I hereby call this special meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order. Today is Thursday, May 26, 2022, and the time is 1.06 p.m. Noting that a quorum is present, the Board will now convene an open meeting. Dr. Gorgorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to the notice for this meeting?
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- 0:03 to 1:07 1. Call to Order - Upon announcement by the presiding officer that a quorum is present, the meeting will be called to order. The presiding officer will verify that the meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted for the time and manner required by law.
- 1:07 to 18:13 3.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of a compensation increase for the 2022-2023 school year.
- 18:13 to 18:27 4.1 Regular Board Meeting – June 20, 2022
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1. Call to Order - Upon announcement by the presiding officer that a quorum is present, the meeting will be called to order. The presiding officer will verify that the meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted for the time and manner required by law.
Mr. Redmond, I do confirm we are in compliance with provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting today.
Agenda item two, we do not have any speakers today, so we will move on. But before we move on to agenda item 3.1, the board would like to take a moment of silence to recognize the tragedy and the loss of life for the victims in New Valley this week. Now, on to agenda item 3.1.
3.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of a compensation increase for the 2022-2023 school year.
Agenda item 3.1 is to discuss and consider board approval for a compensation increase for the 2022-2023 school year. Mr. Schuster, would you mind updating the slides there? So if you remember at the last board meeting, we committed the decision on the compensation plan and formed a committee. The committee met this past week, took into account the board questions, recommendations, different scenarios that were asked. Everything from what does it look like next year when the market increases? What does it look like for different pay grades to receive different items? And so administration immediately went to work, reworked through all those scenarios that we asked for. What does that look like on our budget? What does that look like at every level? Even some options we didn't ask for, which are very appreciative of the hard work and the thoroughness of the group that went through and did that. And so if you go on here, the board committee's recommendation is. There you go. So our recommendation is to continue along. We're going to start at the bottom and work our way up. To continue on with the recommendation that administration brought to us at the board meeting with a 3% general pay increase at those midpoints. But we did pull out a couple of pay grades or a couple of different classifications. The second part would be hourly employees would move from that 3% to a 4% general pay increase. And then that last one seemed to be where most of the conversation focuses, what happens with our classroom teachers. Just due to the market and general teacher shortages and all the things that we've been discussing as a board for months that's been going on around the state. and what the recommendation is is a five percent general pay increase for the midpoint so again every year this causes a little bit of confusion is that that percentage is is not a true percentage but we base it off the midpoint so what that ends up looking like whether a first year teacher or a 25 year teacher is a pay increase of thirty six hundred dollars and so that would bring our starting teacher salary increase to just over sixty thousand uh so sixty thousand seven hundred and what does that look like as far as the repercussions on our budget on the next slide goes into a little more detail there and so currently what that looks like is a budget deficit of approximately 11.5 million dollars so traditionally we've ran a balanced budget what sounded like as we talked as a board was that there are some extenuating circumstances as we go into this next year the desire to stay above that mid-market price that we spent a lot of time talking about in the presentation and so yeah that's where that ends up there are some options to be able to make make up for that this next year one thing that we've we've discussed before is a voter approved tax ratification election increasing some class sizes at a secondary campus elimination of the KD instructional supply budget federal funding and possibly rearrange some esther funds budget reductions program reductions Some of those are very minimal changes. And the last thing as we looked at that is there were some other items that people thought, what if we were to decrease some certain areas? And the budget impact on those was very minimal, almost to the point where the negative side effects of decreasing a couple of those items aren't worth the money. We're super appreciative of our employees. And the last thing we want to do is to make a decision that looks punitive. when it's not going to change the budget that much. So that being the recommendation of the committee. Are there any discussion?
Mr. Vice President?
Yes, Ms. Watts.
