I hereby call the special meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Katy
Katy ISD · Special Meeting
Katy ISD Special Meeting, March 21, 2022
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Independent School District to order. Today is Monday, March 21st, 2022, and the
time is 5 p.m. Noting that a quorum is present, the Board will now convene an
open meeting. Dr. Grzegorski, will you verify that we're in compliance with the
provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regards to notice for this
meeting? Mr. Shelty, I do confirm we are in compliance with the provisions of the
the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting this evening.
Thank you.
At this time, the Board of Trustees will give members of the public an opportunity to speak
in accordance with KDISD Board Policy BED Local.
Speakers who signed up by 2 p.m. on Monday, March 21, 2022,
and have provided their first and last name will be allowed to address the Board.
As this is a special meeting, public comment is limited to discussion on posted agenda items only.
Each speaker gets 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 ten copies to the Secretary for Board Services before the Board meeting for Board members, the Superintendent, the Chief Communications Officer, and Permanent Record.
If a speaker has not attempted to solve the matter administratively through proper channels as stated in Board policy, the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to seek resolution through the appropriate policy.
Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551074 and 5510821, 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 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 in which they signed up to speak. Our
first and only speaker tonight is Mr. Victor Perez. Good evening.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. I ask to speak to you about the budget
and future staffing plans that you have.
I've spoken to many teachers and parents over the last several months.
First of all, I think we all know and recognize a few things.
Classroom sizes are too large in terms of students per teacher.
We don't have enough teachers.
Number two, teachers are leaving the profession,
and I believe Katy ISD is on the verge of seeing an increase in departures.
Three, teachers in Katy are underpaid when compared to the average
of Cyphair, Lamar, Fort Bend, HISD, and Aleaf.
It appears the disparity is greatest for more for more for the experience levels
like 15 20 years and plus 20 years but there is a disparity also in the
beginning five years or less. Based on some calculations I've done KD ISD
payroll would need to increase by approximately 3.3 percent to get the
teachers in KD on a par with surrounding districts. This is a weighted average
based on the makeup of our KD ISD levels and experiences. This presents a real
disadvantage for KDISD in meeting staffing levels which is one of our goals.
Another thing we know is that approximately 25% of KDISD students are underperforming
schools.
This needs to be addressed.
Teachers are overloaded with redundant paperwork and excessive amount of administrative oversight.
Six, finally, there are discipline problems that impact the morale of teachers and the
quality of education.
All these issues affect the quality of education at KISD.
How do we solve this as you consider budget and staffing this year and in the years to
come?
We hire and retain great teachers and campus administrators.
The teachers are not the problem.
They are the experts and they work hard.
Arrive at optimal classroom sizes on a grade by grade basis and subject by subject basis.
Classes in underperforming schools may need to be smaller.
You don't really know how many teachers you need until you determine optimal class sizes
for a quality education.
that should drive staffing requirements for the future three increase teacher
pay and benefits or keep the district administrators focused on supporting the
teachers on the front line we have to pre free up teachers to teach number
five make sure we are supporting teachers with discipline problems they
encounter in the classroom that disrupts the entire class principals and assistant
principals need to be intensely focused on ensuring classroom discipline without
Without discipline, there is no quality education.
I recognize all this may not be able to be accomplished immediately, but I implore you
to at least make a down payment on these issues, create a plan to get there, recognize these
issues and possible solutions.
Engage teachers and campus administrators in the discussion.
They have face-to-face interaction with students every day and can help with solutions and
the decisions about the allocation of funding instead of a top-down push.
In summary, hire and retain great teachers and campus leaders, arrive at optimal classroom
sizes, increase pay and benefits for teachers, free up teachers to do . . .
Thank you very much.
This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting this evening.
The Board will now convene and close meeting as authorized under Section 551001 of the
Texas Government Code for the following purposes.
Texas Government Code 551071, 551129, and 551074. Thank you.
Good evening, everyone. The Board will now reconvene in open meeting.
Today is Monday, March 21st, 2022, and the time is 5.30 p.m.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's special board meeting.
Each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Friday, March 18, 2022.
The board will receive information and recommendations from staff, administration, and the superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting.
Board members should be able to ask questions, receive answers, and should be prepared to take action.
The board has just reconvened from closed meeting.
In accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code, any action arising from discussions in closed meeting must be taken in open meeting.
We'll now proceed to Agenda Item 6.1, 2022-2023 Budget Updates.
The presenter is Mr. Christopher Smith, Chief Financial Officer.
Good evening.
Good evening, President Schulte and Trustees, Dr. Grigorski.
I've got the most recent initial draft of the 2023 budget.
Still got a long ways to go, but we are starting to see it take shape.
Of course, this is the third month.
We had some parameters that we talked about in January in our debt budget we talked about last month.
month. Here in March, we're looking at budget projections, the initial budget projections for
the general fund. And then we've got a few months to go in the budget process. Austin is dark.
They're not meeting this year. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think at
one point you'll hear me talk. Normally, I would think that's a bad thing.
But I think in a few slides, you're going to see where I wish they were meeting.
So the legislature, we just talked about economic uncertainty.
I've been using this slide.
I think it is very uncertain of our economy, but the Texas economy is scorching hot right now,
and the state has a lot of money that is not being spent at this time.
I don't know the billions.
I'm sorry I don't, but it is a lot.
I used to be concerned about the sustainability of House Bill 3 and I'm
not at the way the economy is going in the state of Texas at this point.
Property value growth and tax rates are considered ESSER. It's not a
general fund but we always have to be cautious because those funds will
go away that we don't put things and put their general fund at risk for when
when those goes away of having a funding cliff,
because right now the state funding formulas
will not fill in that hole that ESSER will create
when it leaves.
Enrollment growth, we're gonna talk about
our enrollment growth, that drives the size of our budget.
Smaller enrollment, smaller budget growth.
Larger enrollment, larger budget growth.
And speaking of that, the fast growth allotment there,
I've got those rings that represent three years. They actually added a fourth year up there.
Last week, TEA did. I haven't got it in the rings. But we're in the middle of receiving the highest
tier all three years, now all four years. In fact, for the second year in a row, we are the largest
incremental gain in enrollment for a five-year look back. So they used the October of 2021
2021 snapshot compared that to the October of
17
Snapshot and we were had the largest growth
Again that was released just last week and I'll talk about that a little bit
In the future or in the next few slides, but I will say that the budget that we're currently operating in
uses that entire fast growth allotment
and
and uses all that revenue for everyday regular operations,
and is going to continue to do so.
Again, more on that in a minute.
And then House Bill 3, I mentioned the long-term sustainability.
We're still learning about House Bill 3.
Things are still not trending.
There's still stuff that we're not sure.
I say we, not KDISD.
The state in general is not sure about.
There are certain things that we just have blank as placeholders.
They're not big monies.
That's probably why they're still blank, but we are still figuring out House Bill 3.
When we look at a general fund budget, we know that House Bill 3 is going to push tax rates down as values grow up through appreciation statewide.
That pushes the tax rate down.
basically that basic is the state's putting money towards that to offset the
tax increase by those rising values so reductions are happening across the
state from district to district our district went down our tax rate went
down three point I think it was three point nine cents last year because of
that appreciation and in values or that growth in values we are looking in May
The voters of Texas will be going to the polls to vote on the homestead exemption going from $25,000 to $40,000.
That's a $15,000 increase.
Not a betting person, but I would bet if I had to that that will pass.
And that will offset.
It's going to be paid for not as much pressure downward on the tax rate.
but it is a break to the taxpayers nonetheless assuming that passes again
from 25,000 to a 40,000 dollar increase so they'd be just beyond homesteads so
the what I've talked to you all before and I'll say this again I thought about
putting this on and making big flashes and neon and everything but the numbers
that you see right there are the two most important numbers in this in this
presentation and that is the basic allotment and the golden penny allotment
the basic allotment six thousand one hundred sixty dollars that was put in
place back in June of 2019 this is the fourth budget we will be building with
that basic allotment so there are different types of students but and so
every student gets six thousand one hundred sixty dollars and maybe a little
little more depending on the type of student they are. For example, if they're bilingual, special
needs, socioeconomically disadvantaged, the formulas adjust for those more expensive children,
but that's done statewide. But that $6,160 is the same used per student in Lubbock, in Midland,
Odessa and Beaumont and Katy wherever that's the number that is used as the
basic allotment that's what you get per student and it varies a little bit based
on the type of students that you have our enrollment now this is budget to
budget we're at 91 or 90,000 just under 90,200 we way exceeded what we budgeted
from an enrollment standpoint. We've been talking about that each month and that took us by surprise.
We're gaining every day. We are, but this is budget to budget. So it shows 4,000 student
increase. It's only about a 2,000 student increase of where we are right now, but about a 4.8 percent.
Our taxable values being very conservative there, like I mentioned last month in our debt presentation
at just under 3%, $49 billion.
Just for Grin's sake, one penny will raise about $4.9 million
if you look at it that way.
So $49 billion, or a 2.7% increase.
Now, again, from the general fund standpoint,
if that increased by 7%,
it's not going to affect our bottom line very much at all
because that's offset by state funding.
that tax rate will be driven down, in other words.
So that's something that you need to know.
It's not as important on the general fund as it is the debt service fund.
Teacher growth, Mr. Schultz is going to talk to you a little later about the campus staffing plan.
That includes 367 units on the teacher salary schedule and on the non-teacher salary schedule, 111.
Now part of that is an estimate because this is what Mr. Schoess will be bringing to you
tonight is only campus and special ed and ancillary positions.
It's not going to be all the positions that are associated with the growth that we have.
But the majority of them will be talked about by him tonight.
And on salary increases, at this time there's currently a blank there.
We're going to try to get as much as we can from a salaries increase in the budget.
and the average teacher salary new hire is 60,000 that we're using when we
develop this budget so our tax revenues going up because we saw that 2.3 percent
growth in value that's 468 million dollars other local revenues going down
a little bit our interest income is not very good right now and I think that's
pretty obvious to folks. State funding that goes up, doesn't go up
proportionately because of this tax revenue, but it does go up and it reflects
that increase in number of students. TRS contributions is in blue. That's just an
offset. There'll be a number in the expenditure budget that you'll see later
and it'll be in blue and it'll be that exact same number at 53.8 million.
Our federal revenue when it comes to the general fund is very small at 11.3
million dollars for a total of 945 million dollars in revenue.
Now, I will say that going back to that fast growth allotment.
Is this to prevent that change that we made?
Is it?
Okay.
I learned yesterday, last night, that the fast growth allotment,
that was introduced by the TEA last week.
Again, we were on top.
It generated from $29 million increase in revenue to $37 million.
I knew that they were going to prorate that downwards
because they didn't set enough money aside, so I took $3 million off.
And I learned in an email that I received last night
that I paid attention to this afternoon that they're going to prorate it 83%.
So if you take $37 million times .83, it's $31 million.
And so I went in and adjusted the revenues,
at least I attempted to go in and adjust the revenues,
but it's not shown on this particular slide.
I'm sorry.
That slide should be $4 million less in revenue or $397 million.
Wow.
Things that control the revenue that the district can control are fees and gate sales.
There's not much there, not much at all.
And then the only other thing that we can control is local tax revenue by adopting disaster pennies,
and this board has done that three times in the wake of a disaster.
and then voter approved tax rollback election of Vader or a TRE is another
way that can that can be done that local boards have to control the the amount
that they get again without something like that six thousand one hundred sixty
dollars is it is it everywhere across the state the budget the campus
staffing plan includes the new campus and the new elementary school campus
that includes organic just district-wide growth special ed growth special ed
students are growing at a faster pace than regular students and then ancillary
positions associated with those new campuses such as custodians
administration etc real quick 90 almost 90 percent 88 percent of our of the
the budget that we talk about is in salary and benefits, and then it's utilities.
When you add those two together, there's not much discretionary when it comes to the budget.
Eighty-eight percent is salary and benefits.
But I wanted to put this in there, and 79 percent of what we do or where we spend money is directly in the classroom.
It's 79 percent.
That's a high number compared to the state.
79% that means we're putting the money where it should go is in the classroom
90% is on students that includes counseling co-curricular activities and
transportation of students if you add all that together 90 over 90% of what we
spend is directly on students very little in administration in fact I look
this information up and was able to pull the administrative cost ratio based on
on school first and I just grabbed some districts.
I've grabbed those districts before over the years
and I know their county district numbers,
so they're easy to look up.
And I charted it and we're at 3.5% there at the very bottom
from an administrative standpoint.
So we could basically double the size of the people
in this building and still be somewhere,
like what is that, at 7%,
we'd still wouldn't be on the top of this list.
So we are very lean as a district from an administrative standpoint.
Part of me hates to say that because I have a staff and everybody has a staff in here that works her knuckles to the bone and works really hard.
But we do have low administrative cost ratio, and I think it's important to remind us that it is low.
We're putting the money in the classroom. We're not putting it in administration. We're putting it in the classroom.
room speaking of that we were able to get some information a week or so ago or
I say we could go probably three or four weeks ago now this is your 2020 fiscal
year 2020 actual numbers that we ran this report and basically it shows I
narrowed it down to these districts that are neighboring districts and Katie ISD
is the orange dots and this is instruction so in the classroom that
classroom number I showed you earlier at 79% we are the orange dots and we spend
the most per student over the last five years in the classroom or in instruction
and you can see the green mean bar there the average bar if you know we're
pulling that average up looked at a little bit differently oh and by the way
if we just say spent the spent the average which we're not an average play
for a place if we spent the average you could save about thirty million dollars
if we just spent the average this is it not graphically but numerically see it's
there at six thousand dollars there on the top and those are the other
districts in their amounts and that average and I'm looking at the middle
column on that that's the one that shows you the best per student the best look at what we're
spending per student so let's just say okay well you spend you know instructional aids or supplies
in the classroom so the funding codes at TEA we narrowed it down to salaries just teacher salaries
We spend the most in teacher salaries. We don't have the highest salary, but we spend the most in 6119 or in teacher salaries than all these districts per student.
And we also looked at it from districts with 60,000 to 120,000. That broadens the scope and it gets us away from neighbors. It takes us to other areas of the state.
And again, you can see Katie there at that orange and spending in instruction, and they're ranked there in the middle.
And the average is $8,900 per student in instruction, and there's Katie at $9,444.
Some of our neighboring districts are in those numbers too.
So with what Mr. Schuss is going to be talking to you about, and probably the main reason
that I'm speaking tonight on the budget update is you're going to be approving the, or not
approving, but listening to the staffing plan and presumably approving the staffing plan
so we can go out and hire quality teachers to meet that growth.
And in new positions, if you take those off the assumptions page and multiply it by that
that $60,000, it would be $19.8 million in new positions associated with the teacher pay group.
Again, salary increase at this time is left blank.
Teacher pay group, that's just the same thing graphically, same thing as you saw on the slide before.
Non-teacher pay schedule, again, there are some estimates in here.
It'll be what Mr. Schuss is talking to you about, by and large, but there are also some
other estimates that we're using that'll be presented to you at a later meeting when it
comes to non-campus staffing plan.
And we're using 10.4 million in new positions there.
And again, nothing at this time for salary increases.
We're just leaving it blank.
We haven't gotten that far.
And you can see in total non-teacher salaries at $221 million.
million dollars looked at graphically same same information but graphically
other compensation just real quick we're still in the career ladder it's just
going down but it won't go away oh our substitute teachers our substitute
expenditures are up quite a bit this year we're estimating that we're gonna
to blow our $8.9 million budget.
And so Ms. Butterfield and her staff have annualized it.
And we'll be doing this every month between now and August
to try to pinpoint it.
But at this point, if we had to adopt the budget today,
we would be recommending a $12 million
budget for substitute teachers.
Quite a bit of increase that we've had in that.
Everything else is pretty much in line there.
There's the same look at that, but just a visual of it.
Benefits, organic growth at this point.
We pay $385 per person that participates in our health plan.
This is just new staff times $385 per month is the million and a half increase.
I do want to point out that TRS care, I think it's going from 7.75% to 8%.
This is the amount that KDISD pays towards the retirees, health insurance across the state.
That's important.
I think that's important, but it is increasing and taking away from our instruction budget what we get to spend in the classroom because the rate increased.
INCREASED.
SAME WITH TRS LOCAL CONTRIBUTION.
WE HAD A RATE INCREASE THERE AND THAT'S AFFECTING US BY ABOUT $800,000, NOT QUITE AS MUCH, BUT
ABOUT $800,000.
AND THEN THE TRS STATUTORY MINIMUM, YOU'RE ABOUT $1.3 MILLION INCREASE AND THAT'S BECAUSE
OF THE RATE INCREASE THAT WE'RE REQUIRED TO PAY.
SAME LOOK, JUST GEOGRAPHICALLY.
geographically. I keep wanting to say geographically, but graphically, visually.
So that ends a total of a payroll budget right now of an estimate of $770 million,
about a $35 million increase. There's that blue that I showed you on the revenue, and again,
that's that offset for a total payroll budget of $824 million. Again, this next slide is a visual
of that same same information non-payroll costs we're at the initial
stages the campus allocations are done that $400,000 increase in campus
allocations is the organic growth throughout the district the department
allocations that's where the big one is it's because that's we budget centrally
for things like testing testing materials electricity water etc etc and
And then the non-allocations is $33.7 million.
And that's just organic growth as well.
Same look.
So what it all would mean, and there is in here a placeholder for a salary increase.
But that middle column would show that with that salary increase,
we would be at about a $5.4 million deficit where we are right now.
and where we we have a healthy fund balance but it would show 5.4 million on
that I would hope that as time goes by it'll be a little bit better than that
but that does have in that bottom line a salary increase built into that and then
looking out a year again with another salary increase you can see that the
deficit gets bigger why because six thousand one hundred sixty dollars does
does not take into account the things that we all see,
such as more expensive cleaning supplies, paper supplies,
salary increases, the need to have our people get a salary increase
to keep up with this inflation.
That's not built into the $6,160.
And they're not meeting again, as far as I know, until January of next year.
so it would be for the 23-24 budget where we would see any relief on that.
And that's statewide.
That's not just Katy.
That's statewide, $6,160.
That's a key number.
Future property values, are they going to be slow or robust?
Again, that doesn't make as big a deal on the bottom line of the general fund,
but it is very important on our debt service fund because of our growth
and our issuing new bonds to build new schools.
Value impact, even if we have robust value impact, that's going to be offset.
The tax rate that would be pushed down is going to be offset because of the way the state's going to fund the increase in the homestead exemption.
Increase in homestead exemption is likely going to pass.
It could affect tax rates.
Again, it's not going to put as much downward pressure on the M&O tax rate.
I don't think it's going to affect the INS tax rate at all.
I think we have enough planning involved that you saw last month and we talked about.
We are actually taking that into account.
that's going to affect our debt service tax rate at all.
Enrollment growth and special populations growth
is what's all keyed on because, again, with more students,
you get more revenue.
With less students, you get less revenue.
And it's still the same amount, $6,160 per student,
adjusted just a little bit by the type of student
that they are.
State funding formulas, those are staying the same.
But there are those nuggets out there
that I found, just found it last night, found it today, about them prorating downward the
fast growth allotment multiplying 37 million times 0.83, which ends up being the 31 million.
Sustainability of the budget and ESSER and ESSER II and III, the administration has been
working really hard to protect the general fund from ESSER II and ESSER III, meaning
we don't want to put programs in place that we know are going to go away
because the general fund just cannot add those programs when we're at $6,160.
Now, hopefully the next legislative session will take that into account,
but if we do that, there is going to be a funding cliff when those ESSER monies go away.
And so the general fund, by and large, has been protected from that,
but we are seeing the the the ESSER dollars at work through additional
staffing etc at the campuses to make up for that learning loss but that will
those funds will go away. So we're now we're done with March and we'll be back
again in May so you may get a break in April and I did want to note that those
those numbers that we saw from an instructional spend standpoint were from
fiscal year 2020 those are actual fiscal year end numbers as i understand it sometime in the month
of march tea will be releasing that data where we can update it through fiscal year 2021 so it's a
year old um i didn't preface that when i when i talked it through it's a year old we'll get a
refresh on that sometime within the next couple of weeks at this point i'll be glad to answer
any questions any questions
questions all right thank you for their presentation I have a couple of
questions so I know that we can't control the amount of money that we get
but we can't control the money amount of money how we use the money okay and when
When you showed the slide and it showed that when you compare us to the other districts,
that we're actually spending more in class than other districts that are surrounding
us, but yet our teacher pay is less.
So where are we spending the extra money?
So in other words, if our teachers are getting paid less than, let's say, Fort Bend ISD,
but we're spending more in the classroom, what is it that we're spending more on?
on? Well, you know, I will just say in generalities, it would be programs. We have, we spend good in
programs like special education, our bilingual program. We have instructional coaches. A lot of
other school districts don't have instructional coaches, those type of things. Student-teacher
ratios, they are not the lowest, but they're on the lower side on those averages when you make
those comparisons it's those areas areas that add up so is that also including
the Paris because the first of all is that yes okay yes the the total
instruction would include instructional paraprofessional classroom
paraprofessionals not office paraprofessionals or anything so we
were spending more in the total instruction which it could include
supplies as well but that it would include instructional paraprofessionals
or classroom aides?
Because I heard at one elementary school,
there's 51 paras at that elementary school.
And I know that certain categories of students
require a certain number of paras,
from what I understand.
But that just seems like a lot,
you know, 51 paras for maybe 900 students.
So I don't know how that's come about or anything.
But, you know, when we're trying to look at raises
or hiring more teachers or whatever,
This might be a Mr. Schuss question, but trying to maybe limit the number of paras and hire
more teachers or give the teachers more money, I don't know if that can be messed around
with.
I'm just curious because other school districts are able to pay their teachers higher and
that's always my concern and my goal with that.
I guess that was just a point.
But one other thing I want to ask you, I think it's on page 18.
It was the pie chart.
And it has the payroll is 87.8%.
And services and utilities are 5.0%.
So I'm wondering where certain departments are.
Like, for example, in-house counsel.
Where is that?
Is that in payroll?
Is that in other expenses?
Is that in utilities?
That in-house counsel used to be by and large, or the legal expenses used to be by and large
outsourced.
We did bring out in-house counsel and that has saved a substantial amount of money to
our legal expense over the last four or five years.
Or spending less, but it's shifted from sending a check to vendors or to attorneys, firms,
to spending that on salary of in-staff.
I'm not talking about his salary.
I mean, well, there's there's several people in the legal department, right? Okay
So that's all within so we've shifted it in our bird our expenses in legal are down
All right, but where is that in the pie chart?
It would be in that same that that contracted services contract and in salaries and benefits
Okay, the majority of our legal department legal fee expenses would be in salary benefits because we've moved that in-house
There would be still some
that are outsourced, you know, like our construction projects and some of those things.
Okay.
So it wasn't really necessarily talking about the salary.
I was talking about his budget or the budget of that.
Yes.
It's still in there in the payroll?
The legal budget is comprised of mostly payroll and some contracted services.
All right.
Thank you.
any other questions
thank you yes i thought i saw mr redmond trying to speak i have a couple of questions
when we talk about the um so i'm a little bit sad that we didn't have the presentation before
we got here i'm more sad that it's still not here so i can't go back and look at all those
great charts you have because i i love to look at all the things and there appeared to be some new
information that that I haven't seen recently and so when you get that loaded
on I'll look at it tomorrow with the comparisons between districts and things
and that went pretty fast so I can't refer to two exact numbers so let me do
some general questions here and I know it was spring break and y'all just got
here today it's not a complaint it's just a I'm not going to speak
specifically because I don't have it so in talking with our county officials the
The property values, appraisals, are going up 15% to 20%.
People are selling their homes for 50, 60 offers.
They're going for way over $100,000, $150,000 over ask.
So when that happens, that drives in more revenue for us.
What happens to the revenue, increased revenue?
Well, House Bill 3 drives that down through the tax rate.
That's why our tax rate has gone down over these last several years.
because that increase or that appreciation on those values is driving the tax rate down.
So the more aggressive the values are increasing in a certain – it's happening all over the state,
but the more aggressive they're increasing, the more aggressive the M&O tax rate is decreasing.
And Katie is one who's decreasing at a faster rate.
But Ms. Fox, one thing, just 63%, I believe, is in homesteads and apartments and stuff like that of our tax base.
The other is in commercial or vacant land.
And so a large portion is commercial.
And so we hear about values increasing on residences, and we all know that that's going on.
There is still a question in my mind anyway, or what's happening with these office spaces
That are in here where where people are, you know going from working in the office to working at home
And what is that doing to the value of those buildings? I have no idea
I'm not an expert in that but there is a statewide
concern for large
Commercial properties like we have in specifically in the energy corridor
door so that could offset some of the both growth in those residential values
that you speak of okay we certainly have a lot of people who move to Katy for the
school district and we can see that by the number of homes and the number of
schools we have to build so we've always kind of been a bedroom community I'm
glad we have more commercial because that helps us for sure but with the
increase in values and the decrease that the state's going to do by driving the
the rate down, how much of the increase will stay here?
Because for every dollar it generates, the state keeps a dollar.
Is that correct?
$6,160 per student.
Per student, that's it.
So if you'll look at it like a scale, property values go up, state funds go down, or vice versa.
But the middle point, the fulcrum, is $6,160 per student.
Again, that's adjusted based on the type of students that you have.
But it's $6,160 per student.
Thank you.
Let me look through here.
So when we do the salary comparisons district and those kinds of things,
and the administrative staff cost, and it went kind of fast,
Katie asked the admin cost is 3.4%.
Is that 3.4% of people or the percentage of the budget?
It's 3.4% of our actual expenditures from the 2019-2020 school year. 3.5% went into administrative expenses, and yes, there are some non-salary in that number.
So legal would be one, outsourced legal, in-house legal.
I'm not picturing that ratio in my head right now, but it's administrative cost.
And it's the same calculation done by TEA for every district.
So those are apples and apples on that comparison.
And so we'll probably all be in agreement.
Our teachers, our people deserve more money.
the cost of inflation seven percent and where will it end right so when we give a one percent
or a two percent increase in salary we can't even help people pay the cost of groceries
so and we keep a tight budget and we put more money to salaries we put more money into classrooms
where it belongs but how in the world are we going to help teachers and all of our staff
you know, teachers and our paras and our support staff, right,
the ones who are just living paycheck to paycheck,
how are we going to do that?
So if it's a TRE, VATRE, what are my initials, Dr. Superintendent, right?
So, I mean, we need to do that.
Whatever we're going to do, I just really want to look through all of this
Listen, and the increased values people believe means we have more money.
We can pay teachers more.
But they don't understand that when we get more money, that your house sells for more.
The state keeps that much back.
If it sells for $150,000 over, they keep it.
They don't give it to us.
They fund us by this per student ratio, $6,160.
How much does it cost to educate a student on average in Texas?
I'm not sure what that is, but it's quite a bit more than that.
that now. Again, there's some things that kick in like tier two funding and things like that,
but that it's still on a per student basis. And it's still on a per student basis. I mean,
that's the funding we get. So basically we get a big ball of clay and that big ball of clay is
the size of, if it's this big, you may have 10,000 students. If it's this big, you may have
90,000 students okay and so and it's because it's six thousand one hundred
sixty dollars and I think historically this administration this board has done
a pretty good job of massaging that ball of clay to produce KDISD and what KDISD
is there are ways to massage that clay differently and push in here pull out
here and things like that and that's a science I mean I'm sorry it's an art and
I think the administration and this the board has historically done a very good
good job at that luckily we're growing because with growth and those new
students we're not getting another superintendent we're not getting another
CFO we're not getting a lot of central office staff that we may need but but
but we're not getting those expenses so that growth comes it may work like if
we're gonna grow 4,000 students we're gonna earn as much money with that
growth as a 4,000 student district who has a CFO and a superintendent and
etc etc so we get some economies of scale based on our size and based on
that growth and that's a good thing and that's how we're able to pencil in a pay
race that and that's a good thing and that fast growth allotment is the is a
huge benefit to us if we didn't have it we would be 20 million dollars less in
revenue 20 million dollars less than revenue i i tell people all the time when they talk about this
and you know administrators and and all of that that when when you get 23 24 25 children in a
classroom you get another teacher and balance that out because that we care about the classroom
that's where the impact happens when you get more than you know the building will hold you get a new
building and you get a principal and an assistant principal and a nurse you get things for the
campus but the people seated over there along the wall they get one more school to be responsible
for right you get you you were working here maybe when i came at 30 000 students and now
we're at 90 000 and we have the same number we still have an hr person and a cfo and a
you know curriculum instruction that's we're operating the same so just because we get
high school number 10 doesn't mean we get more of all of that so when people
are talking about administrative cost the number of people in the building
when we look at those projections I know that it always is easy to talk about oh
minutes so many administrators but the support people that have to be there to
support support our campuses in saying all of that our teachers need help
Yeah. People, you know, from the principal in the, let's talk about pay grade. I won't talk about down, but pay grade of principal and below, they just need more help. So I appreciate everything you all are doing, and I understand that I've been doing it a long time, but asking these questions at this point helps us all understand more.
and I'm constantly in contact with our state officials
and our county officials talking about the needs
that we have for public education.
And I hear that vouchers is gonna be bigger than ever
at the next session and try to help them understand
that what happens here happens here.
And if we're gonna do vouchers,
take all the rules with you, I don't care.
But you don't take the rules with you take vouchers,
that's not an equal playing field.
so thank you i'm off topic
any other questions
nope thank you sir we'll now move on to agenda item 7.1 discuss and consider future board approval
of the campus staffing plan for the 2022-2023 school year the presenter is mr brian shuss chief
Chief Human Resource Officer.
Good evening.
Good evening, President Schulte, members of the board, Dr. Kogorski.
I'm excited to present the staffing plan for the next school year.
It's been working on this for quite a while, and we're ready to get moving on it.
Do I have Dr. Nita Hill with me here this evening to assist with any questions?
And also, as we've done in the past few years, Dr. Gwyncoffee is here as well to give a short presentation on the special education staffing side.
But just so you know, in the campus personnel summary listings that you have in your agenda,
that includes the special education numbers.
Okay, so a quick reminder on the timeline.
We get our enrollment projections from our business development folks in January,
and they do a great job with those, and those come in the end of January.
and then immediately after, we prepare all the individual campus staffing sheets for the campuses.
Our assistant superintendents for school leadership and support help us out with those,
meet with the principals, gather any concerns, any concerns the principals have or they have.
We then meet with our assistant superintendents, and we go over all of those concerns.
And we have those meetings, and then also with our departments for really the month of February going into the month of March.
Once we finalize those, we then prepare those for the board to have this presentation, and then we'll be asking for approval next week in the March.
Staffing projections.
So, and Mr. Smith talked about a lot of this, and, you know, of course, our two departments work very closely together all the time, but, you know, much more when it comes to budgeting and staffing.
I actually called Mrs. Butterfield a couple of months ago, and I said, hey, it's the time of year you get to talk to me every day, because we do talk a lot.
So 22-20-23 growth, protected enrollment 91,872.
And this is as determined in January for projections.
So enrollment in January that was used for the projections was right on 89,149.
As we know, this enrollment grows every day.
So it was right around that number.
As you can see, that's about 2,700 new students next year that we will have to plan to staff for.
But the other side of that story is that 2,122 protected enrollment was 87,695.
So as you can see in January, we are approaching already being almost 2,000 students over that
number.
So of course the staffing plan for next year has got to account for the 2,700 new kiddos,
but also for the unanticipated or growth that wasn't projected in the current school year.
And I think that's important to point out when we get into some of these numbers.
And again, you do have the more specific campus personnel listings in your agenda.
This is just a high-level overview.
So what we are requesting is an additional elementary staff, 213 and a half new staff members.
If you see down at the bottom, 72 of those are for Robertson. So 72 of those are for the new campus.
The secondary additional staff, we're asking for 183. 53 of those are at Jordan High School for a total of 396 and a half.
The 31 campus support positions, those are food service positions, custodial positions for the new campus,
us, and also some assessment staff that Dr. Coffey will be talking about shortly. So for a grand
total with 50 growth units that we're also requesting this year, 477 and a half additional
staff for 22-23. Now compared to 21-22, 368 and a half. So a little over 100 more, but again,
like I said earlier, we're also having to account for that really high growth that we saw this year
that has to be incorporated into this.
We've got to staff for that.
And so with Robertson, with Jordan,
another high-growth campus was Pato.
If you add just those three campuses together,
actually it's a big chunk of that whole number
is three high-growth campuses.
And one thing that I do want to remind the board
is we still do have ESSER positions under the ESSER plan
that are still over and above this campus staffing plan.
And those were presented under that ESSER plan.
There's still about 110 of those positions that fall under ESSER.
So they are not in what we're discussing this evening because, again, they were largely academic requests, not based on ratios or anything like that.
We start to roll those into the campus staffing plans, then they become a part of ratios and formulas.
So they are, again, academic requests that are above and beyond that are still at the campuses for additional support.
And like I said, there's about 110 of those.
And now, if it's okay with the board, I'd like to call Dr. Gwynn Coffey up to give the short presentation on special education staffing, and then we'll be available for questions.
Good evening, President Schulte, board members, and Dr. Grogorski.
I just want to quickly cover some of the highlights of our year in special education.
We are growing at a very rapid rate.
A lot of our families, one of the things you'll see this year, a lot of our families last year due to COVID did not enroll their younger students.
Many of those students may have some concerns related to understanding some of the health protocols.
So we have had quite a large percentage of growth in that area this year.
So in looking at this, we bring this every year, and I do want to say that those very end numbers are based on projections.
I try very hard and I think we do a pretty good job at hitting our numbers pretty carefully and closely, but they are projections.
So as you can see, we continue to grow.
The blue, these are all special education numbers that you're looking at right here.
The blue number is our PEIMS snapshot number.
So the number of special education students we had on the day they captured that in October, the last Friday in October.
And then the orange numbers are end of the year numbers.
numbers. So in October of this year when we captured that PEMS snapshot, we were looking
at about 12,300, which was up from last year. At the end of the year last year, we were
at 11,845. And then we project by the end of the year this year that we will have 13,038
special education students. I can tell you that just I pulled the numbers and we currently
have 12,837 special education students so I'm quite certain that we will
hit that 13,000 and then of course we'll have graduates and people that
students and families that move. This chart compares the special education
enrollment in blue to the overall district enrollment across time and you
can see we've been just steadily increasing. The big jump happened during
the 18-19 school year where we went from 10.8 to 12% and you'll recall that I
came or some of you will recall that I came and presented that year on some
changes TEA had instituted related to special education and evaluations under
the IDEA and then you have seen steady growth based on some of those changes
and just general district enrollment from that point forward so we are
growing and we expect that by the end of this year we'll be sitting at about 14.5
percent of overall district enrollment. National average, in case you're curious,
is about 13 to 15 percent. So we're right solidly there in the middle.
So in looking at our campus-based staffing, these are all staff members that work directly with
students on campuses. So we're looking at for teachers for in-class support adding 74 positions
and then paraprofessionals 13 positions. And those are the individuals that go into a general
general education, grade level classroom, and assist students while they're in the classroom.
And then in specialized programs, which are programs that are aimed more at, for example,
our life skills program, or perhaps one of our children with autism programs, a Y-CAP
or a J-CAP, we're asking for 10 additional teachers, and then 28 paraprofessionals in
those programs, because those programs are staffed at a lower student to adult ratio.
So a total of 84 teachers and 41 paraprofessionals across the district.
And then for assessment staffing, we have ‑‑ are requesting ‑‑ we currently have 53
ARD facilitators.
These are individuals that go in and help to facilitate an ARD where an evaluation is
not being discussed.
It's just a matter of going through the required steps and components under IDEA.
So we're requesting an additional 10 for 63.
We are requesting one additional speech language pathologist.
We have 162 currently, and this is for our new campus, to help cover our new campus.
Two additional positions in the areas of licensed specialist in school psychology.
I currently have 65 of those, so this will take us to 67.
A special ed clerk to cover the new campus.
Every campus has at least one.
And then a diagnostician to cover the new campus.
those so most of these additional assessment staff members are related to
the new growth and new campus and then I'm happy to take any questions as I'm
sure any questions mr. president I have a question please thank you dr. coffee
I'm always just curious about this, about the dyslexia.
I know there's been some changes in the law.
Are they within the special ed parameter?
And also, what are those teachers classified as?
So are, because I personally know someone that is a dyslexia teacher in a junior high.
And is she part of this special ed allotment that you have?
I'm just wondering.
She might be.
So as most things in special ed, if you stay around me very long, I'll tell you there's
no absolutes in special education, except there are no absolutes.
So we have both general education and special education dyslexia teachers.
So depending upon that individual's job assignment, she could be part of the staffing allotment
or she may be part of a different general education staffing allotment.
And to address your other statement, there have been quite a few, TEA has changed some
of the interpretation pieces to offer some clarifying information based on a lot of our
requests from the lea perspective there's been a lot of conversation back and forth with tea
related to dyslexia we do have a new handbook and there are multiple ways previously that we were
able to assess those evaluations are running through special education as a first line at
this point but thank you but it was it didn't it used to not be part of the special ed program and
now yeah the dyslexia wasn't part of it and now it is or is there dyslexia has always been part
students with dyslexia can be previously and now can be served in two different ways so if they are
a student that's being served in a general education setting and they need
a very sort of targeted specific intervention they might be served through 504 depending upon
upon the needs of the student.
So we have standard protocol intervention
that sometimes is a general education intervention
and sometimes is a special education intervention.
It's a little.
So there's not one definite answer to that?
There's not, it's tailored to the needs of the student.
Okay, I got you, thank you.
Yes, ma'am.
Mr. President, Dr. Coffey, I think maybe
a clarifying part of that would be 504,
if you have a 504 classification,
that's not mean special ed,
But if you are special ed so you could be dyslexia and special ed or you could be dyslexia 504
And that's where the separation is right 504 is not considered special ed correct. Yes, ma'am. Okay
just
One one note that it has bill three
Based on the number of students enrolled in dyslexia now funds
the
districts as part of that $6,160 for all those students that are classified as
dyslexic with dyslexia did not increase the bottom line did not change what we
were doing from at least from my perspective in Katy ISD but now there is
a funding stream associated with dyslexia but but for that's really all
it is is a funding stream it doesn't didn't change anything and it's not
enough to to to significantly at all to change things I don't remember the
amount but it's it's just this a nominal amount president one more question I
went to a presentation recently with the State Board of educator education
elected person there and seems like they said something like 504 parents do not
have the same rights or abilities as special ed parents is that correct like
504 parents don't necessarily get to ask for things or attend things that it was
a long presentation it was very good but I do remember that being something like
being parents don't want their babies to be called special ed but with special ed
comes more input from parents or inclusion is that correct so my
My understanding, and I'll say that I went to teacher school, not to law school, but
my understanding of this is that the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act is a specific
act that is very narrowly designed to support students who require specially designed instruction,
meaning that we need to somehow adapt, modify, or change the content or methodology of the
instruction that's happening for those students in the classroom.
504 is about an access piece.
So if a student, for example, is able to enter the classroom and do all of the work requires
no change to the content or methodology of the instruction, but requires a ramp to get
into the classroom, the access for that ramp might be covered under the 504 piece.
Whereas a change to the way we're instructing a student potentially is covered under special
education.
So there is a different level of entitlement.
It's special education, if you're protected under special education, you're often also
protected under 504, but we don't duly label that way.
But not all 504 students are also protected under IDEA because they don't require change
to that content or methodology.
Thank you so much.
You could be a lawyer because that was a very good description.
No, thank you.
I'm good.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Mr. President, I have one question.
So, Dr. Coffey, when you were talking about, of course, the in-class support for teachers as well as the paras for both in-class and specialized,
are these numbers just the additional pieces for our new campuses, or is this district-wide based on the overall growth we're seeing within our 504 and IEP arena?
That's a great question.
So it's overall.
Overall, we are adding several programs at our new campus to serve that quadrant of the district.
And so there are probably more in the program side that are going to be at Robertson Elementary simply because of that.
But it is across the district to address growth.
Great. Thank you for that answer.
And I'm very happy to see an increase in paras.
My son is serviced with paras and I find them highly effective for what they do in our classrooms to support
Our children who need additional services. Absolutely. They are critical members of our educational community
Any other questions
Thank you very much very informative
Well now move on to agenda I'm 8.1
The next regular board meeting will be held on Monday.
Mr. Shush, you're finished?
No, I have questions for Mr. Shush, not for Special Ed.
Sorry.
May I?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm so sorry.
Oh, almost got away.
Almost.
I do have a few questions about staffing.
Let me get my glasses.
How will hiring practices change based on like as we see teacher shortages?
I don't think we can leave here tonight and talk about teacher shortages.
What will our hiring practices be?
Will they be changed in any way?
Are we lowering standards?
Are we being less stringent?
What are we doing to get more teachers?
That's an excellent question and I think it's a good point.
It's something we do need to talk about.
The teacher shortage obviously is not something that's just impacting KDISD.
It's impacting every district in the United States.
And we do have to look at more creative ways in hiring.
One of those ways is through recruitment.
I will say that, no, we are not going to lower our standards.
We've got to keep those high.
That's why we're as successful as we are, and I think that's very important.
But finding these new teachers, where they are, and adjusting our recruitment and how we recruit is very important.
We've done that.
Our recruitment schedule this year is certainly bigger than it has been since I've been here.
and I think probably bigger than it has been in many years.
I actually had two folks at two different universities today.
We also have the, we're having our job fair on Saturday, right?
So that's going to be exciting, the elementary in the morning and the secondary in the afternoon.
Here, yes, ma'am.
And backed by popular demand from the principals, I do have to say,
the in-person was very important to them.
And we still do have the ability to do, you know, once we do the in-person job fair,
We have the ability to also run virtual job fairs after that to, you know, be very specific in our hiring.
Also, we've partnered with a company named Handshake, a wonderful company used by virtually every Fortune 500 company in the nation.
I'm pretty sure we're the only ISD in Texas to use it and one of the only in the United States to use them.
them.
And we can actually seek out kiddos with education degrees that have not graduated yet, not just
posting our jobs on a job board.
We actually have access to these students.
They have over 9 million alumni in their network.
Those aren't all teachers, but anybody with an education degree, we can look at by certificate,
we can look for LSSPs, DIAGs.
the possibilities with Handshake is great.
Our partnership started with them in January.
We've already run a couple of campaigns,
and I'm really excited about that.
And that is one thing that I think is going to be a real positive for us.
Also, in the future, again, we know this is about 18 months down the road,
but it's the ACP program that we're looking to get started in-house.
That will be something that I think will be huge for the school district.
district. And but you know we're we're a little we're a little ways out from that but we're
certainly hoping the adjustments in our recruitment schedule partnering with Handshake our ability to
do virtual job fairs as well as our our job fair is is going to be great. Are we still going to
have vacancies? Yeah probably so. You know I certainly hope not near the number of vacancies
that we have this year and we're trying to get out ahead of it but you know the the the times of
of being fully staffed by mid-April or beginning of May,
it's gonna be tough to do that
considering the teacher shortage.
May I continue?
It certainly saddens me when I hear from many teachers
who are leaving the profession
because it's gotten so difficult to do what they love.
It's a calling.
Teachers don't do this for fame or fortune.
they do it because it's a calling and it's just gotten so much harder and people don't understand
because you know discipline problems are worse more more all of them increased paperworks and
and arts and and discipline that's happening everywhere and i think covet had a huge part
in that and changed the landscape of all of it when we're talking about
a lot of it is student driven right with the how behavior and reactions and figuring out what that
looks like when you're gone for two years and there to your gaps everywhere we go I think we'll
see that for a long time but is there and this may not be your question but as I'm hearing from
teachers I want to ask what can be done to help teachers with things like
discipline problems because disruptions might be the better word how can we help
with that so that all students are in the classroom and the teacher gets to do
what they're really good at which is teacher-student face-to-face is there
anything I don't I don't know whose question that is but that we can do to
to help those teachers, is there professional development we could do to help them understand
how to minimize that or I don't know, and it may be area supes.
Well, I was going to say I can turn to the area supes, but these folks behind me are
amazing and I can tell you that they're strategizing constantly for not just that, but items like
that.
And professional development, I'm sure, will be a big part of that, maybe Mr. Sack, whatever,
But those things are on people's minds and so I'm asking the question
You're probably not prepared for but if you want to jump in out my pops box
I'll go ahead and jump in on that just briefly only to say we do have our
Presentation tonight on budget staffing that's a little bit narrow in scope for I think the question you've asked
To get into that but we could certainly put an agenda item in the future if the board would like to hear more
About some of those supports that they had but in just a general summative term I'd say to that
I think our schools and our principals are fantastic leaders and any teacher
that has reached out to you or any board member and has asked questions about
what we can do to support them I'd encourage that teacher to start with
their campus principal first and we've got a whole team of assistant
superintendents over there who can help those principals as well I too do not
want to see our teachers frustrated by issues in the classroom but I rely
rely heavily on our campus principals and I trust in their ability to lead those campuses
that they can support those teachers.
But we'd be happy to put together any sort of presentation in the future on any of that
professional learning or anything else or get that to you.
I can take a note and Dr. Caskey can provide what professional learning we offer.
Maybe I'd send it out to the board if that's helpful.
I don't know.
But anyway you'd like us to do that in the future, we're happy to do so.
Thank you.
I think that'd be super helpful to know and just help for them and professional learning
may be the thing.
So are we doing differentiated staffing in schools with the greatest need?
I think we do that.
Are we continuing to do that?
Yes, and that, again, that comes from, you know, we have our formulas and we have our ratios,
and those are a guideline and a strong guideline.
But, again, we don't say, okay, here's how the formula is going to apply to your campus, that's it.
that's why we spend time with our school leadership,
our campuses, to listen to concerns.
And even within these formulas,
whether you're talking economically disadvantaged
percentages, all of that works into it.
But additional concerns that are justified,
we listen to and try to assist where we can, so yes.
Okay. Do we have a, because of lack of teachers, I'm wondering if it will be difficult to staff some of the classes so that we have an equity and offerings from high school to high school in some of the things that might be hard to staff for?
Do you have a, is there a class size that has to make in order to staff those?
And what does that look like when you have trouble finding teachers?
Yeah, so, and I'll answer that broadly.
And then, again, if one of the folks in school leadership wants to come back.
But, yes, you know, in some classes, they're going to have to have a certain number of folks enrolled for that class to make.
And then if it doesn't make, it doesn't.
But that comes into master scheduling at the high school level, and we've got folks that are masterful at master scheduling.
And this time of year, that gets a little difficult.
But, yes.
Okay.
Okay. And when we're talking about our, I believe it's our low SES numbers increasing
significantly in one year from 32 to 39 percent, I'm rounding, that means differentiated staffing.
Those mean smaller class sizes to help with our low-income students.
Are you concerned about that?
I know that's probably budgeting as much as it is, but it's also can we get the staff
to fill those needs?
Exactly.
You know, that's what we're running into.
And, you know, it's all kind of hitting us at once.
But I can assure you during the past, you know, couple of months, month and a half of
these staffing discussions, all of these items have come up.
Now it's not something that we can say, okay, you know, here's this issue at this campus.
We've got to fix it today, but it is more of what you're saying, that, hey, these issues are on the horizon, and we need to look at planning for them.
But you're right.
It comes down to budgeting, too, because we have several charges.
I mean, we'd love to be able to offer, from my side, anything anybody wants or needs.
But you just saw in the presentation with Mr. Smith, staffing is 88 percent of our budget.
So it wouldn't take much for that to hit 88 and a half, 89.
And then what do you cut?
You know, there's not, there's, we've, you know, we've got to look at the needs, but we've got to be very careful.
Mr. Schuss, I'm going to add to that just to make sure there's clarification for the board.
I don't want to leave with any misunderstanding.
We do have staffing standards with ratios that the HR follows.
We're doing all of our staffing for all of our campuses.
but we don't have any differentiated staffing standard based on specifically
economically disadvantaged students because we don't have classes tied to
that so maybe you can clarify that a little differently of what you were
asking about that possibly might help but there are campuses that are title 1
and they have Title I budgets, and with the Title I dollars, you can use some of those
dollars for additional staffing.
But that's campus decision, principal decision on how they use their Title I funding.
Thank you.
That helps.
That must be what I'm talking about.
We talked about those.
That term has been in my vocabulary for a very long time, and you're exactly right,
it's the Title I.
But generally they would do that for things such as maybe some pull-outs or some one-on-ones,
some tutoring, small group academic support classes, things of that nature,
but it wouldn't be just to lower class ratio sizes of like the 22 to 1 standard for elementary
to just hire another teacher to drop that.
That wouldn't be an allowable expense to my understanding.
Thank you. That's a great clarification. Thank you so much.
When we talk about teacher salaries and it's constant about how much we pay teachers in KD
and it looks like it's really a lot, but there are lots of comparison charts that show we're right up there
and some that show that we're really not.
Can you bring us some statistics at some point to help with that?
Because that is a constant communication, right?
I'm going to go ahead and jump onto that because it's a conversation Mr. Schulte and I just had earlier today.
So I can give the board an update on that.
We are in the process of doing a comparison study.
Okay, so I'm going to talk about this from two points.
So we always look annually each year at the Region 4 data.
Okay, so Region 4, 47 school districts.
When I say Region 4, Region 4 Education Service Center.
I think everybody knows that, but that's Region 4, 47 public school districts that we compare ourselves to annually to find where we're at.
So when you talk about teacher pay and that kind of comparison, we are at the market median for that.
As expressed, yes, some school districts will pay more, some will pay less, and we shoot for that market median in there.
We also do a more comprehensive study of all of our pay job classifications.
About every three or four years we want to recalibrate and look at that and we bring in an expert and we're working with TASB right now to do so.
That data should be available by the end of March, we believe, and then once we take a look at it,
we are going to put a presentation together that we can bring to the board and show you some comparables of like large districts within the region
and show you the entire region as a whole of how we compare to all 47 districts in there.
But definitely right now we are at that market median.
I'm sure the comprehensive study might show some areas where we could bring up a little bit,
probably show some areas where we might be a little bit high on that too.
But I'm looking forward to that data as well,
and we'll bring that presentation to the board when it's ready.
Well, you're one step ahead of me, ready for that.
I appreciate that.
that's exactly what I was hoping to hear. I'm almost finished. I have a question about
responsibilities and pay grades. Do you do an audit or how do you determine who moves from a
T1 to a T3? And I'm calling it the old standards. It's AS01 or something now. So when someone takes
takes a move and they think it's more responsibilities, it's kind of an honor to be chosen and to
be asked to apply for this job and then they make the same amount of money but they're
doing significantly more work.
Do you have a way for them to contact you or do you do an audit of responsibilities
and pay grades?
And I know last year, I mean, certainly there are so many, like, 50 paras had these questions
and then like our instructional coaches,
we've talked about that where they were the best teacher in the world
and were asked to be an instructional coach and share best practices
and help coach other teachers to have that high standard
of being teachers of the year and like incredibly successful,
and yet we don't pay them.
It's more responsibility, but it's not an increase.
So help me understand that.
Sure.
So we do have a yearly comp plan review.
We bring the compensation plan to the board every June,
And in that, it is a review.
Our compensation team, they do a lot of that throughout the year.
I mean, one, they'll get concerns from folks that will draw them to,
let's look at this, let's see if there's an issue here or not.
But also in their own review, yes, there is an audit.
Now, to go through every year, every single job category, job description,
that would be a tall order.
But that said, the comp plan that we currently have,
now we're going to be going into our fourth year and that one was produced
actually right before I got to the district by TASB to go from the old to
the new and that compensation plan was market-based okay so that's so I guess
in in the broad sense how do we how do we place a position well one it's going
to be around other positions with like responsibilities okay and I like tasks
but also it's going to be market based and that's how they're going to be
placed now if somebody goes from an ASO one to an ASO three and they get a
promotion they shouldn't make the same amount of money so if they're you know
something like that happens of course that's when we want somebody to contact
us and say hey I think something is amiss here because if you get a
promotion officially within the comp plan you're going to you're going to
earn more than you previously did and if someone comes with a concern I tell them
to go to their principal do they do that do they is it an HR question maybe they
should call HR help me tell me help me help them where to call yeah that that's
it depends on what the concern is you had mentioned somebody moves to a
different classification whenever somebody moves to another classification
gets a promotion or moves job responsibilities, they get a notification from HR of where they are placed.
And that's the perfect time to have that discussion.
If for some reason, which I can't think of a reason that it would happen that someone actually got a promotion
and they looked at their current salary and HR proposed what the new salary would be and it wasn't a promotion,
that's the appropriate time to ask that for that situation.
But if there's just other, there could be a million reasons somebody has a question about their salary or their pay grade or where they're at.
But like Brian had mentioned, when we did a comprehensive study four years ago and we made our pay system, it was that market-based system.
Then we come through every three to four years and recalibrate that.
We'll do that after like districts within the region.
and that may require some pay categories to be adjusted, but it's pretty rare for that to happen.
I don't, in all my years of experience doing this, and I did HR for a number of years,
it generally doesn't happen that we have all these pay categories that are misplaced.
I don't doubt people think that the pay category could be misplaced,
but once again, the pay categories are double-checked on this review to see if they're within the market.
And if they are, they stay where they are.
If there's reason to change it, then we would make that change in the comp plan, and we bring those changes annually to the board.
Maybe I could clarify one of the examples, which is I move from an AS01.
Someone's like, oh, I love you.
Come work in our department.
And they're an AS01.
And it's like, okay, I'm happy to do that.
But this new AS01 is this many tasks as opposed to being a receptionist in a high school.
and then you move to something that has a lot more task and that pay grade doesn't seem to be
in keeping, where would they take that question? Maybe something like that.
Yeah, I think they're going to have to take that to HR. I don't think the principal is going to
be able to answer a question of why pay grades are in certain families. We refer to them as families.
So you might have 10 different jobs in the same pay grade and those are positions that are all
on that pay grade based on the market, not based on the job name or title, based on market data
within that salary band or that range, as we call it. So that's what happens sometimes.
One could argue a whole lot of things. I could give you a job that says,
these are your five jobs you got to do, but they're extremely complex. Here's your job in
this one, and it's 15 things, but they're not as complex or hard or difficult, but it's 15 things,
and this is five things so we got to always balance that with that and i think it goes back to
uh putting like families based off the market data not based off anything we come up with we we find
it we match it to the market and we try to place it in there some things are very unique in the
market and sometimes there are fewer comparables to some jobs we might have and that gets a little
harder to do but then we just spend more time like brian's group does in compensation they make phone
phone calls, they call other districts and find out what other people are doing if we
can't find some comparable data.
I think one of the things people need to understand is it's extremely difficult when we compare
like positions with school districts to business and industry.
That's really hard to do.
And I know that happens sometimes too and people will say, hey, if I had this job that
you have in your school district out in industry, I would make this.
But we don't compare to industry.
Rarely we do.
Sometimes we have to grab some comparables from industry, but we mostly do all our comparables
within K-12 education.
Hope that helps.
It helps very much.
And I like the, I'll refer that person to HR to talk about pay grade and definition
and those kinds of things.
And I thought, you know, they probably do an audit and it'll come up anyway, but I will
refer that person to call your department if that's okay.
Yes, ma'am, please.
I appreciate it.
my last closing comment is i know that we care a lot about teacher retention and i know you're
doing every creative thing you can think about and as you learn more and hear what other people
are doing i look i look forward to that and um we've you know my support for our people is as
big as it has always been and i'm so appreciative of the work all of you do especially those people
in our campuses and you know when we take our best and ask them hey can you
come and do this because you do it well and you do it better and and then you
know I just hope that some way in there we can have you know compensation for
that as appropriate and I know that that's your focus and I appreciate you
letting me have the time for these come to these questions and conversation mr.
president yes mr. sis I asked you about this every month and you probably know
what I'm going to say, but it kind of helps on the teacher paid everything. If we were to push more
of the teacher incentive allotment that each teacher could qualify for that additional $3,000
a year, they were to get that certification. I know it's work, but, um, I, I think it's perfect
that it doesn't come from our, our pocket comes from the state and, um, they get reimbursed right
for, for the cost to get the certification. So once, yeah, once they complete the certification,
the state will reimburse them for the cost of that.
And we did have about, I believe, 15 teachers take Region 4 up on their cohort
to get nationally board certified, so they're in that process as we speak.
Austin.
Mr. President, that last thing, because Mr. Redmond and I talk about this sometimes,
is when we talk about compensation, we talk about that we pay more of the insurance
than is required by the state.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
Correct. And then teachers ask me, but I use my husband's insurance, so I get, that's not fair.
So just wanted to put that out there.
Hard to say, oh, but we pay more of it when we don't.
And then they're like, but what about me? I don't take that.
What can I, you know, is it $135 a month or I'm way off on the number?
The state minimum is $225 per month per person on the insurance plan.
We contribute $385 per month.
Okay, thank you.
Any other questions?
No?
The next regular board meeting will be held on Monday, March 28, 2022.
There being no further business before the board, this meeting is adjourned.
The time is 6.52.
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