of the things that we want to know about, you know, during the week,
you know, about, you know, could we do the survey to the families?
Could we look at combining the junior high teachers?
Well, anyway, all those questions, I don't even know all the questions there were, but.
I'd have to admit, Ms. Champagne, I'm not clear either.
I don't mean to extend the discussion any longer than it's been.
I think we've had a very robust and good discussion about it,
but I am unclear as to what information the board would like me to gather
to make sure you have by October 4th.
So can I request each board member, can you let Dr. Gorski know right now
what information you need?
And if you don't know right now, can you let him know tomorrow?
Well, the one thing I would like to know is if we could do the survey.
Survey is the easiest thing.
Of the enrolled parents, whether they were going to.
I don't know all the questions to ask.
Dr. Grooms, do you see us taking more than 24 hours to create a survey?
No, the survey can be completed by tomorrow.
Okay, and now the families, give them three or four days to answer it,
and I can maybe have an answer to the board by this weekend on the survey.
That's correct.
Okay, that would be a good timeline.
I heard somebody else ask for what are non-KDISD KVA options.
I don't know if that's something that you guys can give us a list.
We talked about that earlier.
I can get a list to the board of certain entities we know within Texas
or what TEA would recommend.
There are numerous options outside of that list,
but I would be cautious that in anything we advertise or give to the parents is,
I don't feel comfortable as a district.
giving the parents a recommendation of where to go.
That's going to be a parent choice.
But I can get a list to the board of what TEA provides
as different virtual options that are available for families in Texas.
Any other?
Or maybe, Dr. Krakorski, we could just tell them there are other options available.
Absolutely.
We don't need to tell them what it is.
Absolutely.
They can figure that out, right?
right? But that this is. This is come if this comes to an end,
there are other virtual options available through the state or
something very generic like that. And the follow up question
I have is don't we already have provisions for medically fragile
children like ish and homebound? Like do we need to provide KVA
if you have medical needs and then you have to go get a
doctor's note with the ish? That is something that's temporary
to COVID or you have a communicable disease whether it's COVID, it's 20 days or something
up to 20 days okay we know you're going to have an extended absence and you retain your in-person
teachers and access to your missing assignments in Canvas so you're not so behind okay very
separate from home. So what Mrs. Wilson was suggesting is a medically fragile student or a
family member that could be in grave danger if they were exposed to COVID something like that
that we could yes and no on that miss fox um should a family have a family member that has
some sort of medical issue a child normally would not qualify for a homebound service because of
that now i don't want to speak for miss coffee or dr coffee i can bring her up here some more
but if a student qualifies with a medical condition for homebound we would serve that
child through homebound if we didn't have KVA? Feel free to jump in on that.
You are the expert. Yes, if a student is going to be absent, and it does not have to be
consecutive absences, but for a period of greater than four weeks on in a school
year, then our team, either through general education, 504, or special
education, can work with the parents and the student's physician to assemble and
create a homebound plan for the student whereby they would be served at home.
somewhere generally depending upon the students conditions somewhere between
four and six hours either in the home or at the hospital there is a remote
homebound option that is on waiver from TEA so they have to approve so does this
what about those kva students who are like oh no we have a medical issue we
don't we're not coming back to school at all is mrs. Wilson's idea something that
that we want to entertain to leave an option open for a few kids or a few
hundred instead of a few thousand or I think if you're asking this Fox that if
we were gonna extend kva and make it only to those folks who with some
documented medical condition we could certainly do that that that would save a
lot of our resources I don't know I don't know what other board members want
want to do maybe yes or maybe no about that mr. president yeah okay may I ask
another question and it's a dr. grooms maybe maybe a subsequent question could
be if if you wanted to return to kva past October 15th or however you're
gonna ask the question is it because of some medical reason and then you could I
mean it's just a suggestion then you could capture how many numbers of the
to 3,500 that say yes is because of some medical reason.
I'm going to go ahead and jump in on that one.
Although surveys are generally anonymous, this is a targeted group that we're sending
the survey to, and I'll be a little cautious as we develop the survey not to get into too
great of medical questions for fear of any sort of FERPA violation or any sort of, help
me out, Ms. Coffey.
HIPAA.
HIPAA violation.
Thank you.
um so we got to be cautious of that but we could certainly um try to skirt around those issues the
best we can and still ask the appropriate questions i appreciate so much the discussion this evening
very much um okay okay so is there any other discussion because i have a motion on the table
we the only the only thing i've heard that we want dr gorski to do is come up with the survey
to send to the current kva people not exactly sure what the objectives of that survey are and what
that we're going to ask but i i trust that you'll figure that out because i i'm not clear on that
exactly but we hope to get out of that but but you're clear so you're you've got the action for
that i haven't heard anything else it'd be good to know what and i know that that will give us
yeah next monday when we meet what the number is yeah sure oh okay is there any other discussion
we have we have a motion in a second is there any other discussion before we vote i feel um
a great sympathy for Mrs. Burris and Mrs. Smith as they make some phone calls and get phone calls after our discussion.
They're the counselors for KVA, right?
If you can get a few.
Okay.
No further discussion?
Okay.
We'll proceed to vote.
All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
Motion to defer passes 7-0.
Okay.
Okay, I'll move to 8.4, discuss and consider board approval of a resolution to initiate the process to design Katy Independent School District as a district of innovation.
The presenters, Ms. Sherry Ashworn, Shars and Discipline Administrator.
Great.
While I get some technical assistance, I'm going to go ahead and shift us to a different resolution for tonight for the district of innovation.
This is just kind of a big overview, step-by-step guide.
I'm gonna constantly remind you of these steps as we go through this process
But for those of you that are maybe unfamiliar
District of innovation doi is a concept that came to us in 2015
It allows traditional independent school districts to take advantage of the flexibilities that are available to enrollment charter schools.
And when we become a district of innovation, we must have the most recent academic performance rating that's at least acceptable, which is not a problem for us.
And essentially, this is about giving local districts flexibility and local control.
You may be aware we have a current innovation plan.
We started this process in the fall of 2016 and it was finally approved in January of 2017.
Local innovation plans by statute can only last up to five years, so here we are.
Our plan is going to expire at the end of this school year, so we need to start thinking ahead if that's something that the board would like to continue.
KDIC must restart this process, so we're going all the way back to the beginning, which is why we're here tonight, the resolution.
And just as a reminder, our current local innovation plan has the three big items, the
instructional calendar that allows us to start before the fourth Monday in August, which
allows us to also end in May before Memorial Day.
Teacher certification, this is really about those hard-to-find positions for career and
technology.
It allows districts to hire nontraditional candidates who have field experience and knowledge.
and then campus behavior coordinator.
This allows, instead of just one person handling student discipline on the campus,
it allows all administrators to share that responsibility
and build those relationship connections with students in their grade level
or alphabet code or however they're organized.
So the first step is here.
Today, where we are, the board will consider the designation
of a district of innovation resolution to kind of start and go down that road.
road. Should you decide to approve the resolution as provided to you, the next step looking
towards our October meeting is going to be two items. The first will be a public hearing.
It has to happen no later than 30 days after the resolution. And the second part is going
to be your vote. You're going to decide whether or not you want to decline if you do not wish
to pursue the district of innovation investigation, or if you decide you would like to move forward
in october we would be presenting you with a committee to develop that local innovation plan
and to find out where those areas are that we would like to be exempt from previously members
included our chief academic officer associate superintendents individuals from research and
assessment curriculum and instruction cte principals and teachers of the year so we get a
good group together that would be something we would look forward to in october after our committee
creates a plan it's going to be posted online for 30 days and it's going to be
sent to the Commissioner that we intend to vote on the proposed plan and there's
going to be a committee the district level advisory committee our kit
committee is going to hold a public meeting and at that public meeting and
it's going to be voted on after we finish all of those items usually during
the month of December we would aim to follow probably a similar timeline to
our last innovation plan and look towards maybe approving the plan in january so it's going to
need two-thirds of your membership to vote um it will have already been posted for 30 days by the
time it comes to you and then it'll be up into effect um up to five years so then we'll be
designated as a district of innovation should that be your choice um and it can be amended rescinded
or renewed as needed moving forward,
but we'll have to go through some of these steps again.
So I know that was a really quick overview,
but I want you to kind of think of the big picture.
This is not all something that's going to happen at once,
and the kickoff would be tonight
if you choose to adopt the resolution provided to you
so that in October we'll hold that public meeting
and get you a committee to look at
and to consider for approval.
Board, if I may, this is a pretty technical legal process.
all you're doing tonight is approving a resolution to start the process we
already have a plan in place you're gonna get a lot of public feedback as we
go through the plan so literally all you're voting on tonight is to start the
plan and then as the plan comes to you from your community and from your
experts then you'll get two thumbs up or thumbs down and weigh in on what it is
you do like and don't like now is really not the time for that now is really do
Do we want to just go forward with the expiration of this?
I just have one question.
Obviously, there's a benefit of doing this, right?
You get some customization or relaxation of a code requirement
that customizes how you want to implement the district.
So that's the upside of doing this, right?
Correct?
Absolutely, yes.
Okay.
You don't have to know exactly what all those things are now.
You just know there's probably the ones that you had before
and maybe some new ones that we'll figure out.
Right.
TEA has listed all the district of innovation plans across the state of Texas.
and so there's a lot of ideas out there of what other districts have done and of course we have
our experience on our current innovation plan to consider any questions mr president yes so because
there are so many new faces around here in 2016 the state made this available the district of
innovation gives things like calendar control so you can start you can have a school start date
when you want it gives us an up am i correct uh dr krakowski it gives us an opportunity
to hire teachers in specialized areas that are not teacher certified like in
auto mechanics or quantum physics or all the things where the culinary right
where you don't have to be an education major but you're an expert in your field
things like that these are very good and are you expecting that the plan will be
very similar going forward I would imagine we would certainly consider
those three items and then more yeah we'll get our experts on the committee
and look at what else is available.
It's really good for us. Thank you.
Mr. President? Yes. I move the Board of Trustees
approve the resolution to initiate the process
to designate Katy Independent School District
as a District of Innovation. Second.
I have a motion by Ms.
Vann and a second by Ms. Champagne.
We'll now proceed to vote. All those in favor,
rise your right hand and say aye. Aye.
The motion passes 7-0.
Agenda item 8.5,
discuss and consider Board approved
July 2021
financial reports.
reports. Miss Ann Feitinger, Executive Director of Finance. Good evening.
Good evening, President Schulte, Dr. Gagorski, and Board. Item 8.5 is to consider approval of
the district's July 2021 financial reports. The four reports are your financial statements,
which break down revenues and expenditures for budgeted funds for the district,
including the general fund food service fund and the debt service fund expenditures are further
broken down by function and high-level object for the 11 months of operation completed in the 2021
fiscal year july is just over 91 of the way through the year and you can see most of the
cost as we've talked about for many months now are falling below that percent of budget
the construction report presents project costs through july for projects funded with the 2014
2014, 2017, and 2020 authorizations, construction-related E-rate funding, and TERS funds.
The tax report summarizes property tax revenues received through July.
We did see a jump in refunds in July, which is not uncommon,
as appeals are settled at this time of year that this report is covering.
However, our collection percentage remains comparable to prior years.
The check register indicates vendor payments made in the month of July.
These are our financial reports we have to present for you with the month of July.
And please note that next month we will not bring the full set of financial statements for the approval.
This is going to be our fiscal year end of August 31st, so we will bring the check register only.
Everything else will come to you.
We're working now to close those books.
Everybody's really busy trying to get everything tied down, and we will have auditors coming back in.
And we will bring that to you in January as audited financial statements.
Mr. President? Yes. I move that the Board of Trustees approves the district's July 2021
financial statements. Second. Okay, we have a motion by Mr. Redmond, a second by Ms. Vann.
We'll now proceed to vote. All those in favor, raise your hand and say aye.
One, two, three, four, five, six, six, zero. Motion passes six, zero.
We'll now proceed to agenda item 8.6, discuss and consider board approval of the September 2021 budget amendments.
The presenters, Ms. Sherry Butterfield, Director of Budget and Treasury. Good evening.
Thank you, President Schulte, Trustees, and Dr. Gorgorski.
Tonight, the general operating fund expenditures are increasing $14,100 and $9,100 to cover extra duty.
costs related to our COVID testing and to help during benefits open enrollment, respectively.
General fund expenditures increase $115,820 to fund vouchers and curriculum related to student growth and CTE programs.
Those vouchers are used to pay for the certification testing, which those students participate in.
And next is a timing amendment, first of many more to come next month.
This is where purchase orders have been issued.
There was budget in last fiscal year.
The product wasn't received by 831.
It's either here now or it's still coming.
So we have to create budget for the new fiscal year.
This $28,030 is for fine arts uniforms that were ordered early last year.
but were not delivered before the 831 fiscal deadline.
Other operating fund amendments are direct offsets,
and approval of all of these amendments will result in a $167,850 decrease to the general fund balance.
One construction expenditure amended tonight for $225,000
establishes funding to cover architect fees for renovations at Miller.
And this project is being funded by the 2017 bond project savings.
Any questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move the Board of Trustees approves the District's September 2021 budget amendments.
Second.
We have a motion by Mrs. Vann, a second by Mr. Redmond.
We'll now proceed to vote.
All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
The motion passes 6-0.
We'll now proceed to agenda item 8.7, discuss and consider board adoption of the 2021-2022 maintenance and operations tax rate and the 2021-2022 debt service rate.
The presenter is Mr. Christopher Smith, Chief Financial Officer.
Good evening.
All right.
Good evening.
Good evening. I'm going to cut to the slide that you see in front of you, and that's what I actually call the anatomy of our tax rate.
And I'm going to ask you to focus on the blue column or the one on the far right.
And note that the top line, the compressed rate, is going to drop by 3.7 cents.
This is a result of House Bill 1.
you can see that this is the third year in a row actually the yeah this is the third year in a row
that that compressed rate that top line is getting pushed downward and that's based on property value
growth at the statewide level and at the local level and that's when i talk about districts are
going to have different changes in their tax rate but ours goes down 3.7 cents the golden pennies
stay at eight the copper pennies stay at the 3.02 those are what is also dubbed as enrichment
enrichment pennies, and that is the state's incentive, if you will, to pay more funds for those pennies.
The golden pennies pays a little bit more state matching funds, and those are locked.
The only way to get those increased is to have a TRE, and those are what we have,
and we're going to keep that 11 cents, 11.02 cents,
as in our enrichment pennies moving forward.
The debt service tax rate is 39 cents.
It continues, has been, and will continue to be,
and it shows $1.3517 in total.
And that's just looking at it linearly over time.
Ms. Fox can remember back in the days when we had a $2 total tax rate
that was dropped back in 2005 legislative session,
and we're now down to the total tax rate there of $1.35.
Some strange language in the resolution that you have.
It's not strange.
It's Section 26.05 required of the Texas Tax Code.
Include the following statements in the order that I'm presenting to you,
and it's quote, this tax rate will raise more taxes for maintenance and operations than last year's rate.
And it will because we've had big property value growth.
So even though the rate's lower, the property value growth of reappraisals and new values to the district,
the new housetops, will raise more in tax dollars.
The tax rate will effectively be raised by 2.1%
and raise taxes for maintenance and operations on a $100,000 home by approximately minus $37.10.
That's because of that 3.7 cent tax rate.
So I know that's strange, but that's required by tax code.
But actually, if adopted, you're levying a maintenance and operations tax rate that, again, is 3.71 cents less
than the actual tax rate levied in the year that we just finished.
and will lower maintenance and operations on a $100,000 home by $37.10.
And with all that said, it would be recommended by the administration
that the Board of Trustees approve the tax rate increase.
Again, there's that strange word, increase by the adoption of a tax rate of $1.3517,
which is effectively a 2.1% increase in the tax rate,
and further recommend that the Board approve adopting the maintenance
and operations tax rate of 0.9617 per $100 in value and the interest and sinking rate of 39 cents per $100 in value for the tax year 2021,
as reflected in the order for a decrease in the actual tax rate of 3.17 cents.
Mr. President.
Yes.
Yes.
I'm ready to make the motion, but Mr. Smith,
does he have to read the order into the record before we vote?
Is this that one that has to be read into the record?
I'm not sure.
Honestly, I'm sorry.
I don't know.
It's been read in the past.
Be it ordained and resolved usually
means you read it into the record before the vote.
That used to happen at the second meeting.
I don't think it would hurt for you
to read it into the record before the motion
and then the vote that way we won't have to come back and redo it is that what
you're thinking mr. Smith we always read the order into the record yes you have
to read that black read I'm not sure I'm not following I'm sorry order the order
the PDF that says I remember it from the past I'll read this whole thing okay be
it ordained and resolved be it ordained and resolved by the Board of Trustees of
the kd independent school district that on this day the 27th of september 2021 we the board of
trustees of the kd independent school district to hereby levy and set the tax rate on 100
valuation for the school district for the tax year 2021 of 1.3517
to be assessed and collected by duly specified assessor and collector as follows
$0.9617 for the purpose of maintenance and operations and $0.3900 for the purpose of payment of principal and interest and debts.
Such taxes are to be assessed and collected by the tax officials designated by the district.
Section 26.05 of the district tax code requires that the districts include the following statements in this order.
The tax rate will raise more taxes for maintenance and operations than last year's tax rate.
The tax rate will effectively be raised by 2.1% and will raise the taxes for maintenance and operations on a $100,000 home by approximately minus $37.10.
The Board of Trustees will be levying an actual tax rate for maintenance and operations and an actual total tax rate that is $0.0371 less than the actual tax rate levied in the prior year and will lower the taxes for maintenance and operations on a $100,000 home by approximately $37.10.
Signed by?
by Greg Schulte, President, Board of Trustees, and Dawn Champagne, Secretary, Board of Trustees,
Kennedy Independent School District.
Mr. President, I move that the Board of Trustees approves the property tax rate be increased
by the adoption of a tax rate of $1.3517, which is effectively a 2.1% increase in the
tax rate, and further recommend that the Board approve the order adopting the maintenance
and operations tax rate of $0.9617 per $100 valuation and the interest in sinking tax rate
of .39 cents per $100 valuation for the tax year 2021 as reflected in the order for a decrease in
the actual total rate of $0.0317 or 3.17 cents. A motion by Ms. Fox and a second by Mr. Redmond.
any questions we'll now proceed to vote all those in favor rise your right hand
and say aye aye the motion passes 7-0 when I'll proceed the agenda item 8.8
discuss and consider board approval of a nominating of nominating candidates for
positions on the board of directors for the Waller County Appraisal District
Fort Bend Central Appraisal District and Harris County Appraisal District
presenter is miss and fighting or executive director of finance and
And actually, I'm going to go ahead and do this.
I'm sorry.
Ann is prettier than me, but I'm already here.
And I'm just going to say that State Property Tax Code directs voting entities
or allows voting entities to submit their nominations for appraisal district directors
to the chief appraiser for each district or appraisal district.
Again, Katy is unique in that we have three appraisal districts,
Waller, Fort Bend, and Harris County.
Because Katy ISD is a member of those three districts,
it has to write or the ability to submit three nominations,
one to each of those three appraisal districts.
Directors serve two-year terms,
all of which will begin on January 1st of 2022
and end on December 31st of 2023.
Attached, you've got some information
on how to be eligible to serve on the appraisal district board.
There's a resolution.
in case the board wishes to nominate one, two, or three.
The board does not have to nominate,
but they can nominate one, two, or three candidates,
one for each county.
And to be clear, if you choose to nominate,
you will be voting on a nomination of this board in November
for those three appraisal districts,
even if you don't nominate somebody.
you will be presented with candidates to vote on at the November meeting.
With the exception of Harris County, those candidates are,
you will get the number of votes in November to place
based on the size of the district's levy.
So it's a lot of votes because of the size of our levy.
And except for Harris County, you get one vote.
vote for, it's not based on property, the levy amount.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move the Board of Trustees approve the attached resolution nominating candidates for positions
on the Board of Directors for Waller County Appraisal District, Fort Brent Central Appraisal
District and Harris County Appraisal District.
Second.
Second.
So I have a clarification because I thought we had, you and I talked before this, we have
to not actual state names in the motion.
motion. Don't we have to choose someone from this list in each place? Yeah. So I, um, and then when
it comes back to us, we have a, a lump of votes. And when we cast a vote, all of our votes, or we
can separate our votes, you know, 200 here, 200 there, whatever. Okay. Yes. So being Redmond has
a, Oh, you know who you like. I think, well, I think so. Would I amend that motion to include
those names so I think we were gonna make do we need to make a motion by
district that's probably this do it by I have a clarifying question please so
right now if we just we just approved the nominations we're not electing
anyone right now that's correct nominating so you could have a list
right because okay there could be several nominations I thought we were
We're going to nominate names, so I just
need somebody to clarify me.
Dr. Gorski is shaking.
He said, yes, we're picking names tonight.
I know.
Yeah, I know.
We talked about that beforehand.
OK, so I guess to close the current motion,
I would say let's vote on the current motion to kill it
and then restate it.
Is everybody OK with that?
I think we amended.
With that, or can we let that vote it down?
Board members, we have a motion pending.
So Robert's Rules of Orders, you can take action on that motion or somebody can make a motion to amend.
Or the person that made the motion can withdraw the motion.
So if we want to withdraw that motion and somebody else make another motion, that would be acceptable.
Thank you.
Does that need to be seconded?
Yeah, it does not need to be.
That's good.
Mr. President, I move that the Board of Trustees approves the attached resolution nominating
candidates Paul Simadas Jr. and Darren Flint for positions on the Board of Directors of
the Fort Bend Central Appraisal District.
street mr. Flint is not a current member of the Fort Bend CAD he's somebody who
would like to be a member so he needs a nomination to get on the ballot I have a
motion second to have a motion by mr. Redmond a second by mrs. van will now
proceed to vote all those in favor raise your right hand and say aye aye okay the
motion passes 7-0 mr. president it is one for County that's correct if
somebody wants to make a nomination for the other two we can do that as well we
we were only provided information on Fort Bend County.
But we provided information for all,
but those are the ones that we recommended.
So does anybody have a motion they'd like to make
on Waller or Harris County?
Okay, we'll proceed to agenda item 8.9,
discuss and consider approval of the claims administration
by Texas Association of School Boards
Risk Management Fund for Unemployment Compensation Claims.
presenters. Mr. Lance Nallman, Director of Risk Management. Good evening. Good evening,
President Schulte, Dr. Gorski, and Board of Trustees. The district shall comply with
provisions of the Texas Unemployment Act, Labor Code 201.26. The district is permitted by law
to enter into a joint group account with other political subdivisions to share the cost of
benefits that are attributable to the services provided in the employee of a group of account
account members, labor code 205.21.
KDISD has provided these services through an interlocal agreement with TASB Risk Management
Fund.
The contribution for plan year 2020-21 was $488,182 with the renewal contribution of
$390,546 for plan year 2021-2022.
As a result of fraud in claim filings over the past 18 months, KDISD has been working diligently to receive appropriate credit through the conduction of hearings and the filing of supporting documentation to overturn findings by the Texas Workforce Commission.
The contributing factors are as follows.
In 2019, our claim frequency was 76.
In 2020, it was 1,335.
The severity or the dollar spent for 2019 was $65,961 compared to 2020 of $1.850 million.
Through the CARES Act recovery credit and our work in risk management in disputing these claims,
we were able to get a credit of $622,589.
The net severity is standing right now at $1.227 million.
million dollars. It is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the 2021-2022 claims
administration by TASB Risk Management Fund for unemployment compensation. I would entertain any
questions you may have. Mr. President, I have a question. So, Mr. Nauman, thank you very much.
Okay, I think I've talked to you about this before, but so I think this is so interesting
that we had the 65,961 in 2019, and we had 1,850,137 in 2020.
And now the CARES Act recovery credit got us back to 622,000.
And then I read up here, and it has to do with the fraudulent claims.
claims. So who pays to try to recover that? You know, that seems like there's lawyers.
Let me try to give you a very high level, but as detailed as I can. Because of the pandemic,
fraud was so prevalent during this period. The State Unemployment Commission, the Texas
Workforce Commission, their protocols were very much lacking, so lacking that
their software dates back to 1991. So what was happening to us and a lot of
other districts and employers in the private sector, we were receiving notice
of awards of benefits before we were even receiving notice of claims being
filed. So we were already behind the eight ball, we weren't receiving our time
deadlines had passed. So we, throughout this process, we were constantly fighting with the TWC of, no, this person was working, or this person was not an employee. We received notice of claims from different jurisdictions. I remember one that stuck out was as far back as Utah, that they worked for us. And I think some in this room actually received notices that they were to file for unemployment. So it has been an ongoing battle. And through this, through this process, we held a detailed
conference call with the leadership of Texas Workforce Commission and we
expressed our concerns a lack of communication lack of software and we
were able to I guess basically pin them down on what we need to do to dispute
these claims even more and we have literally gone back since April I think
of Mark louder part of March 1st of April and refiled our disputes to
to continue this process and it's still ongoing.
So it's a function of fraud,
it's a function of the state not holding up their processes
and making, for lack of better words,
incoherent decisions on awarding benefits.
Okay, so first of all, do we pay for this?
And also, did we learn anything or things better?
like did the 1991 software get remedied you know did things so that this won't
happen again like that well everything that happened was beyond our control and
everything that we these credits that we have received has been direct result of
our action
And we were, again, this is an unprecedented collateral damage of COVID.
So we were literally learning as we were doing.
So through the course of time, I guess, I don't know that we really learned anything.
We continued our process of filing the documentation as we have in previous years.
But I can't control what the state's going to do or not do.
And we'll just continue our processes, which I think are pretty solid.
So that just adds a lot of work to y'all, right?
To your...
Significant.
Significant.
Sorry about that.
What we did.
Does this impact the budget at all, or this is a...
Well, actually, you will see that compared to last year,
you know, we spent $488,000.
It looks lower, right?
We were able to lower it.
And I will also mention, too, that TASB, in our communication with TASB over the year,
throughout this whole process, it was the integrity of the data that TASB was receiving, that we were receiving.
There was a significant disconnect because TASB would receive a number,
and then we would request the numbers online, and it was a complete disconnect.
It's a perfect storm.
How did claims go up and the contributions going down?
Am I missing something there?
Well, a lot of it has to do with the CARES Credit Act.
Okay.
And reassessing that maybe we're kind of past the fraudulent piece.
I have noticed that our claim filings are down.
They aren't burning at the same rate they were burning during the heat of the pandemic, if you will.
Any other questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move the Board of Trustees approves the 2021-2022 claims administration by TASB Risk Management Fund for unemployment compensation.
Second.
I have a motion by Mrs. Vance, second by Mrs. Champaign.
We'll now proceed to vote.
All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
The motion passes 7-0.
We'll move on to Agenda Item 8.10, discuss and consider Board approval to award a contract for design services necessary for the construction of elementary schools number 45 and 46.
The presenter is Ms. Lisa Kastman, Executive Director of Facilities, Planning, and Construction.
Good evening.
Good evening, President Schilti, Board members, and Dr. Gagorski.
I have three items to present to you this evening.
The first item is the recommendation to award a contract to VOK Architects for design services for elementary schools 45 and 46.
These campuses are scheduled to open 2023 and are design repeats of the current elementaries under construction in Kane Island, as well as the recently opened Leonard and McIlwain Elementary Schools.
Any questions?
Mr. President?
Mr. President.
Oh, sorry, question.
I move that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to VLK Architects, Inc. for design services necessary for the construction of elementary schools number 45 and number 46.
Second.
Second.
Second.
A motion by Mrs. Fox, a second by Ms. Wilson.
We'll now proceed to vote.
All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
The motion carries 7-0.
Agenda item 8.11, discuss and consider Board approval of the construction delivery method
for renovations to the Miller Career Center and Technology Center.
The contract for design services for Miller was awarded last month to Stantec Architecture.
The next step in the process is the approval of construction delivery method for this project
in accordance with Texans Government Code 2269.
It is recommended that the construction manager at risk
delivery method be used for this project
so as to maximize the planning and design
by bringing in a construction team.
Any questions?
Mr. President, I don't have any concerns with the action,
but what I'm wondering is,
is there any way that we could hear or see
the kind of the designs before they're all the way polished, shined up, and there's a vote yes or a vote no thing on it.
And in a, like in 45 and 46, we know what that looks like.
And we did, we used to get these books with the big shiny pictures and all those things.
But it was always completely done and you couldn't make any changes or input of any kind from your board about,
and especially at Miller Career Center, that's very specialized with our programs, you know, our career,
CCMR things there. I'd kind of like to see what that looks like before it's all decided and no input from the board.
So I'm going to ask Ms. Kastman a couple questions. Maybe she can help me with her expertise in the process.
Are there some, as you venture into this process and you start to look at the redesign,
are there some steps along the way where the plans are more in a preliminary state,
not a final drawing stage, that you could bring those back to the board to see some preliminary drawings.
And if the board wants to have discussion, we'd have to do that in a board meeting.
But if there are preliminary drawings I can just share with the board of the stages of the planning that you just want to see them,
I could always share those with the board throughout the process if those are available.
That's correct.
And once we start the design, we'll have some preliminary sketches that we call schematic design,
and we could share that kind of show what the areas are and what we're looking at.
When did you anticipate, Ms. Kessman, coming back with a final design?
Do you have that on a plan?
November-ish we're looking at, so November, December.
So we'd have to get something to you in the next maybe October board meeting.
We were trying to wait for a construction manager to come on board to help with some of that planning,
but let me get with the architect and see what we can come up with.
If you think you can design that two-step process, let's you and I talk about that,
maybe mr. Vierling of what that looks like see if we can bring something in
October or something in November and then something in December along the way
for some discussion you bet thank you thank you yes I move that the Board of
Trustees approves the delivery method for the renovations to Miller career and
technologies here so yeah I have a motion by mr. Wilson a second by mr.
Redmond will now proceed to vote all those in favor is your right hand and
say aye aye aye the motion passes 7-0 and now proceed to agenda item 8-12
the final item is the recommendation to award a contract to hks inc for the design services
for the addition to schmaltz elementary this work is on schedule to open in 2023
hks has extensive k-12 experience with work in dallas but in katie and a leaf as well
well.
Mr. President, Ms. Kastman, I'm not sure if this question is for you because you're
doing the addition.
I must have missed the permanent addition to Schmalz Elementary that we need a permanent
addition to that school.
What's their capacity and what is their enrollment?
I know that there's a lot of special programs out in the portables and it was discussed
best during bond planning that we'd like to get rid of as many portables as we can and
bring those programs into a brick and mortar because that campus is not going to get any
relief from any kind of rezoning.
So this way we can bring those programs out of portables into brick and mortar.
Ms. Fox, I'll add to that that there was some discussion in the bond planning process with
our demographers with PASA.
We are seeing some growth in that area and some regeneration, and it's going to continue.
Schmalz is not going to shrink for any short period of time.
There was a proposal even at one time from PASA to consider possibly using that vacant piece of land that we have over by Maid Creek Elementary
and maybe putting another full-size building over there or looking for a piece of property or something to control for some of the growth in that area.
We kicked that option around with about four other options and settled on an addition to Schmalz would be helpful along with a couple other control measures over time, short term and long term.
What kind of addition are we talking at this campus? Is it 10 classrooms?
What are the number of classrooms, Ms. Gassman?
We're looking around maybe around 20 classrooms. Two stories is what we're looking at.
Oh, wow.
Like I said, we want to bring the architect on board to start that planning process.
I thank you for the questions. I I missed that this piece so
Schmaltz is that close to wolf? Is it just on the other side directly?
It's out there Barker Cypress your clay
Mm-hmm
Okay, I remember the wolf redesign and all that we thought we would have more students there it ended up being
Considerably under populated I think we thought we thought more more of the students there would come back and there was talk
talk then about Schmalz being overcrowded and sharing some of the students, but it was
busing them across I-10. So I'm trying to put those conversations in my head right this
minute, so I just wondered. But Schmalz is continuing to grow. That's a very interesting
dynamic. Okay. And Wolf has a smaller design capacity of only 405. And I'll go ahead and
ask Mr. Vierling to get me those PASA numbers for Schmalz, and I'll include that update
if you guys want to see what those numbers look like over the next 10 years. Just kind
Kind of see just for information that information great. I don't need it for this discussion. Thank you for thank you for answering questions
Just it was for my information
This president yes, I move that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to HK s Inc for design services
Necessary for the construction of an addition to Schmalz Elementary School
Have a motion by mr. Redmond a second by mrs. Van will now proceed to vote all those in favor raise your right hand say aye
aye motion passes 7-0
Thank you.
Ms. Gassman.
Now to move on to Section 9, Information Items.
9.1, the Board was provided a copy of donated items to KDISD.
Agenda Item 9.2, Board Member Report, Texas Associated School Boards.
Ms. Dawn Champagne.
Okay, thank you.
TASB stands, T-A-S-B stands for Texas Associated School Boards.
Tasby has all of 1024 boards as active members and has maintained 100%
membership for over 30 years there are 43 Tassie directors in Texas all large
districts are hard to have one director since KSD is a large school district we
have one director which is as B is like a school board for the state several of
us just returned from what was what is called the TASA TASB convention which was held in Dallas,
Texas. TASA by the way stands for Texas Association of School Administrators. During this convention
superintendents, other school administrators, and school board members came together
to receive training, interact, and some attended the TASB delegate assembly. Only the delegates
and the TASB board of directors attended the and voted during the TASB delegate assembly which was
held on saturday september 25th 20 2021 leah wilson is our delegate and duke keller is the alternate
during the assembly over 300 delegates and tasby directors voted on changes to the articles of
incorporation bylaws and statement of beliefs also the advocacy agenda for 2020 to 2022 was approved
approved. The TASB leadership was elected and the new TASB directors were elected. Actually,
resolution 12 was offered by KDIC and was approved. It says TASB advocates for a formula
driven mechanism of index to be implemented annually to increase the basic allotment to
keep up with the additional inflationary pressures in public schools. And if you would like to
see any of these approved items, you can visit TASB or you can also contact me. Dan Troxell
is the new executive director. This was the first TASB delegate assembly over which he presided.
He replaced James Crow, who had served as the executive director for over 25 years, and actually
he worked for TASB for 40 years. Jim Rice, Fort Bend ISD, was the TASB president. He served a
one-year term, which ended with the conclusion of this convention. The new TASB president is Ted
Beard of Longview ISD. During the convention, the school board of the year was announced, which is
is Alito ISD.
The superintendent of the year was named Dr. H.T. Sanchez of Plainview ISD
and new this year, the TASB advocate of the year was named,
who is Tracy Fisher of Coppell ISD.
I wanted to say I appreciate the support from this board
and I want to thank the other board members for trusting me
to advocate for this district at the state level.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Champagne.
We'll do now agenda item 9.3, recap of board members' request for information.
Okay.
Okay.
So I think I have it.
Okay.
So Dr. Gorgorski said that he was going to provide us the three-to-one teacher ratio
information.
I'm not sure what that is, but when we were talking about the teacher-student ratio, and
you're also going to try to find statistics about how many people are graduating from colleges and
entering into the education field and then um we are going to get an update every i don't know what
was decided every 30 to 60 days about the improvement upon or the you know the changes
in the teacher-student ratio.
And we are going to...
Oh, now you've said that we'll get the PLASA numbers
about smalls.
And you're going to work on the information to us
pending the October 4th vote on the KVA.
And that's all I have.
The only one I had, Ms. Champagne, was getting the Miller Career Center design updates at the next couple meetings to make sure that gets on the agenda.
Yes, thank you.
Okay.
Agenda item 10, future meetings.
10.1, special board meeting workshop will be conducted on Monday, October 1st, 4th, I'm sorry, 2021.
10.2, regular board meeting, October 25th, 2021.
There being no further business before the board, this meeting is adjourned.
The time is 9.28 PM.
Thanks everyone.
Official documents
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 6.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the proposal for a chiller rebuild at Seven Lakes High School to Hunton Services in the amount of $345,443, and the total project cost not to exceed $360,443 utilizing the Choice Partners Contract #19/036/MR-03.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 002 · AGENDA 6.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric, LLC a blanket electrical easement associated with the construction of Elementary School #44 as depicted in the attached easement document.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 003 · AGENDA 6.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the minutes of the Board meetings held in August 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 |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 004 · AGENDA 8.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Campus Performance Objectives.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 005 · AGENDA 8.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees grants approval for the superintendent to prepare, sign, and submit an application to the State Commissioner of Education for a class size waiver exception.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 006 · AGENDA 8.3
UnknownIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves a resolution to extend Katy Virtual Academy (KVA) for grades K-6 through the end of the fall 2021 semester.
MOTION 007 · AGENDA 8.3
PassedMoved by Lance Redmon seconded by Leah Wilson that the Board of Trustees move this item to the October 4, 2021 Special Board Meeting.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 008 · AGENDA 8.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the resolution to initiate the process to designate Katy Independent School District as a District of Innovation.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 009 · AGENDA 8.5
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's July 2021 financial statements. Not Present at Vote: Dawn Champagne
6 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 010 · AGENDA 8.6
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's September 2021 budget amendments. Not Present at Vote: Leah Wilson
6 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 011 · AGENDA 8.7
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of $1.3517, which is effectively a 2.1 percent increase in the tax rate. And, further recommend that the Board approve the Order adopting the Maintenance and Operations tax rate of $0.9617 per $100 valuation and the Interest and Sinking tax rate of $0.3900 per $100 valuation for the tax year 2021, as reflected in the Order for a decrease in the actual total tax rate of $0.0317 or 3.17 cents.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 012 · AGENDA 8.8
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the attached resolution nominating Paul Stamatis and Darren Flynt as candidates for positions on the Board of Directors of the Fort Bend Central County Appraisal District.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 013 · AGENDA 8.9
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the 2021-2022 claims administration by TASB Risk Management Fund for Unemployment Compensation.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 014 · AGENDA 8.10
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to VLK Architects, Inc. for design services necessary for the construction of Elementary Schools #45 and #46.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 015 · AGENDA 8.11
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the delivery method for the renovations to Miller Career and Technology Center.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 016 · AGENDA 8.12
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to HKS, Inc. for design services necessary for the construction of an addition to Schmalz Elementary School.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| duke-keller | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |