Okay, everybody ready to get started? 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, October 24th, 2022, and the time is 5 p.m. Dr. Gorski, will you verify that we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regards to notice for this meeting?
Katy ISD · Regular Board Meeting Agenda
Katy ISD Regular Board Meeting, October 24, 2022
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- 0:05 to 4:49 1. Call to Order - Upon announcement by the presiding officer that a quorum is present, the meeting will be called to order. The presiding officer will verify that the meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted for the time and manner required by law.
- 4:49 to 25:10 3. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
- 25:10 to 25:30 4. Closed Meeting
- 25:30 to 26:10 5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 26:10 to 41:43 6.1 Presentation of the District's rating on the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST).
- 41:43 to 1:13:55 7.1 Strategic Plan Specific Result 1.3 Literacy Update
- 1:13:55 to 1:54:17 7.2 Satchel Pulse Culture & Climate Update
- 1:54:17 to 2:09:48 8.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of the attendance boundary modification (ABM) for elementary #45, elementary #46, Campbell Elementary LUZ 73I to Randolph Elementary and LUZ 51C to Wolman Elementary, Golbow Elementary LUZ 7C to McRoberts Elementary and LUZ 14C to Franz Elementary for the 2023-2024 school year.
- 2:09:48 to 2:10:55 8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the October 2022 budget amendments.
- 2:10:55 to 2:16:42 8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the August 2022 check register.
- 2:16:42 to 2:21:49 8.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the District Performance Objectives.
- 2:21:49 to 2:22:58 8.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Campus Performance Objectives.
- 2:22:58 to 2:32:52 8.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Emergent Bilingual (EB)/English Learner (EL) Enrollment and the 2022-2023 Bilingual Education Exception/ESL Waiver Application.
- 2:32:52 to 2:33:20 9. Consent
- 2:33:20 to 2:33:27 10.1 Quarterly Investment Report
- 2:33:27 to 2:33:32 10.2 Donated Items to Katy Independent School District
- 2:33:32 to 2:34:36 10.3 Recap of Board Members' Requests for Information.
- 2:34:36 to 2:34:53 11.1 Regular Board Meeting – November 14, 2022
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1. Call to Order - Upon announcement by the presiding officer that a quorum is present, the meeting will be called to order. The presiding officer will verify that the meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted for the time and manner required by law.
Mr. Schulte, 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 Pledge of Allegiance.
Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and invite up a special guest up to the podium, and it is Natalie Ferreira. You can come on up, Natalie. Fifth grader from Stevens Elementary. I see Principal Michael Schwartz is out there. Parents Edna and Robert Ferreira. And has a brother, Robert, who's in the second grade. Natalie enjoys reading, drawing, music, and electronics. NATALIE'S FAVORITE SUBJECT IS READING AND WRITING. FROM HER HOME ROOM TEACHER, MRS. FOREMAN, NATALIE IS A BRIGHT AND OUTGOING GIRL. I AM SO PROUD OF ALL OF HER ACCOMPLISHMENTS AT SCHOOL. FROM HER READING LANGUAGE ARTS TEACHER, MRS. KID, NATALIE IS A WONDERFUL STUDENT AND AN EXCELLENT LEADER. AND FROM MATH TEACHER, MS. WASHINGTON, NATALIE IS A STRONG STUDENT, HARD WORKING AND DEPENDABLE. SHE REPRESENTS STEPHENS AND KDISD VERY WELL. So welcome, Natalie, and would you please lead us into the Pledge of Allegiance?
I pledge allegiance to the Republic of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Honor the Texas Pledge. I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.
Good evening, President Schulte, board members, and Superintendent Gagorski. My name is Natalie Ferreira. I'm 10 years old and in fifth grade. My homeroom teacher is Ms. Foreman, and I've been a KDISD student since first grade. I am a member of the student council this year, and I want to help my friends and my teachers in any way I can, like this board does. My favorite quote is that disability is not a disability, it's just a different ability. I have autism but my mom says that this will never stop me nor will it define me. My school and teachers give me everything I need so I can try and do my best with my schoolwork. I will always try my best to get good grades and help my classmates when I can. Thank you for the opportunity to represent my classmates, my teachers, and my school tonight. And for everything you do so we can learn, grow, and be happy and safe at school every day. Go Stylons!
Thank you.
Great job, Natalie.
Do we have any scouts in the audience tonight? No scouts? Oh, we do. Oh, yeah, please come forward.
Did you see? I just go forward. Yeah, right up to the podium there. Yeah. And tell us what troop you're in and what badges you're working on, what rank you are. I'm Spencer Carr. This is Daniel Carr.
We're twins. We're from Troop 584, and we're working on the Sitton Community. Mayor badge. Yeah.
What rank are you guys? Life Scouts. Wow, so you're getting close. Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you guys for coming.
Thank you for having me.
3. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
We'll now move on to the public participation and comments section of the meeting. The public participation section includes two categories. Category one is for speakers that sign up to speak on posted agenda items. Category two is for speakers who sign up to speak on non-posted agenda items. Speakers who sign up to speak on posted agenda items will be allowed three minutes to speak. For speakers who signed 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 the speaker has not finished speaking at 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 proper channels, as stated in Board Policy, the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to seek resolution through the appropriate policy. Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code 551074 and 5510821, the Board will not permit the presentation of personally identifiable information regarding a student and will not discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee or hear a complaint or charge against an officer or employee. 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 the speakers that assigned to speak on post-agenda items. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak. We have one speaker tonight on category one. It's Christy Bruns.
Good evening, Dr. Gagorski, President Schulte, and Board of Trustees. On behalf of the Katy Literacy Coalition and thousands of parents and educators across the district, we would like to thank each of you for your commitment to this momentous and impactful transition. Thank you for your willingness to get curious and understand the need to move away from balance literacy practices and curriculum and embrace those that are supported by the science of reading we are especially thankful for the hard work of the literacy task force and their unwavering dedication to the science of reading and bringing evidence-based literacy instruction to each student in our district the kd literacy coalition continues to work collaboratively with experts across our state and country and we welcome opportunities to support you and our district as we put the science of reading into practice for all of our students we look forward to hearing the literacy update and agenda item 7.1 this evening thank you
not yet okay well now we will call the speakers who signed up to speak on non-postage items by policy a maximum of 30 minutes has been allocated with the time divided equally among those who signed up each speaker will have three minutes to speak the first speaker tonight is jake Dublies and the second speaker tonight is John Latham good evening good evening
and thank you very much for giving this opportunity to speak good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and board of trustees my name is Jake Dublies I'm a resident of Katie and have two children that attend Katie ISD schools my topics are student behavior and classroom instruction specifically there are growing concerns about student behavior and classroom and extracurricular activities specifically at pay toe high examples include fighting reckless endangerment arson racism bullying weapons and drug possession these are unacceptable behaviors from children as expected that principals and district administrators wake up and refocus their efforts on from which book is in the library shelf to ensuring that our schools are safe weapon and drug free and the curriculum is logical and relevant the critical needs of our children are to further their education be successful leaders positive role models, progressive thinkers, and well-rounded citizens. As racism is increasingly a hot topic button in today's society, we must refrain from feeling this atrocious act. Students are consistently using racial slurs toward each other and the orators genuinely believe that the use of such is acceptable and often go without consequences, even when spoken in front of educators. Let me be clear that in no way are any racial slurs, words, or comments acceptable, and and this must end now. Based on what I've heard from teachers, some staff are hesitant to exercise enforcement due to possibly being called racist or administrative repercussions, which again is unacceptable. When staff hear such things, I demand they act immediately. Should they remain static, the focus should be expanded to encompass their inaction. I encourage the curriculum of the district. However, it far exceeds debate that technology, though significant advancement in society, is hindering students focus participation and education is appalling that some students ignore direction of a teacher requesting that they put their cell phone away there must be a crackdown of their use during educational hours staff told me they could not become they cannot confiscate cell phones however the disciplinary management plan clearly states otherwise that when cell phones are a distraction of instruction they can be so what is the issue in conclusion I request the Katy ISD specifically pay toe high school reassess what direction they are going and strictly enforce student and staff violations to rekindle the educational environment of which Katy ISD was so well known for. I moved here because of this ISD's reputation, however I am not impressed with its current standing. Without a doubt, Pato has the potential to be an outstanding academic institution, but without action from staff and the district, it will decay as one of the district's latest shortcomings. I note that schools are not the only resource for a child's successful future. future as staff and parents we must work collaboratively to secure our children's future potential and societal contributions in fact the onus is also on us parents to educate our children about values morals and ethics lastly as both an ethical ethical responsibility and due diligence Pato and the district must increase communicative situational transparency to be trusted and lead by example.
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is John Latham, and the speaker after that is Soha Jaswan.
Good evening. My name's John Latham. I'm a 12-year resident of Katy. I'd like to speak to you today about water polo. I know you heard from us last month. I want to hear from you today about this sport, my two boys Connor who's in eighth grade and Cameron who's in sixth grade both love they enjoy it and they're very good at it I personally swam and played water polo from the time I was very young all the way through college I was a state champion and an all-American in high school I swam and played water polo at a national level in high school and in college and I was an academic all-American in college and probably most importantly and most relevant to this discussion I founded my high school water polo team and I founded my college water polo team and played varsity in both and Really wanted to just share with you my story there. I was able to organize the players the parents I petitioned the school I got pool time. I hired the professional coaches. I did all that as a 16 year old Today, I'm responsible for about 1 7th of a billion dollar organization in terms of revenue I tie a lot of my success and today in my career to what I did academically and athletically being a student athlete through high school and college my kids have been attending Katie ISD schools their whole lives and we moved to Houston we selected Katie ISD because we heard it was a trailblazing district because we believed our kids would have access to better academic athletic and experiential opportunities and we knew that we probably may pay more in taxes maybe other fees in exchange for these opportunities on august 1st as you guys know isds around texas launched their first sanctioned water polo season just to give you a sense of scale in texas and actually we shared a little bit of data with you in the printouts that we passed out there are 159 schools this year first year inaugural year with water polo teams and 103 of them are from 6a schools 74 of the 159 schools about half are from the Houston area so half of the water polo teams in the state of Texas are in the Houston area there are 121 schools in the Houston area with UIL athletics 74 of them have water polo so 60 61 percent and most 6a schools in Houston do have water polo this year there are 24 ISDs in the Houston area only nine of them do not have any water polo teams this year I shared the data on those in the handout of the 15 high school Houston high school districts they do have their water polo to do not have teams in all their high schools as you know Katie's not participating the point is it's a huge sport and huge opportunity for Katie and for the kids I there's a risk if we don't act the many many kids who already play will be left in the fray and not able to play so my suggestion is potentially starting small and building just a couple of schools and building from there so thank you for your time
the next speaker tonight is so ha Jos want and the speaker after that is John
Rosenthal good evening good evening am i audible yes thank you Thank you. Honorable board members, I hope you are having a splendid evening tonight. Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Soha Joshwant and I'm a senior at Tompkins High School as well as the founder of a local youth mental health initiative called Square to Care and my school's Mental Health Alliance president. Seeing as how recently there has been a dramatic increase in the youth mental health challenges challenges of our community, I would like to start by congratulating KDISD on its several initiatives on this subject, such as the Mental Health Police Unit, the Speak Up app, and District Strategic Plan Goal 8. However, I still believe a key factor is missing. The students, who are the major stakeholders in this issue. If I'm correct, only five high schools in all of KDISD have implemented the district recommended group called the Mental Health Alliance. and I'm proud to say that Tompkins is, as I mentioned earlier, one of them. However, MHA, as it's called in short, is regarded as a non-curriculum club and is given very little importance and promotion by KDISD administration, rendering the reason for their establishment essentially kaput. I believe it's crucial that the individuals whom these initiatives are for are involved in their own decision-making, which is why we need district-level initiatives initiatives that actively involve student representatives from what can be established as a mental health student advisory committee across KDISD to work together in creating effective responses to youth mental health for our younger communities. In light of the amount of action not only the state of Texas, but also the entire country of the United States is taking on this issue. I really hope you consider this proposal and if you have any further questions, please let me know. Thank you for your time.
Thank you very much.
The next speaker tonight is John Rosenthal and the speaker after that is LeGang Le. I think I said that right. Good evening.
Good evening and thank you so much for giving me the time to speak here tonight. I really appreciate it. I'm Texas State Representative John Rosenthal for House District 135. And I'm really pleased that this district will be gaining a portion of the Katy Independent School District where I have been completely enclosed inside of Sci-Fair before. So now I have two of the best school districts in the state of Texas. I have a letter that I have written to you that I'd like to read to you and I have a signed copy for each of the members and personal contact information for you also because I'm here for you. I'm here to advocate for public education. So the letter is congratulations on the A rating from the Texas Education Agency to Superintendent Dr. Ken Grzegorski, the KDISD Board of Trustees, most especially to all of the education workers and officers in KDISD. This letter is to congratulate the Katy Independent School District on being consistently rated A school district since 2018, according to the Texas Education Agency Accountability System. system. I'm beyond proud to have gained a significant portion of KDISD as part of House District 135. And I will do my best to support and advocate for the KD Independent School District and your communities. Even with the challenges of the COVID pandemic, I knew that KDISD would succeed.
This is only possible because of the great campus leaders, teachers
teachers and education workers you have in KDISD. It truly takes everyone pitching in together to make great things happen and our KDISD community deserves the highest recognition and accolades for always meeting the challenges of the day. Thank you all for your efforts. John Rosenthal, State Representative, House District 35. And I just want to add that I'm so glad to be able to come in here and have a positive interaction first time. I hope they all are. And once again, I'm here for you. So thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
The next speaker tonight is LeGang Lei, and the last speaker tonight is Linda Cabana. Good evening.
Good evening, everyone. About two months ago, I gave a speech to reduce our policy tax. Today I would like to continue to recommend our taxpayers to vote against the property tax in the coming election in November. Midterm election early vote starts today. I'm sure lots of you have received some type of notification through email, poster or flyer about the tax rate election that KTISD Board of Trustee has called for. It says in our conditional statement, if voters approve the TRE, KTISD teachers and staff would see a 4% raise in their school year. According to the KTISD website, when the tax per property value increase, the district receive less fund from the state. In Chinese we say .
This side increase, that side decrease, and vice versa. It is pretty easy to understand the state has mandated KTISD to reduce the M&O tax rate by 4.7 cents per 100 value. So basically, you are inducing the voters to vote vote against that as a mandate paid tax reduction by using teachers and the staffs paying rates as a leverage. Wait a minute, what about the tax money you have already collected from the taxable property values, which has increased 14.3% in the last few years? That is about 6.8 billion dollars. The trigger for the state mandate M&O tax rate reduction reduction is a 9% increase. In our case, we have a surplus that by 5.3%, that is more than about $2 million. If the state has reduced the funding by what percentage and how much is that? Compared to the amount of money you have collected through our increased proper tax, which is one is a greater 4% pay raise for the teacher and staff is only about $26 six million dollars can it be generated from that two billion dollars taxable values consider about the total property tax rates range from 2.4 to 3.7 percent in kid area apparently the answer is yes if you still consider this difficult to reduce the budget maybe you consider replacing a place in this emphasis on the internal and external design when you build a new school or renewable new new little school. Compare the time people spending on hallway and bathroom. In my opinion, it is a waste of money. I'm sure that teachers won't demand if their school have a painted hallway or bathroom with a saint or glory finish. If they could see a large number in their pay of checks. Therefore, I recommend the taxpayers vote against the KTIA state property tax proposal. Thank you. Thank you.
The last speaker tonight is Linda Cabana. Good evening.
Good evening, everyone. My name is Linda Cabana. I've been a resident of Katy ISD for about 30 years and all our kids graduated from Katy ISD high schools. I'm here today not about education issues but about tax issues. issues. There are apartment complexes being built in the area that feeds to Wolf Elementary, and one is at Highway 6 in Memorial. The other is less than a mile away at 15-635 Memorial. Together they're about 650 units, and these apartment complexes were financed in a way, they're listed as affordable housing which according to what we've been able to find out exempts them from Houston City taxes and Katie ISD taxes and I'm here tonight to ask you to reject that exemption because the whole funding arrangement is a huge concern these exemptions were offered for 75 or 99 depending on the length of the lease of the land to the developers. The projects were approved by Houston Housing Authority without any notice to anyone in the area, probably not Katy ISD either. And it's really interesting that the land is owned by a company called Lakeside PLC, and the members of that board overlap with the board of the Houston Housing Authority. So there is self-dealing going on here. These taxes are not being given up to allow for affordable housing. They're being given up to allow for some people to make themselves very rich, and that is totally not acceptable. The mayor of Houston is aware of what's going on and apparently doesn't care. The Houston Housing Authority is appointed by the mayor of the city of Houston. He has been asked about the issues because HISD is also losing tax revenue. So this would pull two pieces of property off of the tax rolls as undeveloped land and not put anything back on the tax rolls as apartment complexes, which will add children, traffic, flooding problems, all kinds of issues for KDISD and the local neighborhoods. and it's all to enrich some individuals so I repeat my request that the KD ISD school board look into this and reject these housing tax exemptions thank you
thank you this concludes the open forum portion of our meeting the board will
4. Closed Meeting
now convene and close meeting is authorized under section five five one 0 0 1 of the Texas government code for the following purposes. Texas government code 5 5 1 0 7 1 5 5 1 0 7 4 and 5 5 1 1 2 9. Thank you.
The board will now reconvene an open meeting. Today is Monday, October 24th, 2022, and the time is 5 57 PM.
5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
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, October 21, 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 Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code. Any action arising from discussions in a closed meeting must be taken in open meeting. We'll now proceed to agenda item 6.1, presentation of the district rating of the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas.
6.1 Presentation of the District's rating on the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST).
The presenters are Mr. Jamie Hines, Executive Director of Finance, and Mr. Chris Smith, Chief Financial Officer. Good evening.
Good evening, President Schulte, Board of Trustees, and Dr. Gorgorski. It's my pleasure to be here to talk about the school's first.
rating. This came out in August, although it's not, there's no argument from our part on this, but the rating is not official at this point. It's not going to change, but there are a couple of districts, as I understand it, that have appealed their rating, but that is not us. So I'm going to move forward and just talk about the history of School First. It started in the 99 legislature it's been around now for 20 years this is the 20th time year that school districts are getting in front of their boards and presenting this information and TEA changes this from time to time back to every year pretty much it changes or something's not scored that's on the list etc but
nonetheless it's a it's evolving every year the purpose of first is is designed to encourage public schools to better manage their financial resources in order to provide the maximum allocation possible for district instructional purposes. And as you've heard me in our budget meetings to this board, we spend a lot in instruction and the efficiency audit. We spent the most of all the districts when it comes to spending money in the classroom, and that's what we're all about, and I'm real proud of that. Scoring, there are several indicators in here that are interpreted differently so they would be more for the finance industry to better understand. Some of these indicators have just assigned points. For example, you can get zero points on one of the indicators. You can get four or two, four, six, eight, ten points, et cetera, on those indicators. I'm just going to cut to the chase now so it doesn't keep anybody on the edge of their seats and just let you know that there are the ranges, an A, B, C, or an F. There's no D or an F, and we are going to end up with an A after we're through with the presentation. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Hines, Jamie Hines, to talk about the first few indicators, and that way you don't get tired of hearing me. And Mr. Hines, take it over, sir. All right.
Keep in mind that some indicators read a little strangely because each is designed to be answered yes or no. Indicator one is a simple indicator. Was your annual financial report filed by the deadline? Yes, it was. It was filed on January 27, 2022.
INDICATOR TWO, DID THE DISTRICT RECEIVE A CLEAN OR UNMODIFIED AUDIT OPINION ON THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AS A WHOLE? YES, WE DID. THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CPAs DEFINES UNMODIFIED OPINION AND THE EXTERNAL INDEPENDENT AUDITOR DETERMINES IF THERE WAS AN UNMODIFIED OPINION.
INDICATOR THREE, THIS INDICATOR SEEKS TO MAKE CERTAIN THAT YOUR DISTRICT HAS MADE ALL REQUIRED BOND OR DEBT PAYMENTS AS REQUIRED. And yes, we did that.
Indicator 4 seeks to make sure the district fulfilled its obligation to the governmental agencies such as TRS, TWC, and the IRS for payroll withholdings. contributions to fulfill any payroll related obligations required to be paid by the district and yes we did fulfill those obligations indicator 5 was not scored last year and is not being scored this year due to the impact of accounting changes implemented by Gatsby or governmental accounting standards board regarding pension liabilities however using the assumptions from the last time this indicator was included the district would receive credit and would have passed this indicator now I'm going to pass it back to mr. Smith thank
you mr. Hines so indicator six measures the percentage change in fund balance to to see whether the fund balance is declining too quickly. And if it's declining, whether sufficient fund balance remains to operate the district for at least 75 days. Our average change in fund balance over the last three years is actually an 11% increase. That keeps track with student pays by and large. So it's an increase and not a decrease. So we pass this indicator. Indicator seven measures how long in days after the end of the fiscal year the school district could disperse funds for its operating expenditures without receiving any new revenues. We scored the maximum points on this one for exceeding 90 days. We actually had 134.4 days of cash on hand. This is down from 146 days the prior year. And again, I don't think I said this when I said prior year. This is the, just to be clear, this is the 2021 fiscal data. So we finished this year in August the 31st of 2021, audited information. All the information was audited and presented to this board in January of 2022. Then all this gets sent to TEA. TEA is the one that compiles these scores, and they need time to do so. So even though we're in two calendar years later, two fiscal years later, this is the 2021 financial data. 21-22 that we closed just in September on August 31st. You'll be hearing that this time next year.
So this indicator eight measures whether the school district had sufficient short-term assets at the end of the fiscal year to pay off its short-term liabilities and we did and received all ten points.
Indicator nine simply asked did you spend more than you earned? The district will will
will automatically pass this indicator if they had more than 60 days cash on hand. So obviously, we had more than 60 days cash on hand, and we did not spend more than we earned. So we passed that indicator twice. Indicator 10 measures how accurately the district forecast projected revenue by comparing budgeted revenue submitted through PEMS October snapshot date to the fiscal year close. So they want to basically see are you budgeting well and so they take a three year average and over the three years and if it's within 10% you're good and our three year average as well within the 10% it was within three. I think it was 3% so we're well in the range of that. We received all points and I'm going to send it back to Mr. Hines.
All right, with indicator 12, the district would not receive all points for this indicator outright, all six points. However, this indicator recognizes that high-growth districts incur additional operating costs in order to open its instructional campuses, and the district receives full credit by exceeding 10% growth in students in the last five years. And yes, we did exceed that 10%. We were at 11.7% growth.
Indicator 12 asks about the school district's ability to make debt payments. The district received 8 out of 10 possible points, as did many fast-growth districts. No allowance for student growth was considered on this indicator.
Indicator 13, this indicator measures the percentage of their budget that Texas school districts spent on administration. administration. Although districts our size are allowed administrative cost ratios up to 8.55%, Katie's is very low at 3.5%, indicating that Katie ISD is administratively very efficient.
Can I say something, Mr. Hines? Absolutely. That 8.55%, that's the minimum to get 10 points. So you can have a higher one, you just might not get the 10 points. And y'all might have seen me when we started going back to my computer because I wanted to write this down and I I forgot the number by the time I got back here. But I looked at 25 school districts, large school districts from all over the state, most of them from this area. And of the 25 school districts, 3.39 was the lowest administrative cost ratio. We were in at 3.54. I'm sorry, 3.45.
I'm sorry. Where were we, Jamie? I forgot.
Yeah, 3.45. So we were at 3.45. We were number two on that list as far as the lowness goes. The highest was 9.58%, and the average of those districts, about 25 districts, was 5.54%. So our 3.46% is pretty darn low. And, again, you've heard me say this before. There's part of me that's proud of that. It means you're getting some good bang for your buck, and that gives us the ability to spend more money in the classroom. But the other part of that is I have colleagues that work really hard and really late in order to make that happen. But by and large, it always is we're the lowest or the second or third lowest on that list every year. I'll update it. Anyway, back to you, Jamie.
Thank you for pointing that out. Okay, indicator 14. If the school district had a decline in students over three school years, the indicator asks if the school district decreased the number of the staff on the payroll in proportion to the decline in students. The district did not have a 15% decline in student-to-staff ratio, and overall enrollment increasing also automatically causes the district to pass this indicator.
Indicator 15. This indicator measures how well the district was able to project average daily attendance for the coming biennium for payment purposes. Projected ADA is compared to actual, and even with the effects of the weather and pandemic-related events, the district passed this indicator with a 1.3% variance. Now back to Mr. Smith.
And that 1.3% variance is pretty low. that could be as much as a 7% variance, but that was not scored because so many districts, because of the pandemic, did fall outside of that range, and so they did not score it. Indicator 16 measures the quality of data that's reported to PEMS and your annual financial report to make sure that the report in your annual financial reports match the electronic data that we submit to the Texas Education Agency. And out of $818 million, we were $662 off. And that's just rounding in multiple funds. That's just rounding. So that's 0.0000 something percent, and well within the 3% range. So we received all those points. Indicator 17, a clean audit of our annual financial report would state that we have no material weaknesses, internal controls, and any material weakness would create the risk of our district not being able to properly account for the use of funds and should be immediately addressed. We did not have any material weaknesses, I'm very happy to say, so we did pass this indicator. Indicator 18 measures whether the district is complying with the laws, rules, and regulations related to expenditures of grant funds and laws related to local and state and federal funds and yes we followed those and passed this indicator this indicator number not number 20 I'm sorry number 19 measures whether the district is complying with legal I just read that one number 20 measures whether the school board had the opportunity to consider the impact of changes in property value on the finances of the district and I talked about property value at every time I talk about the budget and how it goes as property value goes up revenue as local revenue goes up but state revenue goes down and that fulcrum that we've discussed many times here so yes we passed that indicator and so our rating I already told you it was an a we passed all the critical indicators and we received 98 out of 100 points which is the superior rating for for the, I think, 20th year that we've received that superior rating. So with that, you all have a package that I left in front of your desk. It has the presentation that we just went through. It has the actual scores from the Texas Education Agency from both this year and last year. It has the section where it talks about any revenue that was received by a school board member and reported. There was none or nor by the Superintendent. It also talks about any gifts that the school board or Superintendent received, and there were none reported. And then it also has the expenditures associated with being a school board member, such as the required training, etc. And that's listed there by trustee that was a trustee at any point during the 2021 fiscal year. So that's in your report, and if you have any questions on that, I would be more than happy to answer those questions. This is posted on our website. We ran an ad about this public hearing in the paper, and then we also have sent that notice of this out each of the last three Fridays to the public via email. not just that, but embedded in an email with a lot of information that we would be having this. So we've communicated this very well and to the how we're supposed to. And I'd be glad to answer any questions. Any questions, board members?
Congratulations, by the way. Outstanding. I don't know if in that data that you that you've made public, It would be interesting to see the actual ratios, you know, where you say yes, you know, what the ratio actually was, the computation, if that's possible.
Actually, what I printed out from the agency does not have but the score, but that information is there. The actual calculation of the ratio? I definitely can get that to Dr. Gorski.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Thank you. Great job. Thank you. I understand that no one signed up for the public. Okay, so we're going to skip agenda item 6.2, which was a public comment on the financial integrity rating system because no one signed up.
7.1 Strategic Plan Specific Result 1.3 Literacy Update
We'll now proceed to agenda item 7.1, strategic plan, specific result, literacy update. Presenters is Dr. Christine Caskey, Chief Academic Officer, and Dr. Sine Bell, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning. Good evening.
Good evening. Good evening, President Schulte, Board members, and Dr. Gorgorski. We are here this evening to provide you with an update on Strategic Design Specific Result 1.3 related to elementary literacy.
After discussions with the Board Subcommittee on Literacy, we have updated the specific result to more closely reflect the work that will be done to support students in the area of literacy. Specifically, the result or the updated result now reads that we will create a district literacy framework aligned with the TEKS and the science of reading that will outline the district's literacy vision, beliefs, and instructional practices, as well as serve as a guide for for literacy curriculum, instruction, and materials decisions.
Excuse me.
We have also developed phases of implementation in support of this work. We actually began the work last summer by assembling our teams and support systems that will help to guide us through the development and the implementation of creating the district literacy framework, including the selection of new elementary literacy instructional resources to be used BEGINNING IN THE FALL OF 2023. DR. BELL WILL NOW ELABORATE ON THE ACTIONS WITHIN EACH OF THESE PHASES.
GOOD EVENING PRESIDENT SHULTI, DR. GIGORSKI, AND SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS. I'M GOING TO KIND OF TAKE YOU THROUGH THE PHASES OF THE LITERACY TASK FORCE AND THE WORK THAT'S BEEN UNDERWAY. WE STARTED OUR work in June and that is where we assembled a team of internal literacy specialists who is housed in the elementary curriculum and instruction department. She is working to coordinate the literacy task force and she is our direct support with our instructional consultants that are assisting us. She will be organizing administrator training, teacher literacy training. She's working with our instructional coaches as we transition through this process. She's our point of contact and will facilitate campus support as needed. We also are working with two external consultants, and these consultants serve different roles. We have instruction partners, which is a team of consultants. They come in and they're leading the task force work in conjunction with our elementary CNI literacy specialists and CNI team. IT'S IMPORTANT, AND I'LL KIND OF TALK ABOUT THIS WHEN WE GET TO THE NEXT COUPLE SLIDES, BUT WE HAVE PARTNERED WITH THIS CONSULTANT THROUGH TEA. WE DID RECEIVE A GRANT TO HELP SUPPORT OUR LITERACY WORK, AND WE HAD TO SELECT A TEA AUTHORIZED PROVIDER, AND INSTRUCTION PARTNERS IS THAT AUTHORIZED PROVIDER. THEY ARE LOCAL, AND SO THEY'RE VERY ACCESSIBLE TO US HERE IN HOUSTON. We also are partnering with an independent consultant, Dr. Thea Woodruff, who has extensive background in literacy and actually has presented a lot of the work that is in the House Bill 3 reading academies. And so she is helping to support our efforts with our campus leaders. We're spending some time with her on November 2nd to talk about data and the importance of using data and making literacy discussions, or literacy decisions. She has lots of experience in leading transitional change as it relates to the science of reading. She's very adept at leading this work and working with school leaders. And so we're excited to have her work with our campus principals. As I mentioned, we did apply and receive THE TEA STRONG FOUNDATION'S GRANTS, AND DISTRICTS WERE ABLE TO SELECT EITHER A LITERACY INITIATIVE OR A MATHEMATICS INITIATIVE TO FOCUS ON. AND OF COURSE, WE ARE SPENDING OUR TIME FOCUSING ON LITERACY. AND THIS GRANT HAS ALLOWED US TO PARTNER WITH INSTRUCTION PARTNERS WHO IS HELPING TO LEAD THE COLLECTIVE LEARNING THAT IS HAPPENING ON THE TASK FORCE. THERE ARE MANY COMPONENTS THAT WE HAVE TO, THAT ARE are outlined by the framework and there are a lot of deliverables that we have to submit to TEA and instruction partners is helping us with those pieces of work one of the biggest pieces that we are working on is developing a framework a literacy framework which outlines our district visions and our beliefs and our instructional practices and will really serve as our guiding document in terms of how we're moving forward with literacy instruction in and KDISD, and then also to ensure that the materials that we select are of high quality and align to the TEA reading academies and to ensure that the science of reading is evident in the materials that we select. So phase one, some of the big activities that we are undergoing include the development of the task force. WE HAD OUR FIRST TASK FORCE MEETING IN SEPTEMBER, AND THAT TASK FORCE IS COMPRISED OF, WE HAVE TEACHERS, LITERACY SPECIALISTS, INSTRUCTIONAL COACHES, CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION MEMBERS. WE HAVE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP AND SUPPORT, OUR ELEMENTARY ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT. SO IT IS MADE UP OF MANY PERSPECTIVES IN THE DISTRICT, AND IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT TO HAVE ALL OF THOSE DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS AS WE'RE MAKING THIS FRAMEWORK, AS WE'RE DEVELOPING our vision as we're developing our direction for literacy instruction in KDISD. In addition to establishing the task force, the development of the rubric that will help us to select high quality instructional materials to meet the needs of our district is another key activity that took place in phase one. And then also ensuring that the materials that we select were part of the commissioners approved list as well as aligned to the TEKS and the science of reading. So a lot of time was spent in phase one identifying these materials and sharing with the Board of Trustees, the literacy subcommittee, kind of the work in phase one. And now we are really in phase two, where we'll begin looking at the instructional materials that meet the criteria, gathering campus feedback, inviting parents and community members to review and to offer feedback as well. We will be bringing back a recommendation to the Board of Trustees on the instructional materials that we are going to select for the 2023-2024 school year and beyond. And then the big bulk of the work between now and February includes developing a literacy framework. And during our literacy task force meetings, we will be engaging in collective learning that is based on the research in literacy. We'll craft a literacy instructional vision and utilize the framework to design professional learning, coaching support, structures, and tools as we move through this transition. Phase three is focused on the curriculum and assessment development and training piece. This is where we will be working to develop new unit plans, scope and sequence, as well as the assessments that we'll be using. This is where we'll provide the professional development on reading development and instructional strategies aligned to House Bill 3 reading academies to increase teachers' knowledge and confidence in teaching reading, and then providing training on the new instructional materials as well as an overview of how the curriculum aligns with the vision for instructional, the vision for literacy.
And then phase four, this is
after we have implemented, we've selected a resource and we're beginning to implement our new curriculum, it's going to be really important that we're monitoring the implementation of the new curriculum and instructional resources and that will come through campus visits, an audit of effectiveness of our our training and curriculum supports because we want to make sure that teachers are fully equipped and that if there's any areas where they need additional support, we want to be sure that we provide that. We definitely, during the implementation phase of the new instructional materials and the new curriculum, that we gather teacher and principal feedback. And then importantly, it's time to review our literacy data. We have different ways that we assess students through to acquire if they are if they're making gains toward our literacy progress and so we want to make sure that we're reviewing that data so that the work that we're leading now we're able to show the effectiveness of that work. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have.
Any questions or comments from the trustees? Mr. President? Yes. I think this is great that we're doing this and appreciate all the work everybody's putting into it I just from my standpoint just to ask like what are the big items the features characteristics that you're looking for in them in the new instructional material in the new curriculum that moves away from where we are today like what would be if you could summarize what we what we're looking for versus where we are today what are those what What are those features, characteristics? I know in reading over the years, over the decades, there's been a lot of what's in, what's out, et cetera, and what's vogue. And I'm just curious as to what we're looking at in terms of the biggest issues that we're trying to solve, if you will, from what we're doing now.
Well, anytime we're evaluating new resources, it's important that it's aligned to the TEEQ. So the biggest criteria was that it was aligned to the TEKS, but also aligned to the components of science of reading. So that it has those five, the big five critical components as it relates to that, as well as it needed to be in English and in Spanish. So we're looking at the ELPS to make sure that it has those language supports for our students. the interaction with response to text, which is ensuring that it's high quality text that students are receiving and that it's relevant. Foundational literacy skills is a critical component and that it supports all learners, but then also that it's the implementation phase is easy for teachers to use use and that it not only meets the needs of our students but it also if there's training pieces where our teachers can feel supported as they're utilizing
these new materials what what what if I might if I'm asked what exactly is
instruction partners doing so they one of the biggest tasks that we that's a a part of the grant is that we form a literacy task force and we have to use a TEA authorized provider. And it was a list that we could choose from. Instruction Partners is our TEA authorized provider. And so anytime that you're making a really big change, it's important to have some collective learning pieces together around that change. So Instruction Partners is leading that work with our internal literacy task force in terms of, number one, understanding about high quality instructional materials, the critical components of literacy. They're leading the learning for us, so we're learning alongside them. Really, that's an important key to mention that everyone that's on that task force, including central office support as well, is learning together. And through that learning, then we're able to kind of get on the same page as it relates to what do we want to see as literacy instruction in KDISD? What does that look like according to the research and according to how TEA is lining out the best practices in literacy instruction? So Instruction Partners is an external partner that has been vetted through TEA. They went through required training. They're helping us to develop and design our literacy framework that's aligned to the goals that TEA has for reading and literacy instruction in the state. And they're leading that learning for us.
And they've done this for other districts in the area?
Yes, they have. Can I add, Dr. Bell, we have a board steering committee that's over at Sorana. We got to meet with the, what's it called? Instruction partners. Instruction partners a couple weeks ago. And what impressed upon me, everything that you said, the other thing that they're really doing is we got this big system that's been doing it this way, and now we're going to do it that way. And you've got to prepare that system to receive this change. So they're helping get the system ready, get the trainers ready, get everybody ready to Okay, we're fixing the, we're making a right turn here. Everybody get ready for this and get everybody in the right mindset. There's probably some resistance as there always is to change. So they're also helping with the psychology of change as well as just the technical aspects of you've got to get all these people trained. You've got the curriculum done. So to me, they're almost kind of like project managers helping you guys get through the process. And they were very, I forgot the two or three people that we met, but they were very energetic, very impressive. I was very impressed with the team that you guys have put together. So any other questions from the yes, yes, Mr.
President, I have a few things. First of all, I also really appreciate all that. Everyone, you know, the people on the school board and who all the people that were involved with this, I know that that's a big ship to turn. But I'm going to piggyback off of something Mr. Perez asked, and that is what what is how is this different from a person who I'm not an educator? I'm not on the task force. How is this different than from how my children in KTISD, not that long ago, learned how to read? Can that be summed up? What is the difference in the curriculum between what my child 10 years ago received in elementary school versus what a child will get now?
I think to just kind of answer that in a short sentence is that one of the big it's in literacy has been a national story across the nation and across the state of Texas and especially the science of reading teachers our elementary teachers K through three have undergone the reading academies and so when we have we've learned that there's some things that we need to make sure that we have in place. And so TEA has made all teachers go through K-3, the Reading Academy. So there are some components that currently have not been as prevalent in the curriculum. And so there's big attention on those pieces in the state of Texas. And so we want to make sure that the instructional materials that we have are completely aligned to the science of reading as the state has lined out. And we also want to ensure that the materials that we select have been vetted through TEA according to the reading, the science of reading components. And so I think that's probably the different, the biggest difference, which is, indicates in the specific result one of the things that we wanted to make sure, number one, always aligned to the TEKS, but number two, definitely wanted materials that were specifically aligned to those five components of the science of reading.
So basically, in a nutshell, this is a large enhancement to something that maybe we were already doing, but just making it better. Like you said, there was components that might have been missing, and now these are being . . .
I would say that it's definitely amplified.
Okay. Then I just have two other questions. I noticed that on one of the slides it says KDIC received $150,000 grant. Yes. Awesome. So I guess I just really wanted to say kudos to that. And so the outside people that have been used for the task force, how is that being paid? Are those people being paid for with the $150,000? Correct. Okay. And then the last question I have is, when this finally gets implemented and everything, I realize that this is all going through a process, and the teachers are going to have to be trained, as it says in one of your slides at the end. How will the teachers be trained? How long will it take?
You know, how much other time out of their busy schedules will this take, since they're already taking that reading academy, like you said, you know, that's required by TEA? I'm just trying to see how this is all going to work into their busy schedules.
We are in the final year of all of those teachers, the requirement to have K-3 teachers trained for Reading Academy. Anyone else that comes online will be new hires or people new to the district that haven't received that training. That big bulk of the Reading Academy piece will not be a large scale like it is right now. A lot of the training will occur over the summer. definitely we want to make sure that our teachers are equipped to implement the new curriculum before school starts but you can't just give a one-and-done training so that their training pieces throughout the year will occur which is why we're although we have a task force but that task force also breathes out so we have instructional coaches who will be picking up the work in February and they'll be working with instruction partners on the curriculum pieces, the curriculum development pieces, the training pieces, very strategic in how we're implementing these pieces so that it's not just, oh, you got a training in August, go forth and use this new curriculum. It will be ongoing throughout the year as needed. In addition, we will have access to our current external consultants, I lost my train of thought out there who will be with us as needed throughout the following year, which is that phase four piece is so important to ensuring that the change process is managed effectively. So once we implement new curriculum, then going to watch it, to see it in action, asking teachers for their feedback, where do we need to make adjustments, what additional training is needed, that'll be a big part of ensuring that the work continues to move forward. So this is not just a one-year thing. This is an ongoing process to ensure that it sticks and that teachers feel equipped and supported, which again, Mr. Perez, you asked what was one of the things that was really important. The teacher use, that it's teacher-friendly and teachers are able to easily implement the new curriculum is a really important component as well.
One more question, please. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Bell. Sure. You're doing a great job explaining this to me. I just have one other question. It's about the reading academies and this new training. Does the reading academies align with this new product that we're having? So in other words, it's going to not be anything, I mean, it's going to be in alignment with it and not against it. In other words, they're not going to relearn something or, you know?
Yes, the answer is yes. Whatever product that we select will be aligned to that. And I think that's one of the things that I indicated on the slide. It's really important to lift out those pieces that teachers learned in the reading academy and really make those things very clear and clearly articulate how they should be implementing that in the classroom. So connecting all of the dots is really important. So there should not be anything that teachers feel contrary to their learning from reading academies and the instructional materials that we use in the curriculum. Everything should be aligned according to the new specific result, which specifically highlights the science of reading.
Mr. President, I have a couple of questions. This is, you know, it's a great topic. I'm so happy that we're doing this. Or happy is the wrong word, sorry. And I would just like to apologize to my colleagues here. I apologize for my tardiness, flight delay that's unexpected. I expected to be here sooner.
So it's a big, complicated process. How much will the transition cost? Do we have an idea? All in.
Not yet because we haven't selected the materials. So the only thing that I can speak to cost-wise is the grant money that we've received of $150,000 that we're utilizing and that we received from the state. But in terms of selecting new materials and all of that, I don't have that information just yet.
That grant will help but probably not cover all the costs.
The grant is just utilized for the consultants. consultants and so the instructional materials is a completely different conversation
Okay, and that probably will come under our instructional material allotment. Yes, okay So as we Choose We're not there yet. You haven't chosen which product. Okay, so will you?
these probably are premature and and so we'll get updates I would guess later but if they are premature just tell me you'll come back later right so how will you choose like based on the instruction partners kind of giving you advice and oh this is a good one it has you know all these stars and you know it's got great ratings on wherever the whatever the Amazon is of that or will you go to other districts and see real results like how they improved reading scores I'm just wondering of how will we make sure that it's proven to really make that change for our reluctant readers to go into that next year so one of the
things that we did initially once the the criteria was kind of developed that I'd already shared what we were looking for we went to the Texas Resource Review which is through TEA. It's a third party, but TEA endorses their work. And so they have a real extensive rubric and overview process, and they vet these materials. And so when you get to select a resource that's 100% aligned to the TEKS, it has English and Spanish, and it is aligned to the science of reading, you really have a very short list of materials to choose from. And so the vendors will come in and they will present the materials. We have a rubric that the literacy task force members will look through the presentation through the eyes of the rubric and then evaluate those pieces. But then we'll also get feedback, which I think is really probably the most critical piece from our teachers because they're going to be the end users of that. So once we gather feedback from teachers and then also from our parents, we kind of look to see how each resource stacked up. We've also utilized some independent research from Hanover. This company that we use and they have vetted some of the resources. And so we have some ideas of how the resource has been used in other districts that are similar size. So it's a lot of qualitative pieces to it that will help determine which resources selected to beat the needs of our students.
I appreciate that. I understand the TEA agreement piece, but I don't trust that confidently because of where we've been with TEA agreement and how we've had a little bit of just we're making a change, right? Because even when they came out with the Reading Academy, then it's like the curriculum that that we've been using and doesn't always, didn't align completely. So TEA is not my bar of measurement. But I like how you have lots of other rubrics in there and I like the thought of the pres centers coming in and doing all that. And I know that as that happens, you'll check with other people who have used it to make sure that it really does what, because I can tell you it's gonna do really great, but have to have results for it. So I know you will. SO THAT LEADS ME TO HOW OFTEN WILL WE GET UPDATES AND HOW LONG DO YOU THINK THE PROCESS TAKES BEFORE YOU START, LIKE, REALLY DIVING IN OR CHOOSING A PRODUCT?
BEFORE I ANSWER THAT QUESTION, I DO WANT TO SAY THAT IS ONE OF THE KEY COMPONENTS THAT INSTRUCTION PARTNERS IS HELPING US WITH IS ENSURING THAT WE'RE SELECTING HIGH-QUALITY INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS. AND SO THAT WAS REALLY IMPORTANT TO HAVE THAT EXTERNAL PERSON TO KIND OF HELP, TO HELP US WITH THAT DECISION. How often will we get updates? That is up to President Schulte and Dr. Gagorski. So as often as they tell me come and speak, I'll be here. I will say that our target is to try to have resource recommendations before the end of the semester. So that it's really a huge feat to rewrite curriculum for K-5. And so we want to make sure that we give our curriculum writing teams time to do that. But then also that gives us time to really spend the time developing training. So I'm here to provide updates as often as I'm needed. And the board, we do have a steering committee, a subcommittee, which is meeting between every two weeks to four weeks, right? And we're getting very detailed updates. I wish you could all be on the subcommittee. It's pretty exciting. It's very collaborative. But because Open Meetings Act, we can only limit it to three. But, yeah, we can give updates as much. I know it's in good hands behind the scenes, and we thought it was time for an update, but we'll do it as much as we need to. And the other thing that I just want to say, and I know I've told you this, but I want to say it, play to the cameras here because I want you guys to hear it so you can call me on it, but we told you in the steering committee, we're at the start line. We're not at the finish line. We're at the start line. We've got a long way to go. You guys are really stepping up to the challenge. I love the team that you've assembled, and I told you, make me say no. Make this board say no. If you need help, you need resources, I'm going to start strong. I want to stay strong and finish strong. So don't be scared to ask or shy to ask. I know you challenged me on it. OK, are you sure you're telling me the truth? I'm telling you the truth. If you guys need anything, let us know. And you and Dr. Kaskin, your entire team, just hats off to you. You guys are off to a very strong start. Very exciting.
Thank you. Mr. President, may I make one final comment? Yes, absolutely. I just want to say to you and to the entire curriculum team, like KDI city students are doing doing well you're providing an excellent education to students and we all recognize that and we also recognize that you are always striving to be better and I'm grateful for that thank
you thank you any other questions for dr. Bell yes president thank you for
everything you've given it's kind of a more overview of what we've already had um and i didn't have any questions for y'all when we were in there but i said let me think about it for a few minutes maybe a few days um my question for you you guys is on the literacy task force um how large like how many members are on that team and then overall or estimate ballpark there And then could you kind of define how members were chosen for that across the district for us? Sure.
So if my memory serves me correctly, it's 45 to 50, somewhere in there. And we wanted to ensure that we have representation from all parts of the district, including campus types. So from our bilingual campuses, non-bilingual campuses, title campus, non-title. We also have dyslexia support there, so dyslexia specialists, dyslexia teachers. And it was important to ensure that we had special ed representation. We thought about our students and all of the students that we serve and all the perspectives that we needed at the table to ensure that we were making, number one, decisions that met all the needs of all of our students, but that we also ensure that we had the different types of campuses that we have in our district as well, because those needs, we have lots of different needs in KDISD. So it's important that all of those needs are taken into account. In terms of support, I have my assistant supes behind me, our elementary assistant superintendents. They are also a part of the task force and have engaged in that learning with us, along with campus principals, because leadership is important to this change as well. So many perspectives at the table, and it really was we just put the district in quadrants to ensure that we had equal representation of all types of campuses represented on the task force. And anyone who is not on that task force, for example, our principals are still getting the learning. We bring the learning back to our principals. WE BRING THE LEARNING BACK TO OUR INSTRUCTIONAL COACHES, UTILIZING THE INSTRUCTIONAL COACHES WHO ARE ON THE TASK FORCE, BECAUSE WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT WE ARE SPREADING THAT LEARNING THROUGHOUT THE DISTRICT AND THAT EVERYONE HAS A VOICE. SO ANY TIME WE TRY TO CAPTURE, WE NEED TO CAPTURE THE VOICE OF THE TASK FORCE, WE MAKE SURE WE CAPTURE THAT SAME VOICE FROM THE DIFFERENT STAKEHOLDERS TO ENSURE THAT WE HAVE ALL THOSE PIECES AT THE TABLE WHEN WE'RE MAKING DECISIONS.
ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?
NO, I'M GOOD, THANK YOU.
I just have one more question, Mr. President. Just following up on what was said earlier, in terms of cost, if you just look at the consultant, the instruction partners, and Dr. Woodruff, what are we committed to? Do we have a contract with them long term or for multiple years?
Right now it's just this year, and the cost is being covered through the Strong Foundations grant, which is $150,000 that covers consulting fees, but then also any materials that we use during the consulting meetings. And so for right now, we're in a one-year partnership with both of those consultants.
Okay. Thank you.
You know, one reason I asked about, to be honest with you, instruction partners, is that on their website they prominently feature the term that says we advance anti-racism which is a means they're a critical race theory proponent and that was kind of red flag for me but again i hope that they stick to the reading part of it and and that
they're good at that and that's it thank you thank you well now proceed to agenda item 7.2
7.2 Satchel Pulse Culture & Climate Update
with the satchel and pulse culture and climate survey presenters dr andrea grooms chief communications officer and dr emily craig assistant superintendent of secondary school and leadership
and support. Good evening. Good evening President Schulte, trustees, and Superintendent Grogorski. Dr. Craig and I are here this evening to provide an update on the staff culture and climate survey initiative.
I'm going to speak to the purpose of the initiative as well as the measures and the methodology while Dr. Emily Craig will speak to what it looks like in practice in terms of reviewing the data and applying it to the campus culture.
So you'll recall back in 2017 the district developed its first ever strategic plan along with eight goals that aligned with the objectives and the goals of that strategic plan community or committee which was comprised of community members and staff.
Staff. Strategic Goal 5 speaks to KDISD attracting and supporting high quality staff members to support school improvement and student engagement and improvement. 5.6 was one of the objectives that came out of that strategic plan that again was from 2017. It was a five year plan and that 5.6 objective spoke to analyzing perceptions of workplace culture and developing systems to improve and support engagement among our employees. So towards the end of 2020, probably early spring 2021, we began investigating K-12 organizations that do work in supporting staff engagement initiatives. And we landed on Satchel Pulse, which is an organization, again, K-12, 12 that is focused on continuous school improvement through surveying and data analysis.
So before we get into that, let's talk about what we're measuring, culture, and what it encompasses. And as you can see there, the list, and these are some of the measures that we look at in our staff survey, relationships with colleagues, students, and supervisors, appreciation and and recognition, job satisfaction, engaging experiences in the workplace, and why it's important. There's some of the obvious reasons for why it's important. Increases morale, decreases stress, but notably, it's about student outcomes, impacting student outcomes, and engaged staff leads to engaged students and students who are performing well. There's a lot studies that back this up that central pulse shared with us during the early phases of investigation of this survey tool so some more about culture and climate specifically with regards to teachers I know that this board is familiar with the Charles Butt Foundation Charles Butt is the founder of H-E-B and you know that H-E-B and the foundation are engaged in a lot of legislative advocacy around public schools and public education they pour for tens of thousands and millions rather of dollars into public education every year. On an annual basis, they release their Texas Teacher Poll where they look at teacher retention, recruitment strategies, and engagement. You'll see here, this is one of the data charts that they released, reasons that would keep teachers in their job. We all know there's a teacher shortage right now. Number one reason, A positive work culture and environment is the number one strategy that teachers who participate in this survey, the Charles Butt Foundation survey, indicate would keep them in their job, followed by significant salary increase and autonomy as a classroom leader. So again, this survey that we are now engaged in as a school district, is addressing that first strategy, which is to improve workplace culture. So how do the surveys work? Prior to us engaging with Satchel Pulse, we used to administer an annual survey that would look at our staff engagement, job satisfaction at the end of the school year, when folks are often moving on to new professional experiences, new campuses, or they're just in a time of transition. This survey is administered every four weeks and allows our administrators, our campus leaders, and our department leaders to make improvement in real time based on what they're seeing every four weeks. Now, we will likely be transitioning to a six-week schedule just to provide a little more time in between surveys. But it's currently at four weeks. The initial baseline survey, we get one every year at the beginning of the school year, is 16 questions, and every survey after that is about six questions, sometimes up to 10, depending upon the participation rate of a given campus or department. And again, it measures discipline support, professional validation, wellness, job satisfaction, relationships.
and data is aggregated in what we call pillars. So here you see eight pillars, ranging from appreciation to meaningful work to school management. So when the campus leader or the department leader sees these pillars, they can actually click on them, dig a little deeper into that data point, see how that pillar is measuring over time, and also look at the comments associated with that pillar.
So here's an example of what I mean. This is the meaningful work pillar. You click on it, you can see since October 2021 to the present, October 22, how that has trended. And it's kind of stayed in the nine range for this particular campus I pulled. This campus happens to be Campbell Elementary.
All right. And now I'm going to ask Dr. Craig to speak about what this looks like in practice.
us all right so just a couple of things as we look at it from both school leadership support but also as a campus perspective with the principal who receives this information and a couple of key points principals look at those pillars that you just saw on previous slides to look for things like celebrations what's going well what do we continue how do we continue to sustain positive culture that's going on on campus but also looking at potential areas of concern so you saw those trending lines too so we're constantly looking are they trending where we want them to be are there things that we need to look at and then those principals work with their campus leadership teams to address needs that they might see in their survey that might be their admin team it might include their counseling team it might include their department chairs or team leaders to really look at what do we need to look at and address for our staff based on this feedback and then it also gives principals an area of where they might want to gather additional feedback the satchel pulse survey is anonymous so there's there's some pieces of that that a campus principal may want to be able to drill down and say is there something more specific I need to gather from my staff to to be able to best address their needs and then it also helps to set both campus and professional goals for administrative staff in particular are there areas that they want to make sure that they're working on to best meet the needs of their staff as dr. groom said when we know that staff are are satisfied and happy in the environment that they're in that's the best environment for our kids to be into so those are areas that both the campus and professional admin staff may make as goals for themselves. The other part that a campus would look at are those participation rates. It's something that we really want to make sure that figuring out best ways to incentivize staff to take the survey to ensure that it's the most accurate representation of campus culture and concerns, right? Because if we don't have a high percentage of staff participating in the survey, it may or may not be the most representative survey data for a principal to take action on. Likewise, if staff aren't taking the survey, then that might also be a source of data to look at why are staff not taking the survey. Is it because everything's good, they don't feel like they really need to talk about anything, or is it because they don't feel compelled to be able to do that or that it actually is anonymous, or what are the reasons behind those pieces? and then as school leadership and support assistant superintendents especially working with our campus principals to look at their data and talk with them about what do they need and helping be a liaison between the campus and then other districts here at the ESC that might be able to support the work going on on campus having just come from a campus as a campus principal I can tell you it's it's helpful information in many ways to be able to to look at where do we need to leverage certain things, what's going well. It's also a reflection point, because sometimes, as a campus principal, we feel like we've done all of these things to support something, but it's not showing on a survey. But it gives us a point to reflect and say, what could we do differently, or is our intention really being fulfilled out on campus? At this time, we're happy to answer any questions about that.
Mr. President? I have some questions. Thank you for your presentation. I think this is so important. I think it's so important, especially now, you know, with all that we've gone through with COVID and post-COVID and just it's so important to let the teachers know that we care about how they feel. Having said that, sometimes I have friends that are teachers that will tell me that they They do the surveys, they have concerns, but in their minds, and maybe even a huge group of them, not just the one person, in their minds, nothing is being done about the information that they give. And it becomes disheartening to them to continuously do a survey and then them feel like nothing nothing is being done and I understand this is anonymous so you can't go back to the person and say well we are doing something but I don't know how or if there is a way to communicate to teachers in general you know that we do care about it's not just the survey you know it's one thing to get results we could do surveys all day long but what are you doing with the information that you I know you have this one slide but you know they they need to feel like they are truly being heard so that they will continue to participate in a survey.
Absolutely. And that's part of what we're working on with school leadership and support and working with campus principals to talk about that data and how do you get in front of that with your staff to be able to talk about the pillars and make sure that that's an open conversation on the campus. I know as a campus principal, one of the things that I talked about as I asked them to complete complete the survey, but also telling them there are other mechanisms to let me know if there's something going on. Like you said, it is anonymous. So if there is something directly impacting their work environment or those sorts of things, we want staff to feel like they can come and talk to the campus principal about that too. But it's important for them to see, you know, we have to do a lot of different pieces of making sure that people do know it's anonymous. So we show them, you know, here's what we can see as a campus principal for that piece. But they have to come and actually let us know because it is anonymous. But as a school leadership team, that's one of the things that we're working with principals about is what can you do to make sure that you're out in front of your staff to let them know you've seen that and that how you're going to address that as a campus. That's part of our leadership with them.
Okay, so the second part to that question is then what if the teachers are having trouble with administration? So now administration is the one that's reading it. I mean, does it stop at administration? I mean, like if the administrator read it and there's a problem with the administrator,
are they the only holder of the information then?
No, so from the school leadership and support department, we can see and we go through each of our campuses to look at what's trending and those sorts of things, having conversations with campus. It may be a campus principal, it might be a campus leadership team, depending on what that looks like. But staff are welcome to contact us too if there's something they feel like they need in that aspect too, if there's a piece that they feel like they can't speak to someone about. But we look at all of that data and then we meet with our campus leadership teams to look at that as well all right and um the other thing is is so when we were doing the old method um we would get i know it was a once a year thing but we would get a binder and in the binder it would have you know all the schools you know alphabetical order and the kind of the neat thing about that information the way it was presented was that we could compare if we wanted to from year to year so we could take school A, and they were real sad last year, and then you could look and go, oh, school A is real happy this year.
You know, and you don't know why, but now you're happy because you know they're happier. But we don't, I don't have a way anymore. I mean, I know you all do, and probably, you know, I'm sure Dr. Krakorski does, but, you know, the rest of us can't see if there is an improvement or if it's worse. We have no idea.
So this year we're going to be giving you a lot less paperwork. I know you talked about the big fat binder. But the data that you'll receive is just as valuable. So this week or perhaps last week we provided a campus by campus and department by department comparison looking at participation rate and also rating by each of those eight pillars along with a detailed report describing what that looks like over time by campus. We got that?
I'd have to double check.
I don't have it right in front of me, but I thought that was added into the board docs in the administrative review, and I think I attached both of those reports as well to the Friday info last week and the update to the board, But I will double check and make sure I didn't miss any of that to the board. But once again as dr. Grooms is describing Looking at those reports will not allow you to do as you explained miss champagne to look at a year-over-year Overview because this system is entirely different than that. This system is to look at Issues or perceptions in real time and then make actionable steps over time So you won't see a comparison score from one year to the next next. But we can see that in real time every four to six weeks. The principals can see it, the department leaders can see it, and that's when they would make those actionable steps to zero in on that improvement in whatever pillar that might be.
Okay, so there's not a way right now to see, you know, you have school A and they had some problems. You or whoever talked to them worked it out. Now school A is better. We won't know that. I mean, we'd have to remember, you know, we'd have to, I guess, print out our things and keep our own copies or something to be able to compare.
here yes so if the board would like access to the satchel pulse software and would like to have the uh type of um i guess administrative rights that that i have or uh that our school administrators have now each school can only see their own data i can see every school's data just like the assistant supes can see all of their school's data if you would like uh to go into it to that level of depth as a school board on the campus culture for all campuses and departments across the district I certainly can get you access to that you could go in and watch the pillars for yourself over time with all of the
campuses well I think it's kind of like the you know like the campus improvement plan you know we got we got that it's something like that where we could kind of see how they did in year one year two year three a comparison so to me it's it's almost the same thing as that but you know that's an academic more of an academic thing and this is more of a personnel or not personal but climate and culture type piece i don't know so for this calendar year we had planned on running two biannual reports for the board one in october and then i think the second one's in march perhaps but um you know president schulte if you wish to have more reports throughout the year that's certainly something we can run for this board if that's of interest i'm not really asking for more reports i'm just like if you did the biennial and we could kind of see the side by side or something like that just to see if it was um you know got better or worse or that's just what i would like to see but i don't need another presentation
so if i may mr just so i'm clear if the board would like some time to think through that or think about what you would like versus what you wouldn't if that means uh the board is is used to quarterly reports to the board that you get every uh you get four times a year obviously quarterly If you would like this one to be different than quarterly, this one is one in the fall as a snapshot, one in the spring as a snapshot. If you would like a report every quarter, that can be produced. If you would like a report every month, that can be produced. If you want access into the system so you can go in and watch every school every two weeks, every four weeks, and see how the pillars change, you can have access to the system that way as well to be an end user. whatever the board would like to see on that happy to accommodate that mr. president man is this the report this PowerPoint no so it's a report that
we're gonna get a report in October on Friday update I've been out of town and
then yes through my Friday update thank you so dr. grooms had sent me those reports and I included them with the quarterly updates okay thank you for the
clarification any other questions so the surveys are just taking twice a year correct now they're every four weeks right now every four weeks okay and why wouldn't a teacher participate unless they were uncomfortable with the the fact you know the source of participation if they thought maybe wasn't they were going to find out who they were or something like that well it It is an anonymous survey. Could they be concerned about that? Maybe the population is too small in their school.
I'm just curious, is it truly anonymous? It is truly anonymous.
Departments that have seven or less individuals, their survey data is not visible to the campus leader because their group is considered too small statistically. So you have to have more than seven people for the data to be available to the campus leader who's reviewing it. Research shows in terms of why people do not participate in surveys, a lot of times folks don't participate because they're satisfied. And perhaps it's the other reasons too. Sometimes they don't feel as though there's change. But as you heard from Dr. Craig, the assistant superintendents are working with leadership teams TEAMS TO ENSURE THAT THEY ARE TAKING ACTION ON THE DATA THAT THEY'RE REVIEWING ON A MONTHLY BASIS. I ALSO MENTIONED THAT WE'RE LOOKING AT TRANSITIONING TO A SIX-WEEK CYCLE THAT WILL, AND I DID NOT MENTION THIS PART, THAT SIX-WEEK CYCLE WOULD ALIGN WITH OUR GRADING CYCLE, OUR GRADING PERIOD CYCLE, WHICH WOULD ALLOW MORE OPPORTUNITY FOR OUR CAMPUS LEADERS TO HAVE CONVERSATIONS during other times of the year in which they're having important conversations with their staff about issues impacting their campuses.
Mr. President? Yes. Just a follow-up. You know, looking at part of the presentation at the beginning where you mentioned about what are important to teachers, like, for example, autonomy as a classroom leader, the work culture, that kind of thing, and also a nice pay raise, and there's one other thing in there. So the pillars, as I look at the pillars, you know, I'm trying to figure out which ones really deal with some of those big items like discipline, which really impacts the culture and the job satisfaction, et cetera, which ones really impact, for example, autonomy as classroom leaders. And just wondering, are you really going to get the feedback based on those pillars to address these issues like autonomy as a classroom leader seems to be important, the, you know, the work the job satisfaction in the workplace ie discipline things like that you're able to get that out of those are your questions that detail where you able to get that information because the pillars seem you know a little kind of
vague yes so we're talking about methodology then so the the pillars are broad there's eight of them there are about 20 or so rotating questions attached to each pillar so so it allows the the survey organization to dig deeper into the cause for somebody's feelings you talked about salary for example I don't have the questions with me but that's something I can certainly share with dr. Gagorski and he can share with the board if that's something you're interested in seeing what those rotating questions look like and so as a
As a campus principal as well, they will get with their survey data each time the survey has gone out, this is the pillar that sees the most success. This is something that these are types of questions that are being answered the least or have a lowest score. So it kind of gives them some things to pinpoint besides just looking at the pillar. It will say this is an area of celebration or this is an area where your campus has seen growth. So it gives them some pieces to look at. The school management pillars where you'll see some of that discipline piece because it's about the processes and procedures on the campus. And so that's where some of those pieces will fall into. So it's maybe not what we might think it always would be as the school management piece, but it's those processes and procedures that are in place on the campus.
Thank you. I really appreciate this because teachers talk a lot about other things besides just salaries. other issues so this is really important thank you yeah I just have a few
questions or comments I know I own my own business and I know nothing's more important than how my company does than the culture so that's something I focus on every single day as an owner of the company so it's it's extremely important so I think a critical part as Michigan paints it of feedback is you got to do a loop you got to do the circle so you're going into a system and the the administration looking at it and it not going back to the people that put the survey gives an indication that nothing's happening with this. So I didn't hear clearly if there is a feedback loop, but if there's not, that would certainly be an, I would quit taking the survey if there was no indication of, yeah, we're doing a good job, especially if you're doing a bad job, we're doing a bad job, we're doing a bad job, or we can do better. Here's how we're going to change it. So I don't need just, I'm just throwing that out there. There needs to be a feedback loop. If there's not a feedback loop, I think that's extremely important. I think you guys also commented on I I sat with Ken and I if you haven't I sat down with Ken he pulled up it's pretty cool the tools pretty cool and we went through a bunch of different schools and it was interesting some schools had 90% participation schools some schools had 20% I should be a red flag with somebody to say what is this school doing to get 90% participation that's a bright spot and what is this school what's that what's the culture that the culture red flag if they're only getting 20% do they not know about it do they feel like there's no feedback loop do they feel like the principals aren't going to listen that's another just a comment i do like the comment that if it's a low feedback that's usually indication maybe the administration is the problem so i like the fact that you said there's a loop around the administration if there's a problem probably people don't feel comfortable doing that but i think that's important and then the last thing sometimes people just don't know the importance of culture how to influence it so do you guys give training to your leaders on it's not something you're born with generally on how to do a good culture i think by the time your principal high high school or big school you would know that but is there training that you give these leaders on if they're getting low participation or something how to how to maybe change the game or go meet with some of the schools that are getting the high rates is there any kind of training for the
leaders yeah so a lot of a lot of pieces in there that you talked about and that's one of the i want to go back to that feedback loop piece and that's one of the reasons why we heard feedback from principals and staff about the four weeks and asking could we move to a six-week time period so you had time to close some of that loop because by the time principals get the aggregate data and then they have time to look at it and start to receive get feedback and put that into place the next survey was on you know on top so it felt like yes you might not have seen any actionable change because the time period to make it was short. So we've asked for that to be extended so that campuses have time to really dive into that. Part of our role as school leadership and support is putting campuses in touch with each other that are having success. Here's a campus that's had 90% participate. What kinds of things did you do? How do you share that so that we can talk about what strategies other campuses may want to do? Some campuses have had success with with having a QR code with directions and right there, a link right at the beginning of a staff meeting, for example. So one of the things you come in while we're all milling about, it takes not very much time. Because it comes to teachers as an email that can sometimes get buried in a lot of things. So it's important to make sure it's at the forefront of that. As far as providing training, that's part of the coaching that we do from school leadership and support to our campus principals. But also as part of our KD leadership pipeline with our AP toolbox this year. We've added a leadership component to each of our AP toolbox trainings that we have with assistant principals to talk to them about how do they work through those leadership pieces to help support the campus culture and the campus principal in those endeavors.
So we've added that this year. It's hard to get the negative feedback, but as your leader, that's the most valuable information. It's great to pick the pat on the back. You're doing a great job, but you really don't get better unless you're getting the feedback you need to hear. And I guess my last comment is that that the current system is very transactional and I get that to be anonymous, but you really want to hit the gold. It's got to be collaborative. You got to sit down with the leader that says, I'm willing to hear. I want a listening circle like we're going to have to see, come tell me what we can do better. I know every office that I have in my company, there's a, it's a culture team and it's a team made up of employees that are committed to the culture. They meet every two weeks. What, what's going on with the culture? And they report that to the leader and that, that collaboration versus the transit. I just sent a letter in the mail. Nobody knows who it is. nobody know what it means there's no context it's hard to get exceptional results when it's transactional now again you've got 10,000 employees I don't have near that many but but anyway it's you got to keep trying it's really important that data that you guys had were 97% of the teachers saying they're thinking about leaving because of the culture I believe it and makes a lot of sense to me so I think it needs to continue to be a focus item and we got to continue to find a way to do better I think we're doing good but I think we we can do better. So that's all I have. Any other questions? Mr. President? Yes.
I've had principals share with me that they've received that training. And several of them say, I just want more feedback. Like Mr. Schulte shared, being a leader is lonely. And it's hard to get people to be honest with you. And so if I were to share anything with any of the employees of a district, the Board of Trustees is looking at this. and as a teacher if you want things to change right i mean it's literally called a pulse like your pulse is only a snapshot in time of what you can respond to if i've got a low pulse they'll send me to the hospital right if i have low o2 sat they're going to send me to the hospital and and our leadership needs that and so i would encourage every employee in our district to respond to these knowing that it's not if if you are unsatisfied or have an issue with your direct leader it is going above and around them people are seeing it um and your leader can only do so much with the information they have if it's not accurate they're thinking life is great and they're the best leader in the world when in reality you don't think so and so at the same time though share those positive things with them because again if anything's taught you as a teacher as a principal as an administrator leadership can be lonely and many times people are quick to share the negative but not the positive and so i i'm excited that our leaders get a chance to share some of that but on kudos to y'all that i know our principals have seen that because uh the the training and i know that they want to hear that accurate feedback as most as recent as friday i was in the school and the principal is sharing i want that that real real feedback so that I know I'm not making a decision based on 12% response rate, but I can make a response on 50 or 60%. Well, that's a good picture. So thank y'all very much. I love the fact that we can get those real-time pulses more often than once a year and be able to make real responses. So thank you.
Just going to add to that, just so the board, I'm going to refresh the board's memory that probably as much as a year ago when it was asked about school leadership and different things we were doing, we did put into place that our school principals go through a principal 360 feedback, and that is in process as well. They don't do it every year. We have them on a rotating schedule. You don't need to do that every year, but as the principals go through that process and get feedback through a 360 assessment That's another way for them to get data about their leadership And then they get coaching on that and they get additional assistance and mentoring in those areas as well
Great stuff. Thank you guys very much. I'm sorry any other questions. I'm sorry
I have another one too, but that's good miss Fox
Holy I'm sorry. I didn't even see you down there good. I'm okay
I'm good. I'm patient. So I heard that we're shifting from the four-week to the six-week, and I totally understand why. Is that enough for our elementary schools? Because our secondary schools are on a six-week rotation, but our elementary are on a nine-week. Is that six enough for them and give them enough time as well?
I think so at this point because we're looking. Right now it's been four, so looking to expand that. I know Dr. Grims can talk to, they look at our information with a larger cohort to look at that, and so it's already part of that piece that they're adjusting for us.
And I'll add that the six weeks was identified through the feedback we were getting from the principals. So they said six weeks would be sufficient for us at this point to really take some action based on the data that we're seeing. Now at the end of the spring semester, we'll take a look at this again, we'll talk to our principals we'll ask them how this worked out for them and we'll get some more feedback and perhaps there'll be adjustments in the future as well thank you i appreciate that miss fox
we're all excited about this it's great information so you just give me another question six weeks does that mean that the survey comes out the same time they're doing grades and a grade book i mean that would probably be like why you would get a low turnout right if there or maybe if it was staggered a week after or something, just a thought. And I believe that what they've said, people who are happy or angry participate. People who are just, like, satisfied and doing, you know, it's all good, I don't really have anything, aren't going to participate. So I like your ideas about getting more participation. The question I get all the time is teachers do not believe it's anonymous. How can we promise them and make them believe that it's anonymous? What are you doing to tell them no one will know who it came from? Because there was something about, I have to do it through my district email. How can you promise?
Ms. Fox, I'll go ahead and address that one just so you can have it on the record and I'll say it right here how this system works. We tell them stuff's anonymous. It comes from a third party. It doesn't come as an internal source. It comes directly from Satchel Pulse. there are two people who can get the data out of that system by contacting satchel pulse and that's dr. grooms and myself those are the only two people if they wanted any of this data to drill down to the person who actually put it in there is no way for a campus principal to get it there's no way for any other district leader to get it they don't have that and we tell people this I probably said that ten times over the last couple of years and I'm not asking SACHEL PALS FOR THAT INFORMATION. BUT I DON'T THINK WE WILL EVER BEAT THAT STIGMA ABOUT ANONYMOUS DATA. THAT'S JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS YOU CONSISTENTLY HEAR. I'VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR THREE DECADES. IT'LL NEVER CHANGE. IF I WENT TO EVERY TEACHER IN THE DISTRICT AND TOLD THEM WHAT I JUST TOLD YOU RIGHT NOW, THAT ONLY TWO PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE DISTRICT COULD CALL SACHEL PALS AND GET ANY INFORMATION FROM THEM, THEY STILL WOULDN'T BELIEVE US. Okay. Yeah. It's a tough one.
Okay. And it's still important information to share. You bet. Even if it's negative, it's still important if it impacts the whole culture. I have two more quick things. Can the questions be varied by campuses based on feedback you get? Can you vary or are the questions the same all the way around? The same six questions to every teacher in the district?
So just this year, campuses have been able to augment the questions that are being asked, so by adding some that are specific to the campus.
I think that's very important, right? And I mean, we have a room full, not full, but with lots of former principals, and I bet they could give a lot of insight on kinds of questions or how to get better, and so many of you all have great cultures. It's why you're here. So I'm glad that you are the coaches for the principals to help them understand that whatever the feedback is, is meant to make you better. And we all want to be better. Thank you.
Dr. Okay. I have just a little bit more based on the other things that other people have said. First of all, Dr. Grooms, I want to tell you I really appreciate the work that you've done and I also love the statement that you made about the happy, I'm not quoting, I don't me to put you incorrectly something about you know the happy atmosphere is makes happy people my grandmother was a second grade teacher for 40 years and I grew up hearing that the principal sets the tone for the school and I I just grew up knowing that and I still firmly believe that that's why this is so important to me because I get feedback from teachers that aren't happy with certain people in administration and they say they complete this mr. Redmond and really did a good job in pointing out that Dr. Gorgorski did provide the information in the Friday update, and I went back and looked at it, and I look at it every time I get it. But for example, I'm not going to call out the school, but there's a school that has like 52%. So if I look at the school again in six months and look at it again and again, because I used to do this when we get that binder, and sometimes those ratings never change. And those are the same schools that will tell me that nothing's ever done. you know and I want to know how many times you know how long how long do we wait and you know that if there's a consistent problem with a certain area in a school whether it be an administrator whatever it is how long do we give them you know is it a year two years you know what what is the thing you know how long do we give them to see an improvement on something because I think if it's 50% time and time and time again they're obviously trying to to tell us something, you know, not us, but y'all or whoever, and they need to see something's changing because they keep putting themselves out there. They keep giving the 50% rating, but it's still like that every year, every year, the same school. So I don't know.
It's hard to encourage people to continue to do a survey when they feel that nothing's being done.
on? The short answer on that is you have to remember, you have to look at the percentage of the folks taking it, and then you have to look at the entire pillar score. So there could be people that are internally scoring the survey results low, but overall the campus is scoring at a higher standard. I've been watching the surveys since we've implemented this, and I've I've never seen a pillar at any campus hit 50%, which would be 5 out of 10. I'm not talking about participation rate. I'm talking about one of the pillars. So it could be possible that you're hearing from people that they're scoring the survey very low and they're not getting any results because their low score isn't dragging the entire pillar down. If I'm a campus and I look at my pillar scores, remember the pillars are going to go all the way to 10, and all my pillars are turning green, I'm probably going to comment on that with my staff and talk about the survey, but I don't really have anything actionable to change in that pillar, although there may be one or two people or three in the organization who have scored that pillar extremely low. The only way I would know about that is if the person came to me and came and told me and said, listen, I've been scoring that pillar low, but you're not doing anything about it. I would just go have those conversations, and I understand those are tough conversations, SO I'LL SWITCH GEARS OVER TO THIS, THAT WE HAVE AN ENTIRE DIVISION OVER THERE IN HR WITH AN EMPLOYEE RELATIONS DEPARTMENT THAT THOSE PEOPLE ARE FANTASTIC AT WORKING WITH OUR EMPLOYEES. IF AN EMPLOYEE IS STRUGGLING WITH HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH THEIR PRINCIPAL AT THAT CAMPUS, THE EMPLOYEE RELATIONS DEPARTMENT WILL HELP BRIDGE THAT GAP. They'll talk about the conflict. They'll give suggestions. They will give advice and they'll talk to the employee about how they can Go about trying to get some changes in there
Thank you important stuff, thank you guys very much Well now proceed in your dad I'm a agenda item excuse me 8.1 8.1
8.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of the attendance boundary modification (ABM) for elementary #45, elementary #46, Campbell Elementary LUZ 73I to Randolph Elementary and LUZ 51C to Wolman Elementary, Golbow Elementary LUZ 7C to McRoberts Elementary and LUZ 14C to Franz Elementary for the 2023-2024 school year.
EBMs and the presenters tonight are mr. Ted veerling chief operations officer and miss Chris Poole attorney and chief data analyst for population and survey analysts good evening president
schulte board members dr gorski appreciate you having us tonight i'm here with chris pool a longtime partner of population and survey analysts to present the final abm this evening just to give you an idea we went back to july there with the objectives and and we're opening elementary 45 and 46 we needed to clean some stuff up at galbo and campbell elementary that that are growing and keep that growth in check for the next two, three, four years over time. So just a little bit on the timeline there. We presented the initial ABM to the board in July at the July board meeting. Right after that, we started sending surveys, Dr. Rooms' department did, out to parents and community members that are impacted by the ABM. You guys got an update update on that in September. Got some data on the survey which is now ended and then tonight we're here for the final approval of the ABM and just to let you know as we have with all these meetings you've got a set of maps in front of you with some overlays so you can kind of see the current setup and then what we're moving to and Chris is going to walk you through the maps and then at the end And if you have any questions, we'll be happy to answer them.
Good evening. It's so cold in here. My lips are going to work.
You can blame Mr. Vealing for that with the secret code over there.
I was told earlier it was hot, so I fixed it. I'll fix. But with some more survey data, we'll get you just right.
That's right. So we're back to hopefully wrap up the zoning ABM for the year here. This presentation is going to look just a whole lot like the one that you guys saw in July, So hopefully we're just going to hit the high points here. I know that you're well aware of the growth in the Northwest. We've compared it to the recent growth in the Southwest that was, you know, explosive in some way, where we're back revisiting this year after year after year, opening new campuses. And so, of course, we have a bond election and two schools under construction, and so now we have to zone for those schools. So this is just sort of the beginning. This is the three schools there in the northwestern portion of the district that are going to be affected. Yellow means really, really full. And so what we've got here is two schools, around 2,000 students over the next 10 years. That would be Bethke and Leonard. McIlwain way, way, way full, over 6,000 students if we don't do anything about that. And so that's why we're here doing this. This next slide shows the current attendance zones with the projections for three years. years. And so the pink there that is shown, those are the sites that the district owns. So the one in the far north is there to relieve McIlwain. The one just there north of the word Hetzel can relieve the schools in the southern portion of the district. And so then this is the recommended attendance zones for the new schools. The goal here, of course, is to pull students out of McIlwain and Bethke and Leonard so that they're much closer to their capacity. And if we don't pull students out now, we're going to continue to have to revisit this over and over and over again so this recommendation pulls the lane you sons that are in the ones and the twos and the threes along with five b c and d into that northern school and so this includes part of ellison that's north of 529 in lane you soon 2d it's windward in lane you son 1c along with katie crossing and marisol in 5d and katie manor in 5b so the southern boundary of that that northern school is Stockdick School Road over to Katie Cochley Cut-Off, and then the boundary turns east along 529. And so that new school in the south abuts the school in the north, and then it takes 10B from Hetzel because that's where the school site sits, and then it takes 11D from Leonard, which is Camilla Lakes, just right down Clay, and then 6D, 6A, and 4A from Bethke. These are the Laniusons that are west of Porter Road, and they include Katy Point, Porter Ranch, and Kings Crossing. And so the southern new school would split to Haskett and Stockdick, but that would be three landing zones to one and four to the other. And the northern school would split down Katy-Hockley Cut-Off to Haskett and Stockdick Junior High. So this should help Bethke and McIlwain level off for a while and hopefully allow us some manageable enrollments until additional schools are built in the future. future.
So we'll turn just briefly to the southwestern portion of the district. We all lived through the southwest growth there and we've just referenced that probably being similar to the northwest. Basically every possible inch of land is used for residential development. We hope that Campbell would hold its student population for the foreseeable future, but we talk and we have talked and always talk about the ratios of students per house. And so right now, district-wide, that ratio is about 0.72 per single-family home. And so we have projected over one in this area, but four of the six subdivisions with the highest ratios in the district are in Campbell. We've got one at 2.08 students per home. And so as a result, we are suggesting that we do make one move. This isn't working here. Moving, this is the current zones here, and you can see Campbell would be continuing to grow just a bit and very full. in its current state. And so we're looking at taking 51C, which consists of Rosedale, Tamarind Lakes, Wesley Cove, and then sending it to Woolman. This landing zone has some current students, about 250, and it's projected to maybe have as many as 400 in the future as those developments that I just mentioned build out. So if we move it... now we're hoping to level out the enrollment at Campbell just a little bit and we're hoping that several of these elementary schools here in the southwest will begin to level out and decline as the subdivisions age over time.
And then to move on just to Galbo Elementary here in the northeast
for several years now I've alluded to this next move when presenting the demographic study to you all in the fall. We've been expecting Galbo to exceed its capacity and we're showing it here as as full as about 185 percent. It has a smaller capacity. If you're used to hearing capacities for the elementary schools, the new ones and for the longest time here have been about 1,030. So, Galbo has a little bit smaller capacity there and we are expecting the top section in particular of Galbo to grow.
So, here are the current attendance zones and you can see that 1200
number there in Galbo shortly and I believe in 7C we had even more students show up this year than we had projected so that those numbers may may very well go up just a little bit and so i know this particular move raised some eyebrows in in july but hopefully it makes a little more sense now that we've had time to think about it so we're recommending moving 14c from mcroberts to france in order to make a little more space to move all of 7c to mcroberts and so 14c includes bridgewater Meadow. 7C includes Jasmine Heights, Grand Parkway at West Little York, which is future single family and at least one multifamily complex that's in there in that 7C that we're talking about. Currently, there are about 200 or there are over 200 students right now, but we're projecting more than 500 students as a possibility at build out. And so in looking at a way to relieve Galbo, we didn't want to move 13A or B because that's basically where the school sits. We hated to move move 7B without moving 7C to break up that zone. So that leaves us with a possibility of taking 7C to the west, and we're trying to relieve all of those schools. Those are some of the ones we've just been talking about. So that left us with the option to move it there to the east and down to McRoberts. And so when we look at feeder patterns, this would actually improve the split that France has between McDonald and Morton Ranch by having both 14C and E attend McRoberts, and then 7C would not change its junior high feeder pattern.
Excuse me, Mr. President, would you repeat what you just said about the split? Fran said something you were saying.
So it actually would improve the split for McDonald and Morton. You'll have 14C and 14E both attending McRoberts. Instead of just one land use zone that attended, it would give it a little additional one, and then 7C wouldn't change its pattern. So you're talking about junior high feeder? Elementary to junior. Elementary to junior. Tell me that one more time. What does it do? So it lets 14C join 14E to McRoberts. Instead of just having one landing zone that feeds to the junior high, we're adding a second one to it, and it doesn't change 7C's junior high.
Got it. Thanks.
Mr. President? Thank you for your presentation. I love that you did that to 14C,
and I know you have reasons that you've already stated, why you did 7c the way it is but
you know i don't live over there or anything but just looking at this it just it's i don't know how many miles apart that is that they're that they're driving through it kind of reminds me of um the kids at walt uh elementary some of them go to taylor high school and they go to I think Memorial Parkway junior high they have to come so far that's always kind of seemed strange to me too but it just seems I wish I guess I don't want to say it seems like there should be a better way but I wish there was a better way how about that then to put those people people that live up in seven C beyond Galbo.
Well, as it is there, they're heading due south to Galbo. So the difference here is the amount of East, you know, McRoberts and Galbo are similarly situated there. So they're already traveling a decent distance to start with. So really the change that we're making is the amount of the distance there between Galbo and McRoberts.
If I may, the other struggle with some of this is, is the historical piece of it all uh as miss fox is shaking her head because she knows that there are some things that you can do fairly easily and then there's some other things that require a fruit basket turnover and so if we really wanted to fix this we probably could in fact we looked at some ideas uh chris sends me uh i don't i wouldn't say crazy but crazy maps all the time uh looking at some things that would would really quote unquote fix everything, but it would move a whole lot more families and cause a whole lot more angst. And so when you start looking at things, you say, well, is it a mile or so more maybe? But does it fix the problem without just blowing everybody's lives up? And so that's the tough thing about ABMs. And again, that last slide, the conclusion slide is something I always say is we take this stuff very seriously. This is not something we take lightly when we ask families to move kids. We know that they love their schools. They don't want to leave their schools. But we also know that a more balanced enrollment is better for everybody. And when you start talking about happy teachers and happy kids and happy families, we think it's very important to do that. So we do make some of these little shifts every once in a while. Do we love it? Nope. But we do the best we can.
Mr. President. Yes.
I'm not going to assume anything. I'll just ask the question. Does 7C, they already, do they have bus service to Galbo, and will they have bus service to McRoberts?
Yes, ma'am, and yes, ma'am.
Any other questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I'd like to go to the Campbell and Randolph section for just a second. So I understand where 51C is going to Woolman, but then we're also taking that section of apartments in 73i and we're putting those to randolph yes yes okay and then down here i don't know if it's in 73h or 73e i only know i drive by the new townhomes being built have those numbers already been included in the growth that we're going to see for randolph because those are on the kdisd side uh some of them are yes and there The ones that are right next, not the adult.
Senior Living. Senior Living, thank you. I was like, I'm trying to think of the word. Sorry, it left me. But to the left of them, and don't ask me if that's north, south, east, or west. That is not my strong point. I just know they're to the left. And then it's like 56 townhomes that are being built by Highland Park.
Yes, ma'am. We reached out to them. I think we shared some information with the board. It was a while back. It's been a while back. Yes, ma'am. And I actually talked to the guy who's selling the homes there. And he said at the time they had not had one family that had kids reach out to them. A lot of older adults, a lot of folks that he gave me the example of dads who have now been divorced, but they want to live close to the family, things like that. So we do not expect to be overrun by a student population.
Okay, great. Thank you. That answered my question.
I appreciate it.
Any other questions?
I have one other question. I'm just curious, which of these schools, which of these up in the northwest go to Payto?
Go to Payto?
Is it McElwain?
McElwain does for sure. Bethke? Yes, ma'am.
So all of those, is that all buildable to see, you know, all those empty spots? Will they be having houses?
Yep. There are a few, you know, portions of it that are not. There's the conservancy and some other things. There's some land that's tied up with some international ownership, and so it's a question mark of when that might actually build. So that's a lot of it in this situation is more timing question When is that one of some of these large chunks going to breakfast? But a lot of it, you know years and years and years and years ago. We might have said no But the developers are doing things with detention and all of these things and yes, they're finding a way to build on
Most of it. All right. Thank you
Any other questions
If not all entertain a motion
Mr. President, I move that the Board of Trustees approves the attendance boundary modification ABM for elementary number 45, elementary number 46, Campbell Elementary lose 773I to Randolph Elementary and lose 51C to Wollman Elementary. Global Elementary lose 7C to McRoberts Elementary and lose 14C to Franz Elementary for the 2023-2024 school year. Second.
we have a motion by miss Wilson a second by mrs. van will now proceed to vote board members please record your vote on the screen via your keypad the motion passes 7-0 thank you guys very much that's a lot of hard work 8.2 discuss to
8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the October 2022 budget amendments.
consider board approval of the October 2022 budget amendments presenter mystery Butterfield the executive director of budget and treasurer good
evening good evening president schulte trustees and superintendent gorgorski tonight there's only one budget amendment that is increasing the expenditures and this is a sixty thousand dollar amendment related to some storm damage repairs and replacements all other amendments tonight are direct offsets between different functions so approval of these amendments will result in a sixty $60,000 decrease to the general operating fund balance.
Thank you. Are there any questions? I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President. Yes. I move that the Board of Trustees approves the October 22 budget amendments.
Second. We have a motion by Mr. Redmond, a second by Ms. Wilson. We'll now proceed to vote. Board members, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad. Yeah. The motion carries 6-0. Thank you.
8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the August 2022 check register.
We'll now proceed to 8.3, the Scots and Kansas City Board approved the August 2022 check register. Mr. Jamie Hines, Executive Director of Finance. Good evening again.
Good evening, President Schulte, members of the board, Superintendent Grigorski. As we do each month, we are presenting the check registers for August 2022 to you all, and the administration asked for your approval on these, and I can answer any questions for these.
Any questions on the check register?
Mr. President? Yes. I had a question on the detailed check register, not on this per se, because I hadn't really, to be honest with you, other than looking at this, I've not really gone through the thousands and thousands of lines on your actual check register. So I don't know if this is okay to ask questions about those specific items on the check register.
But hopefully not thousands of items but
Well, for example when I see not knowing what this is when I see a payment of 312,000 to something called Rick DreamBox learning and I don't know what that is. So obviously just bring it up to ask You know, what is that? 45,000 for 321 insight. So these are like vendors. These are service providers. These are software providers so I'm just curious about items like that and and if you know it at some point maybe we can discuss at another time you know how much we spend and how much we have budgeted for items like that like third-party providers vendors that provide us whether it be professional development or software or whatever I'm just curious about some of these amounts and what they're for so that's just a kind of a specific question there and and then also just a general item.
As far as your first question, Mr. Perez, if there are specific things in the check register or payments we've made to vendors, I would have to have each individual cabinet member speak to those, but we can go through those. I wouldn't expect Mr. Hines to be able to speak to DreamBox, but I know Dr. Kaske or Dr. Alawne could, as that's an instructional resource through technology. But each one you want to speak about, we can answer those questions. about any of the products.
Yeah, DreamBox is a big one, so I'm just curious about that.
Sure, so DreamBox, it's a math software program that we use. It's also part of our House Bill 3 objectives. That is the software that we use to pull data on student performance in the area of mathematics.
And is that an annual payment? Is that like a subscription?
I'd have to turn to John for that. His department manages those pieces.
Yes, sir. That's an annual payment.
What about since we're 321 inside 45,000?
I believe that is our Parashart program. That is an online program that we use to provide professional development for our paraeducators.
And that one is funded, I believe, through ESSER.
Okay.
That's all the questions I have on the... If you need some time offline... I'm just curious, just in general, these kind of payments, like for software and vendors and all that, if there's a... At some point, it'd be good to learn what all we're committed to and how much we pay for these outside vendors and suppliers and software providers. And if that's where that's...
The Board adopted the annual budget in August and it was part of the budget. you know you hear me talk about the third largest expenditure we have is software so a lot of those that you've mentioned so far are software um we don't provide typically the budget of what i've learned as socks and jocks at the detail because that stack would be four foot tall of paper right um but but obviously those uh those annualized licenses and saw a software of what we're talking about now do start at the beginning of the year and so we pay those subscriptions or the are those licenses for the upcoming year typically in September or October is when those are paid but those are all budgeted funds
right I'm sure everything's budgeted I'm just saying that when you see a tech register and you have a big item and an unknown name so to speak it's natural to to ask what is this for, you know, because we are approving the check register as a board.
Mr. President? Yes. My question would be how often are those licenses reviewed to make sure that they are still in use and if they're not in use to stop the payments? Is there a process for that, a vetting process for active licenses or software?
Yes, Ms. Fox. We do review those annually, usually before budget time, and that's the time when we sunset some of those products or we increase or reduce the number of licenses that are needed.
Any other questions? If not, I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President? Yes. I move that the Board of Trustees approves the District's August 2022 Check Register.
Second.
We have a motion by Mr. Redman, a second by Mrs. Fox. We'll now proceed to vote. Board member, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad. The motion carries 7-0. Thank you very much, Mr. Hines.
8.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the District Performance Objectives.
8.4, discuss and consider board approval of district performance objectives. The presenter is Mr. Natalie Martinez, executive director of school improvement. Good evening.
Good evening. Good evening, presidential team members of the board. Dr. Gorgorski, each year the board is asked to review and approve the district performance objectives that guide the district improvement planning process. The performance objectives are aligned to the eight strategic goals and are created through three different processes. Five of the 22 proposed district performance objectives are from legally required statutes. 11 are yearly action steps from our strategic design process. And six are created from a needs assessment process involving district departments, staff, parents, and community members. You received a copy of the proposed district performance objectives, and at this time I will answer any questions you may have about them.
Thank you, are there any questions?
I had a, Mr. Resnick? Yes. So, you know, the goals, and some of these comments apply, I think, to some of the campus, district campus, because they kind of go hand in hand, if you will. And that is, and I hear this a lot from parents, we talk a lot about personalized learning experiences and digital content and all that. And it seems like we've really emphasized computers and everything being on computers in terms of assessments, tests, etc. and parents are really having a difficult time from what I hear with helping their kids that are taking computer tests and also the kids are having are struggling with online testing and so I see a lot in here about you know we want to have personalized learning experience what there's a lot of content here about digital content that kind of thing and I just wonder I I mean, I know that the START test, I think, is supposed to be online, so we're trying to get the kids up to speed to take that test. But I think there's a lot of frustration among parents in terms of, you know, I can't help my child. I only see a score. I don't see the test. The test is not available to me. He's struggling with the online testing, with the assessment, with the homework online. It takes forever for him or her to do his homework. So that's just more of a comment more than anything else, because I see that as sort of like, and you're talking about a math software program for the kids, you know, and I think they have difficulties where they can't get partial credit because it's online and showing their work and things like that. So that's just, I'm just passing along that comment because it's really emphasized here, we're kind of doubling down on that. And I think it's a greater challenge also for the disadvantaged group. We're trying to bring them up, and especially when they have a difficult time, as it is already, and trying to get the parents may not be available to help them or they may not be able to help them, if you will, with language issues or whatever, that the online assessments and the continued emphasis on electronics, electronics, too much electronics could really impact us and impact some of our scores and some of our
assessments. That's kind of a... Mr. Riz, I'll jump in on that just for a moment because that's a little bit sliding off the topic of what the item is tonight. It's the district performance objectives with assessments and accountability, but the questions you raise are good questions. It's something that I've had some discussions with Mrs. Hack about and what we're going to do with principals and some of those discussions we've had with Dr. Caskey about that. If the board would like an update on something related to those types of questions, happy to get you one. If you can phrase that into a few questions, maybe you send me this week and I can get you some more information about what has transpired, why we've moved to more online types of assessments or not but probably not a good discussion to have under this item tonight because it's a little off topic well it's it's it's
we're talking about our goals and our goals and I think this impacts achieving those goals is what I'm saying is why I'm bringing it up here and it's in the same comment I would make as far as some of the district the campus plans if you will kind of the same comment thank you any other questions yes and move the
board of trustees approves the district performance objective second we have a
motion by miss van a second by miss Wilson will now proceed to vote please record your vote on this keypad motion passes 7-0 thank you
8.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Campus Performance Objectives.
Jen item 8.5 discuss and consider board approval a campus performance objectives
Perfect. Good evening again. Each year the Board is required to review and approve the performance objectives that guide each individual campus improvement planning process. The performance objectives are aligned to the district's strategic goals and are created through three different processes. Again legal requirements, narrowing the focus of the campus work throughout the school year and extensive campus needs assessment review involving campus district staff, parents, community members. The copy of campus performance objectives you received begins with the district performance objectives and then goes into the campus performance objectives as well. At this time, I'll answer any questions about the campus performance objectives.
Any questions? If not, I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President? Yes. I move that the Board of Trustees approves the campus performance objectives.
Second. We have a motion by Mrs. Vann, a second by Mr. Redman. We'll now proceed to vote. Board members, please record your vote.
the motion passes 7-0 thank you very much
what is that 8.6 8.6 discuss consider board approval of the emergent bilingual eb english
8.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Emergent Bilingual (EB)/English Learner (EL) Enrollment and the 2022-2023 Bilingual Education Exception/ESL Waiver Application.
learner enrollment and 2022-2023 bilingual education exception esl waiver the presenters are miss linda shepherd director of esl and bilingual programs and jennifer purple luck Thank you. I'm not even going to try that one. Perpala, construction officer for elementary ESL. Good evening. Oh, there's even has the fanatics there and I missed it. Sorry about that.
No problem.
I see it down there now. It's at the bottom. Sorry. My apologies.
Good evening, ward president, board of trustees, and superintendent Grogorski. As required by the Texas Education Code, district personnel shall report to the board of trustees the number of emergent bilinguals or English learners across the district. That term is used synonymously either way. Emergent bilinguals is the new term that Texas uses to describe English learners, which is a federal term, so you can use either one interchangeably. We use both in our district. As of October 4th, the English learner district report indicates 21,314 emergent bilinguals district-wide. Additionally, each district with an enrollment of 20 or more emergent bilinguals in any language classification in the same grade district-wide shall offer a bilingual education or special language program. The district has identified 16 languages this year for which a bilingual exception is being requested. These are Arabic, Cantonese, Farsi, Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Yoruba. The bilingual exception application will be filed with TEA on or before November 1st. The application will include a description of how the district will provide instructional support to the elementary campuses for students who have been identified in the aforementioned 16 languages. KDISD has applied for this for 21 years in a row. KDISD is requesting an ESL waiver for 205 teachers who are providing service to ESL students. These teachers have been informed of the training opportunities to become ESL certified. A part of the application requires a description of professional development and Jennifer will talk about a few of the highlights of what we're providing this year.
KDISD has developed two pathways to support teachers seeking ESL certification and developed sheltered instruction strategies that support English learners. Pathway one, ESL certification is offered to English language arts reading teachers and other content teachers who are not ESL certified. This in-district training provides preparation for the Texas supplemental ESL exam. Teachers learn the fundamental language concepts and the structure and conventions of the English language to support emergent bilinguals. Teachers also develop an understanding of ESL teaching methods and how to use the knowledge to plan and implement effective ESL instruction. Ten opportunities throughout the school year are provided for Pathway 1 ESL certification. Pathway 2 ESL Sheltered Instruction Course is a more robust course offered to teachers who are seeking ESL certification along with a comprehensive sheltered instruction training. The participants in this pathway complete 45 hours of test preparation and professional development in sheltered instruction best practices. The goal is to equip teachers with the knowledge and strategies to better serve English learners. learners. Using ESSER funds, participants completing the Pathway to ESL Certification Program will receive a $1,000 one-time stipend. The effective linguistic and cognitive needs of English learners are addressed throughout the Comprehensive Professional Development Plan. The plan ensures participants increase their understanding of the importance of effectively planning for the delivery of instruction that meets the needs of English learners at varying proficiency levels and academic experiences. It is recommended that the Board of Trustees grant approval for the superintendent to sign and submit the bilingual exception and ESL waiver application prior to November 1st as required by TEA. At this time I welcome any questions.
Are there any questions? Mr. President? Yes. Ms. Champagne?
Thank you. That is so interesting. I've always thought the I just love our district for this reason that we have so many different people here but I've always just wondered this one question it's probably been asked of me before and it's probably been told to me also before but just for re clarification what qualifies a student to be an emergent balance right so so you know is it that they can speak 50% English but you put you know What is the criteria?
There is a state assessment. When a child enters the district, if they speak a language other than English, all districts in the state of Texas are required to assess students with a language assessment. It's the same across the entire state. It's called Laws Links. And there is a listening, speaking, reading, and writing domain. You would have to be proficient across the domains to not need services. So if you're not proficient, then you are offered either ESL or bilingual services.
Even in one of the domains?
Yes. The younger kids, they don't take the reading and writing. Like pre-K, they just do listening and speaking.
Because I think it's so interesting that there are 12th graders that are still the emergence bilingual.
And some of those are new to our country or have been in our country, left, and then come back, varying degrees. Most students do exit within about five years. All right.
That's just interesting. Thank you for telling me that again. I may ask again next year. Sorry.
Okay. And we have 93 languages. We counted them today across our district. Ninety-four if you count English.
Any other questions? Mr. President, I think you had one.
What is your biggest challenge from an ESL perspective in terms of really addressing the needs of the district from a district standpoint?
I guess for me personally, it's the diversity. We have some students that just need access to language, and they're high-achieving in their native language, so you can make a connection. And then we have other students who have been out of school for several years and are coming to our country under some severe hardships. And meeting the effective needs of the person who's in your classroom who hasn't been in a school setting for years is a big challenge. of wanting to close those gaps. You may have a child in high school that needs phonemic awareness, so they're needing to close a tremendous amount of gaps.
So you have a big gap in terms of? Regardless of the age, where they are in terms of the language. And let me ask you this. Can a parent choose, let's say a third grade, a parent of a third grader, can they choose not to do any ESL and just say, I want them just in the classroom to pick up the language?
Parents can fully deny services. I'm sorry? They can deny either ESL or bilingual services and say I don't want you to do anything additional with my child, but they're still required to participate in a state assessment called TELPIS that assesses to see if they are achieving the listening, speaking, reading, or writing, and they're becoming English proficient. And we do have students in our district that fall under that category where parents have chosen to deny services.
I have personal experience in that I came to this country when I was in third grade. I was the only Spanish speaker. in my class and you know i find that kids pick up the language very quickly at that age the big advantage or disadvantage is if they're required to speak spanish if they have to speak spanish at home versus being able to speak english at home as well so they can you know they can still use their english but that's why i ask about parents who maybe don't want the esl but want the kids to just kind of plunge into the classroom and pick it up pretty quickly.
It varies by parents. Most parents, once we explain the purpose of the program and depending on what the proficiency level of the students do want the additional services, most of our services are provided directly in that in the classroom. How many ESL teachers do we have?
Well in elementary... I was like That's a hard question to ask because we have teachers that are specifically working with newcomer proficiency level, students that are working with our year two students who have a little bit more English.
They're developing full sentences, working on their tenses, and then we have students that are in their third or fourth year of English proficiency. They're actually in the Gen Ed English classroom, and our classroom teachers have learned those ESL strategies to work with their students.
I think there's a huge area for the district, really important,
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other questions? If not, I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President. Yes, I move that the Board of Trustees approves the emergent bilingual English learner enrollment and the 2022-2023 bilingual education exception ESL waiver application.
I have a motion by Ms. Wilson, a second by Mr. Redmond. We'll now proceed to vote. Please register your vote on your keypad. motion passes 7-0 thank you very much now proceed on to the consent agenda yes I move the board of
9. Consent
trustees approves the consent agenda for items 9.1 through 9.4 you have a motion by mrs. van
and the second by mrs. mrs. Fox will now proceed to vote members please record your vote on the keypad the motion passes 7-0 now agenda item 10.1 quarterly investment report
10.1 Quarterly Investment Report
the board was provided a copy of the quarterly investment report 10.2 the
10.2 Donated Items to Katy Independent School District
board was provided a copy of the donated items to Katie is d 10.3 mrs. van we
10.3 Recap of Board Members' Requests for Information.
Will you recap Board Member's request for information tonight?
Yes.
And maybe it's wrong. On 6.1, Mr. Prez requested further info on the financial integrity rating system or FIRST from Mr. Smith, to which he said he would send it to Dr. Havorsky. On 7.1, Ms. Fox encouraged regular updates to the Board on elementary literacy plans. And on 7.2, there was kind of a peppering of a few things. It was requested of what, or it was offered to us that the rotating questions will be shared with the board from Dr. Grooms. And Dr. Rogorski was asking how often do we want updates in the culture and climate reports. That's information that if each of us could get to him so he can get an understanding of how often we want to have updates on that. And Mr. Schulte, you requested the importance of needing a feedback loop from survey results.
AND THAT'S PRETTY MUCH ALL I HAVE. GREAT JOB. I DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING ELSE. ANYBODY MISS ANYTHING? NO?
11.1 Regular Board Meeting – November 14, 2022
AGENDA ITEM 11.1, THERE WILL BE A REGULAR BOARD MEETING ON NOVEMBER 14, 2022. THERE BEING NO FURTHER BUSINESS BEFORE THIS BOARD, THIS MEETING IS ADJOURNED. THE TIME IS 8.06. THANKS, EVERYONE. NEW SPEAKERS, ANY SIGNALS? NEW SPEAKERS, ANY SIGNALS?
NEW SPEAKERS, ANY SIGNALS?
NEW SPEAKERS, ANY SIGNALS?
NEW SPEAKERS, ANY SIGNALS?
NEW SPEAKERS, ANY SIGNALS?
Official documents
Agenda
The district's own agenda for this meeting, as published on BoardDocs.
Official agenda, Regular Board Meeting Agenda, 24 October 2022 →
Board packet · 21 documents
The district's own backup material for this agenda, retrieved from BoardDocs. Each file was checked against the size BoardDocs states for it.
- FIRST_sign_in 608 KB
- Katy ISD August 2022 Quarterly Report 312 KB
- October 2022 158 KB
- Check Register-August 2022 60 KB
- October 2022 - Donation Report 131 KB
- 2023 Katy ISD Multi-Campus ReRoof_Bid Tab 183 KB
- 2023 Re-Roof Pacakage 1_RR_Ltr_Rec 269 KB
- 2023 Re-Roof Pacakage 2_RR_Ltr_Rec 181 KB
- 2023 Atlas Contract- Signed 4360 KB
- 2023 Reliable Commercial Roofing Contract- Signed 6624 KB
- FINAL ABM 2023-24 Elementary 45-46-SW-NE 2738 KB
- FIRST_PPT_20-21_Data 304 KB
- AIA_B101-2017_Ag Barn 10_VLK 13438 KB
- Hellas Agreement for Tompkins HS Turf 6387 KB
- Elementary Literacy Update Board Presentation 641 KB
- Katy ISD - Culture and Climate Slides 443 KB
- FULLY EXECUTED -AIA_B101-2017_Ag Barn 10_VLK _10242022 2235 KB
- MIN 9 12 2022 Special Board Meeting SIGNED 103 KB
- Katy Independent School District alternative-language-program-recruiting-activities 2022-23 316 KB
- Katy Independent School District Bilingual Education Exception and ESL Waiver 2022-2023 108 KB
- MIN_9_26_2022_Regular_Board_Meeting_SIGNED 280 KB
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 8.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the attendance boundary modification (ABM) for the 2023-2024 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 002 · AGENDA 8.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's October 2022 budget amendments. Not Present at Vote: Ashley Vann
6 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 003 · AGENDA 8.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's August 2022 check register.
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 8.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District Performance Objectives.
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 8.5
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Campus Performance Objectives.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 006 · AGENDA 8.6
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees grants approval for the Superintendent to sign and submit the 2022-2023 Bilingual Education Exception/ESL Waiver Application.
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 007 · AGENDA 9.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the proposal from Hellas Construction, Inc. for the turf replacement at Tompkins High School in the amount not to exceed $803,811 and approves the total project cost not to exceed $873,811.
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 9.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the contracts for the re-roofing and skylight replacements Package 1 at Jeanne Coleman Student Support Annex, Rhodes Stadium fieldhouse and Morton Ranch High School to Atlas Universal Roofing, Inc. utilizing HCDE/Choice Partners contract no. 22/022MJ-02 in the amount of $1,987,434, and for Package 2 at Kilpatrick Elementary and McMeans Junior High to Reliable Commercial Roofing Services, Inc. utilizing HCDE/Choice Partners contract no. 22/022MJ-07 in the amount of $3,841,700, with a total project project cost not to exceed $6,390,000.
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 009 · AGENDA 9.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to VLK Architect for design services necessary for the Agricultural Barn #10.
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 9.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the minutes of the Board meetings held in September.
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 |