I want to say thank you to everyone who's worked long hours on getting this. It is a great improvement from the 3% that we talked about last time, and how that just wasn't something that felt good to any of us. So 5% is better. And I'm hopeful for some of the implementations we will do throughout the year to be ready next year to do hopefully even better. So I appreciate the 5% for classroom teachers. I have a little bit of a reservation with the hourly employees. When you think that, Dr. Superintendent, I think this is probably paras and then all of our auxiliary workers. Is that who those are? When you think about the paras who provide support for classroom teachers to be able to deliver quality instruction, we can't do it without the paras. us and we can't do it without the people who provide support for everyone to be able to do their jobs who make the lowest salaries in our district and i'm just thinking about those people who are struggling to pay for groceries and their families with you know whatever the inflation rate is which is way more than four percent and just to keep up and be able to you know buy groceries and take care of their families and pay their bills and i would like them to be treated equally with teachers and i would like that number to be five percent i i would hope that we could find um not find i don't believe we find money i believe we um position the budget to support our people and the programs that we like that that we find important struggling with my words here for my emotions i apologize so um is there any way uh dr gregorski that we could do five percent for the hourly employees and along
with the classroom teachers uh certainly miss fox of course um the the folks you have talked about there we've got a lot of valued employees within our district so when you talk about that what we What the subcommittee has proposed here would be about $11.5 million of add to our budget. Moving the hourly employees back up to a 5% increase would add a little bit more to that, somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe a half million dollars, maybe as high as $600,000, $625,000 possibly. We'd have to run those numbers for all of our employees. But if the board is comfortable with that going into the budget as proposed, as you've talked about, then I'm comfortable with that too.
And one other question. So to go from $11.5 to $12 million in a deficit, we will repay with our changes coming up this next year if our plans hold true. we should be able to replenish that? Is that the plan?
So let me talk a little bit about that because we haven't finalized our budget yet and we're still working through our numbers and the information that's provided by the state. So I can't speak specifically tonight of how much the full deficit would be to the budget of what we bring in August because we're still about three months away from that adoption of the budget. But I can say whatever we approve tonight on the raises, yeah, that's going to be part of that deficit, whether that be 11.5 million or 12 million or 12.2 million somewhere in that range and we would do that our goal is exactly that during the next budget cycle next school year not right now but through through that next budget cycle is to examine things within the budget that we could either reduce or eliminate or do some different things with that we would be able to come back to the board the following year with a balanced budget that makes up for all of those those things. As you'll notice, the things we've put in here are some things. There are other things we could do that I wouldn't even recommend to the district, so I won't even talk about those things. But these are things that are within our control as a district to do. We're not counting on the state for anything. It would be a blessing if the state came in and did anything in the future legislative year with more money towards public ed, and that would be great, but I'm not counting on that. But I am counting on specific strategic moves that we can do as a district to close that gap back up.
Ms. Kahn. Mr. Vice President, one last thing. Dr. Gorgorski, how are other school districts able to give better raises than we are? Are they operating on a deficit budget as well?
Yeah, I couldn't speak about all school districts and how they financially plan, and it wouldn't be prudent for me to say it, but I do know from public presentations that there are a number of districts that are doing things that they're going to be in a deficit budget. budget as well. I'd speak more globally about that and I think the main driver on a lot of this is not just the salary increases that we're all trying to do as public school districts. But the main driver on that is the fact that since 2019, the tier one funding of that basic allotment hasn't changed. There's been no inflationary increase to that and that's hurting everyone's budget. But the other drivers in a budget that are causing deficit budgets or challenges is just the high amount of inflation. being around 7 or 8 percent 8.25 percent whatever day they want to manage that that hits every part of our budget as well everything that we're paying more for whether that be a carton of milk or that be a supply or paper products you name it we're all feeling that pressure in public schools so I think there's two or three things a lack of new money inflation on every product and every every service that comes to us as well. And all of that's playing into deficits.
One last one. I'll yield the floor and probably think of something else. You know me. People have a misunderstanding that the inflated prices of housing brings us more money. And it does generate more revenue for the county and those kinds of things. But we are not paid on housing prices we are not we our funds for children for the school district does not come from the cost of houses I don't know that people and understand as many times as we've said it over and over we are paid per student based on day weighted average daily attendance and that price is six thousand one hundred sixty dollars is that correct for each student on bed on on on the average daily attendance since 2019. So we don't get, we don't have an abundance of money. The more money we get, the state keeps it.
Yeah, I see Chris Smith over there shaking his head. He can add in on this one anything he wants to say about it. But you're correct. Regardless of the amount of taxes that are created locally through the appraisal process and the collection of those taxes, the amount of money per child given to every public school school district in Texas remains the same.
I wish we did keep it. We could do great things.
As I understand it, as I read through this, on the teacher raises, because of the fact that the lion's share of our teachers are below the midpoint, below the mid, they actually will see a higher than 5% increase because we're catching them up plus more since the 5% is based off of the midpoints and so the lion's share below the midpoint they actually will see higher than 5% so that's sort of one point I wanted to make and then the other thing is on on the hourly, we do expect that we will bring some of those people up to market. So they may see a bigger adjustment than the 4% as they're brought up to market, if they're below market. Is that correct?
Yes, sir. That is correct, that as part of our compensation plan that we bring in June to the board, that if there are different employee groups identified through our market analysis and our study that are below the market, we would be bringing those folks up to the market. And then, of course, whatever percentage of increase that is approved today by the Board of Trustees is on top of that.
Okay.
One of the things that I know that is dear to our hearts, and especially Chris Smith's heart, is of course the ratio of the fund balance versus the operating expenses. And I think we were projecting or what we saw in the initial budget for the initial budget for 2023, assuming the 3%, was that that ratio would be around 32.7%, something in that range. And with this proposal that that drops to about 31% thereabouts, assuming everything else is constant. So it's not a, um, to my mind, it's not a, a huge change. Um, obviously it's something we have to protect and be on and be careful about. Uh, but I'm curious, what are the other districts like, um, uh, Cy fair and Fort Bend? What are the, what are those ratios running for them?
As a lower ratio, and I know one of them has a higher ratio. There's one that was at 1.50%. But some are higher, some are lower. I would say ours is about average at the 32%, 33%.
But that's still considered a good, solid ratio going forward?
Yes, sir.
Okay. You know, I would be in favor of increasing the four to five as well in the sense that, you know, honestly, if we're comfortable with 11 and a half, we should be comfortable with 12. So if we're not comfortable with 12, it means we're not really comfortable with 11 and a half. So I mean I think it would go a long ways if we can help out the the hourly people and maintain what we're proposing for the for everybody else for the teachers. Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. Vice President?
Yes, ma'am.
Are you ready for a motion?
Absolutely.
I move that the Board of Trustees approves the compensation increase for the 2022-2023 school year as classroom teachers, 5% general pay increase of the midpoint. hourly employees 5% general pay increase of the respective midpoints all other employees 3% general pay increase of the respective midpoints second I have a
motion made by Rebecca Fox and a second by Victor Perez we will now proceed to To vote, all those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye. I have a question.
Absolutely.
Maybe this is for Mr. Smith. Do you have any idea about where that puts us working on a deficit budget? We have the $11,500,000.
Are you asking about how much more that goes from $11,500,000? yeah yeah by going from 4% to 5% for our hourly employees to this 11 5 that's gonna push us up to about 12 million maybe 12.1 or 12.2 yes I think mr. Perez had captured that pretty good yes
any more questions we will now proceed to vote all those in favor raise your right hand and say aye aye motion passes with the unanimous vote agenda item 4.1
4.1 Regular Board Meeting – June 20, 2022
we will have our regular board meeting on monday june 20th 2022 there being no further business before the board this meeting is adjourned the time is 1 24 pm
Official documents
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Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 3.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the compensation increase for the 2022-2023 school year with a classroom teacher increase of 5% of the midpoint, hourly employees increased by 5% of the midpoint, and all other employees increased by 3% of the midpoint.
5 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |