Good evening everyone.
Katy ISD · Regular Board Meeting Agenda
Katy ISD Regular Board Meeting, July 25, 2022
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In this meeting
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- 0:04 to 1:22 1. Call to Order
- 1:22 to 3:12 3. Recognitions
- 3:12 to 7:45 4. Oaths
- 7:45 to 33:59 5. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
- 33:59 to 34:20 6. Closed Meeting
- 34:20 to 35:13 7. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 35:13 to 1:20:01 8.1 2022-2023 Budget Update
- 1:20:01 to 2:18:46 8.2 2021-2022 Health Plan Update
- 2:18:46 to 2:44:51 8.3 Planning for Growth: Attendance Boundary Modification (ABM) for the 2023 - 2024 School Year
- 2:44:51 to 2:47:13 9.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of the May 2022 Financial Reports.
- 2:47:13 to 2:52:06 9.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the July 2022 budget amendments.
- 2:52:06 to 4:14:26 9.3 Discuss and consider possible future Voter Approved Tax Rate Election. (VATRE)
- 4:14:26 to 4:16:24 9.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the publication of the Notice of Public Meeting to discuss the Budget and Proposed Tax Rate.
- 4:16:24 to 4:17:56 9.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of a Resolution to designate an Officer to calculate tax rates.
- 4:17:56 to 4:19:31 9.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of Amendment Two to the Stewart Builders, Inc. contract related to the renovations and addition at Schmalz Elementary School.
- 4:19:31 to 4:20:29 9.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of the prevailing wage rate schedule.
- 4:20:29 to 4:26:12 9.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Discipline Management Plan and Student Code of Conduct for the 2022-2023 school year.
- 4:26:12 to 4:30:35 9.9 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2022-2023 District Professional Development Plan and review the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) Clearinghouse.
- 4:30:35 to 4:31:36 9.10 Discuss and consider Board approval of a delegate and alternate delegate to the 2022 Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Delegate Assembly.
- 4:31:36 to 4:39:59 10.1 Discuss future Board adoption of Policy Update 119
- 4:39:59 to 4:40:35 11. Consent
- 4:40:35 to 4:51:35 12. Information Items
- 4:51:35 to 4:51:47 16. Adjournment
Full transcript
Automated transcript, not human verified. It is a way to find a passage, not a quotation.
1. Call to Order
I think we have everybody.
Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this regular meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Katy Independent School District to order.
Today is Monday, July 25th, and the time is 5.01 PM.
Dr. Gagorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to notice for this meeting?
Mr. Shelty, I do confirm we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting tonight.
We'll now proceed to the pledges of allegiance.
KDISD Police Officer Clarence Howard will lead the pledges tonight.
night.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the
Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and
justice for
honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and individuals
any scouts in the audience
nope okay we'll move on to uh recognitions dr gregorski thank you mr shelty so we want to
3. Recognitions
recognize a few of our new principals that we've hired over the summer we've
asked them to come up tonight and I'm gonna first recognize Ashley Pierce from
Bryant Elementary new principal and actually if you got some folks with you
if you'd introduce them or if you've come alone
I have my husband, Matt Pierce, my daughter, Kate, who's in second grade, my son, Lane, that's in fifth grade, and then my former, my work family from Patey Elementary, our current counselor, and then our, Kobe Dykus, and then our former counselor, Cecile Gunsland.
Awesome. Well, thank you, Ashley. I appreciate that.
And then I'm looking around. I see Kelly Stroud's out there. He's going to take over principal of McRoberts Elementary.
And I see you've got somebody with you over there.
I know who that person is.
This is my better half, Tracy Stroud, also principal of Nottingham Country Elementary.
So I'm very honored and glad to be here.
And I'm looking forward to the competition between you two.
It's going to be fun.
And last tonight, but not least, Kay Williams is a new principal at Cinco Ranch High School.
Where's Kay? There's Kay.
And this is my husband, Jay Alderton.
Awesome.
Thank you, Kay.
We appreciate you coming over here to KDISD and welcome.
And that's our recognitions for tonight, and thank you all for coming out.
Thank you.
congratulations again uh chief call will now administer the oath of office
4. Oaths
and deputy chief tabor will read the biographies for uh new inductees
i'm getting older
Dr. Gagorski, President Schulte and school board. It is our distinct honor to introduce two of the
newest KDISD officers to the school board tonight. We have Officer Jamel Keenan and Officer Juan
Hope Vaughn Flores.
Officer Jamel Keenan was born in Beaufort, South Carolina.
He was later raised in Arcola, Texas by his father.
He's the middle child of seven siblings.
Jamel started his law enforcement career in 2010 as a corrections officer
with the South Carolina Department of Corrections. In 2012 he became a police
officer with the city of Beaufort in South Carolina. In 2019 officer Keenan
decided to transfer his certification to Texas and became an officer with the
Iowa Colony Police Department. After serving there he decided to move on to
the Harris County Sheriff's Office where he served there for two years before
being hired with the Katy ISD Police Department. Officer Keenan currently has
an associate's degree in criminal justice and will be finishing his
bachelor's degree in the fall with Bethel University. He's a resident of
Katy, living here a little over two years with his girlfriend who could not be
here tonight. Officer Keenan is going to be the campus officer this year at Stock
Digg Junior High. Officer Juan Flores, he's been married to his wife Yadira
since 2014. Juan is the father of a seven-year-old son Juan Jose Flores Jr.
who's a student in Lamar Consolidated. Officer Flores was born in Honduras in
Central America. When he was seven years old his family moved to the United
States and grew up in Southwest Houston. Upon graduating high school he attended
Houston Community College and entered the security field. Became the owner of
his own security business for several years before in 2019 he decided to attend the houston community
college police academy upon graduating from the academy he went to work for the harris county
constable precinct 6 office and on january 31st of 2022 he was hired on with the kdisd police
department officer flores will be your campus off one of your campus officers this year at
Cinco Ranch High School.
Thank you.
I state your name.
I, General Keenan.
Do solemnly swear.
Do solemnly swear.
I will faithfully execute the duties.
I will faithfully execute the duties.
Of the Office of Police Officer.
Of the Office of Police Officer.
of the Katy Independent School District
of the State of Texas
and will
to the best of my ability
preserve, protect, and defend
the Constitution
and laws
of the United States
and of this state
so help me God.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
thank you congratulations
okay we're now con got no excuse me going to proceed into the public participation section
5. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
of the meeting the public participation section includes two categories category one is for
speakers signed up to speak on posted agenda items and category two is for speakers signed up to
speak on non-posted agenda items speakers who signed up to speak on posted agenda items will
be allowed three minutes to speak for speakers who sign up to speak on non-posted agenda items
a maximum of 30 minutes has been allocated with the time divided equally among those who have
signed up however the maximum amount of time for any one speaker is three minutes if a speaker is
not finished speaking by the end of the three minutes the audio will turn off if speakers
wish to share written material with the board you must provide 10 copies to the secretary for board
services before the meeting begins for board members the superintendent the chief communications
officer and permanent record if the speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively
through the proper channels as stated in board policy the presiding officer's designate shall
advise the speaker to seek resolution through the appropriate policy finally pursuant to 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,
education, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee or hear
a complaint or charge against an officer or employee. Should a speaker wish to address one
of these issues, they must do so through the appropriate local grievance policies, FNG local,
DGBA local, CKE local, or GF local. Our speakers will be called forward in the order they signed
up to speak first we will call up speakers that have signed up to speak on posted agenda items
each speaker in this category is allowed three minutes to speak the first and only speaker
tonight is melanie desert good evening i'm sorry if i said your name wrong
good evening dr gregorski president schulte and fellow board members my name is melanie beisert
and I work as an ELA instructional coach at Memorial Parkway junior high I've
worked for KDISD for 26 years now all at Memorial Parkway junior high I want to
thank you all for allowing me to speak tonight and I also want to thank you for
all the hard work that you do for us in for our district I want to give a
special thanks to miss champagne and miss Fox for speaking on behalf of the
ICS at last June's board meeting I have been an ELA instructional coach for the
past six years when i sought out and accepted the position it was considered a promotion
although still on a teacher pay scale and i was completely fine with that however in recent years
teachers have been compensated more than ics in a variety of ways amazon money attendance bonuses
and now this pay raise in may you compensated teachers and employee hourly employees with a
five percent pay raise but only gave instructional coaches three percent i reached out to dr gregorski
and board members to express my displeasure at the lesser increase.
I was told to be patient until June and that an audit had revealed that ICs would maybe be compensated
for their work with a new and higher pay scale.
However, the June meeting only brought us an extra 1% increase.
It pains me to know that my work as an instructional coach is not valued the same as teachers.
I'm considered to be part of the leadership team at the campus level and at the district level,
but I don't feel that I'm compensated as much right now. In the past six years I
have taught KVA students, I have served as a classroom teacher, I have created
and implemented lesson plans, I have presented professional development, I
have contributed to the writing of curriculum, I have served as a mentor and
yes I have still found time to coach teachers. I have been a collaborator and
a fierce leader for my school and the district. My leadership responsibilities
match if not surpass the role of a department chair and yet I don't feel
that i'm compensated as such you should have all received a recent email from erica burke
in her email she points out that this year she will be making approximately 700 less than a
teacher with the same years of experience even though she's working an additional five days
that's seven hundred dollars less i urge you to reconsider the pay raise for instructional coaches
in the june district video message mr redmond summarized the two-year strategic plan this plan
is intended to set priorities and ensure that staff board members and community
members are working together on common goals that impact student successes and
outcomes my position directly impacts student successes and outcomes
instructional coaches do touch the lives of students on a daily basis and we
deserve at least the same compensation as teachers thank you for your time
Thank you. I've gotten several tests that suggest the live stream is not working, so I don't know if we can check that.
It's working. Okay. Thank you.
Okay, now we're going to proceed to speakers who signed up to speak on non-posted agenda items.
By policy, a maximum of 30 minutes has been allocated, with the time divided equally among those who have signed up.
Each speaker is allowed three minutes to speak tonight.
The first speaker tonight is Kathy Carpenter, and the second speaker tonight is Logan McLean.
Good evening.
I'm sorry I missed last month, but I was impressed with what I watched.
You still have value and common sense, but in a way you still don't get it.
There are two agendas that live in our world.
the gay community, which are just people chasing the American dream as everyone is,
and the gay agenda, in which I tried to define with pictures.
My definition of any agenda is your curriculums.
I understand that the superintendent is all about procedure and policy
because you have no choice but to protect your bond.
The government that you work for demands policy and procedures.
Therefore, you're kind of stuck.
In referencing 11.1, I support any kid that sits at the table stating that their parents approve their choices of books and curriculums.
But that's why I'm so dumbfounded over your desire of the gay agenda.
agenda. These kids are requesting equal rights and equal representation of things that don't
even exist for the straight kids. Therefore, I too would like to ask for critical opponents
of representation. Straight kids might want representations from Playboy, Hustler, Penthouse,
house, and don't forget Playgirl.
These kids, oh, I'm sorry.
I originally came to speak to the parents, but it's all of you that I can help with those
words, because you said those words of policy and procedure, those are actually disallowed
of being corrected, but only you can correct them and get away with it.
Straight sex or gay sex, it doesn't matter. Neither fashion belongs in education.
Hillary Clinton destroyed parental rights by stating it takes a village to raise a child.
And she locked it up real tight with your bond.
I'm asking you to walk away from the bond, and our education team will help you with those words.
Those words are the hardest part to get away from, and I was very impressed to hear all
of y'all talk last week.
We missed out on one, but I enjoyed it.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN BRYANT L. Thank you.
The next speaker is Logan McLean.
The speaker after that is Ann Russey.
Good evening.
Good evening, Board.
My name is Logan McLean, and I'm a rising senior at Cinco Ranch High School.
I'm here again to discuss your proposed updates to EF local policy.
There are three problems with these revisions that need to be addressed.
Firstly, this policy still allows books to be removed from shelves during the formal review process before a decision is made,
which violates our First Amendment right.
One complaint should never override 90,000 students' right to learn.
Secondly, I highly suggest that we include secondary students in the review committee.
Students are by far the people most affected by these decisions, and we deserve to be represented by the books in our libraries.
Thirdly, informal reviews should never lead to removal.
They should only result in resolution or a referral to a formal review.
review. In a time where so many of these challenges are politically charged, every book review
is inherently content-based. This wave of targeted attacks might not end anytime soon,
which is why we need to build a policy that will protect our right to read. I'd also like
to comment on last meeting's discussion to define pervasive vulgarity. As a current student
who knows firsthand what is in our libraries and in our curriculum right now, this route
will be a waste of your time our perception of vulgarity varies from person to person
and it changes over time any set guideline you make on this will be ineffective we need a policy
that will be built around community input and diverse perspective not a set of rigid state
standards created by a small group of people to add to that ironically many of the required
readings in my classes were banned or challenged at one point in america this is included this
This includes, but not limited to, the Great Gatsby, banned in a U.S. school district in
1987, to Kill a Mockingbird in 1977, and even Romeo and Juliet in 2012.
If the books we consider essential to learners today were once considered dangerous and vulgar
back then, who are we to define that?
I'm going to make a final point that I am extremely frustrated with the Board's decision
to postpone this discussion.
We should have addressed this policy months ago when the issue was hot in the press.
And yet, why did this wait until the summer when people are not paying attention anymore?
When so many of us are out of town?
Why are we again postponing this to August when so many of us will be busy with the first week of school?
This pattern doesn't seem coincidental.
If the goal was to sweep this under the rug and move these decisions forward unnoticed, it won't work.
your students see you your students deserve better
your students are talking to you and i urge you to listen thank you
thank you the next speaker is miss ann russi and the speaker after that is yan zhao
good evening hello good evening i'm here tonight to share some specific feedback about proposed
proposed changes to EF local policy EF local must protect the First Amendment rights of students to
do so the district must leave challenge books on shelves until after a review is complete simply
submitting a formal request for reconsideration without any regard to merit should not give one
parent even temporarily the right to restrict access of a resource to all 90 000 students in
our district the guiding principles of most texas school districts ef local policies is recommended
by the tasby by tasby the american library association and the national coalition against
censorship all state access to a challenge resource shall not be restricted during a review
except in the case where a parent requests the restriction for their own child kdisd should
follow suit next please consider striking objective 12 from the library selection criteria
Writing into policy a requirement for KDISD to base our library selection on whatever political wars are playing out in neighboring districts and our state interferes with our librarians' abilities to meet the unique needs of all students in our beautifully diverse district.
In addition, please consider adding a secondary student to the formal review committee.
This is standard practice in many other large Texas school districts and gives students a seat at the table where the decision is being
made to potentially infringe on their First Amendment rights. As it stands,
you are proposing to give students who have repeatedly and respectfully asked you to help ensure their rights to read
zero seats in this decision-making process.
process. Finally, EF local should clearly state that the only way a book challenge for content
concerns can be removed is through the formal challenge process. The district should not have
the authoritarian power to remove a book through internal, informal, or partner with parents
challenges because an administrator or board member believes a book is pervasively vulgar
or educationally unsuitable. If a content concern cannot be resolved through one of these lower
level processes, the complainant should be referred to the formal review process where a committee
will determine whether or not removal or restriction is legally warranted under the
pervasively vulgar or educationally suitable criteria. I am confident and hopeful that this
board can adopt a policy policy changes that will prioritize protecting the
First Amendment rights of students will support library staff and doing their
jobs and will reiterate the freedom parents have always had to place
restriction on their own child but nobody else's thank you thank you the
next speaker is yen Zhao and the speaker after that is Jennifer a dozy
Good evening. My name is Yan Zhou. Dear KDISD board members, I'm a mother from Keiko Davidson Elementary School.
People usually assume that mass shootings are far away from kids of that young age,
but what happened at Sandy Hook and Robb Elementary School did prove it wrong.
They are the second and third deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.
I'd like to urge our board to conduct active shooting drills regularly at our elementary
schools and improve our safety measures.
You may ask, do active shooting drills really work?
The answer is yes.
In Oxford High School shooting, after the shooter fired in the classroom, an alarm alerted
others, the teachers locked and barricaded the doors and covered the windows as they
were trained in the previous drills.
Their quick response stopped the shooter entering any of our other classrooms.
So what are other safety measures we can improve?
First, ensure that our police department is ready.
In the recent disaster at Robb Elementary School, nearly 400 armed and vestige officers
waited 73 minutes on site before rescue.
Please cooperate with our police department, provide what they need, and ask them often,
are you ready?
Second, ensure each classroom door can be opened and closed as needed.
In Robb Elementary School shooting, the teacher whose 19 students died said his classroom
door could not be locked during the shooting and the issue was supposed to be solved in
their previous security checks.
The third, ensure all of the door windows and the classroom windows have blinds.
In Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the shooter did pass the first grade teacher, Caitlin Roy's classroom, but not enter it because a construction tape covered the door window and blocked the shooter's view.
The fourth, ensure people have place to hide in their classrooms.
In Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, a shooter killed 17 people and injured 17 others.
Many classrooms he attacked had no hard corners.
That's an area people could hide if the shooter peered through the door window.
Unfortunately, the shelter places were taken by furniture.
Fifth, make the main entrance bulletproof.
In Sandy Hook Elementary School, the front entrance door was locked,
but the shooter shot his way through a glass panel next to the door and killed 28 people.
people. Six, equip each classroom with gunshot first aid kits. In Saugus High School shooting,
at least one injured student was medically treated from one of those kits. Most of the
time, the intense attack in a mass shooting lasts only five minutes after the first gunshot.
Mostly it happens even before the police officers arrive. People on site must quickly decide
and act on their own. So training our teachers and young students is key to help them survive.
Please take action. Thank you.
I'm going to go ahead and take a moment to respond to our public on this with a few things,
because safety is a number one priority for us here in KDISD.
Appreciate what the patron has shared tonight, and all of these things that were shared tonight
are current practices that are within KDISD right now.
As a matter of fact, soon after the Uvalde shooting that happened over there,
Texas School Safety Center which which provides a lot of training and resources
stated public school districts in the state of Texas provided all school
districts with what I would call their top ten list of things that they said
these are your priorities to do in your school districts and when that came out
and I gave it to our safety team they were able to confirm that all of those
things come from the Texas School Safety Center are in place in Katy ISD so we
We take those things very seriously, and we've been very blessed in our community on the last couple of bonds, school bonds, that our community has supported.
And we've really had a significant amount of money, actually millions of dollars, for our facilities to do a lot of upgrades that a lot of districts can't afford.
So I do appreciate our community support on that.
Next bond around, we'll probably have a few other things that we want to do in there to harden our facilities.
But we do take all that very seriously and we put these things in place.
Can we always do more training and can we do more practicing?
Absolutely.
Chief Gaw and I have had two good conversations about that this summer, and I know our teams are working together.
Just last week, Chief Gaw and their team got together with our local agencies, our supporting agencies, what I'd call our partner agencies,
Spent a full day conference going over our emergency plans and how outside agencies outside of KDISD would work in partnership should there be a need for everyone to be on the same facility.
That was a great day of learning.
In the near future, our board is going to meet with our school safety team, including Chief Gaw and some others, and hear about what we're doing and what we've put forward and have an opportunity to ask questions and talk about this and have additional dialogue about what we can do to continue to keep our community safe.
but I want our community to know and this was a perfect opportunity to say a few things that
this is a number one priority for us. We're taking care of our business here and we're
going to do what we're doing and we're going to continue to do more in that area here in KDISD.
The next speaker is Jennifer Adozy and the last speaker tonight is Celeste Gu. Good evening.
Hello, my name is Jennifer Adozy and I'm a senior at Cinco Ranch High School and I'm
here today to address the book removal policy. Over 100 book reviews have been passed by KDIC
based on content that is deemed pervasively vulgar and due to this taken off of library shelves and
inaccessible for KDIC students throughout the district. However, this overwhelming quantity
of books which have or had been in review include books that are significant especially historically
or morally. A good example of this is the book Night by Ellie Wiesel, a memoir of the Holocaust
Holocaust and the oppression that the author faced during this time.
Another book, This Is Your Time by Ruby Bridges,
details racial inequality and her experience being the first black person
to integrate into an all white elementary school,
consequently advancing desegregation in the South.
Indeed, these books may very well have vulgar content.
However, this is because the history
and truth behind these books are vulgar and brutal.
Was the Holocaust vulgar? Yes.
Was segregation in the South vulgar as well? Yes.
Yes, is it appropriate to suppress stories that detail such oppression encountered during those times?
No.
So with this, it is unreasonable to display such books when the truth behind them is vulgar in nature.
Along with this, the benefits of reading these books outweigh any crude content.
For example, the KDIC required reading, To Kill a Mockingbird, describes vulgar events,
and another required reading, 1984, contains lewd topics.
However, KDIC has deemed these books more valuable for the student body to read and learn from, in contrast to the controversy of its topics.
With this, if books like 1984 are held to a standard where its pervasively lewd content won't get the book challenge, then you ought to hold other books to a similar standard.
If such extremely vulgar content is overruled,
by the value of reading the book,
then consider the value of reading the books in review
above any vulgarity.
Consider how students can experience different perspectives
through a book like Esperanza Rising.
Consider how students can understand historical racism
through a book like Stamped.
Consider how students can further learn
about the horrors of the Holocaust
through a book like Moss.
After mentioned books like Night or This Is Your Time
have an undeniable importance to reading them.
them. The world is a vulgar, lewd, and profane place, and these books taken off shelves only
show a part of humanity that is typically hidden and unrealized by residents in Katy, Texas,
but is nevertheless vital to be discussed and understood. In light of such removal of books
during formal process, I ask that books should not be inaccessible while in formal process,
and only be removed from shelves until after a decision is made, as well as the board should
consider the value and worth of reading such books above the vulgarity thank you
thank you the last speaker tonight is celeste goo
good evening
hello everyone my name is my name is celeste a fairly new resident here in katie
and I just started to work as a substitute teacher for KDISD right before last school year ended.
I'm also a gay teacher or GT teacher here in Texas, teaching Mandarin Chinese virtually
to gifted and talented students back to where I used to live.
I also participated as a district advisory committee member for my previous school district
with a focus on bilingual and English learner education programs.
As a parent myself, who also works in the educational field, I share a similar concern with many other parents here.
And that is knowing some indecent books are finding a way to disseminate in our schools.
From a cultural point of view, there's an old saying in Chinese,
which means there is a knife hanging over on top of the pornography.
Sounds pretty dangerous, right?
It's like you're about to get chopped off if you dare to access it.
In fact, researchers did indicate that obscene portrayal,
let it be in words or on screen, could physically change the brain.
It takes over the brain's reward system
and overwhelms it with unnatural prolonged dopamine levels.
levels. This would cause the brain physically degenerate in shape, size, and chemical balance.
No wonder ancient Chinese people would say, which means to avoid pornography is like to
avoid a charging sword. Our schools are and should always be a learning environment. It
It is a place where teachers, faculty members, and policy makers come together and work together to guide, facilitate, and support our students' learning.
Parents and community members put their faith in our school district, hoping that we can create a safe and nurturing environment for our children to learn and grow.
Therefore, I urge you to take a serious consideration whether these kind of books should be put
on the shelves of our school's libraries.
In my humble opinion, it should not happen.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting.
The Board will now convene in closed meeting as authorized under Section 551-001 of the
6. Closed Meeting
Texas government code for the following purposes Texas government code 551071 551074 and 551-51129
thank you
7. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
yes good evening everyone i think we have everybody here the board will now reconvene
an open meeting today is monday july 25 2022 and the time is 6 46 pm on behalf of my colleagues i
welcome everyone to this evening's regular board meeting each board member received
the agenda and documentation for this meeting on friday july 22 2022 the board will receive
information and recommendations from staff administration and the superintendent on these
agenda items at tonight's meeting board members will be able to ask questions receive answers
and should be prepared to take action the board has just reconvened from closed meeting
in accordance with the chapter 551 of the texas government code any action arising from
discussions in the closed meeting must be taken in open meeting we'll now proceed to agenda item 8.1
8.1 2022-2023 Budget Update
8.1 2022 2023 budget update mr christopher smith chief financial officer welcome all right good
Good evening, President Schulte, trustees, and Dr. Grigorski.
This is the seventh budget update of this calendar year,
the one leading up to next month before we adopt our budget in August for September 1,
fiscal year date, fiscal year begin date.
So there's where we are.
I wanted to talk to you about our budget objectives at first.
As you know, we have an objective every year to maintain a balanced budget,
and the bottom line that you'll see tonight is not quite.
It's at $11.9 million.
As obviously nobody likes a deficit, but I will tell you that I have not lost any sleep over that.
We've historically been able to underspend.
We underspend our budget.
We don't spend to the maximum amount.
And then we've had what we've historically had were a little bit conservative revenue estimates.
And so I'm not losing sleep over that, but it is a deficit nonetheless.
We want to maintain a competitive compensation plan.
Of course, we did a lot back in May when we increased the teacher salaries by 5% and teacher starting salary at $60,700.
We want to maintain our health care program.
And Mr. Nauman will talk to you tonight and give you a health care physical checkup, if you will.
And I will tell you now, our health plan has suffered over the last 15, 16 months.
with COVID, with people pushing procedures, et cetera.
Our plan has had a tough 15, 16 months,
but it's still much more valuable than TRS active care.
A high priority on student safety staff.
You've seen this every time I do a budget presentation,
it's always been high and that's no different now.
Robertson Elementary School and Jordan High School,
we're opening robertson and then our final grade at jordan high school and of course in this budget
because we will open elementaries 45 and 46 within this next budget skier and so we've planned for
the expenses that'll hit before august 31st of next year in those two new elementary schools
uh just to give you a recap on the general fund assumptions um the two most important numbers
that you'll see tonight i've got shaded now uh six thousand one hundred sixty dollars is the
basic allotment and the tier two our golden penny yield at ninety eight dollars and fifty six cents
i'm going to talk to you a lot about that tonight those two numbers tonight but just for now those
were established in june of 2019 and they have not changed and if those don't change there is
is no real access to additional revenue for school districts.
Whether what part of the state they're from,
whether they're property rich or property poor,
there's really no new opportunity
for additional revenue.
We get more revenue as a growing district
than we've had in the past, but there's always
student that's associated with student growth.
And with student growth come expenses, i.e.
teachers, to sit in those classrooms
for that growth and the support of those teachers.
Enrollment increase, 4,177 students.
That's from this time last year's budget,
because we always go original budget to original budget.
We ended up the year last year with over 90,000 students.
And so if you went from the amended budget or from where we were in May,
that increment wouldn't be so big.
But from original budget to budget, we're looking at a 4.8% increase,
or 4,000 students.
Taxable values, we're looking at about 12%.
I'll tell you that today, August the 25th,
is the deadline for appraisal districts across the state
to get their information to school districts.
There's not a time deadline on that.
And as of about 545 tonight, we'd heard from one county of the three.
And so I presume that those other two counties will come in between now and midnight
because today is the deadline.
And I think that goes to show how complicated it is for those county appraisal districts.
And we know my staff, our director of accounting and Jamie Hines here, our executive director of finance,
are going to spend a large part of the next couple of days when we get these numbers working them through.
It's not just three numbers we're going to get and add together to put that $53.9 billion estimate.
estimate, there are going to be hundreds and hundreds of numbers to go through and put together
a puzzle to get with that. I would say if our values increase higher, and you're going to see
this on the next slide, it's not going to mean as much to the general fund. It means a lot to the
debt service fund, as does the increase in the homestead exemption. I'll talk about that here
in a slide or two. Of course, we're going to open those new facilities, and then based on
that growth you can see that we have added to our staffing plans 366
positions that's an expense that goes along with that additional revenue and
144 non teaching positions or support such as cafeteria staff at the new
school custodians at the new school security our police officers etc and
then salary increases you can see that on teacher pay scale we gave 5% and this
This budget includes that as well as the 3% and 5% for those on the non-teacher pay scale.
The funding dynamics of school finance in Texas, I call this a teeter-totter.
I know the appropriate word is a fulcrum.
And if you'll look at that fulcrum in the middle, it's at $6,160.
And we get more money for each student we get at $6,160 as the base.
And as the taxes, taxable values go up, the state share goes down.
And vice versa, if we were in a market where our values were suffering and going down in value, the state share would go up.
But it is all centered on that fulcrum of $6,160.
Looking at it a little bit differently, same information.
If you look at it, that student there on the left, about 46% is coming from the state and about 53% comes from local funds.
We do we are very reliant on state funds to for our budget, but that's all centered around
$6,160 times our number of students. So in the numbers that you see when we're looking at
students and student demographics and when I say demographics, it's
compensatory education students special needs students
bilingual students gifted and talented students, etc, etc
There's some small adjustments or there's some adjustments that hit that six thousand one hundred sixty dollars
But it is all based on the number of those little people that you see there in this one shaded in green and blue.
And again, if the state's portion goes up, if local values go down or local taxability goes down, and if local taxability goes up, the state's portion goes down.
So this is the anatomy of our tax rate.
And I'll just have you to focus, and you're going to get tired of this slide by the time the night's over.
But if you'll focus on the far right, that's what we're projecting this budget that you'll see tonight on.
That shows the compressed rate, that top line on the far right.
You can see the red arrow pointing right at it.
It goes down from 85.15 cents down to 80.46 cents.
We really feel that based on our values, even though there are estimates right now back from early May,
that we are going to get pressed down to that state floor.
That'll be the state minimum compressed rate.
That gold line and those copper line represents our gold and copper pennies.
And we have 11.02 total pennies.
And you can see those two little black arrows that denote that.
Eight golden pennies, we're able to take advantage of the eight golden pennies or the tier two yield.
And then the copper pennies, we have three, just over three of those copper pennies.
and there's going to be a lot of discussion on those two numbers, or at least on the copper pennies tonight.
But over until this year, we will have a reduced tax rate thanks to House Bill 3
and the passing of House Bill 3 again back in June of 2019.
Our tax rate has gone down by 16 cents and the potential for it to go down by another 4.69 cents
based on what we think our property values are going to be coming in with.
sometime between now and the next five hours.
As a reminder, 88% of this expenditure budget that's presented to you tonight is in salary and benefits.
We're labor-intensive.
Again, with more students comes the more need for staff to take care of those students in the classrooms.
And then non-payroll is about 12%.
utilities making up the vast majority of that, which the maintenance and operations department
is doing a fantastic job of trying to reduce that since that's one that
can be reduced without much pain. And we're working real hard on being more efficient with that.
Our third largest expenditure behind salaries, benefits, then payroll would be
our software licenses that run all our computers, as an example, and then fuel for our fleet and our buses.
Here's a summary. I'm not going to go into all the details, the components. We've done that.
But in summary, the amended budget that you will be seeing tonight on item number 9.2, I believe,
shows an amended fund balance of $315 million. That's up slightly.
over where we were budgeted. We've been at a deficit a lot of the year, but thanks to a couple
of things that Ms. Butterfield will speak of tonight, which are the attendance, actual attendance
rates from the 2021-22 school year are in. They're real. We resubmitted that data as a district just
last week. Some of those were better than we had budgeted. Going back to why I don't lose a lot of
sleep we try to get it as right as we can but when in doubt we lean toward
conservative but our comp ed numbers our number of students that qualify for
comp ed funding were up substantially that's probably the largest chunk of the
increase that Miss Butterfield will show you tonight as well as the whole
harmless kicked in that's going to be a big deal a topic as we move forward
throughout this this actual year is what attendance rates are going to do our
attendance rates historically have been 96 97 percent in Katy ISD they were 94
four percent as a district district-wide because of COVID. And districts all across the state,
percentages were way down. The state's whole arm was kicked in and helped us from the first
six weeks through the fourth six weeks. And that also helps affect our bottom line in a positive
manner. But again, it goes back to the number of students that we're projecting and if they come
to school and what type of students those are and all that that's just that's just a really
uneducated yes at this point expenditures totaling 944.9 million dollars transfers out a 2.5 million
dollar net out we historically have sent three million dollars from our um general fund to the
health fund to make sure that it means maintains its health and then the 500 000 is coming in from
the TERS fund for the expenses associated with everything associated with the TERS and the
Merrill Center in particular. So those two wash out and it's a $2.5 million transfer out.
So that shows a net change of fund balance of $11.9 million and still having, if everything
were to be spent and budgeted perfectly and spent right on, a deficit of $11.9 million,
but it would still be an over $300 million fund balance.
Food service fund, budgeted fund balance beginning September 1, 2022, is $18.4 million.
I will tell you that this is a problem.
It's too much.
We have been noted twice from our auditors that we carry too much fund balance,
and we've tried to spend it down.
some of this stuff associated with the accounting of child nutrition funds and
kovat have made it almost to where we can't spend it down where and then also
we would budget for some of the the new construction and the remodeling that
we're doing now the construction fund but you just can't say okay let's spend
that money first unfortunately that's not going to get spent until next fiscal
year so you can see in the capital outlay at the bottom of the expenditures
is a 4.3 million dollars and then hence a pretty big deficit of 6.3 million dollars we need that
to be a deficit we need to use those funds or we're going to end up having to potentially give
that money back to the texas to the texas department of agriculture or from the usda
but but i think we'll do that we have a plan to do that and we will unfortunately that plan just
can't unveil at the snap of a finger but i would expect another comment from our auditors
in january when when they look at that
debt service fund moving on to debt over the last 20 years you can see there are property values
have increased substantially that's going to be another increase another one in the next five
hours and our bonded indebtedness has increased as well that's to build the new schools that's
creating the property value increases with all the new rooftops and the businesses to support those
new students debt service fund looks like we're budgeting an amended budget tonight of about 60
million uh 500 000 in fund balance property taxes being the biggest of that now that that fund this
fund does benefit from high property value growth and you'll see substantially more taxes in that
but we're on our own when it comes to debt service.
As I've mentioned many, many times before,
that the state of Texas really doesn't help us out
when it comes to building our new campuses.
Only thing that we're on our own as taxpayers
and as a district when it comes to paying back the bonds
that build the new schools.
There is down there at the bottom,
the additional state aid for homestead exemption,
the ASAHI, when the state increases,
increases the increased the homestead exemption from 15,000 to 25,000 back in 2015. We started
getting some of that to make up for that homestead exemption. And then also when we voted on it as
taxpayers or as citizens of Texas back in May, and we expect that to help kick in and pay for
some of our bonds that had already been sold prior to September 1 of 2021. So we will get
some Asahi but that line above it is blank existing debt allotment instruction facilities allotments
we have not received money for many years to help pay those bonds back from the state of Texas we've
been on our own as as KDISD for many many years uh total revenues is 209 uh right at 209 million
dollars expenditures uh principal payments at 115 million dollars from rounding uh that includes
$5 million in defeasance, meaning that we've identified bonds just to just pay off.
They are in a part where we feel that it's better off to just pay them off,
and so we're just going to pay those off instead of letting those hit the schedule in future years.
We'll save significant interest with that maneuver.
Interest payments of $93.7 million, and then, of course, bank fees and trust department fees make up the difference.
at $208.9 million in expenditures.
We are looking, Mr. Hines, Ms. Butterfield, and myself,
are looking at the proceeds from that bond sale that we had.
It was funded last month.
It was transacted in May and funded last month,
and I'm very glad that that was a good transaction.
We priced it at a right time.
Interest rates have only been more volatile.
Interest rates are going up.
You've seen it on TV.
We were able to get more principles sold.
And now with the interest rate, what's happened since we've closed on those and the cash is in our coffers, we don't need to spend it yet.
So we're working on an investment plan, and I expect that it transfers in $476 million.
When you see this again next month, it's going to be substantially higher because we think we can invest a large portion of those proceeds
and actually get an earnings about what we're paying or just under what we're paying.
So it's a good move for the board to allow us to move forward with that transaction.
I think it's going to be a very long-term, extreme benefit to the taxpayers of KDISD.
So you would see a small increase in fund balance and an ending fund balance of just over $60.9 million.
So a summary of all funds looks like that.
It's a $1,183,000,000 budgeted funds expenditure budget.
This does not include special revenue funds and a capital projects fund special revenue funds. We send you all information as those
Grants are received from the state
But we don't we don't budget for those in this format and only only these three funds are what is
Are what we call budgeted funds so about one point two billion dollars in revenue and about one point two billion dollars in expenses
those transfer out again, I expect to benefit us
and be a little less than negative two million,
probably around negative a million
or just even better than that in total.
And a total ending fund balance of $376 million.
Again, pointing at that middle column
that we need to have a deficit in that,
that's planned, it's part of the plan.
We'd like to have been able to spend some more
of that down this year in the year that we're in,
but we're not gonna be able to make that happen.
Future considerations, enrollment, it determines our funding.
The demographics of our enrollment determines our funding, and it's really that simple.
The more of those little students that we have and the types of students those are is what determines our revenue.
There's nothing else that we can control as a board.
We'll talk about maybe one thing, but there's nothing really that we can do to control our revenue.
And I'll talk about some other things that we can do to control our revenue,
but there's it's not much and then they're hold harmless will there need to
be another hold harmless this year I'll tell you mr. Hines and I are budgeting
what we would normally do if Koba didn't exist what happens if we remain sluggish
in our average daily attendance we may have to amend the revenue budget
downward we're budgeting moving on as normalcy because that's where we need to
be and that's the only way that we're going to develop trends and that's the
I only want to give you a real picture of what our budget looks like.
State funding, long-term legislated funding decisions, they meet again in January.
They know that they're sitting on a static, stagnant basic allotment that hasn't moved since 2019.
But in addition to that, we're also dealing with proration in the formulas.
The numbers that you saw in our revenue tonight are $10 million less.
less, actually, yeah, $10 million less because of the fast growth allotment alone, $8 million
directly for the fast growth and about $2 million in tier two because of our fast growth allotment
being prorated. In other words, we're not going to get what we're fully earning because
they didn't put enough money in the big piece of pie that when it's all paid out,
there's not enough to go around, and so they prorate it downward. That same thing can be
said for the new instructional facilities allotment we obviously are
participants in that in our new schools that we build the new average daily
attendance that's in that new school for the first year all of it generates a
supposed to generate a thousand dollars per student and in the second year the
incremental gain in students is supposed to generate a thousand dollars per
student that gets prorated down when they don't put enough money in it and
the instructional materials allotment I think a couple of months ago we talked
at length. Ms. Coy talked at length about that being prorated down because there
just wasn't enough money allocated towards that to meet the needs across
the state. There's ongoing rulemaking I would say every six months. The state, our
TEA is doing something with those census blocks for compensatory ed. Doesn't
change the bottom line a lot but it just creates a lot of worry, a lot of moving
target and there's instances similar to that that are going on but we still deal
deal with that and that unknown. And then tax rates, they're going to vary. There's going to
be districts across the state like Katy that hit the floor like I think we're going to,
and there's going to be districts across the state that probably aren't going to drop their
tax rate at any because they're not seeing the value gains that we're seeing. I think most
districts are going to drop their rate some. I don't know how many will drop it to the floor,
but I think most districts will drop it some. But they'll be different all over the state.
Okay. So you've seen what the general fund, this is the general fund only. There's three columns, but this is general fund. And that's what our budget looked like when we adopted it a year ago at a very, very small surplus. And where that middle column is what we've looked at tonight that shows us a deficit of $11.9 million. And again, I'm not worried about that. Yeah, I worry about it, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it because I feel that over time, administration will do a great job of working through that.
We will do property value audits. We'll apply for indirect costs on some of the
grants that we don't budget for and there are several things that I think
will make up for that. That it may be a deficit when it's all said and done but
but it won't be much and again the district did the right thing to try to
keep up with inflation when we did the 5% salary increases because we didn't
have that ability as a state because of the state's basic a lot of static and so
we did the 5% and that's what that's the ramifications of it and then moving out
a year you would think based on a static revenue that that would be a deficit or
a larger deficit and it probably would I don't know if the fast if the next
session in January is going to put prorations or on that for the fast growth allotment or NIFA or
a couple of the other things that are subject to proration and so those are showing that 100% so
if everything was funded then I think that next year would be okay too if it's not funded then
you could look at a 20 million dollars there but I do think and I'm confident that the state will
do things with their budget that will help kids throughout Texas right now the state has as I
I understand it a $2 billion surplus that they were going to spend toward
education that they didn't have to spend.
And that's before values are hit the floor tomorrow morning. Uh,
that number is just under $2 billion is projected to go well over $2 billion of
money that went toward that's supposed to go toward education or was earmarked
to go toward education. That's not going to have to go to education. In addition,
I mentioned that average daily attendance statewide has been down even with the
old harmless enrollment was down statewide not in Katy but statewide enrollment was down and so what
they set aside in their budget to the number of students that they thought they were going to fund
again number of students times 6 160 times whatever type of student they are is down slight
And so that's creating $2 billion that's going to grow.
And then next year, if you read the information from Comptroller Hagar,
that it looks like they're looking at $16 billion of money that they have
unappropriated or that they're going to have at their hands to spend.
And will they spend it on education?
Who knows?
I would like to think so because we are Texas and our kids are important.
So this is a calendar of where we are tonight.
At the top of that calendar is the update that I just finished.
We're going to talk about that on items 9.4.
We're going to talk about that second one, which is the meeting notice to discuss our budget and proposed tax rate,
where the president will read in the time and date and location of that meeting,
which is basically this meeting next month on the 22nd.
They're going to prove that you guys are going to be asked to approve the notices that will run on
August the 11th and designate an officer, which is me, to calculate those rates.
And again, that will start as soon as those three counties appraisal districts send that in.
And the three of us will be working on that substantially
with our time over the next couple of weeks.
TEA will provide our, we have to fill something out online with TEA and that's going to determine
our maximum compressed rate, that top line that I think is going to go down by 4.86 cents.
That's going to be official within the next week or 10 days based on the information that's
coming in as we speak from the appraisal districts.
And then we're going to publish that meeting to discuss the budget and proposed tax rate on August the 11th.
That will also go on our websites probably before August the 11th and then have that meeting on the 22nd.
At that meeting on the 22nd, we will be asking you to adopt the budget.
We'll have to adopt the budget.
We'll ask you to adopt the tax rates.
If we're going to move forward with the VATRE, that would have to be done in August and not September like normal.
And then that would also be the last day to call VATRE,
should we choose to do more on that on item 9.3 tonight.
And then if so, then November the 8th is the uniform election date.
So this is the notice.
And again, August the 22nd is where we're going to have our final meeting to discuss that.
And it will be much abbreviated than this because I've tried to at that point,
hopefully you will know everything about the budget you need to know so that's
where we are on the budget update thank you very much thank you mr. Smith any
question from the board mr. president yes I have a couple of questions mr.
Smith mostly to help me in my conversations with I was having a
conversation with my state senator this week last week so when you talk about
the fulcrum so state versus local how does the compressed tax rate impact that local portion
in theory and not in theory in reality can we can you get to that slide easily or not sure
just to kind of give a visual i saw um i saw a visualization today that i thought you know in
a lunch and learn that i was participating in i told miss butterfield if i'd have just saw that
out a week ago today, I'd have had, I'd have fixed something up like that. So I think that's a great
question, Ms. Fox. But in reality, and what happens is, is the values that we receive tonight,
you saw that percentage of 11, 12 percent. If they just come in at 20 percent, our revenue that we
have available to spend is not going to increase. The taxes is going to increase substantially,
financially, even though we're increasing the home state exemption and even though that
rate's going to be driven down by 4.86 cents, it's still going to generate a lot more taxes.
What's going to happen is the state's not going to participate and give us as much money
as they would.
It's still centered around that fulcrum of $6,160.
So if our values surprisingly came in at half of what we're budgeting right now or 6%, we're
we're going to still make the same amount of money based on Mr. Hines' projections
of what we think our students are going to look like next year, period.
So I don't want to say it doesn't matter,
but it really, when it comes to the bottom line of the general fund,
it really kind of doesn't matter.
It does to the debt service fund, believe me.
It all 100% matters, but to the general fund, it's not going to matter as much.
because the state pays us six thousand one hundred and sixty for every student
they say we earn six thousand one hundred sixty dollars for every student
and no more again there's the slight adjustment based on the type of students
comp ed special ed etc that that happens but that's that's what we get paid on so
the extra taxes generated by our increased values goes to the state
they're going to compress the tax rate 4.86 cents.
Yes, that's our estimate.
So if it goes up 12%, they're going to give taxpayers,
that goes back to taxpayers, 4.86.
Well, that doesn't.
Is that correct?
Help me.
Yes.
Basically, they're trying to keep up with increased appreciation on homes
by driving that rate down.
It's just not driving it down enough statewide.
And because there's floors, because there's floors,
That's what's creating that surplus in money that's not going to education across the state,
which is just about $2 billion.
Because SB3 and HB3, those talked about that compressed tax rate,
and it's a gradual over years.
Yes.
So that's going to come down 4.86,
but the increase in values is considerably more than the 4.86 cents.
Yes, that's my estimate right now.
May I continue one more?
You talked about $2 billion this year.
I was jotting fast as I can and maybe a 16 billion over time because of the decreased attendance statewide
Is that what Glenn Hager says it's 2 billion this year that number will grow when they get the values after tomorrow
and then also
What's a da gonna do this year? So we don't know but right now for this biennium
It's so far just under a two billion dollar savings that they're not going to spend
The state's not going to have to fund an education as I understand it
But it's $16 billion, not just in education, but statewide, that can go to TxDOT, the Department of Public Safety, et cetera, et cetera.
Some of that presumably would be available for education.
But it's a total of $16 billion surplus, as I understand it, for all of the state of Texas, not just education.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
And that generally goes to general fund.
Yes.
Less students attending school, less money they spend at $61.60.
they take that money, put it in the big pot, and spend it on projects as needed around the state.
Yes.
They saved it on education.
They don't put it in an education pot, fund.
Not necessarily.
Necessarily.
Okay.
And the last one, the tax, may I, Mr. President?
The tax rate approved August 22nd, according to your thing.
So the compressed rate, the 4.86 cents, is that then?
Does that take effect here or is that at the end of 2022?
That would take effect. The rate that you adopt in August will go out in statements to taxpayers across the state in November or December timeframe.
So mortgage companies get it and some of us pay our taxes prior to December 31st.
if we're itemizing, et cetera.
That all happens, and it will happen based on the rate
as set by this board in August.
So the tax rate we approve August 22nd
is the one that we'll pay on in December as homeowners, possibly.
Possibly, yes.
And then if we do the VATRE,
that could be adjusted from the August 22nd
based on what voters tell us in November.
If we do the VATRE, in a perfect world,
We'd have the same rate next year as we have this year
Okay, we adopted this year and the effects of the MCR squeeze would go to copper pennies and
Generate more dollars and we'll talk about that in detail August 22nd
Could be different depend in by December depending what happens in November. Yes, sir. Yes
Thank you. I
Have a couple yes, okay
Okay. So, Mr. Smith, did you say that the ADA for Katy is not down in comparison to the rest of the state?
We are blessed that our average daily attendance ended up being, was it 94%?
Right at 94%. I understand there's some districts that were in the 80s and low 90s.
So this may not be your question, but is that the same?
Isn't that a state requirement, the ADA, you know, whatever the rules are about that?
Or is that a per district thing?
It's a state requirement that we don't get funded based off enrollment.
We get funded on average daily attendance.
So we work real hard to get those staffing ratios at the ratios that they are.
But if the kids aren't in school, we're not getting paid for it.
So we budget to enrollment, but we only get paid off ADA, which is typically less.
What do you, this may not be a question for you, but what do you think is the difference between, you know,
why we're getting such a better ADA than other school districts?
My opinion?
Yes.
I don't know this for a fact.
My opinion is because the people in KDIS devalue education.
That's why they're here.
All right.
Okay.
Okay, then my last question is, it's about the food service budget.
And so you said that in the audit that they didn't like it, that we had extra money or whatever.
So that just seems weird to me that they wouldn't like that.
But I don't want to judge on that because I have no idea why.
So are the kids still getting the free and reduced lunches and all that?
And is that coming out of that budget?
They're not, 100% of our children on this next school year will not get the free lunches
and breakfast like they did in the prior two years.
It's going to go back to normal.
And when it goes back to normal, we won't be quite as efficient and we will probably
start not making those huge gains in fund balance.
Huge, it sounds bad.
Those gains in fund balance.
But I think the premise around that, Ms. Champagne, is that we want money working for children, okay?
And if we are growing that food service fund balance, it's not working for children.
And so we're either charging too much for those meals or we're not doing the right things for children.
And so we are doing the right things in Katy, but because of the way the stars align with COVID and the way that that worked,
we became extremely efficient at a district our size and so our bottom line grew and
and we couldn't
Spend the capital timely to offset that and we're gonna do that next year. We're not gonna and operationally
We're not gonna be as efficient moving forward. So I think we'll go back to normal, but we're we have an excess fund balance now
We do and that's a problem. Okay. Well, that's very interesting. Thank you very much
This is the question. Yes
Mr. Smith, thank you.
On page 21, kind of the projected budget, you're looking ahead to 23, 24?
Yes, sir.
What is, and I notice it goes up 50 million in revenues
and a little bit less than that in expenditures.
This is without the TRE?
This is status quo?
Yes, that is budgeted status quo.
Everything that you're seeing tonight is based on,
And everything that you'll see in August, regardless of the action that we take tonight,
is going to be based on the rate, the compressed rate of the lower compressed rate.
If we have a TRE and the TRE were to pass in November or December, probably November,
we would amend the budget to show the increase in state and local revenue,
as well as if there was an expense associated with it.
So these revenues are going up 50 million without the TRE?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
And that's not for the death service.
That's just for the M&O.
That's because we're growing that many students.
Yes, sir.
And then the operating expenditures, are you forecasting, for example,
the same types of raises we gave for this that we're giving in 23,
or what are you assuming there?
I can't remember.
There is a raise in that 23, 24.
I can't remember if it's 1%, 2%, or 3%.
I'm pretty sure it's two.
It's two.
It's not status quo?
It's not static.
It's not static.
It does show a raise on the 23-24 school year.
It's not the 5%?
No, sir.
It's a 2% raise, which would be on top of what teachers are earning now,
but projected out for a year from now.
Okay.
And it's on the same basic allotment, again, and same Tier 2 yields.
So, again, hopefully the state would adjust that for inflationary things,
and that would be able to provide better than a 2% salary increase.
So the deficit would be higher, of course, in that year,
were we to repeat, for example, the raises that we just approved?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Yes, sir.
Those will repeat naturally.
Once you give a raise, they keep on giving.
But to give a raise, another raise on top of that would increase that.
If we went to 5%, it would increase that by, what, $10 million because it would be a bigger raise than it's built into that now.
So the balance instead of being 294 would be like, say, 285 or so?
Something like that, yes, sir.
Okay.
Okay. And I was wondering about the federal, you were just talking about the food fund and the, where I see federal program revenues of 21 million. Is that number the number that would be at risk under the potential Department of Agriculture threat to?
Not that entire amount, but the amount to get us back to a normal amount I think could be.
I've got a deal taped to my back deal that says that excessive fund balance could go back to the TDA.
Now, we have a plan, and I think we're going to execute that plan to get it back normal within this next budget year.
But, yes, that could happen.
What amount would we lose, roughly?
I don't know that number, sir.
Okay.
That's a good question.
I should know it, but I don't.
It would bring it, whatever it is, to bring it back to not excessive.
Okay, and you mentioned, and maybe this is a discussion more for the BATRE or TRE, whatever you want to call it, later.
But you mentioned we may still have a deficit, but we'll find ways, blah, blah, blah, et cetera.
Are you going to go into that in a little more detail with the discussion?
A little bit more detailed, yes, sir.
Okay, okay, great.
Thank you.
Any other questions on this item?
Mr. Schulte, I have a question for Mr. Perez.
Mr. Perez, were you referencing the amount of money that we would lose based on what
the current administration talked about?
Is that what you were referencing?
Yes.
It would be at risk.
In other words, if we don't comply with the changes they want to make to Title IX, then
they've threatened to pull the food and lunch program.
Free and reduced.
That's what I was talking about.
I'm going to go ahead and clarify that one because I think we're talking about two different things.
Mr. Smith was talking about if we carry too much of a fund balance in the food service fund,
the State Department of Agriculture, who works with Texas public school districts,
could come in and say you're carrying too much of a fund balance,
and they would even that out a little bit by X amount of dollars.
Correct?
Yes, sir.
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir. But Mr Perez, I think you're talking about something totally different from the federal government. Correct. Okay. So if you want to maybe restate that about the feds, what you're asking, because I think we're talking about two different things. So, so, um, okay. I repeat that. So
So the Biden administration has come out with either just an executive order,
I'm not sure exactly what the status is of it,
that to change or expand the definition of discrimination.
And then that if schools don't comply with that definition,
and I think, you know, I don't know if this is accurate,
but, you know, allowing biological men in women's locker rooms
and all this kind of stuff, that if the schools don't comply with that,
then they're threatening that the Department of Agriculture would yank federal revenues,
federal funding of food programs, the lunch program.
Did I describe that accurately?
I understand.
Yes, I understand what you're talking about.
My question was, if that happened, how much would we have to make up or how much is exposed?
What's our vulnerability to that?
I see.
So, Chris, let me rephrase that a little bit so you understand it in terms of a financial
question in there.
About how much money does KDISD get each year annually from the federal government for the
USDA federal free and reduced lunch program?
About how much money is that from the feds?
$21 million.
Pardon?
$21 million.
dollars. 21 million dollars that we get from the feds as part of our USDA free
and reduced lunch program. So that's about how much money we get from the
feds. 21 million dollars. However, Mr. Dr. Gorgorski, I believe you talked about
the fact that we are in compliance with what the law says in spite of those
stories that came out about, oh, you might be in danger of losing federal funds for our free and
reduced lunches. It was, we're in compliance with everything the law says, the way we currently
operate. Is that correct? Is that what? Yes, that's accurate. We're in compliance with every
federal statute that I know regarding anything in that category. I am not any bit concerned about
risking any federal funds from our food service fund great thank you they they
have they have I guess they asked for a 60-day comment period on those title 9
changes that there had proposed any other questions thank you thank you
Commissioner Smith will now proceed to agenda item 8.2, 2021-2022 health plan update.
8.2 2021-2022 Health Plan Update
Mr. Lance Nolman, Director of Risk Management.
Good evening.
Good evening.
I want to apologize for my raspy voice.
So if I sound grumpy, I'm not grumpy.
I just got a raspy voice.
Dr. Gagorski, President Schulte, Board of Trustees, here this evening to give you an update on the health plan.
Before I start the conversation, I think it's important for us to set the stage.
The last, as Mr. Smith was alluding to, the last 15 to 18 months has been cataclysmic.
It's been biblical, I guess, in terms of people getting sick, things beyond our control.
And this is not just a Katy problem or a school district problem.
It's something that is seen across all sectors of industry.
No one has been free from the free fall that has taken place in the health care business.
So kind of keep that in the back of your mind as we roll through some of these slides.
But I also want to point out some things to you that are very optimistic
and some of the programs that we've put in place over the last few years
to prevent even greater things that could have happened.
So there are some good things that are going on.
So this evening I'm going to give you a high-level review of what happened in plan year 2021.
We're going to look at plan year 2021 projection versus actual results.
We're going to look at what we're doing currently in the health plan in terms of our activities,
in terms of plan management.
I'm going to speak to some key measurement summaries.
We're going to talk about COVID-19 and its impact.
We'll provide you an update, what's going on with plan year 2022.
And then also we're going to look and do a good deep dive into area district comparisons.
What are our neighbors doing?
And then as I always do, I'm going to give you an update in terms of TRS active care
and then what our next steps are.
You will see in plan year 2020, we came in at an operating loss of 2.7 million.
In plan year 21, we had an operating loss of $13.1 million.
In plan year 2022, we projected a $7.59 million loss.
So here's how we look.
In terms of projection, the district was going to contribute $36.3 million toward health care expenses,
employees contributing $23.6 million,
total contributions of $60 million,
Medical was going to be at 47.4.
Pharmacy was going to be at 11.5.
And then administration of the plan for a total of 65 with a projected deficit at that time of 5.7.
We actually came in with the district contributing 36.9 million.
14,000, that's interest on the premiums that we collect.
And then employees contributed 24.075.
giving us a total of 61.024.
Medical expenses spiked, as you can see, 52.1,
as well as pharmacy at 15.6,
and administration actually went down 6.325,
back to that deficit number of negative 13 million.
point line. So let's look at our three plans. In plan year 21 we went we went
from four plans presented to you four plans and we narrowed it down to three
and those three plans were the Memorial Hermann ACO, the High Deductible Health
Plan and the Choice POS2. The Memorial Hermann ACO is a plan that allows
allows employees to move within the Memorial Harmon Network.
The high deductible health plan is what it is.
It's a high deductible health plan with freedom of choice.
We implemented a part of the high deductible health plan for the first time, a HSA, a health
savings account, which allowed employees to contribute pre-tax dollars and those dollars
belong to them.
They're portable if they left the district, whatever they choose to do with those dollars.
And then the Choice POS2 is basically an open network where employees can go.
That's the most expensive plan that we have.
So as it all turned out, even during plan year 2021,
the Memorial Hermann ACO had an operating gain of $563,000.
The High Deductible Health Plan had an operating gain of $168,000.
and then the Choice POS2 lost 13.83.
And you'll see this as I go further into the presentation,
why that number was that way.
This slide will show you that the district contributed 36.9 toward the 61.0,
employees contributing 24.1.
The interesting thing I want you to look at are some four numbers here.
The cost per covered employee in 2021 was $13,814.
Cost per covered member was $7,933.
Now, per member would be including dependents and children and your whole family in that situation.
Last year, every day, you will see in the bottom slide, we spent $142,909 average per day in medical expenses.
expenses. In pharmacy, we spent $42,860 per day. In 2021, I've already mentioned this,
that we projected a $5.7 million operating loss. In 2021, we actually had a $13.1 million. So what
were some factors that contributed to that? We saw organic growth, like we saw in the district,
plan member growth of 3.1, medical trend, and that's another word, is inflation against medical cost of 6.3,
and pharmacy trend of negative 5.0.
Let me allude to that.
Medical trend, things continue to rise, just like the price of milk, the price of gas,
everything deliverable in the health care world went up.
A 6.3% growth is pretty good.
We're seeing across the nation, I've said before, anywhere from 10% to 12%.
But in our market, in the Houston market, a 6.3% growth rate in medical trend is a pretty good number.
And I'll allude to this earlier, our pharmacy trend was negative.
Was negative.
And I'll point out some of the reasons why it was negative.
In 2021, we had 113 claims over $75,000 that totaled $25,045,000.
Well, I can't go into the particulars about those claims because of HIPAA.
That's particularly related to COVID.
People in the hospital with getting sick.
That's just the basic bottom line.
A lot of people in the hospital and a lot of sick people.
Against 20, we only had 81 with $18 million,
and then in 19 we had 136, but the cost was only $18 million.
That's a very important number to think in the total scheme of this presentation this evening.
This slide just basically tells you what the premiums were by month for our staff.
I won't go into too much detail on that,
but it shows you kind of moving from left to right the level of risk that
employees can take to meet their needs. So what have we been doing? Last I think
it was October or maybe September I came to you and we were going to roll
something out new for Katie and that was called dependent verification and that
is to validate based on the rules of the plan were you able to participate in the
plan and all staff seeking to have dependents added to the health plan have
been audited against the plan rules for eligibility staff members who were not
able to supply the necessary documentation received notice dependents
were no longer eligible any new staff to the district or those who have a
qualifying life event must meet the same eligibility requirements for adding
their dependent to the plan. We reviewed over 8,163 cases, 288 people failed, and
24 dependents were removed. This was very important because it was part of
fairness and equity to the plan. And I will say that, you know, when you
When you start this process, you anticipate some noise.
We had very, very, very little noise.
People were compliant. They understood.
And we did not rule with an iron fist, if you will.
I would say more like a velvet glove because people had unique circumstances
in which they couldn't get their marriage license.
One particular lady was married in China.
10 years ago.
Person had been on the plan for a long time.
We used common sense and a reasonable approach,
and people were receptive to that.
Right now, we are currently in the market for a new pharmacy plan.
We're evaluating where we can reduce costs,
improve our operational efficiencies,
and look for deeper savings for plan participants.
Even though we're running a negative 5%,
we're really not satisfied with that.
we want to continue to find the best value for our staff members.
And KDISD is working in collaboration with Region 4 to provide input for the legislative response
as required by Senate Bill 1444. This project is to inform key government stakeholders of the
present condition of health care by region to understand any alternatives that may exist.
Senate Bill 1444 at a high level was the Senate bill that allowed districts who were part of TRS active care to leave.
They were given the opportunity to leave.
They had to leave for at least, when you leave, you had a five-year window.
And part of that deep down, part of the rules in that bill were each region must come up with some ideas and such.
So we're putting together and cooperating with that project.
Dr. Graborski and myself are working in concert with that.
And it's a very rewarding project.
Other health activities.
HRA accounts.
In previous plan years the district provided an HRA, a health reimbursement arrangement,
to staff members participating in the health plan.
Beginning in 2019 the program went into sunset with the district implementing the premium
support program in its place.
place. Over the last two years, we're going I guess into three years, staff members with
remaining balances were given full access to those balances until those funds were exhausted
via a debit card arrangement. Effective January 21, 2023, the HRA program will cease with
balances netted out to zero. And we have been communicating on a series of communications
with those individuals with remaining balances.
Please use them.
Here's what they can be used for.
And we've actually sent, I think, almost on a quarterly basis
in educating people about that.
So that plan, that part is going away.
And as I mentioned a few moments ago, in 2021,
we implemented the high deductible health plan,
which allowed employees to get an HSA.
And again, employees contribute pre-tax,
and those become their dollars and they're portable to wherever they may go.
Well, what have we done administratively to help save the plan?
Through our pharmacy management, through preauthorization, step therapy,
quantity management, which has been very important,
we garnished $5.6 million in net savings to the pharmacy plan.
Very important to understand we're not trying to limit the amount of drugs people can get,
but I would ask you how many times do you get a prescription and not use all
of the drugs so we took a hard look at some of those things and said okay well
let's let's look quantities that we distribute to help reduce costs we're
not we're not denying access we're just trying to manage the quantity that's not
being used and then we had we've had a very successful pardon program to reduce
quantities by 50% in pain medication through the opioid management program.
Saved us right over $100,000.
And then with Express Grips, who is our pharmacy, PBM,
we received rebates of $5.5 million.
And we have a program called Save on RX.
That saved the district $1.293.
I will call these your TV drugs.
These are going to save you.
You see on Saturday morning when you're drinking coffee,
We have an arrangement with Save-On that goes into deeper corporate coupons
that we're able to pull back and really do a deeper dive.
So that's helped us out on those specialty meds, which are really out of control.
Again, in 2021, what did we do in terms of changes and enhancements?
We went from four plans to three.
The pharmacy, as I just mentioned, we focused on quantity restrictions to reduce waste and manage pain medications.
What did we do to enhance our program?
We provided free virtual medicine, and we offered free COVID testing.
Here's some interesting things I'd like for us to look at in terms of talking about trend,
and here's some medical measurements I'd like for us to evaluate.
In prior year, in plan year 20, our medical per employment per month was at $492.
Obviously, it went up to $523 with a trend of 6.3%.
Aetna, their book of business, and that's across all market sectors, is at $833.
Our peer industry is at $724.
So we're still beating our peers significantly.
Pharmacy prior year was $82.58.
Again, we dropped that.
It was 78.49.
Our peer industry is 81.30.
Inpatient facility, as I was talking about those large claims,
obviously went from 72 to 87.
That's a trend of 21%, but it still was lower than Aetna's book of business at $98.
Emergency rooms, we were at prior, we were at 26.
Currently at 27.
We had a trend of 3.8.
Again, Aetna's book of business is at 35.
One of the things that we've been focusing on as a district and as a plan is to make
sure we educate people on why do you really need to go to the ER?
What is a stand-alone ER?
What are your options?
Can we handle that virtually?
So that's been a very important tool that we have to keep pressing forward.
And obviously, ER visits per 1,000.
We were at 135 to 164.
The trend spiked.
Aetna's book of business is at 186.
So I feel good about trying to manage that.
But people's bodies were on fire during COVID.
and they just had to seek something so that's that's literally what they were
doing behavioral health prior year it was ten dollars the cost eight dollars
our trend dropped to twenty dollars or twenty percent rather and at this book
of business was nineteen behavioral health as we all know with the things
that have been going on we were at 596 in the prior currently at 673 it jumped
12.9%.
Aetna's book of business is 10.72%.
This just
is a breakdown of
the plan year. I was telling you that negative
5%. I want to point out
a couple of things, too, that are very important.
The last two are our generic
fill rate.
We're right in line with
using generics. We're at
83.5 last year,
and our period was at 84,
and we're right in line
in formulary compliance of 98.3 against our peer group of 98.6.
And formulary compliance is nothing more than our PBM,
which is Express Scripts, working with physicians to say,
here are the drugs that we recommend.
Let's do step therapy.
Let's try this one first.
Maybe that one doesn't work.
We'll move to the next one.
So it's working.
It's working.
Virtual medicine performance.
This seems like a busy slide,
but i'm going to point to a couple of things in plan year 2020 we had 5 428 employees enrolled
in 2021 we had 7 303. this is very this is a very important number because people are using
virtual medicine uh to take care of their health care needs and look at different options and we
what we saw in during coveted was there was a spike in virtual care because people and we promoted
I promoted that because where were the sick people with COVID and where were the sick people in general?
They're sitting in the emergency rooms and they're sitting in the ERs.
So if I have a sinus infection, do I want to go sit in an urgent care where I've got five or six people possibly with COVID?
Not really.
That's not the best situation.
So it aggregated savings to us, you know, right at $996,000 when you look at what the cost of those care sectors would be.
Earlier in the presentation I talked about large losses, and you can see the Choice PLS, as I mentioned earlier,
and we lost $13 million.
That's where the large losses occur.
You can see that the membership, that breakdown of member, spouse, and children,
we had 62 large losses over $75,000 in that plan.
Here are some impact factors for COVID.
As I mentioned earlier, standalone ERs and emergency rooms saw an increase in 21.9%.
This is the trailing thing that's been hitting us, I'll be rather frank,
is the delay of treatment and planned surgeries.
People didn't realize what they had or didn't have.
And because of lack of access to care, people's health suffered.
COVID-related claims totaled $6.1 million.
million dollars.
Covid vaccinations. We vaccinated a total of 11,806 at an expense of $420,000.
And I will tell you this, the uh, I was, I think I mentioned this later on in
the presentation, but
we worked with a lot of our local health authorities to promote vaccinations to
give people access to those which was very successful.
And again, a lot of undiagnosed conditions went unchecked due to lack of access to providers.
And again, large losses, $25 million against $18 million the prior year.
Here's just some COVID cost drivers that you will see.
I think the point I would like for you to take away from this is,
in all the emergency rooms and the urgent cares and things of that nature,
total non-emergent care totaled 3.456 million dollars.
That was because people were, like I said, their bodies were on fire.
They were trying to find first and whatever was available to seek treatment.
And you saw the lines and you heard the stories of lack of access to care and things of that nature.
Let's talk about some success stories.
The Wellness Center.
We tested 17,269 staff members from August 21st, 21 through July 3rd, 2022.
Incredible.
Plan year 2021 vaccinations, we had 11,806.
And again, this does not include, I don't have access to the data that the county did on our staff.
We partnered with them and helped them communicate some across the street over at Fort Bend Health
and different locations at the mall.
And then virtual medicine services kept plan members out of high-risk areas, as I've already talked about.
Direct actions, free testing, occupational and non-occupational, cost avoidance.
By testing, it avoided people going to the ERs, going to those standalone emergency rooms.
It was prevention.
We were able to direct them to urgent care or get them virtually taken care of on the spot.
And many times we saw we were able to handle that case right there as they were getting their test results
so we can manage and we can keep these classrooms open and all these programs up and running
so we can manage that better.
And by redirecting staff away from these waiting rooms,
somebody might have tested negative,
but we kept them out of a potential hazardous area waiting to get tested,
where their person sitting next to them might have been positive.
2022, the projection, we were projecting 62.4 in contributions
from both staff and the district.
with against expenses of 69, or basically 70 million,
with a projected loss of 7.599.
So where do we stand?
Month, January, plan year 2022, January to May,
we projected 2.2, and we stand at 4.55 negative right now.
I will say this.
We are seeing a bending of those expenses.
January, February, and March, and I think Mr. Smith alluded to this in several of our presentations
earlier this spring, those were things that were actually happening in December or November
and December.
And because of the delay in getting claims reporting, they were hitting the books.
But what we're seeing is that cost curve beginning to bend downward.
It's moving in the right direction.
Everyone asked me and I think they've asked you all, some of you have come to me and said,
well, where do we compare ourselves against other districts?
And my response has always been it's kind of, it's hard because we're talking apples,
you can't compare apples to apples, oranges to oranges, right, all the time.
But the Affordable Care Act created an actuarial value model that puts plans,
rates plans from bronze, silver, gold, and platinum.
And here you will see that based on the actuarial value and other self-insured districts,
these are districts in our area, our value stands at 76.1,
which is on the higher end of silver.
So the value of the plan is a very high-rated silver plan,
which is good.
And just to let you know that the bottom number
and the top number are just anomalies
based on level of contributions and lack of contributions.
Okay?
So where do we stand against in terms of medical spend?
You know, I was telling you earlier about ourselves and our area districts.
Last year in plan year 2021, per member per month, PMPM, we spent $801.
So that puts us at the bottom of the cost in managing health care in the districts in our area.
And I will say this, the district with the lowest costs there, their deductible is so high, employees never reach it.
I don't know if it's really insurance.
I just think it's just.
So we are very much on the lower end of managing our costs of our peers in this area.
So what's going on with TRS active carriers?
As I mentioned earlier about Senate Bill 1444, lots of changes going on.
This year, plan year 2023, there will be no rate increases, premium increases, for TRS active care members.
And the reason is, in April, the state infused $435 million into TRS, a one-time payment, to plug their deficit hole.
Okay?
Here's an I'll point your attention to the red font. These funds were not
extended to any self-insured or any other fully insured district in Texas.
Only TRS active care. And under Senate bill 1444, right now TRS is only
insuring about 51% of the districts in Texas. People are leaving, seeking bridge
plans if you will, to look at self-insurance. There's a program out
with TASB that is as sort of a bridge if you will and they're looking at that. And
you always say well, I think Mr. Smith pointed out in one of his slides, we want
to stay self-insured for various reasons and the primary reason is the ability to manage our plan
and implement those programs on our timing and how what's best for our employees and based on what's
happening in our cost factor here in the the greater houston area had we been with trs our
Our estimated contribution would have been $97.7 million
against what we spent last year, $74.1.
And I want to go right, just say real briefly about the $435 million.
That is not a guarantee for next year.
It is unknown what the legislature will do with that.
And it's very unknown what they're going to do with Senate Bill 1444
in terms of districts leaving.
I would be very concerned if I was a TRS district that stayed on board
because of all these districts that are leaving,
and there are some significant districts leaving,
somebody's going to be left holding the cookie jar with all those claims.
So that's going to be an interesting play,
and I think we are in a very good position, if you will,
to be able to not have to be concerned about that.
Next steps, as I mentioned, we're looking at our pharmacy right now.
We're going to evaluate plan structure
and underwriting for the plan year for 2023.
We'll discuss with district administration plan year 2023 options this month,
and then I'll present to you next month what plan year 2023 will be looking like.
So thank you for listening, and I would entertain any questions if you have any at this time.
Any questions?
President?
Yes.
I'm just wondering on the employee cost, which I think slides say 40, 41 percent, the employee contributes.
Mr. Perez, could you get closer to your microphone?
I'm having trouble hearing.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
You mentioned or the slides mentioned that the employee contributes about 41 percent of the total plan.
plan, any idea of in terms of peers if the, for example, if the district is funding more
of the cost, you know, and reduces the out of pocket for the employee.
If that's, for example, what's the difference between, you know, the silver and the gold
that we saw there?
You know, is that part of it as well as the coverage?
but you know any different any any idea of how we fare you know several
employees worried about not only the coverage but also what they take home
which is you know they're out of pocket I will tell you this that's there's
lots of there's lots of questions within question let me try to answer that those
for you we contribute three hundred eighty five dollars a month toward a
staff members premium so we add up all the expenses we project it and the
and the district contributes $385.
Okay?
Now, in the years that we've had a deficit,
the district has funded those deficits.
So the cost, the district contribution, is actually higher.
So the employee hasn't been, those increases over time
haven't been passed on in terms of premium increases.
So the things that we've been doing through pharmacy rebates
and reducing administrative costs
have tried to keep the benefit as level as we can for the staff member.
So 60-40 across our area is about the standard average.
Some may have a little bit more.
Some may have a little bit less.
So it's an art, if you will, of how much a district wants to contribute.
And Katie and the employees have been very blessed in those years
that we had a deficit because of high claims or whatever it might be that
those costs were not passed on to them so that actually the the premiums that
they were paying were not reflective of that the choice word says the choice
plan is $996 for employee and family that's the out-of-pocket for the
employee and family yes that's that's each of these are out of pockets they're
premium. That is their premium. And that is a very, that is a very rich plan. That's a Cadillac
plan, basically. That's a very low deductible. I don't want to say Cadillac plan because the IRS
might not like that term for me to use publicly because there's a tax associated with that.
So I will say it's a very, it's a very lucrative plan that allows an employee to go
pretty much any place they want.
But you have to keep in mind that plan is a plan
where you see a lot of people who are high utilizers of health care.
They need a lot of care, so it's more expensive.
Whereas comparatively to your high deductible or your ACO,
you will see typically a younger set of people who are healthier moving to that.
In fact, when we rolled out the plans last year, we had about a 16% migration from the Choice POS to the Memorial Harmon ACO because of healthy people not wanting to pay those premiums anymore.
They're staying within the Memorial Harmon.
What's the breakdown roughly between Plan, how many of the 8,000, are they largely on the Choice or are they largely, you know, anything else?
It's a good question, and I'll go off my best memory because it fluctuates.
Basically, we have about 1,800 people in the Choice POS,
and it's pretty evenly spread across, if you will.
I can follow up and give that number to you if needed.
Thanks.
Yes, sir.
I had a question.
Can you go to slide five?
I'm sorry.
It's kind of working backwards.
It's all right.
There's one, two, three, four.
I needed a break.
This one?
Yeah.
Yeah, I noticed 100% of the loss was from the one plan, right?
And is that 100%?
So we just said we didn't have that plan, we actually would have been operating at a surplus.
So I'm just wondering, is it normal for one plan to be that negative?
And why was that plan underforecasted so greatly?
That seems like an anomaly that it's all in one bucket.
Well, I've been here, I guess this is my 10th or 11th year.
That plan has been in place.
And that has historically been the loss leader year over year.
And we price it accordingly based on the previous year's activity.
And you can provide, you know, the principle of insurance is you spread the risk.
You spread, you want your healthy people to help pay for your sick people.
And I will say with the Choice POS, this too, it just happened to be you had a lot of people with underlying conditions that were there for a reason, okay?
They were already sick, if you will, suffering from other ailments and matters.
And then they got COVID.
it so it just it just quantifies just exponentially created a larger situation
and if you priced if you completely price that program out to make it
cost-effective the premiums would be through the roof I mean there would be
unaffordable but nothing that just it's a business right and it's an unsustainable
I'm a business guy that's an unsustainable business what I agree with
you I agree with you but one of the things that we have to be careful of
okay is making sure that we're compatible with TRS we have to follow
make every year we have a guideline that we're under exactly you have to make
sure that we have comparable plans to TRS and they currently have that that
type plan now as they roll out we look at it year over year and go okay we're
in compliance here what if we do this we do that that's that's an annual look
that we do and I'm assuming when you're new then projecting for the next year
you do the previous year you can't goose that and say well we're typically way over on this one
let's goose it a little bit and have higher premiums you can't do that right it's a formula
that you have to use we we take we take a a formula based on i will say this covid is going
to basically be thrown out the window because it's it's complete anomaly so we have to look
out of normal conditions normal frequency and normal severity as best we can and then go okay
here's where we are and then what are we what's what's the best pricing structure and and
sometimes you know pricing a a a plan is not just based on premium it's looking at deductibles
out-of-pocket maximums, co-pays, and things of that nature to try to keep the premium in check,
but the employee might have to share a little bit more of the cost.
So there's, and that's what we do, and that's what we're doing right now,
is looking at those numbers to make sure that we get as healthy a plan as we can.
Yeah, is there a plan that we can get that is a little bit more predictable,
that keeps us in compliance with TRS
when we're not losing,
we're underestimating it by $14 million.
And that's the million-dollar question literally, right?
It is.
It is.
And I think the other two plans we've been pricing
and they've been structured is evidence.
Evidence.
And even during COVID,
even the worst that I've seen in my career,
it was doing well.
If you had a surplus,
You said the deficit is fully funded by the general fund not going back to the employees get a surplus the same as true
just goes any surplus goes into the
As as just goes on it doesn't go back to the employees. No credit in the year, right?
No, it does not but it
What it does is we look at the modeling you you're able to
Take instead of having having this it's a little bit more of a wave so that that that in terms of
predictive modeling helps keep premiums in check, so therefore the employees actually
My last comment is it's amazing that you track all this, all the different metrics, how you
guys are dialing it in.
It's certainly unfortunate to see that one dark spot there, but there was a lot of bright
spots that you guys are doing to control costs.
So very appreciative of all your efforts.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. President?
Yes.
Did I hear right? I think I caught it. A small, small comment. Instead of taking the big year-long
picture, you said you were looking at in June, those costs started to hit, but some of these
like quicker snapshots are starting to show we're trending back to normal.
What is normal? Yes, we're starting to see the cost curve bend. I will tell you,
January, February, and March were very, very difficult.
But as we get into April and May, things are starting in looking June.
It's kind of bending downward.
We don't see as many large losses near the losses that we had
in terms of the great big things that we had.
Is there any kind of...
education we're doing with employees to, I know, because like as a young husband trying to pick out
a plan, there was a time I looked, I was like, oh, I want that one. But reality is, as time's gone on
and times when our family's been healthy, I've realized, wow, like I think, was it, there used
to be a thing called an EPO? It was like exclusive provider. I don't know. At one point when my
family was on KDIC insurance, I remember going through and breaking that down and how much of
difference it made from the old mentality of just pick the biggest not Cadillac but nice plan
but then going for one I actually needed do we have any education that's able to say we have as
part of our open enrollment process you know your what are your costs what are your expected
expenditures for your upcoming surgeries and things of that nature and then we also as part
of the open enrollment we have benefit counselors through our provider ADP that helps answer those
questions and we've got some really good open enrollment tools that help people
guide through that and then we look at that on an annual basis and go do we
need to tweak it and it's you know as a plan administrator you hit there's a
fine line you have to walk because I don't want to become a benefit counselor
so to speak and say well you need to get this one and well you told me this
therefore I've lost more money in my own personal finances because you told me to
go here well i didn't think that you were going to have knee surgery or that you're going to have
open heart surgery or things of that nature but i think we have some really good tools
with our navigator adp and our enrollment platform that we use any other questions yes i have some
questions um first of all i i'm sorry that you you don't feel well tonight and i appreciate your
your presentation, but I have a few questions.
Let me see where they were.
So on that one slide, I think it was on page six, it said $142,000 a day is what we're
spending.
So what I'm wondering about that is, does that include the cost of their leave also,
or is that just a medical expense?
That's just medical.
This number does not include any loss efficiencies through substitutes, FMLA losses, or anything like that.
This is pure doctor visits, ER visits, MRIs, CAT scans.
Is it a combined district cost and the employee cost, or is it just the employee cost, or just the plans cost?
This is the plan cost.
Okay.
Then the other thing is about the, what did you call it, the choice one, not the Cadillac,
but the one.
So if we get better at it, let's say like next year or this year, we don't have a loss
in it, would that help reduce the rate for the following year?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
If the plan operates, and I'm not in a gain or a loss.
You know, we've had some really good years where I think some of you will recall we were
in an operating game because of the way we structured things.
If we have a game that keeps this, the premium upheaval, more as like a gentle wave that
we may have to tweak.
And, you know, one of the things that you always want to try to do is when we're looking
at pricing and premiums out is, you know, I mentioned that we try to stay in tune with
with medical inflation or medical trends.
To see what that number is versus what plans,
the activities going on in the plan,
it's a very hybrid process, not just to say,
well, I think we're going to charge this,
and we hope for the best.
It's very scientific.
All right.
Now, on the audit that y'all did,
so I saw you only kicked out, whatever, 24 dependents, whatever.
whatever, did the cost of that audit, because I'm sure there was an expense to doing that,
did we profit on that?
Like by the 288 fails and the 24 people, the cost of the audit,
was it found to be beneficial to do that for the little bit of gain that you got?
I think the gain was, if you want to know the truth, I think it was substantial.
because what dependent verification really does is a lot of people get on
plans and hoping that they can slide in the back door because they know they
have something going on. What dependent verification really does is it's the
cost avoidance of those individuals. They step up to the line and they go I'm
gonna get checked so I'm not gonna go through enrollment. I know I'm gonna get
get caught, so to speak, that I'm going to have to prove that one, I'm the spouse or
that little Johnny is in my house, is my legal dependent and meets those rules.
We had several cases where people were saying, well, he's just living with us.
He's a friend.
Well, I'm sorry.
That doesn't qualify.
Sorry.
You're not on the plan anymore.
more it's it's it's that person's thinking about crossing the line that is
where you save it and going forward okay anytime a person has a qualifying life
event a birth of a child a marriage anything of that nature we're making
them prove that up we're not making people do it annually like you know
Lance doesn't have to prove that he was married or has three kids or four kids
or whatever every year we prove it and do it once and new hires who come on board as well okay um
the the trend in the virtual medicine medical visits so since i've seen it was going up you
know from 2020 to 2021 if that trend continues to increase then that will also help to decrease
you know because it was it was kind of a significant increase you know from i can't
I remember it was like, let's say, let's use round numbers like 700 to 900 or something like that.
So if it went up another, you know, if it kept going up like that every year, you know,
I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was a significant savings.
It continues to grow.
And I think that is a function of, number one, is we have a good provider with ReadyMD.
Number two, people are becoming accustomed to that because of care.
It's convenient.
convenient. Um and they and I think people quite frankly have changed their outlook of
going to doctors because they don't want to be around somebody that's sick. Sorry Ted.
Okay and then just two more questions um on the vaccination cost. So I guess I'm just
not well informed about this but I thought that the vaccinations you know for example
But when I went to go get my vaccination, I didn't have to spend any money on it.
No, your plan did.
And here's the deal.
The government provided the serum for free.
But the person giving the shot, whether it be Walgreens, your doctor, whoever,
was able to charge an administrative fee of anywhere from $36 to $40.
So by law, they could charge that to the respective health plan.
Oh, I see.
So there were two different costs.
So when people are saying, well, I'm getting a free COVID shot, oh, okay, great.
The person walks in, they get their shot, they're gone.
We set aside $450,000 on it.
Yes.
Okay.
And then this is my last question, and I don't know if you know the answer to this.
Well, actually, this is like a two-part question.
I remember about a year ago or so you were telling me that there, or you told us that there was this big abuse of the COVID leave thing or workers comp or something like that,
where people were, you know, you had this slide that showed all this money that people were abusing, you know, did they have COVID but they were off and they were using, do you know what I'm talking about?
Yes, ma'am.
That was for unemployment.
Unemployment.
That was unemployment.
So that's not part of this.
This has nothing to do with it.
And so anyway, so maybe you'll tell us about that later, if that's getting better or not.
But the last thing is, are we still getting, maybe Dr. Kroporsky does this answer,
are they still getting the 10 days of COVID a year?
Or no more days or whatever it was?
That ended?
All right, so Mr. Sash.
Yes, that has ended.
That ended as of June 30th.
Of this year?
This year, yes, ma'am.
Wow.
Okay.
And all the employees know that?
Yes.
They got an email or something?
It was in the communication that went out from Ruben Martinez.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
It went out, I believe that went out last week, didn't it?
I'm sorry.
Ruben's communication about the COVID leave.
At least anything for the return to school regarding students.
Oh, okay.
Okay, the staff can't use the five days anymore.
They are still, per CDC and Texas Human Health Services,
required to be off for five days if they are COVID positive
or have symptoms for COVID, and they can return to work after five days.
I know, but there was some kind of thing where they got extra days off
if they had COVID.
There used to be a thing.
Not the paid COVID leave.
Yeah, the five days and the paid COVID leave, two different things.
But the paid COVID leave ceased to exist on June 30th.
Okay.
Now they were notified of that in their updated guidelines.
Okay, thank you.
I just had a few teachers ask me that.
Mr. Schulte, thank you.
I have a few questions that I don't think are repeats.
So the virtual visits, I mean, yes, why not?
Who wants to spend all that time at the doctor's office waiting?
I think that's wonderful, and I have some doctor friends who like it as well
because you can see people for things like sore throats right so does our plan
reflect those of other well you do have some self-funded plans here so when
you're comparing them you compared actuarial value and a medical and
pharmacy spend I would like to see the comparisons of our district with other
districts I see that you reference the people are about 60 40 but the
questions we get are why does this district cost this much and why are
their pharmacy their prescriptions this much and I know you can't apples to
apples but can you give us a little help on where because we have to be better
than them because we're kdst but I know we do things better than they do maybe
just you know there there are X expenditures or less but here's how much
they spend on that I just would like to see more comparison that gives us more
than 800 to 974 if can you help us with any of that when we get questions I
could yes and I'll just be completely just level honest with you that is
That is extremely difficult because one district may be contributing $340 PEPM, whereas we
contribute 385.
So the cost of that pharmacy copay on generics and office visits, it's all over the place.
And that's very, very difficult to say, well, I paid this, right?
And it's a function of how much, I can try my best to get to that, but it's extremely difficult.
And it's hard to give a true picture of that.
And that's a struggle.
That's a question we get a lot is, well, I came from so-and-so.
Well, what were you paying?
Okay.
Why?
So you see what I'm saying?
I know it's difficult.
And I know the ask is difficult.
but I also know that what we're providing is excellent and it's just
really hard to hear oh we didn't get a raise and now my insurance and I have to
pay more for my prescriptions and I know that we pay more 385 I know that there
are things in there where if you you know have you compared all the things
but I don't have that information to give them like do you know how much they
pay per month oh yeah it's cheaper and there are X is cheaper how much does
does their district pay of their plan? I don't know. So if we could have something with a couple
of neighboring districts that they talk about the most often, what Mr. Dr. Gregorski, you probably
know which ones those are. Maybe Fort Bend and Cy Fair, they talk, Fort Bend and Cy Fair.
Help us with that because I know that it's quality. I know that. I'm sorry, I'm just. I know it's hard,
but if you could help us with that.
I know what their PEPM is.
That's easily attainable.
Okay.
But do you know how much their plan costs are,
and what about their prescription costs?
Well, I will tell you this.
Can we get that?
I will tell you this.
South Faroe only contributes $225.
$225.
And they're a part of TRS, so that's what's going to happen.
It would be pretty great to have that in a slide
where we can just point them to it and go,
go look at that slide that Mr. Nauman presented,
and you'll see that it isn't better.
it's it's it's I'll promise you to endeavor to get the best data I can for
you a little bit would help okay the why do you compare Aetna book a business is
that kind of a middle of the road or is that the one that shows us that it's
more and more better I just don't know why you know it's the reason I show that
is it's it's across all business sector in this area so it would it would
include Aetna's clients that are in the retail Aetna's clients that are in
manufacturing so if you had chosen a Humana or something it would be similar
it's just right are they all about similar I just wonder why Aetna I
couldn't speak to Humana or Cigna or Blue Cross I mean I would say they'd be
pretty much in the same ballpark, but that would be purely speculation.
But I just wanted to show that across what's going on in the market,
health care-wise, and then what our peers are seeing.
Got it.
The wellness center, did I see somewhere that that's closed permanently?
Did I see that?
I'm making that up in that update thing that we get in the email.
That is correct.
Wellness Center, what did it do?
That's the one where you went for the COVID vaccinations and that, so we're finished?
Generally, at the Wellness Center, you could get COVID testing or you could get possible flu testing.
We did do some partnerships where people came out and did vaccination clinics there.
They were not our vaccination clinics.
They were people who wanted to come in and be able to do that.
And so just a few of those kind of services.
Okay. And so we're finished with that. And now they go and get that at their doctor or whatever. Yes. The vaccinations for the children. Okay, good. That was that was a really great idea served a lot of people. Okay.
Okay.
And I already asked that last question.
Thank you very much.
I would never wanna do what you do.
And I'm super grateful for you.
So please, I hope that all of my questions,
you see them as information
so that I can help answer questions
rather than critical,
because I'm not.
It's uncred, what you and Mr. Smith do,
and well, all of you.
It's really incredible and I'm grateful for you.
And I'm glad that we decided to self-fund way back when it wasn't very popular,
but we knew how important it would be to do.
And I sat at this dais when that decision was made,
and I'm looking at that.
$97.7 million if we'd be in TRS and we're at $74.1.
It was the right decision then.
It's the right decision now.
And those 150 and 160 other school districts are realizing it now.
So thank you very much for what you do.
Appreciate it.
Thank you for the comments.
Any other questions?
Mr. President, I have one question.
Mr. Nauman, thank you.
My question is that when we are looking at insurance plans, yes, we're looking at what the total cost is to me per month or per year,
but as a parent I'm also looking at what are my co-pays that I'm having to pay to go see my primary care physician?
What am I needing to go see my podiatrist?
What am I going to pay if I have to take my kid to the ER?
Can you?
I don't need it today.
Is that something that you can send through Dr. Drogorski to get to us? I think that would be like a
Key thing for us to make sure I feel
We're in their own
Let me try to answer your question in our benefit guide
we outline those expenses for for staff members and
There's
There are some copay programs if you will
but it's a capitated rate and it's very very expensive and the employee pays for
that so when employee says well I'm just want to copay I want to I just want to
write a $25 check they're actually going to pay for it through their premiums and
we look at those on an annual basis and go is that a is that a good decision for
the district is that a good decision for employees and sometimes it is and
sometimes it isn't but I can gladly share that that matrix with you yes ma'am
any other questions thank you thank you again appreciate it well now proceed to
8.3 Planning for Growth: Attendance Boundary Modification (ABM) for the 2023 - 2024 School Year
item agenda item 8.3 attendance boundary modifications for the 2023 excuse me 2024
school year the presenters are mr. Ted Behrling and miss Chris Poole good
Good evening.
All right.
Good evening, President Schulte, board members, Dr. Gagorski.
As Lance flips through his 85 slides again, and we're back to the ABM presentation.
Just kidding, Lance.
You haven't lived until somebody said, I don't want your job.
So there you go.
So sorry, a little humor to set the tone here.
So anyway, we appreciate your time this evening.
Chris Poole is with Population Survey Analysts, and Chris has been a longtime partner, as
has PASA of the district.
I think we talked today,
and Chris feels like she's been driving here for how many years?
20-something.
20-something, and nobody's been around long enough to tell us
when PASA started with us, but they've been great partners to us.
And most of you have been through this process before.
Mr. Perez, I believe this is your first,
but I'll kind of walk you through the process,
and then, of course, if you have any questions at the end.
Chris will present a little bit, I'll present a little bit,
and, like I say, questions at the end.
So just a little bit about the process. We usually will do these as we open new buildings in the district, but we'll also do attendance boundary modifications when we feel like there are schools that are overutilized or, in other words, too full or possibly underutilized when there's schools that are a little too empty.
In this case, tonight we'll present a tenant's boundary modification for both of those issues.
We work with PASA, Chris Poole and I talk almost weekly, sometimes for months, sometimes for years,
about opening schools and what that looks like over time and what that means for existing schools as well as for the future.
And PASA also helps us with demographics and planning for the future and planning for future bonds and things like that.
And Chris will be back here in November, I believe, to talk to you about a demographic update.
So just kind of talking through this process, we present an initial ABM to the board.
We will elicit information from the public, especially from those families who are affected by this attendance boundary modification.
But we'll also take input from anybody who has it, whether it's email, surveys that go out, telephone.
We answer a lot of phone calls in our office.
And then our plan is to come back to you in October at the October board meeting with a final attendance boundary modification proposal and then hopefully a vote for that.
So our objectives tonight, what triggered this mainly is the opening of elementary 45 and 46, which Mr. Smith mentioned earlier.
Mr. Graham leaned over and said, hopefully, there is no hopefully, these will open in the fall of 23.
And I forgot to say, but all of this would take place in August.
It would occur, it would start in August of 2023.
This is not an August of 22 thing or anything like that.
It's a full year from now.
So our goal was to develop an ABM for 45 and 46.
And we also felt like based on numbers that are current and then based on numbers that are in the future here,
that Campbell Elementary needed a little help down in the southwest.
and then Galbo Elementary will need a little help in the kind of northeast-ish, okay?
And it provides some relief in several quadrants over the next two to three years.
You'll see as we go through this presentation, as Chris talks about the maps,
there are more schools affected than just these four, but these were the main catalysts for the ABM.
So just again on the timeline, we're here tonight to give you the preliminary ABM.
On the 27th, Dr. Grooms and her team will start sending out surveys to families that are affected.
There's a bunch of questions, and families are able to get feedback.
We'll be back in September to talk to you, or Dr. Grooms and her team, K-12 Insight,
will be back and talk to you about some survey results, and then in October we'll present the final ABM to you.
And you should have received this evening a packet of maps.
I give those to you at this board meeting as well as the October meeting so you can kind of look at what we're proposing.
And then the overlays that you have, the little plastic overlays, will show you what the current situation is at those schools.
And then communication, again, just kind of repeating what I just said.
and then assuming we pass this ABM and the board votes for the ABM in October,
November we'll start notifying families and we'll continue that process,
helping families understand kind of the process and what we're looking at for the 22-23 school year.
Communication tools, parent emails, media releases, website, phone calls, you name it.
And here's Chris Poole.
Well, good evening, Superintendent Grogorski, President Schulte, and the board.
Like Ted said, we're here to talk about elementaries mainly, starting with elementary 45 and 46.
It seems like I seem to tell you guys the same thing a lot, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow right now.
And so I know you guys have heard the story.
I know you're aware of the growth.
I know you're seeing it.
And we've been talking about it and planning for it for a long time.
The last bond allowed for two elementary schools in that area.
And so we've got to design those zones.
So, first we want to talk just a little bit about what the situation is right there.
We've got Bethke, Leonard, and McIlwain shown here and just what exactly is going on.
They're highlighted in bright yellow because that means that they've crept over 120 percent
of capacity.
This is based on geocoded students.
We know that there's a lot of transfers, especially in the northeast, a lot of transfers going
on, but that's where we start is geocoded kids, how many students are residing in that
zone, how many are we projecting to reside in that zone.
So, of course, we've got Bethke and Leonard could be near 2,000 students apiece.
McIlwain, you know, 6,500 kids if we keep going at that sort of pace in 10 years.
So clearly we've got to do something about it, and so that's what we're doing.
This is just a little bit of a map.
McIlwain, just by 2025, could have almost 3,000 kids in it with all of these schools with a capacity of about 1,030.
Bethke and Leonard, you can see they're even popping over enough where we've really got
to do something about those.
But you can see the sites here in the north and the south there near the Hudson label
in pink.
So they're situated so that we can do something about that.
That's been the plan all along.
So this next map shows what we're proposing for Elementary 45.
That's the one in the north.
This option pulls out the Laniusones that are in the 1s, the 2s, and the 3s.
They're split into little parts there that we use for planning.
Also 5B, 5C, and 5D.
All of that would go to that northern school that's elementary 45.
That includes parts of Ellison that's north of 529 in Laniusone 2D,
Windward in Laniusone 1C,
and along with Katy Crossing and Marisol in 5D,
and Katy Manor in 5B.
And so then that southern boundary of that zone is Stockdick School Road over to Katie Hockley Cut-Off,
and then moving east on 529 there, the border between the new school and McIlwain.
Then the school in the south, it abuts that school in the north.
It bumps up against that, and then it also includes 10B from Hutzel, because that's where the school sits.
So we're going to take that land use zone out of Hutzel there.
It takes 11D from Leonard, which is Camillo Lakes.
They're just right there down the road.
We figured that was the way to relieve Leonard a little bit.
6D, 6A, and 4A come from Bethke.
Those are the lane new zones that are west of Porter Road,
and they include Katy Point, Porter Ranch, and Kings Crossing.
And then that southern school would split to Haskett and to Stockdick,
about three lane new zones and four lane new zones there for the junior high.
and that new northern school would split down Katie Hockley cut off to Haskett and Stockdick.
And so you can see that we would be expecting those to relieve McIlwain, Bethke, Leonard.
It doesn't empty them out by any stretch of the imagination.
We're still expecting a lot of kids.
We're hoping that levels out and tapers off over time.
But you can also see that we're looking at 2025 here,
and these two new schools are going to go ahead and get full.
We're going to have to have more bond money to open additional facilities in that area
and relieve these here in the future.
So then for Campbell, we're going to touch just a little bit on the south side of the
district.
Here are the numbers for Campbell.
And the southwest grew.
This is what we've done for the last 15 years is deal with the southwest like we're dealing
with the northwest at this point in time.
And we had hoped that that zone for Campbell would be the last one there and that it would
level off and that it would be really full for a little while and then sort of level
out.
But when we're projecting, we have to project homes and we have to project the ratios of
students.
students. And whenever we talk about ratios every year, we flash up on the screen for
you guys an average ratio of students per home, and it's .72 per occupied single-family
home right now. And so that's just a talking point that we use. That's just a rule of thumb
if you're going to talk about it. But then we vary those ratios for what we think is
going to happen in each one of the type by type of development that we think is going
to occur. So in the Campbell area, most of our ‑‑ I looked back and a lot of our
projections were above 1.0 students per home but also in that report that i'm talking about that
we provide every year we highlight the top six uh five or six highest ratios and the lowest five or
six ratios for single family homes and four of the six are in that zone that are the highest and one
of them actually tops out at 2.08 students per home so i keep hoping for a little tiny kindergarten
class coming in but that's not where we are right now and so we knew it would be full but not quite
that full and so we're looking right now at taking Laney's own 51 C and these are
actually the current attendance zones there she can see that 51 C in the top
part of Campbell and so we're looking at taking that one right there and sending
it on to woman now that includes Rosedale Tamron Lakes and Wesley Cove
and it would go there the Laney's own currently has about 250 students and
we're projecting it to reach maybe 400 elementary students over time as some of
of those areas build out. If we move it out now, then we can level some things off in Campbell.
It doesn't really, we're not really expecting it to push Woolman over a ton. And so we're hoping
to level that out there with 51C. It would come back to go to Adams and to Jordan for junior high
and for high school. And then in the northeast for Galbo Elementary, we've been talking about
this for a long time too. Galbo has a little bit smaller capacity. It's a little bit one of the
The earlier schools there, it was a capacity of 867 before we started building 1,030 a long, long time ago, a couple of decades ago.
And so the top part of that has a lot of growth that we're expecting to come in in that particular attendance zone.
And so we've talked about can we do something about this?
Do we need another school?
Can we move some things around?
And so here you can see that Galbo is a little over now and expected to really get that way in the future.
The area that we're talking about here moving is in the far north portion of the Galbo attendance
zone.
You can see what it looks like here, and you can see those sort of three pieces that McRoberts
is in right now.
And so what we're talking about doing is moving 14C to Franz and 7C down into McRoberts.
We thought for proximity reasons and so forth, just provide McRoberts a little bit more space
if we bump that one out and make that Franz zone sort of contiguous.
It was done that way a long time ago, and it had to do with the layout of the subdivisions and so forth.
But if we go ahead and put 14C back into France, we can pull 7C down into McRoberts here.
14C includes Bridgewater Meadow, and it would move to France.
And then 7C contains Jasmine Heights, Grand Parkway at West Little York, which is a future single-family development.
And then at least one apartment complex that we're projecting to be there in the future.
And this would all move to McRoberts.
The Laney Center right now has a couple of hundred elementary students, and we're projecting as many as 500 at build out.
And this would actually improve the feeder a little bit for the 14C, 14E to junior high.
And then 7C, when it moves, it would all stay in the same junior high.
So it doesn't affect those feeder patterns at all.
The tip-top part.
All the way to McRoberts?
headed down to McRoberts because Galbo, the problem with splitting out Galbo,
Galbo sits as far south as you can possibly get it.
And so unless we're going to move, do you see the little pink there in 13B?
So unless we move the kids back to Galbo and scoot them down to Morton Ranch
or scoot them over to Franz or something, 7C isn't terribly close to Galbo.
It's not all that different to go to McRoberts than it is to go to Galbo.
And so if we could, you know, we've got to pull something out of it.
if we pulled 7B, 7B is actually part of, isn't it part of a similar subdivision to 13A and 13B?
Then we, if we pulled 7B out, then we'd have a non-contiguous zone. So it seems like the one,
the piece that makes the most sense in a kind of odd way.
Was that your question, sort of, that it looked odd to you at first?
It looks very odd.
It does, but that's-
McRoberts is not contiguous anywhere.
McRoberts hasn't been so it cleans up something on the south side of McRoberts
But then it does manage to relieve gaba by pulling that down into McRoberts
The one thing I will add to that miss Fox is when you look at the distance
Because we have looked at those distances that what they're moving right now
You got to remember 7 C is is not going to kind of follow through Katie ISD boundaries. You can cut through that white part
Okay, so the the distance might look a long way but
but just based on our boundary.
Those are other neighborhoods.
Those are other neighborhoods that the transportation would travel through
to get closer to there.
I don't remember what the exact mileage was,
but it's not as far off as it kind of looks on a map.
Yes, and actually on the western side there is the Grand Parkway.
And so if we move in someplace, you know, the other way,
we might have to move back out.
I mean, I'm just looking at Stevens at 531.
It has programs in it?
Are we asking questions now?
There was one more conclusion slide.
Just a conclusion slide and then you're welcome to ask questions.
We as I say with all these, we take these very seriously as a parent who's been rezoned
several times and as a principal who's been in two schools that were super full and had
rezoning done we we take this stuff very seriously we know that every time you move a kiddo or a
family it is serious business but we do feel like this is is the best plan moving forward
for the next several years and we're happy to take questions all right can i ask a question
all right so back to that 7c situation i i know by the way i know that y'all are the experts okay and
and I know you've done all your research and all this,
but I'm just, from a practical point of view,
like you said, you're a parent, I'm a parent,
and I know this is a question that people are going to have.
You see that 14C, I'm just asking,
to me, and I'm looking at this, Matt,
why can't we move that 14C over to McRoberts?
14C is currently at McRoberts.
Is at McRoberts right now.
So the red here is Franz, right?
Is that projected for, that's what you're going to do?
Yes, ma'am, we're proposing to move it to France.
So that's not done yet.
But why can't we move some of this red?
So this is all going to be McRoberts.
Is that what you're saying?
7C, anything that's green.
7C plus 6.
No, but I'm talking about 14C.
14C would move to France.
We're moving it out of McRoberts to make a little bit of space.
Because France maybe has a little space.
It's got some proximity.
Try to take care of some.
But why can't we just keep that at McRoberts, like the 14C and 14E, and then move some of the Galbo people down, you know, into Franz and then put the 7C back to Galbo?
Well, 14E is already in France to start with.
What?
14E is already there.
And so the only one we're talking about moving is 14C.
Right.
Because it's a little, we don't have a ton of space in France.
We've got, you know, it's 138 kids or something like that.
it's so we're providing a little bit of relief to mcroberts and then like we were just talking
about with galba what can you peel off of galbo because if you take if you go from 7c it looks
to me if you take those kids all the way down to friends then they are moving further no but what
i mean is why don't you keep the 14c and 14e at mcroberts 14e is at friends right now would you
all right then keep 14c at mcroberts okay then we're not providing as much space for 7c if we
move it to McRoberts and if we move 7C to France, then they're traveling probably a
further distance.
No, I want 7C to go to Galvo and part of Galvo to go down to France.
So then the difficulty is what are you going to move because the area that is, because
of where Galvo sits, it's in that pink right there, right at the label of 13B.
We don't move anybody that's right back around.
I see what you're saying.
That's the difficulty.
Because you don't want to move the people that are in the neighborhood.
Literally next door to the school.
Right.
They walk to school.
Well, I see what you're saying.
It's tricky. Chris will present all kinds of things to us and say, hey, what do you think?
And so the first plan that was presented to us was, well, we could rezone the entire eastern
portion of the district. And when you start looking at these things, they really do fit
together like puzzle pieces. And when you move one, you got to move the other. And oh, wait a
minute, that triggers the other one. And then the next thing you know, we've got thousands of kids
that we're touching. And so what looks a little odd in this case actually is kind of the least
amount of pain that we're putting out there. Having said that, any of these are options,
any of these we're up to discussing and looking at and running numbers on, we can certainly do that.
Mr. President, my question is, what are you doing with Schmaltz?
Schmalz is getting a building addition.
And Schmalz is another.
1421 over here and you've got some 428s right here.
It is.
It's huge.
It looks gigantic from that standpoint.
Remember that Schmalz has got a ton of surface area there that is the park and the, you know, and the detention and things like that, right?
Right. We're attacking smalls with a building addition because we felt like that's the best thing to do.
Again, you could theoretically start really doing some massive movements, but that's how we're going to handle the small situation.
Any other questions, Mr. President?
Yes, I have one question about Campbell, and I actually think it's two parts.
So this 51C LUZ that's on here, what did you say is a part of that?
Where does it end, I guess?
My question being, I live in Cross Creek Ranch, so parents approach me about this all the time.
Is it coming into Cross Creek and kids that you're taking, or is it the Churchill Farms up into Tamron?
It's Tamron Lakes, Wesley Cove, and Rosedale.
okay so it's it's that it's a northern so it's north of that right then my second question and
dr gorgorski or mr veerling probably has the answer for me i believe we had a special program
within the district at campbell have we also moved that out of campbell to facilitate more room
already or are we leaving that there we um i thought we had something there that could be moved
It was bilingual kiddos?
I think it was bilingual.
Yes, ma'am.
It was a bilingual program and we moved the kiddos that are not geocoded to Campbell.
So the only bilingual kiddos that are going to be at Campbell will be the kiddos that
live in that zone, that are geocoded and bilingual in that zone.
We split the other groups out to a couple of different elementaries.
Perfect.
Thank you.
That answers my questions.
I appreciate it.
Any other questions?
My question, yes, of course.
My question's on Griffin, Holland.
They're so small.
Do they have special programs there at Griffin?
564 in 2025.
I'm just looking as it all the way out.
Yes, ma'am.
Griffin does for sure.
Griffin has a lot.
So I'm going to jump in.
I've got the enrollments here, but I don't know the three letter codes.
Griffin and Holland programs.
Which programs are there?
Hollins has multiple programs.
They are getting programs from Randolph this year.
Dr. Coffey may can speak more to that.
Any special programs that were at Campbell, we moved them.
I think the only thing they kept was an ECSC and their own bilingual students.
students. Every other self-contained program was moved away from the campus to accommodate
the large enrollment.
So, like, at the end of the year, Holland had 874 kids in it.
And Griffin?
What's the code for Griffin?
I have that enrollment. I should look it up.
MGE had 800.
Okay.
That's good.
That's really good information, I think, for our listeners and our community to hear is
that when we see a number that says 564, that those are geocoded students, which means students
who live in one of these purple sections, but we utilize our facilities as much as possible
with our special programs, ESL, bilingual.
There are many more that I'm not calling.
And pre-K as well.
Pre-K, ECSC, those things.
So they each have 800 plus students.
Normally those programs don't have 22 kids per room.
It effectively shrinks the...
Say that again.
Normally those programs don't have 22 students in every room.
So it shrinks the program.
So it uses the entire facility.
It might be built for 1,030, but it's completely full
because smaller class sizes for things like pre-K
and that sort of thing.
Okay, I like, you know, we utilize our buildings,
and so that helps when you see a number on a flat map.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
I don't have a question.
I just want to make a comment.
Thank you so much for this great presentation.
I know when we go out in the community,
ABMs are always something that we're asked a lot about.
As a parent, my three kids never had an ABM.
They were right along with Mr. Veerling in those oversized schools.
schools. So I know the downside of that too, of having a crowded school, hard on the facility,
hard on the kids, hard on the teachers, hard on the administrators. So ABMs aren't the
best, you know, not everyone loves them, but it's necessary, able to keep our schools the
quality they are. So I really appreciate all your hard work and information that we can
now take out into the community and help explain.
And Mr. Schulte, I might just add that when we see this great big, say McIlwain, for example,
at 2,900 students by 2025, we already have land purchased and plans to put more schools and be prepared as we have for years and years.
We have a 10-year plan at least for where we're going with growth, so nobody needs to panic over that.
No, no need to panic.
We meet almost monthly now about plans for the future and future schools.
And we have the land for Elementary 47, and we're working with our land team.
And we just met with them and Chris this afternoon.
So we do have a plan.
Although land is getting tougher to find as you look in the north.
So we're working.
Right, right.
I met someone last week whose two sons attend Leonard, and they've been somewhere else,
and then they went to Leonard, and they didn't want to go, and now they're like,
I can't wait to go to Oakland Elementary.
And it's so cute.
When I talked to the namesakes, I said, Mrs. Davidson, does everyone just call you Mrs. Davidson?
She goes, oh, no, they say, hello, Keiko Davidson, hello, Keiko Davidson.
It's one word, right, and they're so excited to see them in there.
So these boys loved Olga Leonard Elementary.
So no matter which school your children are going to, you're going to love it there, right?
All the schools are amazing.
These are always tough.
But as you say, the principals, the teachers, the staff, they do a fantastic job with the kiddos.
And once they get in there and they warm up to them and they get to know everybody, generally things work out okay.
And Mick Roberts is getting a new principal we met tonight, so it's all going to be really good.
Thank you very much.
Chris, it's always great to see you. Glad you drive back and forth to see us all the time.
All the time.
Okay. Thank you. Well, now we move on to agenda item 9.1, which is discuss and consider
9.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of the May 2022 Financial Reports.
board approval of the May 2022 financial reports. The presenter is Mr. Jamie Hines,
Executive Director of Finance. Good evening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good evening, President Schulte, Superintendent Gorgorski,
members of the board.
I'm presenting to you our May financial reports.
Included are our financial statement for May,
through May actually, which includes the first 75%
of this fiscal year.
It's also got an analysis of our revenues and expenditures
by function and object.
You'll also receive a copy of our tax report, our construction report, and a summary of our check registers for the month of May.
I want to bring just a couple of things to your attention. We do still have continued underspending through the year.
And we've also had recently an unprecedented amount of previous year tax refunds.
and this is due to the counties catching up from last year.
So these are tax refunds from last year that didn't get processed.
A lot of this is catch-up from COVID and also just the growth in the counties,
but Mrs. Butterfield will address this with the budget amendment a little bit later.
These are being presented to you as they are each month for your approval.
Can I answer any questions?
Any questions, board members?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move that the Board of Trustees approves the May 2022 financial reports.
Second.
We have a motion by Mr. Redmond and a second by Ms. Champagne.
We'll now proceed to vote.
You have to change the words here.
Raise your right index finger and push the button on your control panel there.
Trying something new here.
Oh, she's gone.
So the motion passes six with one.
Someone upstairs.
What's that?
out here just not a vote okay so six six six zero thank you
that's fancy that's pretty cool
all right thank you now we'll proceed to 9.2 discuss discussing consider board approval
9.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the July 2022 budget amendments.
of the july 2022 budget amendments miss sherry butterfield director of budget treasury good
evening good evening president schulte trustees and dr gregorski there are quite a few revenue
amendments tonight and we talk about revenues a little deliberately in terms of local revenues
state revenues so as these are articulated for the general fund we are decreasing our property tax
revenues by $6,381,305, and also in our local property values related to the TERS of $62,729.
These reflect the current tax collections, as Mr. Hines was just mentioning. State revenues,
news however are increased uh first of all 900 9 500 000 to recognize the 2020 property value audit
and also increased by 19 million eighty one thousand eight hundred eighty six dollars
for changes in state funding that are related to the same tax collection reductions but also
related to our student number PIMS data and the state hold harmless being worked
through the state funding revenues general fund expenditures are going to
increase nine million five hundred thousand to recognize additional health
insurance expenditures through all the functions as you heard mr. Nauman talking
talking about, this will provide additional cash into the self-insured fund.
The remainder of the operating fund expenditures are direct offsets between different functions.
Approval of all of these GOF amendments will result in a $12,637,852 increase to the general
operating fund balance.
The debt service fund revenues are increased for local property tax to reflect that same collection decreased $2,639,566 and approval of this amendment in debt service will result in a $2,639,566 decrease to the debt service fund balance.
Thank you. Are there any questions, trustees?
Mr. President? Yes.
I just had a question on the, we talked about the health insurance a lot,
and the costs, and now we're seeing the funding for the district health insurance.
That's basically a catch-up or a funding, if you will, of that deficit for the year.
And we don't fund that as we go. We kind of fund it all at the end of the year.
Mr. We budget the expense of the $385 per member each month.
That gets put in the original budget.
But because the plan has lost and had such a tough year, what we're doing in order to – we're just expensing the plan, not to anybody's individual account.
We're just expensing that $9,500,000 through our books, through all the functions, in order to generate cash for the plan.
Right now, Ms. Butterfield has lent cash of the general fund to the health service fund,
and this will actually create an expense to move that cash permanently.
A contribution to the plan.
Yes, sir, a contribution to the plan, and it will be permanent.
And then when we have our audit done in January, when that's presented to you,
our expenses will reflect that $9,500,000 more expense to the district.
Had the plan performed and not had the need for this, our expenses as a district in the general fund would be $9,500,000 less, but it needs to be more in order to cover this health expense.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
If not, I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move that the Board of Trustees accrues the July 2022 budget amendments.
Second.
I have a motion by Ms. Champagne, second by Mr. Redmond.
We'll now proceed to vote.
All those in favor, push your button.
The motion passes 7-0.
We'll now proceed to agenda item 9.3,
9.3 Discuss and consider possible future Voter Approved Tax Rate Election. (VATRE)
discuss and consider possible future voter approval tax rate election,
otherwise known as VADER, and the presenter is Mr. Chris Smith.
And I think Dr. Grooms is also co-presenting, I think.
Maybe?
or maybe Matthews, yes. All right, well good evening again and voter approval
tax rate election has also been used as also as a TRE, tax rollback election.
Those are one and they're the same. I'm going to try to call it the official
name now of the voter approval tax rate election, but if I say TRE please know
that those are really one in the same. We started talking about this, we've talked
about it off and on over the years since I've been CFO several times, nothing
really formally until I would say earlier this spring during the
strategic planning sessions it became, it got wheels enough that we were asked
informally to put that on the agenda to get a efficiency audit and the next
Next month we put the efficiency audit to the board and we're working on that.
In fact, I saw the first draft of that late last week.
Well, I first looked at it yesterday.
I've got a couple of things that I'm supposed to do on my part for that,
and then we hope to be bringing the results of that efficiency audit to you in August.
That is our goal.
But that was approved at the next meeting after the strategic plan,
And then we've just kind of been considering it until tonight.
And tonight I want to talk to you a little bit about the specifics of how, if we were to call one in KDISD, it would look.
But to set the stage for that, I want to talk about Texas School of Finance and the basic allotment.
Again, those two most important numbers that you saw in my previous presentation.
I'm going to talk to you about the options available to KDISD or any ISD statewide to control their own revenue.
to have the fate of their own revenue.
And the anatomy of our tax rate, we've talked about that, so that will go quickly.
And the potential allocations of our tax rate, the impacts of different allocations in our tax rate,
and a timeline, which we've already kind of very briefly talked on,
and then what a sample ballot would look like.
But it all starts in that beautiful building there on Congress Street in Austin.
The legislature set the basic allotment in the tier two yield and the tier two level two yields back in 2019. I mentioned that those are stagnant. They do not take into account inflation. And that's what's causing the deficit budget in order for us to do things locally to try to help our staff out in this times of unprecedented inflation.
We gave a salary increase that didn't reflect help from things like this basic allotment, not having any inflation.
Again, the state funding dynamics, you saw this, the fulcrum there at $6,160, and I won't go into the details of that any longer.
longer, but that is the rules in which we're working under and what sets it for a static enrollment or static revenue.
Historic budget objectives, we talked about all those earlier. I'm not going to perpetuate that, but we did get some
information. I got some information today that I slid into the slide, and it just kind of shows what's happened in our area
with the raises. You can see that we're tied for second largest raise that was produced, again, in an attempt to keep up
with an inflation that still doesn't keep up with inflation to our staff but it attempts to do so
and then where we stand on the teacher salary schedule uh this beginning teacher salary
schedule kind of right in the middle there at sixty thousand seven hundred dollars and that's
why it brought it was brought back in uh it came up as so important back in the strategic planning
process is because in order to address that and to be on on the top that we would need to do
something that meaningful to affect our revenues and hence the conversation
tonight from an expenditure standpoint to reduce the budget there's several
things that we could do are the budgets that the campuses have has historically
been adequate to provide everything that a classroom teacher needs for the
instruction of in his or her classroom period those those budgets it actually
have some underspending involved in those budgets so those have been adequate kids be or the Katie
instructional technology in the instructional teacher supply budget was adopted as a nice to
have especially during the beginning of kovat when it was harder to you know we were we were starting
the school year when in the middle of kovat for the first time and it allowed this teachers to
to get stuff that they wanted, not what they needed,
but they wanted for their classroom.
And it was a luxury and it was in our deal two years,
but that's one of the things that we've reduced,
because again, those classroom budgets,
or those campus budgets are adequate
to fund each teacher in our district.
Increased student teacher ratio,
when we adopted the salary increase in May,
those student teacher ratios or the campus staffing plans were established.
That's something that we'll look forward to in the future if necessary. Again
based on the deficit anything draconian here I don't think is necessary based on
the small deficit do we have. Administration has worked through
deficits before and I think that's something that we can work through
without without doing too much damage to some of the ratios that were damaged.
That's not a good word but too much change to the ratios that we've done
we've used in the past and reduction in program spending is also something that
could be done but what program to start with that it'll take time to study if we
decide that we need to go there and again at this time I don't think that
that that with I have hope and faith that that when the legislature meets the
need for some of that will be taken off the table but the options to available
to control our revenue are not much.
SHARS, Mr. Graham and his department have done a great job
on the SHARS program.
That's the third largest revenue that we have
in our district.
It's about $12 million a year, maybe $14 million a year.
Those are services that are provided throughout our district
every day and are reimbursable through federal funds
through the SHARS program.
And those come in as federal revenue.
That's the third behind property, Avaloran taxes, state revenue, and then comes SHARS.
We've done a great job over the last three or four years, or Mr. Graham and his department have,
to getting those dollars maximized, and we've seen tremendous progress on that.
There's not much more progress to go.
Local investments, we can look at our investments again,
but we're not going to make a lot of revenue a significant impact to our
bottom line by looking at those investments we can't get into the stock
market and do things to get a 10% return on those investments all our investments
are need to be conservative and need to make sure that principle is intact when
it's all said and done and we will do some things that will increase that but
but it won't make significant strides.
Other local revenues such as...
Oh, fees on some courses, maybe ticket sales, that you could make changes there that's not going to be impactful to our bottom line, probably a million dollars if you looked at those.
Other things that are associated with fees are rental facilities.
Those are really just there to cover our costs.
Virtual school program is really there just to cover our costs.
They're not set up as moneymakers.
And then there's the voter approval tax rate election or a TRE which could be done which would
put meaningful
revenue
To the district and it's the only tool that I know of out there. That's meaningful
Again I talked about this earlier. We've had a sixteen point five percent reduction
since
2018-19 in our tax rate. That's wonderful, but that was
was prescribed by House Bill 3. House Bill 3 used surplus at that time to drive down
the tax rate at certain increments every year and KDISD has benefited from that, the reduction
of our rate, some 16.5 cents over the last three years. This is just a visual of that
and you can see the taxable values going up and the tax rate going down. That's pretty
indicative of what it would look like across the state if you looked at those
in fact I saw one today during my lunch and learn that looked very similar to
that from a statewide perspective so this you saw earlier through the 21-22
that shows on the far right the anatomy of our tax rate and the 16.5 cents drop
since 2018-19 that's all coming on that top row there where House Bill 3
specifically prescribes the reduction when it comes to value growth, reducing that rate.
It's just not reducing that rate substantially enough right now to offset all the value growth that we're having.
So you can see we have a 96-cent maintenance and operations total tax rate.
The golden pennies were maxed out at golden pennies or that tier two level one yield at $0.08.
And then we have three copper pennies currently.
And those two are also called the enrichment tax, which the enrichment tax rate, which is $11.02.
Those can be as high as $0.17 and arguably higher in a district like Katy, but I won't go there.
But $0.17 is what that maximum number can be between those two.
So that's what it looks like sort of vertically.
We are taking advantage of all eight cents,
and why those pennies are called golden is because if you'll look there at just any one of those pennies,
those top eight pennies, one penny earns about $5.2 million in tax revenues,
and those generate about $6.4 million in state revenues.
You can't get, unless you tax that penny, you can't get the state revenue,
But that's why they're golden in the fact that there's so much return on investment
From the state of Texas to the local taxpayers on each one of those pennies
Most districts can only access five of those pennies. We are fortunate that we can currently access all eight of those pennies
So we are getting some good
benefit from the the tier two
or the
tier two level one yield
But again, that Tier 2 Level 1 yield has not changed either since 2019.
The copper pennies, again, they're copper, still value, but not as value as gold.
As you can see on that, again, one copper penny still yields $5.2 million in tax revenues,
but only gets a state match of about $580,000 from the state.
So, again, not as valuable, not as much bang for the buck, but a return from the state of Texas nonetheless.
But that's why they're copper.
So we currently have 3.02 cents.
And so you can see those.
And then you hit the white section.
And then the part that's being discussed tonight is what's highlighted in blue off to the side,
which would be another increment between 2 and 4.68 cents.
I'm sorry, 8.6 cents.
So projected, again, I showed you this slide earlier.
That red arrow shows the 4.69 cent reduction in MCR that we think is going to happen.
And by the way, when I last looked about 9 o'clock, we still only received the one county's appraisal,
from one county appraisal district.
So they're working into the night and working on that still.
But I'm still confident that it's going to drive it down to that floor of 80.46 or a 4.69 cent reduction.
So if we had a voter approval tax rate election and went for two pennies,
the only thing that would change on that would be those copper lines.
So you can see that copper line went from 3.02 to 13.02.
and the total reduction went down at the bottom right to 2.69 cents
if that was a scenario that the board chose to go after.
Three cents, again, from 3.02 to 6.02 cents,
or a total of 14, in this case, enrichment pennies,
would still be a tax reduction of 1.69 cents.
A four cent would make that go to 7.02 copper pennies or a total enrichment rate of 15.02, again, 17 being the cap, the max.
and it would still be a drop of point zero one point zero zero six nine of a
tax rate drop if we went with four pennies and if the state or if the board
decided to go with a wash or to take those reduction of the compressed rate
of four point six nine cents and add all of those back to copper pennies we would
we would have 7.7 copper pennies or a total enrichment rate of 15.71 cents.
It would not be an annual drop in the tax rate.
It would still be 16 cents over the last four years from a drop perspective.
What does that do?
Let's take that.
And by the way, if we were going to move forward with this,
And my recommendation, my recommendation would be that we go for the $4.69 to make it meaningful to the bottom line of the budget.
And what we can do for our staff would be $4.69 or a break-even tax rate.
We would adopt the same tax rate as we currently have, essentially.
What would that mean?
that would mean a 12 cent I'm sorry a $12 per month impact to the average
homeowner or tax homeowner 12 dollars if we reduce the tax rate by four point
six nine cents they'll get a $12 a month savings because of the tax rate
reduction if we keep the tax rate at the same rate that we had this last year it
it would be $12 more per month or the same amount at $12 more per month is what it would cost.
And you can see the other pennies that I showed you are the other scenarios,
and that's a per-monthly amount at $10, $8, $5, and $3.
What would that impact to us would do?
A two-cent impact would generate $11.7 million in local and state revenue.
A 4 cent tax rate would be basically double that or $23.4 million and a 4.69 cent or the
same tax rate as we had last year would be $27.5 million in state and local taxes that
it would generate for us.
Potential uses of that, again I don't know where to start on that so I put in here what
a 3% salary increase would do for all staff and that would be 19.6%.
You could have some to use for the benefits that's associated with that salary increase and be able to put some towards the deficit, put some towards other inflationary things that have been squeezed in our budget.
If you went with a 4% salary increase, it would be an expense of $26.2 million, which would squeeze the amount that could be applied toward benefits, the deficit, or other things that are subject to inflation.
So it squeezes that amount downward if you went with a 4% salary increase.
And then there's other things that could be done at the discretion of the board.
um what the calendar looks like again i talked talked about this earlier we're here on july
the 25th essentially for this conversation we would need to adopt our tax rate in august and
then after that we would adopt our budget first again the budget is built on the the uh the lower
tax rate we would adopt that budget we would adopt the tax rate which would be the same tax rate that
we are under right now and then we would call a voter approval tax rate election all on monday
august the 22nd november the 8th should we choose to go there would be the uniform election date
in which the election would be had and the ballot what the ballot looks like this is prescribed
this is a state comptroller's uh uh ballot that came off their website uh straight from
legislation and it would say the Katy Independent School District on November
the 8th is going to have an election you can vote for or against the rate rate at
ratifying the ad valorem tax rate of point nine six one seven again that's
our current rate in Katy Independent School District and here's where it gets
murky because it says that rate will result in an increase of ten point six
percent increase in tax revenue yes it's ten point six percent a portion of that
is related to the to the four point six nine cents in question but the other
amount is just on sheer growth but again if you'll think of that fulcrum you're
not going to get in this case it says forty eight million dollars new to the
bottom to the district that wouldn't be we would not have all that to spend we
We would only get the 27 more million dollars to spend.
The difference between the 27 million dollars and the 48 million dollars is offset by the
state.
So it's kind of misleading, but that is the way it looks and there would be some education
that we need to have to happen.
But in essence, this ballot and this is what it shows now, again, based on values that
we'll know in the next three hours, I hope, we'll start looking like that number, that
that $48 million and that 10.6% could change based on what we get in the next few hours.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I have a question about the ballot language.
I thought that when you do a VATRE that the ballot language would say this money will be used for salaries.
I do not think so.
It doesn't have to, but can it?
I went to a session at SLI from a district who did it, and they included language in there that you have to include this.
The state requires this so people know that taxes go up.
But I thought there was language in it, Dr. Gorgorski, that says that this is not like we can't use it for anything.
This will be specifically used for people.
That's what I thought.
Well, it's a good question, and it's a question I don't think anyone in this room really knows.
I don't know.
I know we're required to use the language that the state says this.
I don't know if we can use this and add additional language to it,
but that will be something I have Chris and our general counsel explore
and find out what that answer is.
Arlington ISD is the session that I attended, and they had something.
and they look very similar to us and that kind of thing.
So that presentation might be posted online somewhere.
But I just don't see how this would be successful
if it isn't clearly communicated to people what it's for.
And when people are going into a ballot box on November 8th
to vote for a number of things,
that this would be something they would readily support
if they don't understand what our intended use for it is.
I agree.
Mr. President?
Yes.
Can I ask some questions, please?
Absolutely.
All right.
So I know that we discontinued the Amazon gift cards that we, you know, as a saving.
So how much did we save with that?
We budgeted, we saved in the budget $1.5 million.
It's about $1.2 million or $1.3 million that was actually spent last year.
Okay.
So I heard the estimate of $12 million that the 5% raise was going to cost.
So in other words, is it $12 million minus $1 million?
So really it's $11 million?
Or is it?
It was $12 million on top of the 3% that was recommended earlier in May.
So it was $12 million.
The expense of the teacher salary increase was $12 million additional that was presented in May,
and this was one of the tools that did go, that we did pull.
And it's not a gift card.
Those were accounts that were set up by the district on behalf of every, it was tied to every teacher's email.
And so the teachers actually were able to go online like they would their personal account in order to do that through their email.
It was not a gift card.
That way we were able to control what type of things were bought with it.
Because if we gave a $200 gift card to a teacher, then they could go buy whatever,
and then that would be a taxable event, which we'd have to issue 1099s,
or we would have to gross up their W-2s, and we didn't want to do that.
So doing it the way we did was able to avoid that becoming a taxable event.
But what my question really was was,
does that $12 million take into account that we didn't pay,
or however you want to call it, the Amazon expense?
I'm not 100% sure what you're asking,
but I'll tell you that the deficit you saw tonight, $11.9 million,
included the 5% salary increase
and included the reduction of the Amazon account.
All right.
So whatever we vote on, and, you know, when we come back next month
and we say we're going to allow for the vote in November,
whatever tax rate we settle on, this is that set in stone.
And I guess what I'm saying, you know, you're going to get those numbers tonight and all that,
and then, you know, other things might happen along the way
that we wouldn't need to ask for as much maybe.
I mean, but whatever we decide in August, is that set for November?
We can't come back in October and say, oh, well, we don't need as much.
No.
The last day to call that election and whatever, if an election is called,
however it is called will be set in stone until November 8th.
So if we end up with extra money from this, so if we get it approved,
you know, we have the vote on November 8th and then it's approved,
and we have extra money, that money can be, the board could decide to, you know,
adjust the salary again in a positive direction if we wanted to of certain employees.
I mean, we would have excess money, and we could, what are you going to do with that excess money, I guess is what I'm going to say.
Well, the things that you looked at tonight, you know, included, for example,
a 3% across-the-board salary increase or a 4% across-the-board salary increase.
If you went with the 4%, there wouldn't be much else left.
It could go towards the deficit or towards basically fund balance,
or we could, I don't know,
because there's no way to just pass on a 4.025% salary increase.
Who knows what that will be because we're still hiring staff.
We'll have vacancies.
will have several things that will affect what that actually looks like once it's all said and done in December.
But if it's approved and let's say we have an excess, will you let us know what that is,
what you project it to be at least?
Oh, I'm sure.
Yes.
Yes.
All right.
That's all I have then.
Thank you.
I have a question.
Can you go to the teacher page?
Teacher.
No, the one up.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, it was one of the first ones.
The one you added today.
I had to work today, so I didn't get to look at that one very closely.
So I know one thing when we're doing the raises back in May,
we always give the raises and think we're getting too competitive with everyone else,
and then everyone else gives a raise,
and then as soon as they start getting the raise, we're already behind everyone else.
So what I understand this is showing is this is, Katie,
after the raise that we've already done and what we believe everyone else already did.
So this is not, this is apples to apples.
This isn't Katie doing it and everyone else still hasn't done it yet.
This is apples to apples where everyone's going to be.
Is that correct?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
And one of the things I know we talked about in strategic design is we did,
we wanted Katie to be not at the median or below the median.
We wanted to be above the median.
And I put a stretch goal out there like it's to be at the top.
So if you did our, if you did the 3%, if you get, got the voter,
the Vader or whatever it's called, the TRE approved,
and you did the 3% or 4%, where would that put us?
Would that put us, would we be above the 62?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, so we would be at the top.
Yes, sir.
And that's going back to that day in March.
What's that?
Well, but we don't know if any other district is going to do a TRE, right?
But this would be for the next school year, if we did another raise
and we get it approved and we gave it all the 3% or 4%,
we would be at the top.
assuming the other schools didn't go do something else.
But we would be the ones to catch at that point.
That's correct.
Am I understanding?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
I mean, again, the data is always changing,
but the data that we know today, we would be the ones to catch.
We wouldn't be in the behind anymore.
We would be the ones that are ahead.
And that goes back to the conversations that was the genesis of this back in
probably March at the strategic design meetings
and probably why we're here today where we wanted to be the leader.
Now, if they met in January and they decided the basic allotment is going to go up to $15,000 per student, right?
Now, we probably don't know that.
But if they did that, what I understand is we could decide to give these pennies back.
We can keep the pennies, but once you give them back, you can't get them back.
But if you get them, you can give them back one time, right?
So we could do that next year if we decided.
Once you give them back, they're gone forever without a VAT.
But you can give them back.
You can give them back.
But that doesn't require election to give them back?
That does not require an election to give them back.
Again, I'm just hypothetical, just to exaggerate to make a point.
If we got it approved, we decided we wanted the voters to decide.
All this board is deciding on is do we want to give the voters an opportunity to vote on this.
We're not deciding.
Obviously, we would feel comfortable enough that we think we're going to vote to put it on the ballot.
But if it passed and something really fanatical happened with the general allotment, we decided in January or whenever we find that out, wow, we really don't need this.
We could give it back.
No voter thing.
Not that we would do that, but that is an option that we could do if the finances really turned around to the positive.
Sure.
And again, that would be turning around for every district.
So every district would have excess money to give salary increases, meaningful salary increases moving forward.
If we were already on top, then that amount that we could give, we could continue to stay, in my opinion, on top.
And I think this is my last question.
On the Amazon thing, I know a lot of teachers are disappointed about that because it's always hard when you have something and you lose it, right?
That can't be funded via ESSER.
I know we always talk about ESSER and there's all kind of things we can and cannot do with ESSER.
Is there any way to fund that via ESSER dollars, the $200 per classroom?
Surprisingly, it probably would be okay.
What?
Actually, no, it wouldn't because it's federal dollars.
And with the Amazon, even though it's procured legally, there's probably some hangup when
it comes to S or dollars.
Okay.
Just curious if there's a way to give that back.
Okay.
Mr. President?
Yes.
May I say a couple things?
So with the Amazon thing, just circling back to that, I'm just curious, were the teachers
I know it's not like a part of their contract or anything like that, but it had become like an established tradition, I guess, you know, 2017, 18, 19, 20, you know.
Were the teachers notified somehow that they weren't going to be getting that this year?
That's one question I have.
Well, our teachers are off contract right now, so we do have limited communication.
We don't generally just email teachers over the summer unless it's something that is significant that we need to let them know of.
We give them that break.
But we have talked about this with the principals, and those communications would be happening at the campus level when they return.
But I can't stress it enough, and I've shared this with the board before, and I've heard Chris Smith talk about that.
The Amazon's nice, okay?
It's one of those things that goes above and beyond so I can go get things that I would put on my want list.
Things that could be really cool for me to have.
And it's a cool thing to be able to do for the teachers, and I'm glad we can do it.
But every instructional need we have for these students is covered with our budget.
And I would encourage any teacher who needs anything to talk to their principals about that.
And if there are issues, and we've talked about this internally as a team,
If there's an issue on the campus with a campus related budget that they cannot afford to get the teachers what they need instructionally
I need those principals talking to this school leadership department and making those phone calls and call
Mrs. Hack or the assistant Supes over there and say my budget is not adequate because I don't think that's what's going to happen
Right. Thank you for that information and then back to what you were talking about. Mr
Mr. Schulte when we were talking about that
the compensation
increase when we were you know at first talk about three percent so we would
have been you know even lower whatever but every year at least since I've been
around you know school districts all school districts give some sort of sort
of ray so we get a three percent or four percent even if they gave a two or three
percent we're still going to be we're not going to be probably be at the top
you know I think the 3% raise would bring us up to sixty two thousand five
hundred and that spring branch will give another three percent right you know I
mean so we would do well I know but I think this year we'd be caught up apples
to apples would be caught up in the next year we'd have again the game starts
over again next oh you're saying in the interim like before the years over we
give another raise yes oh that's so that's a good question this is my
understanding okay so it's a great question if we get the tre approved in november let's just say
we decide as a board we want to ask for all the pennies the copper pennies we get off all 4.69
the board has total authority to say let's make it retroactive from the start of school year so
the so we the five percent that we already gave say we want to give another three percent that
three percent could be retroactive from the start of this school year we could do it from january
We could do it.
We have the authority.
We have the money to do it however we want.
Yes, it could be.
So I think that that's important for people to know.
Thank you.
It's clear in my head, but I haven't communicated that.
So my vision would be if we got the voter, the vader approved, it would go retroactive.
So apples to apples, we would be at the top.
Does that make sense?
I think that's a good idea, and I hope that that's communicated to the voters that that's a possibility.
I think it's, and I understand it's in the board's authority to do that.
Once it's approved, we can't do anything until it's approved.
I would suggest my thoughts on that would be just a little more timeline.
If you approve this tonight with the intent to move forward,
I believe we would bring to you a compensation plan in August
that reflected an additional 3% or 4% salary increase
So that when the VATRE passed, let's say that's November the 8th, after the 30 days and all that timing stuff worked out, then we could retroactive that raise until September 1.
So all teachers would then, if you were looking at this and it was in December, we would be at an 8% raise and a $62,300 starting teacher salary.
it would be retroactive to September 1.
And for those non-teaching staff, even though their contracts may begin July 1,
it would still be retroactive until September 1 for those folks because that's our fiscal year.
And so what would happen if the VATRE passed in November,
Ms. Butterfield would bring a budget amendment that reflected an additional
27 million dollars in salaries to be amended in the budget in November that
would be retro or been paid as the board wanted it may be in December the 15th
where those would be retro back to September 1 and so the effective raise
would be immediate okay thank you for the clarification because I wasn't clear
I'm not clear on that.
That's a great question.
I don't think that maybe other people weren't either.
So that's good news.
So, Mr. President, can you all hear me?
Yes.
We had a question earlier about the ballot language.
Did some looking.
Arlington and Comal, they did similar programs where they said,
we're dedicating this to teacher salaries.
They were unable to change the ballot language.
The ballot language comes directly from the comptroller.
It comes directly from the state law,
which has been recently modified in order to make it a little harder for school districts to pass these.
However, what those districts did and what you have, what I think you have here in front of you today is this resolution that, you know,
you're going to consider action or no action on it.
What you would be telling your public and what I'm thinking I'm hearing now is that if we do this public,
it is so that we can use it for teachers' staff salaries, right?
We want to use it for staff salaries.
And what Mr. Smith is talking about is he's talking about doing a budget amendment, if you did decide to call for a voter-approved tax ratification election, doing a budget amendment that would say, look, we are budgeting this if it happens, that we are going to put it in salary.
And so one of the reasons we're talking about it today, I believe, and one of the reasons we've been kind of, it was on the agenda, I think, last month and talking about it today, is so that we can educate the people that are watching this meeting and educate the people that may be interested in this to say, if it is something that this board decides to put forward to the voters, right?
Right. Number one, this board's got to vote to do it.
But then number two, the voters would have to approve it.
But what you would be doing is you're ahead of the curve by saying, look, guys, we're not we intend to spend this money to make sure that our staff members are paid accordingly.
And you're right, Ms. Champagne, it is a it is a what we're doing is we're taking this one time kind of lump sum TRE money, which will put us on the top of the list.
So then next year when we do 3% and everybody else is doing 3%, hopefully, or whatever the number may be, then we're there.
We're caught up.
This is kind of a one bullet in the chamber kind of thing.
And so, again, the ballot language is going to be what the ballot language is,
but this is an opportunity for this board to make a statement and to help educate.
If we do do this and we need your support, this is what we're going to do.
we're going to use this money for right it's a it's a transparency i think issue
uh mr gregorski i think what you're saying mr graham is this is a one-time vote it goes to the
base but the continued income taxes from that we're going to collect will continue to support
that raise and so then any future raises will go on top of that mr uh sorry dr gregorski when
When I regret that when we talked about the pay increase from the day, whatever day that was, that we didn't say then clearly, we're going into a deficit budget.
We are spending more than we have.
We're dipping into savings because we want to give our teachers and the 5% and hourly employees 5%.
I just thought it would be understood that there is no more money for the extras that we do do,
because what we've done over the years is give a 1% attendance incentive, a 1% at Christmas, a 1% at the end of the year.
When we have underspending and stuff, we do give it to our employees, but it didn't build on the base.
So this year we chose we're putting it all to the base.
So now the 1% at Christmas won't be there.
The Amazon expenditures won't be there.
Those are the things I guess I thought would be understood,
that when you're dipping into savings, I look at it from a personal budget,
then the extras, you won't have that.
We just don't have extras to do the Amazon and the 1%s
if this VATRE does not pass, we've done all we can and a little more than we have a budget for.
That's what I wish I would have communicated better to help people understand about the expectations on those things.
You're correct in everything you've said there, Ms. Fox, in terms of the budget is tight.
The budget is the proposed budget.
I shouldn't say the budget.
it hasn't been yet adopted yet but the proposed budget that we will bring back to you next month
the board to adopt will be a deficit budget and we'll have to make some some some considerations
but you heard from mr smith on that we'll figure that out over the next year of what to do but a
lot of the um extras yeah that's hard to fund when you don't have the finances for that should the
board want to move forward and call for a tre and should the voters approve that to take care of our
valued employees even more than we're trying to do and i get it's a huge ask of our voters it is
but at the same time we're trying to be super competitive here and value our employees but all
the things you're talking about in there those could be decisions the board makes with that money
as well you could take those dollars and you could distribute them in the terms of salary increases
the board could put them back into lump sums the board could use uh the residual if we said we're
We're going to use 4% for raises or the bulk of it for raises.
You could use the residual for other things.
So, yeah, that's completely up to the board how they want to use those dollars.
The only thing is, as like Mr. Graham explained there, we want to start communicating right away should the board want to move forward with that.
That's your option tonight to do that or not do that tonight, that part about wanting to move forward with giving.
And I like the way Mr. Schulte had phrased that.
that all we're doing is approving to give the voters the opportunity to say,
do we want to do this or not?
I think that's a good way of framing it.
I'm so sorry to belabor this so much, but back to that.
When we were talking about the TRE, when we did it back in the team building,
I guess I was under the understanding that the reason for the TRE was to pay back the $12 million.
$12 million. So we're going to find a way to do that because my concern was what if the TRE doesn't get approved? You know what's going to happen to that $12 million that we lost. So that's going to be somehow covered. So this is this is in addition to that. So that's all I want to say about that. So I just was under a misunderstanding of that.
I JUST HAVE TWO MORE COMMENTS.
ONE IS ON THE EFFICIENCY AUDIT, YOU'VE PEEKED UNDER THE HOOD.
I DON'T EVEN KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THAT'S GOING TO RESULT IN, BUT IS THERE ANYTHING THAT COULD
HAPPEN IN THE EFFICIENCY AUDIT THAT WOULD DERAIL THIS THING?
PROBABLY IT'S A DUMB QUESTION, BUT IS THERE ANYTHING, EFFICIENCY AUDIT, OH, YOU FLUNKED
THAT, YOU CAN'T DO THIS?
IT'S NOT THAT KIND OF AUDIT.
IT'S JUST GOING TO TELL YOU MAYBE OPPORTUNITIES WHERE YOU COULD DO BETTER AT YOUR SPENDING
EFFICIENCY?
It's prescribed by the legislative budget board.
Whitley Penn performed it.
It compares us to 20 comparable districts, which are large districts.
They're not just in the Houston area.
It's throughout the state.
And there are some things in there where KDISD looks fantastic,
and there are some things where we may spend more.
But where we spend more is instruction,
and where we spend less is in administration,
and those are both pointed out.
extremely... There's no way to fail it is what you're saying? You can't... There's no
way to fail it. It's just a document that shows a comparison and points out
several items that that a taxpayer would want to know to make sure that we're not
in financial dire straits or not spending way more in co-curriculars than
then we are in instruction or some some crazy things like that and again
compares our spending to other districts. My last comment is really to
to all the trustees is that, you know, we, in order to get on the November ballot, we have to
make this decision by the next meeting, right? So, and I just want to implore upon everybody on this
board, if you need something that you don't have to make a decision, we got to make a decision on
if we want to do it and how many pennies we want to do, right? We can do one penny, two penny,
all the way up to 4.69 pennies, but anything that you need to bank that decision needs to be
be daylighted so that we can get that to you so we're prepared to make a decision no later
than the next meeting.
So I just want to make sure everybody's aware of that.
Make sure you have any question that you have, any information request, make that very transparent
to these folks so they can get you the information.
Mr. President?
Yes.
So on that point, I just want to back up for a moment in that, you know, we want to do
some great things in terms of compensating our teachers.
We want to do something special.
And our staff.
On the other hand, it is a difficult time to keep the, let's say we're not really raising
the tax rate, but we're keeping it.
So in effect, we're raising it.
And it's a horrible time to not lower the cost for the taxpayer.
So what I would like to see is, for example, and look at that slide 21, it's kind of taking,
Right now we have a $12 million deficit for projected around $12 million for this year.
And then I saw the $8.9 million number for next year deficit, but that was not really factoring in any raises.
It was just a minimal raise.
So, you know, I'd like to see kind of like at the end of this year, at the end of next year, what that incremental revenue, assuming several cents, you know, 3, 4, 4.69, 2, whatever, to see what we look like at the end of each year in terms of like, you know, budget deficit or surplus and the fund balance, et cetera.
Just kind of those metrics that we can kind of see going forward.
Because we're kind of like talking, we're sort of talking like, well, we'll make up the $12 million loss,
but then we have next year that we want to do something special, or maybe even this year.
So I kind of see where we stand at different points in time, assuming this additional revenue.
Because it's not just this $27 million or the $23 million with $0.04.
It's actually, we actually have other revenue.
In other words, we have the $40 million that we're talking about, $48 million.
that they will have as well.
No, I know it's not ours.
I know it's not ours, but we cut with a $12 million deficit.
We did the 5% raise and the 3% raise,
and so we have a $12 million deficit.
So assuming that we do this,
then what do we look like along the way?
What's the deficit look like each year?
year I think I think the answer to that is is exactly like it looked assuming
assuming we did a like if we passed along a 4% salary increase to all staff
and we spent the entire amount that tre regenerate essentially that slide would
look the same because the revenue increase will be there forever and the
expense and a raise is there forever once you give it you can't take it back
but because of those things are pretty much the same amount, or at least 4% is anyway,
then the deficit that you saw on that slide 21 stays pretty much the same.
It's just the expenses and the revenues are bigger.
Unless you do something else, unless you decide to do the general allotment doesn't go up,
and you do another 3%, and you can't fund it some way because there's no additional revenue source,
then the deficit would get bigger.
But that's like a, that's the next phase, right?
But in this phase, if everything stayed constant, journal allotment goes up a little bit, you can continue to do the 3%.
The budget's not going to get any, the deficit's not going to get any bigger, right?
That's what you're saying.
Mr. Schulte, if I may, I don't mean to cut you off, Mr. Perez, but tonight's presentation is actually a two-part presentation.
You've heard from Mr. Smith.
I see over there anxiously waiting one of our partners.
Matt is here.
He did some opinion polling for the district.
I told the board we would do that.
And if I may, can I get Matt in here to show you the opinion polling,
and then you can ask Matt any questions you have about opinion polling,
and then I was going to cut him loose, and then I can bring Chris back up there,
and we can answer any additional questions you have about the TRE.
It's been a good discussion.
It's been very robust.
I want to continue it, but I'd love to get Matt in there so he can get out.
Yeah, I'm trying to keep him up not too late.
Thank you. He's been patiently waiting. Good evening, Mr. Schulte and trustees and Superintendent
Grigorski. As Dr. Grigorski just mentioned, we'll now segue into the second portion of this
presentation. Most of you are very familiar with our bond committee processes in which our bond
committee will often utilize the assistance of a public policy research firm to measure public
public perception of bond-related projects that they may want to include in a bond program
before it goes to an election.
Research firms like Vasilisa & Associates, which is represented here this evening by
Matt Gamble, help entities understand which messages have the most impact and where the
work needs to be done to further educate a public on an issue that may go to an election.
This month we partnered with the firm to conduct a public opinion poll on a potential TRE along with some of the variables Mr. Smith just discussed.
Matt Gamble will now provide a report on the outcomes of that poll.
Thank you.
Good evening, everyone.
So we did this survey by telephone interviewing voters by cell phone and a few landlines, but mostly cell phones.
We interviewed 400 respondents. The margin of error is 4.9%.
What I want you to know about the sample is this is reflective of likely voters.
This isn't registered voters or census population.
This is likely voters, so it resembles the November 2022 electorate in terms of their age, gender, and other demographics.
Our objectives were first to assess general attitudes about the school district,
district, particularly some questions about the district's finances.
We wanted to assess initial support of a vader, and we did that through two methods.
We asked respondents how they would vote with that convoluted ballot language that you're
by law required to present, and then we asked them a more straightforward question in terms
of how they would support this four cent proposal.
proposal. And then a lot of the survey was dedicated towards, as Dr. Groom said, providing
more information, testing messages, and then at the end of the survey we asked respondents how
they would vote for the Vader, having learned more about it. So just to touch real briefly on views
of the district, 78 percent of respondents have a positive impression of KDISD, only 16 percent
negative this is about as good as it gets i've only seen the negative in the single digits once
in the last couple years we do about 20 of these a year this is kind of towards the top end of what
districts see i've seen negatives as high as 45 35 percent in the last year so really good report
here in terms of how they would rate the job being done by schools in the school district 30 percent
say excellent, 44% say good, only 4% poor. We actually did a survey statewide of Texas voters
in May, and we asked everyone in that survey the same question. And what we see here is that
within KDISD, the voters view their school district, the job of the schools, much more
favorably than the average voter statewide. We asked respondents how they would characterize
the management of district funds, 19% say wisely and effectively, 50% say as well as to be expected.
In this day and age, if you're a governmental entity and a voter says you're doing as well
as to be expected, that's a good thing. 69% would say as well as to be expected or better.
Only 25% say wastefully. We ask these questions because it really helps us understand the
environment in which we're operating, and it can help us understand why there may or may not be
opposition or support for proposals like bonds or vaders. Another general question that we wanted
to ask was their perception of how much money the district has or how much it might need.
We did this two ways in VRP or version P. We just asked the respondent if they thought the district
had enough money for daily operations. The other half of the respondents, we asked them if the
district had enough for daily operations and teacher pay. So for version P, only 23% think
the district has enough money 67 percent says it has enough i'm sorry 23 says the district needs
more 67 you have enough for version q when we put teacher pay in there you see it's 50 for enough
43 for needs more this really just underscores the um the disconnect the average voter has with what
daily operations means they really don't realize that a huge portion of your budget is for teacher
your salaries so it shows the discrepancy they they see the the disconnect they have between
the operations and teacher pay but you'll note even when we put teacher pay out there still 50
think that you have enough so we'll show you at the end when we provide more information
how that those opinions may change combined total sample 59 think that you have enough
So on the official ballot language, 40% of respondents said they would vote for this proposal.
54% would vote against.
6% are unsure.
When you look at the intensity, that's another important measure.
If you don't feel strongly about something, you might not go vote for it or against it.
You might skip over it when you're in the voting booth.
So those intensity numbers are also important.
This just really shows what would happen if you were to call the election and not a single thing was communicated to any voter out there and they just walked in off the street and read the language.
We all know that's not going to happen. As you discussed before, explaining to them what the funds are going to be used for is a big piece of that.
The other thing we wanted to do, though, was ask a more simplified question. We didn't talk in this question about how the funds would be used.
just wanted to test the support of whether or not they wanted to keep the four cents or have it
sent back. And we did this two ways. In version A, well, first we told everyone that the tax rate
in the district is set to decrease by four cents. In November, voters could be presented with an
election where they could vote to sustain the rate or vote against would be to lower it the
four cents in version b we said a vote four would add the four cents back to the tax rate and a vote
against would allow it to fall uh to to fall down four cents 42 would vote for this 55 would vote
against it looks pretty similar to question five where we tested the official language
but we actually found a lot of crossover we found a good portion of respondents that were for
question five were against question six and vice versa.
So then after question six, we read over a dozen statements to respondents.
Questions nine through 25 were more information about the proposal, a lot of different uses
for the funds.
We did talk about kind of what that four cents translates into in terms of taxes.
But I'm just going to show you a sampling of these questions so you can see what we
gave them and then show you where we ended up at the end of the survey.
In question nine, we told them the tax rate is set to decrease by four cents because of a mandate in the law, which you have no control over.
But the district can keep the current rate by seeking voter approval, which is all this proposal does.
The four cents is about $12 a month for the average homeowner.
And with all of these, we just said, does this make you favor or oppose a proposal?
proposal. In question 11 we see 59% so they oppose hearing that they would pay the average
homeowner would pay another $145 a year in taxes and they would otherwise have to. Question
19 we talked about starting salaries and how the starting salaries in the in Katy are lower
lower than other districts and that this would help recruit and retain high quality teachers
73 percent favor the proposal when they hear this in question 20 we told a respondent that
the district was had a teacher shortage and has been struggling to fill positions
this would help fill the these teacher positions 71 percent favor hearing that
that. In question 22, we talked about the starting salary or the hourly pay rate of employees, and we
told them that this would help improve the living wage for teachers and staff. 73% favor the proposal
hearing that. And the last example I'll show you is in question 25. We told them that by sustaining
the tax rate, the proposal will sustain community investment, sustain high quality teachers,
highly qualified teachers and staff and staff and sustained student success 71%
would favor the proposal hearing that so question six is again where we started
before we gave all of those statements to the respondent we see the the net
Net support is a minus 13 when you look at the total, and it's a minus 12 when you look at the intensity.
But at the end of the survey, when they heard more about how the money would be used, 59% would be for it, 39% would be against.
You've got a plus 20% on the total and a plus 9 on the intensity.
So voters are supportive of the concept.
They just need to be told what the district's using the money for.
And it's not just enough to say your tax rate's not going to go up, it's going to stay the same as it was.
That was good information, but we learned that you needed to tell them more about how it's going to benefit the district.
We followed up that question and sort of closed the survey out with this statement or this other proposal where we said,
how would you vote this different proposal where you could return two cents back to the district and keep the other two cents?
We actually saw less support for this than the 57% for the 4 cent proposal.
And I think the reason that we see that is we had got some respondents so supportive of sustaining the tax rate and investing in the school district that they didn't like this idea of only giving back 2 cents and keeping the other 2.
In fact, we see 29% of the people for the 4 cent increase or 4 cent proposal were actually against the 2 cent proposal.
It doesn't really make sense.
They were so excited about the 4 cent or committed to sustaining the investment that this proposal didn't sound good to them.
When you readjust the numbers and assume that this 29% would be for this two cent proposal, had they not been asked about the four cent proposal prior to this, it's about 68% support.
The other way you can look at it is 25% of the respondents that were not for the four cent proposal would be for the two cent proposal.
That equates to just about 10%.
You add that 10% to the 57% on the 4 cent, you're getting around 68% again.
So more support for the 2 cent proposal, of course.
So just to summarize, voters have a really good view of the district in terms of your fiscal management,
overall quality of quality of education,
and those are really good signs heading
into either a TRE or a bond election.
It's extremely hard to get voters
to support proposals when they're not
satisfied with the school district.
Unfortunately, only one third of
respondents thinks right now that
the district needs more money.
59% think that you have enough.
The belief that you need more money
is greater when you throw in teacher
pay into the equation, but that's
still not getting used to over 50 thinking that you need more money so that just underscores the
need for communications and in explaining how this bond or how the tre will benefit the district
when the official language is tested it's a minus 14 net support when we ask a more
straightforward question of do you want to you know let the district keep the four cents or
or would you rather have the four cents back?
It tests similarly.
But then when we tell them more information about how the funds would be used
and benefit the district, it's a plus 20.
So with any public policy or election, information and communication is really important,
and it really just the voters are going to have to know more about it to be supportive.
but it's not always a given that when you explain something voters will be supportive a lot of times you can tell voters I
Just finished a survey yesterday in another school district that we we didn't get over 50% after everything we had to say that's challenging
Unfortunately here that's not the case and they're supportive of the ideas and the policy so
They answer any questions that you have questions, mr. President, yeah
When the people were asked about the 4%
and they were told it was going to be for teacher pay,
and then the positives went way up, as I saw it,
compared to not getting that explanation, as I recall,
were they also informed at the time about, for example,
this is going to affect the typical homeowner by X amount?
Were they given all the information?
Yeah, so those, back to this here, questions 9 through 25, I believe, they were all randomized.
So everybody got, yeah, questions 9 through 25, they were all randomized.
So, yeah, question 10, they were told $12 per month on the average homeowner.
And question 11, we said it a different way, $145 a year on the average homeowner.
So in that one, in that case, the favorability went down quite a bit?
Yep.
And that happens too.
What just happened there?
I didn't touch anything.
That happens a lot when we do these types of surveys.
Respondents can, you know, they're reacting to what they just heard and that mimics what
what happens in reality and in campaigns because you know you've got you can have a yes side or a
pro side promoting something and saying things and you can have other people saying other negative
things about a proposal and people's opinions can change based on what they hear and that's why we
we didn't just you know live off of the responses to each question but at the very end after they'd
heard everything we asked that question 26 again having heard everything that we that we've had to
say how would you support it and that was where we had 57 percent for so it
just shows that you know 59% don't like the idea that they're gonna have to pay
a hundred forty five dollars more in property taxes and they would otherwise
have to on the average home but it shows that there's a percentage that are
willing even though they don't like that they're willing to do it because they
they like the investment ideas, right?
Any other questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
So you look at these all the time.
Looks like a green light to move forward
based on what you're seeing,
that if we were to do some education,
really share with our community about what it's for,
move forward?
or a absolutely stop, red light, don't do it?
No, I would say a green light, but I mean, cautiously optimistic.
The challenge is, you know, communicating this information
in the context of the general election or the midterm election
and all the other election-related communication
that will be out there for the voters.
But they're supportive of the concept.
So it's going to take a lot of work and communication.
I swear I'm not doing anything.
It's not even going on.
It's tired.
But, yeah, I would say a no-go is when you, like,
if we had ended up with the intensity tied, that would be kind of like, well,
that's a little troubling because you can tell your story
and you still can't get a majority of people to be really excited about it
or outnumber the people that are really against it.
So that's not the case here.
Okay, any other questions?
Mr. President.
Yes.
Given the environment right now in terms of the property taxes,
the general idea that property taxes are high
and property taxes in Texas need to be reformed, all this kind of stuff,
did that play into it at all?
or for example did people ask about or they pose a question any question about
reducing costs district needing to reduce costs anything on that front yeah
we do I guess I'm more concerned about the mentality the environment if you
will as far as property taxes yeah I mean we didn't ask anything specifically
about whether or not the district should reduce costs we again we know that a
majority don't think that you need any more money um but we did have two other statements relating
to property taxes that i didn't share just was kind of giving you a sampling for what we told
them but we let them know that um you know appraisals have gone up and so you know property
taxes may go up as a result of that and then we also told them that um about the homestead
exemption increase to 40 000 that was another piece of information we put out there okay
any other questions mr president yes so you do these for other districts
around the state and I know you referenced one yesterday or one you said that never got to 50
percent do you have any other references from other districts and how that one was a bond
that just is an example of you don't always get to an informed position in a survey where you
have people supportive so it's not a you know a given you know in terms of other TREs
We haven't had one that's gone to an election in a while, not with this new language.
We've done about five other TRE surveys in the last couple of months for other districts,
and a lot of districts are looking to do this.
And some are in a similar situation with the compression, and others are just looking to
increase.
I don't know that any have really started off in a place where voters are supportive
more so than against.
I mean, it's just kind of common sense that when you ask, you know, are you supportive of a tax increase, so to speak, you're going to have kind of a more opposition.
But most of them can get to a supportive, favorable position with the information.
So you have a lot more bond surveys.
I'm sorry.
I have one question.
So we're going to get a lot of people voting for this who aren't necessarily people who,
because what else are we voting for in November?
What else is on the?
Midterm elections.
Midterm elections.
So all these people who are out there voting for midterm election are going to see this.
And so we're going to have, you know, a lot of uninformed, you know, the people that normally
normally aren't that informed or that into what school board's doing and what the district's doing
um I know there's a cost associated with it too and I guess Mr Graham could probably tell us that
but what about I'm just throwing this out there does this have to be done now or could it be done
in May well I can answer that from a legal perspective it cannot be done in May it has
to be done in November election and we're still waiting on our final calls from Harris County
but the last November election was around $400,000,
and that's kind of what we have budgeted.
It could be as much as half a million to run it,
but we will know that number, have a better sense of that number in November,
I mean in August.
Mr. Graham, thank you for that information,
and I completely 100% believe you,
but I just want to know why can't we do it in May?
I mean, what's the...
Because the legislature changed the rules a while back that said that these type of elections have to occur at the general uniform election date in November.
So it's a lot of people that we're going to have to educate.
It's not just the normal 8,000 to 10,000 people who vote for us.
Good point.
Okay.
Any other questions?
Thank you very much.
Thanks.
And I think we were going to, what's that?
So I guess we're back to where we can, I guess we've got three options right now.
We can see if Mr. Smith has any questions,
and we can postpone doing anything until the next meeting, August 22nd.
We can vote.
Somebody can make a motion tonight to approve the VATER, but not the amount,
and then we can approve the amount at the next meeting.
or we can decide to let's approve the due the vader and do the full amount or something in
between so those are the options that the trustees have available to us tonight going forward
mr schulte yes i have a question for mr smith and uh but that does his answer will not change
how i feel about this i love having robust discussions like this and letting the community
speak back to us before we make a decision.
Space, yeah.
Yeah, so because we can do it next month
and know what we're going to do.
And so I would like to hear what they have to say
once they've seen this and kind of hear about it.
My question for Mr. Smith is,
when you said you would bring a budget,
Sherry would bring a budget next time
that showed a 4% general increase for all employees,
that would be kind of a guideline,
but the board would decide how to spend the money
if it's going to be 4% for everyone,
if we're going to do a differentiated again,
all of those things would be,
that wouldn't be a guarantee that's how we're going to spend it.
It would be a guideline.
Is that correct?
Again, it is my understanding that the board would need,
if you call an election,
would need to adopt a additional compensation plan that reflected an
additional three or three or four percent salary increase so that when and
if the VA TRE passed that it could be retroactive to September 1 and then
those would be eligible for TRS unless if a state if the compensation plan is
not updated then it would not be the the retro portion would not be eligible for uh trs it would
be from december on would be eligible for teachers retirement system okay so i'm glad i asked that
question so when we as a nation are concerned about teacher shortages and teacher salaries
salaries, and if that's why we're asking about this, then if we wanted to treat classroom
teachers differently, the way we did with our 5% and 4% and 3%, whatever we did, then
we would need to have that ready for next month as well?
As I understand it, in order for it to be TRS eligible, yes, ma'am.
That's a challenge.
Can we confirm that?
Are you 100% certain of that?
or mr. Schulte I'll say it is a confirmation I didn't ask anyone in the
ledge this question but I did have a conversation with a superintendent who
has passed a TRE in the last two years and he shared that very same sentiment
that if you want to make them retroactive you have to pass a secondary
comp plan to ensure that it is TRS eligible we're pretty confident and
you've got to do it before the start of the school year we'd have to do it at
about the same time that we call for the TRE so part of the discussion we've been
having and like I said I get what folks are saying and I'm gonna piggyback also
on what miss Fox just said there as part of that education piece if the board
wants to wait a month before saying we're gonna do this and then make final
decisions in August that's fine we can still move forward as a district because
I think after tonight there's gonna be a lot of questions there are and we can
put some FAQs out there, you know what I mean, and talk about what is a TRE and what are
we proposing to use it for.
And I can have Dr. Grooms create that as part of our website to have some information out
there.
But the best I could offer the district then is to ask Mr. Schuss down there where the
compensation plan is, grab me the tables out of the compensation plan and go ahead and
move the employee salaries from the midpoint at 3% and show you what that looks like and
move it at 4%.
I can move one at 2% too if you want to see that.
Heck, I can move it at 1%.
I can move it at whatever you want.
But if you would like, Mr. Schuss, to create that at 3% and 4% on the employee salary tables,
I can have them do that and send that to the board and you can see what that looks like
on about how much raise that would be for our employees.
and then you would have that data for next month if you move forward with
calling it and saying hey we think we're gonna call for it and let the voters
have that choice and if it were to pass this is the comp plan we would approve
at 3% or this is the comp plan that we want at 4% so then it's on the record
that you are saying that and I think that would meet the letter of the law of
what mr smith is saying that would be above and beyond what we've done yes and what if we want
to differentiate the five plus the four or the three that's correct which would get us at the
top and that and that would uh need to be put in place by september one august 22nd is when
i never knew that we will tonight that that was a that was a requirement i thought we had until
november to decide that so i'm a little surprised to hear that we have to have that by the next
media i've never well you don't have to okay let me be clear like what you described earlier uh mr
schulte like if if a tre was was passed the board can make any decision you want of when to execute
those uh those races we bonus it you could what we're trying to say is if we don't do another comp
plan, the small gap time from September to the day in there, that's not going to be TRS eligible.
But you could still give the raise. There's just going to be a portion that wouldn't be TRS
eligible for this year. Going into next year, Mr. Smith, all of it would be TRS eligible in the
future. There's going to be a small gap time if we don't execute that extra option in there.
Just the back pay. The rest of the school year, December, moving forward, it would be eligible.
That's not that bad.
Because you would be adopting at that time a new compensation plan.
I would, just my preference would be to rush getting all that together, all this together by the next meeting, something like a lot.
If that's the case, that seems tolerable to me.
That's up to you what you want. I've got confidence in Mr. Schuss and his team. He can get it together.
Well, I think you should give us today, then we can decide how quickly we want to move.
yeah certainly for me mr president i
my thing is the difficulty in deciding in a differentiated
plan it's not one one percentage across the board
if we wanted to do something different treat classroom teachers differently the
way we have been because of the teacher shortage when we talk to our
people about teacher shortages and teacher pay
our compensation plan should reflect that
that. So so and I really think it probably should be ready by August so that when we say we've already adopted the plan here's how we're going to spend it we've already said so so don't think you're writing us a blank check. It's we've already adopted the plan of how we will use the money so that would be strong.
But as long as we communicate, we are going to use it for staff salaries.
We could do that too.
I know Dr. Grooms will have an amazing plan, communication plan going forward.
We could talk about it like that.
We can put that in the motion when we make the motion too.
Right.
But I would not want to see only a straight across the board salary increase.
Another whole set of discussions to have, yeah.
For me.
Well, along with what she said, so we're talking about teachers.
I always thought we were kind of talking about teachers.
But, you know, we're talking about cabinet members and admin and all that, too, getting a 4% raise.
I mean, is it just across the thing, or is this something that we can still discuss,
or is this something that we have to know right now to be able to tell?
We're saying we don't need to know it right now.
But we might need to know it.
If we choose or we deal with the three-month gap, right?
Okay.
Okay, so I don't think we need to make that decision tonight.
So it sounds like we're ready to move on to agenda item 9.4,
unless there's any other questions.
I just want to clarify.
I love you all.
I'm not trying to say anyone isn't valued as much as everyone else.
But if we're going to talk about teacher pay, teacher shortages,
I think that might need to be part of the plan if we adopt that plan in August.
That was my point.
not that I don't value everyone.
Thank you.
Mr. President, I think to wrap it all up,
I know for me understanding the history,
while I hate the idea of a tax increase,
just inside me, I dislike it.
But when I understand the why,
when we started the conversation of,
I mean, throughout this entire year,
we've talked about teacher shortages
and what we've gone through with COVID.
And I mean, it's been a topic of discussion
at every meeting and then as we've gone through looking at pay and like miss
champagne said we just it continues to play that jump but this is this is a
lever you can pull that gets you to the front and keeps you there I know
there's another district in the area that's at their board meeting tonight
is talking about it because we're not in a we're not in the unique situation we
don't have as much of a budget deficit to make up so there's not a there's not
hundreds of millions of dollars over the next couple years we have to make up and so i think
for for me what what i like about this is that especially if we adopt the compensation plan
that i when people are talking about excess and extra i don't i don't think it any of us would
really view it as extra especially with an approved compensation plan it's super transparent
about what we're trying to do and how we're trying to do it and so um yeah and then and then at the
end of the day we're not the ones making that decision every every single person in this
community has the ability to walk into their voting booth and make that decision do they value
paying our teachers more or not we just put it on them and they get they get a choice they use
their voice so the why uh i think is what draws me to saying i can get behind this and support it
So, thank you.
9.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the publication of the Notice of Public Meeting to discuss the Budget and Proposed Tax Rate.
Okay, so we're going to move on to agenda item 9.4, discuss and consider board approval of the publication of the notice of public meeting to discuss the budget proposed tax rate.
Presenters, Mr. Jamie Hines.
Actually, I'm going to present this one.
You have a notice.
It's a blank one attached.
We won't be able to fill that out with the exception of the top portion tonight.
tonight. In the top portion, we'll read that Katy Independent School District will hold a meeting at 5 p.m. on August the 22nd in the boardroom of the Education Support Complex, 6301 South Stadium Lane. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the school district's budget that will determine the tax rate that will be adopted. Public participation in the discussion is invited.
invited so in the tax rate based on the conversation that I've heard tonight I'm
going to go ahead and put last year's tax rate if we decide as a board the
board decides to not do that we can always adopt a lower rate you can't
adopt a higher rate so I'm going to put published last year's tax rate is the
intent of the way I would move forward public say publishing this again much of
of the data that's in here we're getting still only from one appraisal district
at about ten that we've heard from so far but there'll be a lot of information
that we'll get to be able to put in here but the main part is is that we're gonna
have the meeting on August and we're gonna publish the rate of last year's
rate and that gives us the maximum flexibility it's nothing or the max yes
sir okay any questions for mr. Smith if not I'll entertain a motion mr.
president yes I'm maybe the board of trustees approves the publication of
notice of the public meeting to discuss the budget and proposed tax rate i have a motion by
miss van second by mr redmond we'll now proceed to vote are those in favor place your vote please
the motion passes 7-0 agenda item 9.5 discuss and consider board approval of a resolution to
9.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of a Resolution to designate an Officer to calculate tax rates.
designate an officer to calculate the tax rate mr smith so this is uh something that i think is
We'd be taking for granted that I would be the officer to calculate that.
It will be me and Jamie Hines and Kayla Smith from our accounting department.
The three of us will work on it as a team, but it will be my responsibility,
and the resolution suggests that or dictates that or says that,
and I would recommend that the resolution be approved with me as the officer to do those calculations.
I have one question.
I don't know if it's for Mr. Graham or Mr. Smith, but I noticed the resolution, draft resolution, doesn't have the name of the person.
So should your name be in the motion as the designee versus just it sounds like we're making a motion to find somebody to pick the designee rather than name the designee.
It says CFO in there.
It does?
Yeah, let's say, heaven forbid, something happens to Chris.
It's an officer.
In the meantime.
On the resolution, it does.
Okay, I'm looking at the motion.
Sorry, I was looking at the motion.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, that would have clarified for me.
Okay, thanks for the clarification.
I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move that the Board of Trustees approves of a resolution to designate an officer to calculate tax rates.
Second.
We have a motion by Ms. Wilson, a second by Ms. Vann.
We'll now proceed to vote.
The motion passes 7-0.
9.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of Amendment Two to the Stewart Builders, Inc. contract related to the renovations and addition at Schmalz Elementary School.
9.6, discussing consider board approval of amendment two to the Stuart Builders Inc. contract related to the renovations and addition of Schmos Elementary School.
Thanks for your endurance tonight.
You know you're going to be here this late.
No problem.
Good to see you.
Thank you.
Good evening, President Schulte, Trustees, Dr. Gagorski.
I have two items for your consideration this evening.
The first is recommendation for the approval of the final guaranteed maximum price for the renovations in addition to Smalls Elementary.
This approval will allow for continued work at this facility for an August 2023 opening.
Any questions?
Mr. President, I have a question.
Does this include the extra buildings that Mr. Verling was talking about?
That's correct, yes.
It's about eight classrooms, a multipurpose room, and some other small workspaces.
So are those the portable buildings or are they?
Yes, this will replace the majority of the portable buildings.
Any other questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move the Board of Trustees approves of Amendment 2 to the Stewart Builders Incorporated Contract
related to the renovations and addition at Schmalz Elementary School
for the guaranteed maximum price of $6,129,674
and approves the total project cost not to exceed $13,245,000.
$1,222.
Second.
We have a motion by Ms. Vann, a second by Ms. Champagne.
We'll now proceed to vote.
Motion carries 6-0.
9.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of the prevailing wage rate schedule.
9.7, discuss and consider board approval of the prevailing wage rate schedule.
Ms. Casper.
Okay, this is something that occurs about every three years for the Texas Government Code.
We need to publish the prevailing wage rates.
This is a survey done in the Houston area.
just the local K through 12 construction trades and this will go on our upcoming
projects any questions mr. president yes how do we use is exactly in our in our
day to day so we put out a project for bid it's published in our contract
documents and the contractor is supposed to pay those those rates that's it this
fixed yes okay thank you mr. president yes I move that the Board of Trustees
is approves of the prevailing wage rate schedule we have a motion by ms wilson a second by mrs van
we'll now proceed to vote
motion carries 6-0 9.8 discuss and consider board approval of the discipline management plan and
9.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Discipline Management Plan and Student Code of Conduct for the 2022-2023 school year.
student code of conduct for the 2022-2023 school year presenters miss sherry ash horn
Good evening.
Good evening.
This is the second time you've seen the discipline management plan.
You had it for discussion last month.
The only change is the update to the bus rules that will align with the district transportation website and student handbook.
So they're just reorganized for better clarity.
But other than that, you're looking at the same information presented last month.
Mr. President?
Yes.
May I ask a question, please?
Yes.
and I realize it was probably presented last month, but where is it?
That, so a lot of the things were taken out and put into the student handbook.
Is that correct?
Yes, correct.
Okay.
And so is the student handbook the same for every campus or, okay.
Yeah, that's a great question.
It's actually, last year, you might remember,
we had elementary and secondary handbooks separately.
This year it's one combined document.
It has hyperlinks, it's posted online.
You can go check it out right now.
And a lot of that information has already been moved over there because some of the
sections like bicycle riders and walkers, bacterial meningitis, those were more appropriate
for a student handbook, not the discipline plan.
And like the visitors, I was reading that.
And I have a specific, I have two specific questions.
questions. One is about the FAFSA exclusion on the EIF local. I believe it's brought up
in here. They said that the FAFSA is required now for the kids graduating high school, going
into college, but you can do an opt-out thing. Do you know about this?
No, I'm sorry. I can't speak to that, Ms. Champagne.
I can separately ask Dr. Kroporsky about that.
The other one is about the bus.
I'm just curious.
I've asked this question before, and I know it says something about that if they're in pre-K or kindergarten,
that they have to have someone with them.
I mean, someone waiting for them at the bus stop.
Are you familiar with that?
Right.
So I can comment about we do have a section in there under jurisdiction.
It talks about bus stops and it does say it's the parents role and responsibility to supervise
children at the bus stop.
Is it just through kindergarten?
I'd like to double check.
I'm so sorry.
I don't think that that's a revised thing.
I just was curious about it.
Kindergarten students must have a responsible adult or older sibling receiving them at the
bus stop.
Is that maybe what you're asking?
So I'm just wondering, is that, is that, where is that rule coming from?
Is that a state law or is that a, just a KDIC rule or, or do you know?
Not a hundred percent confident Ms. Champagne.
It's probably best practice.
I'm not aware of a law, but.
It just seems so young that we only require it through kindergarten.
I don't know.
But anyway, but that's good.
That's okay.
I was just wondering about that.
I know that that rule has been in there.
I just wonder about it all the time.
So, all right.
Thank you.
That's all I have.
Any other questions?
Yes.
Mr. Schulte.
Man, it's too late.
So the FAFSA thing, I also had a question about that.
There is an opt-out for that.
If you're not applying for financial aid, you do not have to fill out that form.
Should that be designated here or not?
Some people are very confused about the opt-out.
but um cinderella of course made a bill about it i can't remember what the bill number is called
but there's an opt out because not everybody's applying for financial aid and the government
does not have the right to know everything i own every piece of property every dollar i have
if i'm not asking for financial aid so there is an opt out for that it's very confusing to fill
out that form anyway so should that be listed here so if i understand the question miss fox
you're requesting that the rules for fafsa and the opt-out procedure be included in the
discipline management plan it tells you conduct trustees i i think i may be able to clarify here
We have a local policy update EIF which specifically talks about the FAFSA rules
And I think since Sherry miss Ashmore does both we may have kind of jumped ahead here
I don't think the FAFSA is part of the discipline
management process
119 that's where I am just on the wrong thing
on the wrong topic
Almost we're getting there. It's mrs. Champaign's fault because she already asked
it's update 119 and and dr. Gorgorski this is probably not the place for it
but counselors need to know and parents need to know that that's not required
however that happens go ahead I'm sorry any other question on the discipline
management plan no that'll entertain a motion yes I move the Board of Trustees
approves the discipline management plan and student code of conduct for the 2022
2022-2023 school year.
Second.
We have a motion by Mr. Redman, a second by Ms. Wilson.
We'll now proceed to vote.
The motion carries 7-0.
9.9 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2022-2023 District Professional Development Plan and review the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) Clearinghouse.
9.9, discuss and consider board approval of the 2022-2023
District Professional Development Plan
and review the State Board for Educator Certification Clearinghouse.
Good evening.
Good evening, President Schulte, Board Members, and Dr. Gorgorski.
I am here this evening to present for your review and approval two items that are new requirements that will be included in the Legal Update 119 presented later this evening.
First, in accordance with board policy DMA legal, the Board of Trustees shall annually review the Professional Development Clearinghouse published by the State Board for Educators Certification.
And second, the administration is requesting your approval of the 2022-2023 District Professional Development Plan.
The district plan does include all mandatory trainings which are included in the state board for educator certification clearinghouse.
These trainings are denoted in your board documents.
Thank you very much.
Any questions?
Have we seen this before in this format like this?
No, because it is a new legal requirement.
So impressive.
I didn't want to say that if I'd seen it before, you know, but it's very impressive reading through all of this.
how all the things are covered but yeah i just wanted to say that thank you uh mr president um
so the the new 2223 district professional development plan that's these are all required
courses correct these are required mandatory trainings okay like sexual abuse child abuse
human trafficking safety all that kind of thing that is correct what about the um the courses
that are listed in the clearinghouse?
So the clearinghouse is what is going to be
in the legal update of 119 that's set forth.
And those clearinghouse trainings
are trainings that we already have previously
and moving forward put in our mandatory training.
And so they are already covered in what we already do.
and they are now asking that the board approve each year annually and review
each year these trainings that are put forth by the clearinghouse okay so these
will be part of they are already they are going forward okay you know as I and
I know this is it's already baked in if you will I kind of drill down on some of
of the players that sponsor or put on some of these trainings,
like the one on building skills related to managing emotions,
establishing, maintaining, et cetera.
And I really had some questions or issues with some
of those sponsors like CASEL, for example, CASEL.
Also with the Education Development Center,
just some questions about their funding and their,
and just sort of their agenda.
I got to tell you.
So I mean, I realize we've been doing this and we're going to continue to do it, but
I think we need to really look a lot of times behind who's behind some of the training that
they put on.
That's just a comment on that.
I have some issues, for example, with CASEL in particular.
They've kind of changed in the last couple of years in terms of their agenda.
And so I'm concerned about some of these SEL programs that have a certain agenda going forward.
Thank you.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move the Board of Trustees approves the 2022-2023 District Professional Development Plan and review the State Board for Education Certification, SBEC, Clearinghouse.
Second.
We have a motion by Ms. Vann, second by Ms. Wilson. We'll now proceed to vote.
The motion passes six to one.
And also, I forgot to introduce you, and I apologize, Dr. Dwarf.
My apologies.
9.10 Discuss and consider Board approval of a delegate and alternate delegate to the 2022 Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Delegate Assembly.
We'll now proceed to agenda item 9.10,
discuss and consider board approval of a delegate, an alternate delegate,
to the 2022 Texas Associated School Board's Delegate Assembly.
What's that?
I think you're the delegate, but in case you can't make it, we have to have a…
No, no.
Yeah?
Yeah, no, it's different.
Is it TASA TASA?
Yeah, yes.
If there's no questions, I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President.
Yes.
I move that the Board of Trustees approves Greg Schulte as an official Katie Independent School District voting delegate to the 2022 TASB Delegate Assembly and approves Lance Redman as an alternate delegate.
We have a motion by Ms. Wilson, a second by Ms. Fox.
We'll now proceed to vote.
Whoops.
Yeah, I voted against myself.
The motion passes 7-0.
10.1 Discuss future Board adoption of Policy Update 119
We'll now proceed to agenda item 10.1, discussion, future board adoption of policy 119.
Yeah, I already asked a pre-question.
Okay, I'm back.
So this is our first reading for update 119.
We'll ask for your approval next month at the August board meeting.
And you'll notice that there are two local recommended policies by administration, one regarding employment practices and one about commencement, graduation ceremonies, and student activities.
Do you have any questions at this time?
Okay.
I think this is where I saw the FAFSA thing.
Yes, yes.
Mr. Graham confirmed it's an EIF.
And I'm very sorry about that.
but my concern is and I don't I know that this is not something that you can
control but I know that there's an opt I guess I call opt out hmm in the legal
but I'm just wondering if the counselors are letting the students and teachers
know that you know because I don't know it I don't know what I raised the pride
of the parents I don't know what the form looks like I don't know they're
They're just getting the form, and the form, because, you know, as parents, we see hundreds of forms.
And so on the form, if it says you must do a FAFSA, then I'm going to think I've got to do a FAFSA.
But I don't know that there's, like, most parents aren't going to research the policies on every little tiny thing that they have to do.
Yeah.
How about I jump in here, Ms. Champagne?
So Sherry is one of our policy experts, and she can tell you what the policy is required to do.
We're required to offer it to every kid, and we're required to offer the opt-out.
That's clear.
How about I get to the board?
You're asking more of a procedural question.
I will get to the board this week by the Friday info, just let you guys know here's our process in KDISD of explaining this along with the opt-out, and then you guys will all be informed better on how we do that.
And if there are still questions, you can bring them back to me if there's a different or better way to do it.
You bet.
IS IT THE OPT OUT FOR THE, WHAT WAS IT FOR?
IT'S THE OPT OUT FOR THE FAFSA.
FAFSA.
THE LITERAL FREE.
OH, OKAY.
WHAT?
I DID THE FAFSA.
I DID.
I DID THE COLLEGE FOREGROUND.
WE WERE TOLD IT HAD BEEN DONE.
I MEAN, THEY WERE CALLING KIDS OUT OF THE CLASSROOM AND SHOWED A LIST OF WHO HADN'T TURNED THEIR FAFSA IN.
I HAD, LIKE, MISSED ONE LAST BUTTON ON MY DAUGHTER'S.
SO I DID IT.
WELL, THE OPT OUT WAS NEVER COMMUNICATED AT SEVEN LAKES.
Guys, I do want to indicate here, this is a new Texas Administrative Code rule that
we're codifying in our legal policy.
It's on page 321 in your packet.
And so this is something that's very clearly articulated now and again.
I think because we've got this new legal rule that's also we're going to look at in local
policy, I think this gives us the opportunity for, again, like Dr. Grosche said, let's figure
out how we communicate that with our folks.
So I just wanted to add to that.
The FAFSA thing itself, you know, the requirement is new.
Like that in itself is new.
And so the opt-out thing happened quickly right after that.
You know, it wasn't like we've had that FAFSA thing for 10 years and now the opt-out thing is new.
They're both are new, you know.
So they're both are new.
So to me, they should have both been implemented at the same time.
That's what I'm saying.
Any other questions?
I had a question, Mr. President, on DC local.
And that is, I'm not sure what's behind this change, but it says the board delegates to
the superintendent or designee authority for selection and employment of all contractual
personnel.
personnel. Was that? Is that just rewarding it or simplifying? Or is it totally a delegation of that authority to the superintendent? I think we give him that authority over the summer and we're just expanding that authority to since we give it to him all the summer just to give him the authority for the entire year where the board's not going to get involved in personnel decisions below the superintendent.
So this is a contractual personnel meeting, not just teachers, just anyone?
Any contractors, contractual?
Any employee who's on a contract, but just employees.
Just employees?
Yes.
Correct.
Okay.
I have one more question.
Yes.
It has to do with the attendance requirement.
requirement. So, you know, I don't have a child in the district anymore. So my last one graduated
in 2020. So I don't have firsthand, you know, that was COVID year and all that. Have we changed
our attendance requirement? Because I'll tell you why. I've heard that someone, this is just an
example, a kid that's in high school was missing all of a class, but was somehow still doing it
online and then the kid had an a so the mom goes and talks to whoever it was at the high school
and really wanted she wants her son she wanted her son to go to school because she would keep
getting the letters you know but when she talked to the person at school the person said well she
he has an a so you know what are you worried about kind of thing so i'm trying to figure out
is he supposed to be going to school or are we doing online still or i'm just i'm just kind of
confused by it. Ms. Champagne, if you could help me understand the question you're asking, I think
I understand what you're asking, but which policy is it related to? Is there a change in policy that
you're inquiring about? Is there a change in the attendance requirement? Yeah, but which policy
in 119 are you referring to? So I can have Ms. Ashmore maybe help me a little bit with policy.
were you talking or asking a procedure?
Let me look on here.
I've got to look at the instruction sheet.
FEC legal or?
Explanation and notes.
I'll have to find it again.
What I can offer up is, Ms. Ashwin, you said this was first reading of 119?
Yes.
Okay at first reading of 119 if the board combs through any policies over the next week or two weeks or three weeks and has
Any specific questions about those policies or the procedures tied to policy if you'll just email me that I can get the board an update
Each week on any policy questions try to clarify it is board attendance
attendance attendance for credit
FEC legal
Right so that and that does discuss some of the
the legal requirements that have maybe been modified or changed.
So are you referencing the local remote learning program exception?
Right, I guess so.
Has that always been like that, the 90% attendance requirement?
So you might remember, Ms. Champagne,
we have exempt ourselves from that requirement.
So our local policy is going to say that it's modified,
our FEC local, the local policy that complements this
because of our district of innovation plan.
So that's already going to look a little bit different,
but it's definitely not a free-for-all that you don't have to go to class anymore.
There are those procedures and safeguards in place still for falling below 75%
or for students that have unexcused absences.
They'll still be captured with an attendance intervention plan with the assistant principal.
So that 10-day thing, because I remember there used to be a 10-day,
you know, you couldn't miss more than 10 days or whatever.
For unexcused absences, yes, that's still going to occur.
Parents will still get those letters.
All right.
So is there any actions, Ms. Champaign, or do you have your...
No, I just was wanting a clarifying, because that question comes up to me a lot from people that have kids in high school.
And I think there's just been, because of COVID, it's just been, and, you know, the rule was something else, and it kind of got changed along the way, and now what really is it still?
So...
You're okay?
I'm good.
Okay, you're good?
Thank you.
Action.
11. Consent
Next, we'll now move on to agenda item 11, which is the consent agenda.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move the Board of Trustees approves a consent agenda for items 11.1 through 11.7.
Second.
I have a motion by Ms. Vann and a second by Ms. Wilson.
We'll now proceed to vote on the consent agenda.
Motion passes 7-0.
12. Information Items
and item 12.1 quarterly investment report the board was provided a copy of the quarterly
investment report 12.2 uh board subcommittee report on advocacy mr lance redmond we just
wanted to bring a quick update to our trustee advocacy training program uh the quicker just a
a refresh is this past year we applied and were selected to take part of one of nine districts
to a lot of the stuff we were talking about tonight so we approached the tre to to just
grow in the way that we advocate and educate our community and so a reminder our first meeting was
here in katie in the spring with the entire board across the street and then in april a smaller group
Ms. Fox, former board member Keller, and myself went,
and we spent that time in Austin
walking through kind of the why, what it looked like,
how to begin through this process.
And so for me personally, what I thought it looked like,
how do we just encourage KDISD to communicate to Austin,
it kind of gave me a new vision
that the education and communication
that we have with our local community,
some great practices that we can apply there too.
And so as we went through that,
there were some things that we've talked about
as a board in our team training.
If you remember the, what do they call it,
the school board development framework,
it lays out some of those requirements
that the TEA requires of us.
And so point number four, just a quick rundown, is advocacy and engagement.
And so why we're taking a part in this, just to remind us and the district here, it lays out the board promotes the vision, engages the community in developing and fulfilling the vision.
The board advocates on behalf of Texas public school children.
And it goes through and talks about communicating goals, which we're obviously doing during our strategic design update this year.
and it continues to go on communication talks about dashboards but the the three
final points on there I think lay out why this advocacy training program could
be so valuable for us as a district and I'm gonna read them because it really
lays it out builds collaborative relationships and partnerships and I
think here you see where it's not just Austin but but here with families
families, community, business, nonprofit, higher education, education support organizations,
and governmental leaders to influence and expand educational opportunities and experiences
to meet the needs of students.
So as a board, we can always learn and grow, but how to communicate not just with locally
in Katy, families, parents, organizations, but also with our governmental entities.
SECOND ONE, RECOGNIZES THE RESPECTIVE ROLES OF AND PROVIDES INPUT AND FEEDBACK TO THE
LEGISLATURE, STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, AND THE TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY TO ENSURE MAXIMUM
EFFECTIVENESS AND BENEFIT TO SCHOOL CHILDREN.
AND SO AS LONG AS I'VE BEEN ON THE BOARD, OUR BOARD AS INDIVIDUALS HAVE INTERACTED WITH
GOVERNMENT ENTITIES.
BUT AS A BOARD, WE HAVEN'T REALLY HAD A CONCERTED EFFORT THAT WE MOVE FORWARD WITH THAT.
The last one, promote school board service by educating the community about the role of the school board and encouraging leadership opportunities within the community.
So where we're at is where our students have the most to gain is that we're participating in this group.
There's nine school districts from all over the state.
There's no money exchanging hands.
Nobody's paying us to be a part of it.
We're not paying anybody to be a part of it.
Nobody's telling us what we should support.
nobody's telling us how we should do it.
What we're going through as a training is literally,
it's a workshop that says this is what's been effective
for school districts to communicate to their community
in Austin and to educate them so that your taxpayers,
your voters are educated and confident
as they talk to Austin.
Because I think a lot of people are like I was,
and before I was on the board,
I didn't know what I needed to communicate.
I didn't know what I should support or not support.
I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know how to speak that lingo.
And so as we move forward, the next steps.
We've been through two of the meetings.
There's four more meetings throughout the next 10 months.
The next one's in September.
So between now and then, there's what they call listening circles.
So we take the opportunity to meet kind of informally at first with members of the community
that know, can verbalize, speak towards how they would like to impact Austin.
And just listen, hear their story about how we can take that information and apply it
in the way we educate and motivate our people here in Katy.
So then it moves on, we'll expand that group a little bit so that we get that feedback.
back so as we approach this legislative session it's not just what the seven or eight of us up
here would like to push forward to it's what our community has said hey these are the things we're
looking at and so you know personally what i've heard people talk about has been uh teacher
retention school finance and then you start getting into the testing and and i think it's
bigger than that because it's also about educating our voters so that when they go to vote when our
community goes to vote we have a better turnout um right i mean our less than four percent of
people voted in may right we want we want people to participate and so when we go back it'll be
middle of september uh miss wilson will be replacing uh mr keller in the smaller group and
i believe when we return back we'll have the ability to take these listening circles and
hopefully know that it wasn't a just
just that we really listened to people.
It wasn't just doing a circle so that we could say,
oh, we asked somebody a question.
So I can update you, because I have to tell you now
in an open meeting.
But any questions as we move forward to that?
Mid-September is the next meeting.
And then I think it's maybe January, March,
and then it ends in June after the next legislative session.
Thank you.
Thanks, Lance.
Any questions for Mr. Redman?
Okay, we're at agenda item 12.3.
The board was provided a copy of the donated items to KDISD.
Agenda item 12.4, recap of board members' requests for information.
I don't know if you were capturing that, Ms. Vann.
I was because I forgot to remind you that you needed to do that.
No, it's a hard practice that I haven't.
It's not a practice that I really got.
I know I was going to remind you.
I did it.
I see the two of you.
I look over at halfway through and you're all writing down.
And I'm like, y'all got it.
I'm going to have what I captured.
I had Ms. Fox ask a question on an apples to apples comparison,
the best that Mr. Lance Nauman can do, Fort Bend versus Cyphair
regarding the health plan care costs.
That close enough?
Yes, close enough.
I'm sure Mr. Nauman knows what the action is.
I had another item from Mr. Perez from Mr. Nauman to get participants, the number of participants in each of the three plans that we offer.
Is that something you asked, I believe?
Then, Leah, you asked for something, and I couldn't write fast enough.
You asked Mr. Nauman something about copay data, but I'm not sure exactly what it was.
Right, to see the copay break out for each of the…
Okay.
Okay.
Copay break.
Okay.
Okay, and then I had, I asked for, as part of the TRE update, updated comp curves for the, I guess we've got kind of the chart,
but when we did the original plan back in May, there was actually some curves and stuff you had,
where you had the median and all that stuff compared to the competitive.
Didn't we have something a little bit more involved than what we saw today, back in May, when you guys gave us all that data?
Are you talking about the line graph with the comparables?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's going to be really hard to get until each district later in the fall submits that.
What we got today is probably the best we're going to get.
I think it is unless, I mean, yeah, it would be a tough one to get that specific of data
until after all that data gets submitted later this fall.
Okay, Victor, you asked for a request from Mr. Smith about forecasted deficits going forward,
but I think we answered that for you that unless we,
the deficit shouldn't get any bigger unless we do something outside of the TRE
we'll keep giving 8% raises when there's no budget to do it.
Did we answer your question or do you still have?
Basically given the rates that we're looking at,
what are we looking at and assuming certain levels of pennies,
then what does it look like at the end of each year in terms of the deficit and the fund balance?
Okay. So, Mr. Smith, do you understand what he's looking for?
Okay. So we got that. And then the other action item, again, this one was new to me, but we need, I think, Dr. Gorski, you were in a work, Mr. Schuss, to get a compensation plan, a draft compensation plan at various raise increases for the next meeting?
We can certainly do that. It didn't sound like that was the direction of the board that they wanted.
so he can do it and we can get it but I I hesitate to ask him to do a whole lot
of work that the board might not be interested in because I'm hearing we
might want to differentiate it and if we want to differentiate it I got to tell
them how to differentiate it so if the if it would be fruitful for the board to
have a straight-up comp plan at 3% midpoint increases and 4% definitely but
But if the board's not going in that direction, I would hate for him to do all that work.
Well, I would tell you this.
I would start with that, and then we can decide from that.
We'll get some indication if we want to do more than that.
Does that make – I think that's a reasonable approach.
Do the 4 and 3 percent.
Do we want to see 3?
What's that?
Do we want to see 3?
Just 4 percent only.
Just do 4 percent.
Yeah.
4 percent complaint.
Do you want the higher part of the 4?
Well, I think 4.69 gets us 4.
4 will get us in the playground, right?
The 462 or 469?
It says four.
Yeah.
Four and 462.
I mean, if we can only ask once, we need to ask.
Yes.
Then I'm getting down.
This is the last one.
Ms. Champagne asked for details or can agree to provide Ms. Champagne details of the opt-out process for FAFSA.
Yes.
Yeah.
And that's it.
Is there anything somebody wanted or needed that I did not capture?
Okay.
We'll move on to adjournment.
16. Adjournment
There being no further business before the board, this meeting is adjourned.
The time is 1103.
Thanks, everyone, for staying so late.
Official documents
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 9.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the publication of the Notice of Public Meeting to discuss the Budget and Proposed Tax Rate.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 002 · AGENDA 9.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's July 2022 budget amendments.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 003 · AGENDA 9.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the publication of the Notice of Public Meeting to discuss the Budget and Proposed Tax Rate.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 004 · AGENDA 9.5
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves of a Resolution to designate an Officer to calculate tax rates.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 005 · AGENDA 9.6
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves Amendment Two to the Stewart Builders, Inc. contract related to the renovations and addition at Schmalz Elementary School for the Guaranteed Maximum Price of $6,129,674, and approves the total project cost not to exceed $13,245,222. Not Present at Vote: Rebecca Fox
6 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 006 · AGENDA 9.7
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees adopts the attached prevailing wage rate schedule. Not Present at Vote: Rebecca Fox
6 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 007 · AGENDA 9.8
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Discipline Management Plan and Student Code of Conduct for the 2022-2023 school year.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 008 · AGENDA 9.9
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the 2022-2023 District Professional Development Plan and reviews the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) Clearinghouse.
6 Yes · 1 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | No |
MOTION 009 · AGENDA 9.10
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves Greg Schulte as an official Katy Independent School District voting delegate to the 2022 TASB Delegate Assembly and approves Lance Redmon as an alternate delegate.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 010 · AGENDA 11.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the plat for Hutsell Elementary School.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 011 · AGENDA 11.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards CenterPoint Energy Houston Electric, LLC a blanket electrical easement associated with the construction of Elementary School #45 as depicted in the attached easement document.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 012 · AGENDA 11.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the contract for the chiller replacements at Stanley Elementary and Sundown Elementary Schools to Hunton Services, utilizing the Choice Partners Contract No. 19/036MR-03 in the amount of $1,627,221; and a total not to exceed project cost of $1,727,063.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 013 · AGENDA 11.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees enters into a Reimbursement Agreement with Harris County for a traffic signal at Peek Road and Stockdick School Road as described in the attached document.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 014 · AGENDA 11.5
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees authorize the Superintendent to negotiate and finalize the Memorandum of Understanding for Operation of a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP) with Fort Bend County.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 015 · AGENDA 11.6
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees authorize the Superintendent to negotiate and finalize the Memorandum of Understanding for Operation of a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP) with Harris County.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 016 · AGENDA 11.7
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the minutes for the June Board meeting.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |