Good evening everyone.
Katy ISD · Regular Board Meeting Agenda
Katy ISD Regular Board Meeting, January 23, 2023
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- 0:05 to 5:24 1. Call to Order
- 5:24 to 13:20 3. Recognitions
- 13:20 to 16:55 4. Oaths
- 16:55 to 1:23:26 5. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
- 1:23:26 to 1:24:30 6. Closed Meeting
- 1:24:30 to 1:25:13 7. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 1:25:13 to 1:37:04 8.1 2023 - 2024 Budget Update
- 1:37:04 to 2:45:32 8.2 Discipline Management Plan
- 2:45:32 to 2:49:22 9.1 Presentation on the 2021-2022 Annual Report to include the Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR)
- 2:49:22 to 2:54:00 9.2 Public Hearing on the 2021-2022 Annual Report to include the Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR)
- 2:54:00 to 2:57:33 10.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of naming Elementary School #45 as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
- 2:57:33 to 3:00:15 10.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of naming Elementary School #46 as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
- 3:00:15 to 3:17:49 10.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the annual financial audit report.
- 3:17:49 to 4:33:09 10.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of an instructional materials adoption for elementary literacy resources to begin implementation district-wide in the 2023-2024 school year.
- 4:33:09 to 4:46:53 10.5 Discuss and consider Board adoption of the Order calling for a regular election of the School Board Trustees to be held on May 6, 2023 and authorization of the Administration to provide official notice of the election as required by the Texas Election Code.
- 4:46:53 to 4:50:09 10.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of an amendment to the 2023-2024 Instructional Calendar.
- 4:50:09 to 4:52:28 10.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2024-2025 Instructional Calendar.
- 4:52:28 to 4:53:14 10.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of a Professional Development Waiver for the 2024-2025 instructional calendar.
- 4:53:14 to 5:03:01 10.9 Discuss and consider Board approval to form a 2023 Community Bond Advisory Committee and approval of the Committee Charter.
- 5:03:01 to 5:06:23 10.10 Discuss and consider amending the total project costs for Junior High School #18, Elementary #45 and Katy Elementary School.
- 5:06:23 to 5:10:01 10.11 Discuss and consider approval of the renewal proposal for Property Insurance.
- 5:10:01 to 5:13:36 11. Consent
- 5:13:36 to 5:23:02 12.1 Katy ISD Legislative Priorities Update
- 5:23:02 to 5:23:05 12.2 Quarterly Investment Report
- 5:23:05 to 5:23:11 12.3 Cooperative Purchases Contract Management Fees Report for the 2021-2022 School Year.
- 5:23:11 to 5:23:14 12.4 Donated Items to Katy Independent School District
- 5:23:14 to 5:23:47 12.5 Recap of Board member requests for Information.
- 5:23:47 to 5:23:52 13.1 Special Board Meeting – February 20, 2023
- 5:23:52 to 5:24:11 13.2 Regular Board Meeting – February 27, 2023
Full transcript
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1. Call to Order
Thanks everybody for coming tonight.
We're gonna go ahead and 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, January 23rd, 2023, and the time is 5.02 PM.
Dr. Gagorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of
the texas open meetings act with regards to notice for this meeting mr schulte i do confirm we are
in compliance of the provisions of the texas open meeting act for a meeting this evening
we'll now proceed to the pledges of allegiance thank you mr schulte i'm going to go ahead and
invite our special guest up to the podium and that is grace check she's fifth grader at williams
elementary principal is jason brown i see her parents are out there julianne and john check
and her brother looks out, he may be out there too, Lucas, who's a third grader.
Grace participates in the Williams Choir, serves on the safety patrol,
and is part of the Williams Interplanetary Space Exploration,
where students learn about space and prepare for a mock mission to Mars.
Favorite subjects, reading and writing.
And from some of her teachers, Megan Chris, ELAR teacher,
on a daily basis, Grace doesn't fail to amaze me in the classroom.
She is a shining star that brings her own mix of creativity with a positive twist whether it's assisting or organizing fun activities for her
Classmates she's always does it with a smile very fortunate to have grace in my class this year and proud of the impact
She has made from April Alexander math and science teacher
Grace is a phenomenal student that always strives to do her best. She gives her all in everything
She does she is a natural leader who is great at organizing tasks and activities
She sets goals for herself and she is always willing to help teachers and other students.
Grace has a very bright future ahead of her and I'm honored to have had the opportunity to be one of her teachers this year.
And for Mary Harl, Safety Patrol Sponsor, Grace is a member of the Williams Elementary Safety Patrol.
She is an excellent role model for the entire Wrangler community.
Grace always encourages students to observe safety rules and expectations for our younger students.
So thank you for coming, Grace. We will all stand and then you can lead us in the pledge.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and invisible
good evening president schulte board members and superintendent superintendent grigorski
my name is grace check i'm a fifth grade student at james williams elementary i've been at williams
since kindergarten. One of my favorite things about JWE is the fun activities that you have
in every grade from Eureka to Lasso. Another thing that makes Williams an incredible school
is its kind and caring teachers and students. This year I have two of the best teachers,
Ms. Chris and Ms. Alexander. Outside of school, I like to dance, act, play tennis, bake, and watch
movies with my family. And if you ever need a good presentation, I'm really good at Google Slides.
While I am sad to leave Williams, I am looking forward to going to Beck next year and joining
art and theater.
I am honored to represent our school this evening and I would like to thank Mr. Brown
and the teachers for giving me this opportunity.
May you have a productive meeting and a wonderful evening.
Let's move over this way a little bit.
A little bit more.
Right there.
All right, here we go.
Thank you.
Great job.
Congratulations.
Do we have any scouts in the audience?
I see a couple up front.
You guys want to come up and tell us your names and what badges you're going for?
The only ones with the scout uniforms on, yeah.
How are you guys doing tonight?
Good.
You?
Anyone tell us where troop you're from and what rank you are?
Okay.
We are the AOL rank and we are from PAC 1836. I'm Yvonne and this is and my name is Joshua.
What rank are you guys? We are AOL. AOL of light. Okay well thank you guys I appreciate it.
You're welcome.
3. Recognitions
We'll now proceed to agenda item three which is the recognition portion of the evening.
Thank you, Mr. Schulte. First thing up tonight, I'm going to recognize a couple of new principals we have. Later on the agenda, we are going to formally name some schools. We've been making a recommendation to the board.
So we've found some new principals for those schools, but we do have to do some backfilling over the last few weeks. So first, I'd like to introduce Carol Langley. She is going to be a new principal at Stevens Elementary. Where you at, Carol? There you go.
Carol's been with us in KDISD for a while.
She's assistant principal now, ready to take on this new challenge.
And Carol, did you bring anyone with you today?
Awesome.
Great to see you all.
Thank you.
And also, I see very close to you this Cara Fox,
who is going to be the new principal at Schmalz Elementary School.
AND CARA, WHO DO YOU HAVE WITH YOU TODAY?
AWESOME.
WELL, THANK YOU ALL.
APPRECIATE IT.
WE'LL NOW PROCEED TO AGENDA ON 3.2 WITH THE CITY OF CAITIE PROCLAMATION, HONORED
SCHOOL BOARD RECOGNITION MONTH.
DR.
KOGORSKI?
AT THIS TIME, I'D LIKE TO INTRODUCE MARIA DEPETA, GENERAL MANAGER OF MEDIA RELATIONS
RELATIONS FOR THE RECOGNITION PORTION OF OUR MEETING.
NEW SPEAKER Good evening, President Schulte, trustees,
and Superintendent Gragorski.
We're going to begin tonight with Governor Greg Abbott, who has issued a proclamation
citing January 2023 as school board recognition month.
School boards play an important role in public education, governance, and policy.
They continue to be instrumental as they face new challenges for Texas public schools and serve the ever-evolving needs of students.
The City of Katy has presented our trustees with a proclamation in honor of School Board Recognition Month.
Now I'd like to present that proclamation.
Whereas school boards create a vision for what students should know and be able to do,
and whereas school boards establish clear standards for public for student
performance rather and whereas school boards ensure that student assessments
are tied to establish standards whereas school boards are accountable to the
community for operating schools that support student achievement and whereas
school boards align school district resources to ensure that students meet
standards and whereas school boards create a climate that supports the
philosophy that all children can learn at high levels and whereas school boards
build collaborative relationships based on trust teamwork and shared
accountability and whereas school boards are committed to continuous education
and training on issues related to student achievement now therefore dusty
thought Theo mayor of the city of Katy do hereby declare the city of Katy's
appreciation to the members of the Katy ISD school board and proclaim the month
of January 2023 as school board recognition month in the city of Katy I
urge all citizens to join me in recognizing the dedication and hard work
of local school board members in preparing today's students for tomorrow's
world and witness whereof I have here unto set my hand and cause the seal of
the city of Katy Texas to be affixed this 23rd day of January 2023 I'm gonna
to ask our kdic board members to please stand by the diocese for a photo with the proclamation
how do we look right
Let's give our board members a great round of applause.
Now it's my pleasure to introduce Ms. Shelley Keaton, President of the Katy Council of PTAs,
for a special presentation.
Good evening.
So in honor of school board recognition month, we are here on behalf of the PTAs and to say thank you for all that you do.
A small token of appreciation for all of your involvement on the campuses and everything that you do for the schools and for the children and their education.
So I'm going to call the schools that I know that are here, and they're going to come up and give their school board rep the book,
and then you're going to stay up here for a picture.
So that was a new development we needed to let them know about.
So Memorial Parkway Elementary, Winborn Elementary, Schmalz Elementary, Tompkins High School, Davidson Elementary,
Taylor High School, McMain's Junior High,
Beck Junior High, Schaefer Elementary,
King Elementary, Katie Junior High,
Seven Lakes High School, Cimarron Elementary,
Bryant Elementary, Jeanette Hayes Elementary,
Cinco Ranch High School.
And if I did not call your school name
and you do have a book, please come up now
to give it to your school board rep and I've placed containers in front of each
of your name plates here that have other books for other people that could not be
here that I brought on their behalf so we just would like to say a huge thank
Thank you for everything that you do.
Thank you.
.
Thank you, Ms. Keeton.
And also thank you to our wonderful parents who invest in our students by partnering with
with campuses and the district to support educational excellence.
Trustees, we are very grateful for your time, talent, and
dedication on behalf of KDISD students and staff.
This concludes the recognition portion of this evening's meeting.
Thank you.
4. Oaths
We'll now proceed to Adhibit Item 4.1, which is the Peace Officer Oath of Office.
The presenter tonight's chief call.
Good evening.
Good evening, President Schulte, Board of Trustees, Superintendent Gagorski.
Tonight we have the honor of presenting for us, swearing in, Officer Gary McLaughlin.
And here along to help me to do that is Captain Ivan Nelson.
Go ahead with the file, please.
Superintendent Gregorski, President Schulte, I'd like to, board members,
I'd like to introduce one of our newest additions to the KDISD Police Department,
Officer Garen McLaughlin.
Officer McLaughlin was born on July 24, 2001 to Wayne and Kirsten McLaughlin.
He was born and raised in Katy, Texas and Garron attended Franz Elementary, Katy Junior
High and graduated from Morton Ranch High School.
During his high school years, Garron played football and baseball and was named captain
of the football team his senior year.
Upon graduating, Garron attended the Houston Community College System while pursuing a degree in criminal justice.
Officer McLaughlin's career in law enforcement began at the Houston Community College System at the police academy and later here when he joined the KDISD police department.
Officer McLaughlin plans on completing his bachelor's degree in criminal justice and enjoys spending time with his family and friends.
officer garen McLaughlin
here tonight the pinnace badge is the mom
I repeat, I state your name.
I, Gary McLaughlin.
Do solemnly swear.
Do solemnly swear.
That I will faithfully execute the duties.
That I will faithfully execute the duties.
Of the Office of Peace Officer.
Of the Office of Peace Officer.
Of the Katy Independent School District.
Of the Katy Independent School District.
Of the State of Texas.
Of the State of Texas.
And will.
And will.
To the best of my ability.
To the best of my ability.
Preserve, protect, and defend.
And I will.
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and law
of the United States and of this state,
so help me God. Congratulations.
Congratulations.
5. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
We'll now proceed into the public comment and
citizen participation portion of tonight's meeting.
Public participation section includes two categories.
Category one is for speakers that sign up to speak on posted agenda items.
And category two is for speakers that signed up to speak on non-posted agenda
agenda items. Speakers who signed 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 a speaker is not finished speaking
at the end of your 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 a 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 Section 551074
and 5510821, the board will not permit the presentation of
personally identifiable information regarding a student that will not discuss the appointment,
employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer
or employee or to hear a complaint or charged against an officer or an employee. Excuse me.
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
have signed up to speak on posted agenda items. Each speaker in this category will be allowed
three minutes to speak. The first speaker tonight is Tracy Malloy, and the second speaker tonight
is Shu Zhu. Tracy Malloy, good evening.
Thank you to President Schulte, to Superintendent Gregorski, and to all the members of the board.
I am Tracy Malloy, a proud resident of Katy and the parent of a graduate of the Katy ISD
school system and I have a junior as well.
but tonight I'm here as the president of the Katy Area Alumni Chapter of Delta
Sigma Theta sorority and we're here to speak on agenda item 10.5 which Katy
Area Alumni Chapter supports the proposal from the NAACP legal fund that
would speak to adopting a total or hybrid single-member district election
system that would satisfy the request requirements of the Voting Rights Act by
by increasing the likelihood that voters who live in majority black and Hispanic pockets
of Katy ISD can successfully elect their preferred candidates.
We also support the move of the Board of Trustees election from May to November when voter turnout
and participation is naturally higher and more representative of the entire Katy ISD
community.
In order that elections for the Board of Trustees use cumulative voting, which also allows for
voters to cast a number of votes equal to the number of positions up for election for a single
candidate or to spread them out additionally cumulative voting increases the opportunity
for minority preferred candidates to successfully be elected even in an at-large system of voting
we thank you for your consideration of this proposal and look forward to a positive outcome
time.
The next speaker tonight is Xu Zhu.
And the speaker after that is Jennifer Myers.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you guys.
And first of all, congratulations
to the principals who are just being promoted.
And so I would like to talk about the NAACP letter.
better. And so I have two kids in the KDISD system. And also myself, I was born and raised
in China, so I had my formative years there. And that's a place where the free expression
of any opinion, unsanctioned, is just probably strongly discouraged, to put it mildly. And
so that's why I feel this country is a better country, it's a better system. But in the
meantime, but I also understand that democracy is messy. And
even though I vote, but I do understand that there's a lot of
intricacies to it. And but it still represents representation
is important. And I feel like if now there is a major civil civil
rights organization is, well, it's making allegations or just
stating situations. And from my perspective, I think I'd like to
to see either one of the two things.
First, either there is convincing facts
showing that those allegations were not true,
everybody was already equally represented,
or in the absence of those,
and then the board will take measures
to rectify that situation.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is Jennifer Myers,
and the speaker after that is Ann Russey.
Good evening.
Good evening, President Shokti and board members.
Do not HISD my KISD.
I say again, do not HISD my KISD.
Let me start by saying this.
The letter from NAACP Legal Defense Fund totally ignored the Asians
who account more than 16% in the student body,
the second largest minority population in KISD, and still growing fast.
By ignoring the Asian community,
This letter is doing the same deed that it claims to fight against.
Secondly, in last year's election, there were a large number of Asian voters
who supported Victor Perez, who came from Cuba, as we all know.
Never before had any board member received such huge support from Asians.
Before last year's election, the Asian community was indifferent about board election.
Until Victor Perez came out running, no one in this board ever received huge support from Asians before.
Let me tell you why. Because he is for academic meritocracy. He is against CRT and gender agenda.
Asians, we value academic meritocracy more than anything else.
Let me remind you, Dr. Gretzky and everyone sitting here, you should feel lucky that you have an easy job to lead KISD to receive A-plus rating every year because there is a large Asian population here.
Where there is a large Asian population, there is an A-plus school district.
This applies to across America, because we Asians care more about real knowledge and learning and much less about party fights.
But it will change once this board chooses the other way.
Good intentions won't necessarily lead to good results.
Children should learn in school and not be used for political gain.
Every native Houstonian knows the history of HISD.
In 1975, HISD replaced all at large with single members for the same reason KISD are requested today.
Sure enough, those single-member trustees will be holding to their small group of supporters
because they've just earned enough voters to a school board election,
even though people are asked to vote.
They just won't pay attention.
The board meeting soon fell into an endless pity fight for my schools, my teachers,
rather than our schools, our teachers.
You think you have a hard time having a board meeting now?
Wait until you're a single member.
The rest is history.
Asians fled out of HIC to Katy, to Spring Branch, to Fort Bend.
Thirty years later, after they changed the election system, are there still anyone proud of HIC?
Instead of arguing whether the election is fair or not, why not ask in which ISD do the minority kids perform better?
Is it HIC or KIC?
I believe the answer is obvious.
So whoever wrote this letter, do they really care about minority children?
Or do they only care about winning the election?
Is it just another power fight to put another color race face in the board but let our children fail and it's fine?
Stop using identity to gain your political power yet dump our children's future into toilet
Not in Katy not on my watch to close our message to the board don't H ISD my K ISD
Thank you
The next speaker tonight is Ann Russi, and the speaker after that is Sam Zhang.
Good evening.
Good evening.
My name is Ann Russi.
I am a KDISD mom of two.
I could stand up here and ask you why you continue to insist the district block the
trevor project on elementary school campus internet or why the district didn't instruct
campus staff to uphold the recently revised ef local policy that would have allowed parents to
opt their own children out of participating in a recent author visit while allowing the event
to continue for all the other students but we've seen what good that does instead i'd like to ask
you to consider what i believe underlies many challenges our district faces by speaking to you
about agenda item 10.5 your plans to proceed with a regular election on may 6th it's not hard to see
that our board historically and currently fails to reflect the demographics of our kdisd community
in terms of geographic racial religious and socioeconomic diversity black and hispanic
voters make up 41 percent of kdisd voters but don't have a single representative on this board
who truly represents their voices or concerns.
Every one of you and all of your recent predecessors live in close proximity to one another south of I-10.
This is in large part because of our all-at-large voting system.
It doesn't have to stay this way.
KDISD received a letter from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on December 20th
that laid out evidence that KDISD's at-large system likely violates the Federal Voting Rights Act
and offered several suggestions that would help resolve these concerns.
Adopting single-member districts or a hybrid system of single-member and
at-large positions is the option that would most clearly comply with the
Federal Voting Rights Act and reduce KDISD's legal liability. Districts like
Richardson and Grand Prairie ISD have settled costly litigation over their
at-large systems by voluntarily adopting these types of changes. If single-member
districts are out of the question at this time the board could adopt
cumulative voting for trustee elections which would allow all voters to
concentrate their votes and cast their ballots for trustees they believe most
represent their interests this method of voting has been proven to result in more
proportional representation in elections finally moving the board election from
May to November would result in the higher voter turnout which may result in
and more equitable representation.
So when you get to 10.5 on your agenda,
I ask you to publicly discuss and consider
the concerns and possible solutions laid out
by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund letter
to demonstrate you are actively working
to try to find ways to increase representation
on the Board of Trustees.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is Sam Zhang,
and the speaker after that is Regina Johnson.
Good evening.
Good evening. My name is Sam. I'm a father of four KTISD students. I'm a taxpayer and a registered voter. Obviously, I'm not a white person.
I firmly oppose the letter from NWACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund to the district that said the way that elections are run in KT dilutes black and brown voices.
I know NWCP LDF doesn't care about American Chinese voices, so I'm here today to tell
you that the voice in this last election was heard.
My vote was counted.
Contrary to the ideas that NWCP LDF is purporting, I did not vote for a candidate based on the
color of their skin or their cultural heritage.
America just celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.
His speech, I have a dream, is clearly lost in NAACP LDF.
NAACP LDF has turned its back on American meritocracy just as they have turned its back
on Americans of all creeds and colors.
NAACP LDF wants you to believe that they care about so-called marginalized population.
However, I know better. I'm the one in this room from a communist country.
This is no more than a blatant attempt to segregate our diverse community.
In this school district, we build a legacy.
The vision NAACP LDF writes about in their letter is not a legacy.
They want to tear down our unity.
They want to tear down our legacy.
They want to divide us all by race.
They want to segregate and control us.
We are free to choose and I choose him, Victor.
He's a minority and he won because of words like mine.
He's been fighting for my kids.
Don't take away our freedom to choose.
we will not be silenced by an organization like NAACP-LDF.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Regina Johnson.
The speaker after that is Amy Treanor.
Good evening.
I'll continue the trend with the letter.
I have a whole bunch of words.
The thing that the letter admitted was a bunch of facts, and we all know that.
Position one was one of the most diverse candidate pools for a Board of Election that I've ever
seen.
We had white, we had black, we had Indian, we had Hispanic, we had the white male incumbent.
And the majority, whether you slice and dice it based off of precinct, KDISD precinct,
Harris County, Fort Bend, north, south of 10, doesn't matter, new or old Katie, they all voted
in majority for the only minority sitting in front of me tonight, and that is Trustee Perez,
who is an Hispanic, who is a Cuban immigrant, and he's not Latinx. We all vote for the issues that
are at hand for us parents. We vote for platforms. We vote for those things that matter to us and the
the educational outcomes of our students not on skin color and kudos to Katie ISD
13 polling locations on Election Day 5 on early voting district-wide polling
locations they followed the state of Texas law as they were appointed by the
Secretary of State we had registered voters come in they showed their
identification and we had I'm just losing my mind here I experienced
workers that served that knew exactly what they were doing. To sit here and say
that my vote, my neighbors who are Nigerian, Persian, Chinese, Mexican or the
Hispanic population north of 10 is invalid, you know the 41% that voted
majority for a Hispanic male, just because we didn't vote for a preferred
candidate now and because of their residency. I'd offer too that the one of
of the candidates that was up for the position one
lived furthest south than anyone sitting here tonight.
So let's move on.
How about that?
Let's move on.
Let's stop injecting division.
Maybe ask the board, can you redo the policy that says,
Board of Trustees can go wherever they want.
They don't have to follow the 14-step process.
If they're being invited to Jordan in their zone
of Maid Creek, they can go to Jordan, vice versa.
They don't have to follow the rules.
just free for all go support everybody full full support or maybe we can unify tonight I'm running
out of time on issues that I'm excited to hear about tonight I'm excited to hear about what you
guys got to show us for discipline and for the literacy thing and one thing before we close I
will tell you guys something that was very upsetting to hear from parents that this literacy
thing is now being deemed the dyslexia pandemic if that doesn't cause a lump in your throat and
and make you sick to your stomach, we got a problem.
And we got to fix it.
That's why you're all here.
And I look forward to hearing what you got to say.
Thanks for the time.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Amy Treanor.
And the speaker at that is LeGang Leigh.
Good evening, President Schulte, trustees, and Dr. Grogorski.
Today is a milestone for us, something
that we've been working toward and looking forward to
for years.
We want to take an opportunity to celebrate the district and our curriculum leaders for the tremendous growth and learning that has taken place.
It was at the April 2021 board meeting just shy of two years ago when the farce of comprehensive literacy was pronounced a supposed happy marriage between balanced literacy and the science of reading in a presentation that went viral internationally among literacy leaders.
and today today we are here awaiting the discussion and vote from our trustees on
the adoption of a literacy curricular resource that is truly aligned with the
science of reading resources that abolish all things Lucy Calkins and
Fountas and Pinnell resources that give all and we mean all students in KTISD
the promise of literacy thank you to this board for getting curious and
digging into the decades of research across multiple scientific fields to gain the knowledge
and confidence needed to truly understand that our students and community deserve better and for
putting in the work to make this day happen we are especially grateful to the board of trustee
literacy subcommittee lance leah greg each of you made it your mission to become literacy experts
seeking the knowledge of state and national experts to lead our district to an alignment
with the science of reading. Your commitment to learning, leading, and
advocating for literacy for all children in Katy made this possible. Our children
are blessed by your commitment and leadership. We are not naive to think
that this transition will be without hiccups. This is a momentous shift, one
that is sure to have some bumps along the way, but one that is worth every ounce
of effort. As always, Alicia and I, on behalf of the Katy Literacy Coalition,
remain ready to support and collaborate with the board and district leaders as
true literacy for all students becomes a reality in Katy ISD we would also like
to take this opportunity to recognize and appreciate those Katy ISD teachers
and families who have trusted us and been willing to collaborate with Katy
literacy coalition knowing that a shift in instructional practices is essential
for student literacy success you are the voice behind Katy literacy coalition and
and what makes our collective efforts possible.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is LeGang Lay, and the speaker after that
is Claudia Turcotte.
Good evening.
Good evening, everyone.
Today I would like to talk about the letter
from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education
Fund to our school district.
I believe the person who writes this letter
has never lived in Katy.
There are more than 300,000 people in greater Kitt area and more than 40,000 are from Asia,
mainly India and China.
Our community is very well-deserved especially in the south side of in my kids'
school, white kids are less than half of the total students.
I think there are too many lies in this letter.
The letter described the Kitt area is full of richest white people that don't want to
listen to voice like mine.
However, this is not my feeling.
Last Thursday, I talked to Ms. Haik about a bilingual book
for students to learn second language.
I can feel our ISD members considering my thoughts
very carefully.
It seems to me that this letter is not nice
to our community and is trying to divide our community
with fake reasons.
We must stop it from dividing us.
I used to be a Chinese community part member 20 years ago.
In general, I know more about Chinese history
history and how Chinese government works.
The government divides our people by provinces, by careers, by religious beliefs, and even
by ancestors because the government does not want us to be united.
It seems to me that this letter is following the CCP method exactly and it is trying to
divide our community by color, as Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1963, I have a dream that
that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the contents of the collectors.
I like this dream as well, so I immigrated to US
and I'm willing to protect this dream.
School board members, community members,
please stand up and do not divide our community
with this kind of fake reasons.
We must stay at large and allow KT to remain strong.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Claudia Turcotte and the speaker after that is Ryan Abt.
Good evening.
Good evening. We recently honored the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'm here to ask you to help make his vision a reality for KDISD.
He dreamt of a time when his children would be judged for the content of their character and not the color of their skin.
Sadly, we as a nation have made a very sharp departure from that concept in recent years.
I'm aware that you've received a letter from the Legal Defense Fund characterizing the District Board of Trustees election process as racist.
The letter makes unsubstantiated, baseless claims and paints a picture of KDISD that is quite a departure from reality.
It also contains thinly veiled threats of legal action.
Ironically, the letter personally targets and unfairly maligns the only minority board member.
As a parent of children in the district, my hope is that you will not cave to these intimidation tactics.
As a Hispanic woman who became an American citizen at the age of 32, I love this country and its system of meritocracy.
The American dream is for anyone willing to work hard and strive for it.
I want our kids to know that they're not defined or limited by their ethnicity or race.
They're defined by the infinite value they have in the eyes of their creator.
I pray our kids reject the victim mentality that they're being sold.
That mindset is destructive and harmful and will lead them only to defeat.
Let's throw off this yoke of oppression and division that the woke mob is so eager to put on us and our children.
Let's rise up and fight for their future by fearlessly facing down those who want to label and divide us into camps of oppressor and oppressed.
I reject that spirit of division. It's a satanic lie.
any and every time this rhetoric attempts to rear its head in the
district it should be promptly dealt with instead let's focus on all that
unites us don't be so afraid to become don't be so afraid to be called a racist
that you won't stand for the truth and for what's right and good for our kids
don't go along with silly labels like Latin X anyone who speaks Spanish knows
that quote-unquote gender-neutral does not work with Spanish or any other
romance language for that matter. Let's go back to using the term racist only when something actually
is. To throw that term around constantly renders it meaningless because when everything is racist
then nothing is racist. If you have the courage, KDISD can be a model for others. You can lead the
way by having the fortitude to stare down this destructive and false narrative until it skulks
away into the darkness from which it came. I hope that you are willing to stand in the
gap for the children of our district. Thank you.
Thank you. The next speaker is Ryan Abt and the speaker after that is Lillian Walcott.
Good evening. Hello. My name is Ryan Abt. I'm a professor of history at Houston Community
Community College. I have two students at Katy ISD and what I researched was education
history in the state of Texas. Some of you might not know it, but in 1957 a lot of the
same conversations were happening in the state of Texas. The NAACP was actually limited.
Its legal defense fund was kicked out of the state of Texas in 1957 for 10 years. The reason
was the Mansfield crisis in which black students were not allowed by a mob with effigies, hum,
with effigies, with alligators saying that they would feed the children to the alligators if they
tried to attend the school. At this event, they were kept from coming, going to the Mansfield
school and they had to bus an hour away to go to school. The NAACP was kicked out of Texas for
advocating for those students. They were sued by the state of Texas for advocating for those
students. Much of the rhetoric and even argument of the state was that black Americans in Texas
were happy and that outsiders were dividing the people of Texas, similar to the things that you've
heard here today. They said that the outsiders were causing racial
antagonism, dividing us by race, but it wasn't true. Instead, at that time, white
Americans made a system that disenfranchised black Americans. Systems
that meant that they didn't have to listen to their neighbors, that they
could silence them. Today, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, once again, it had been
removed to opposing segregation, now reinstated, has asked KDISD to alter its ISD board elections
in accordance with the Voting Rights Act.
Today as then, there's an impulse to accuse outsiders of stirring up antagonism.
But we know that KDISD has mechanisms in its elections that disenfranchise voices.
Just as before, there's the appearance of equality, but the reality of segregation.
congregation. It comes to this. In these elections that we have, a single constituency can choose
the board members, all of them. Every member beholden to a single constituency. That is not
a system that benefits all of us. It's imperative that we start listening to those who don't look
and think like us. And we know from history that if we don't do that, we won't give people a true
voice. Moving KDISD to a single member district would go part of the way to
redressing the silencing of our fellow Americans. Thank you for my time. Thank
you. The next speaker is Lillian Walcott and the speaker after that is Zume Yang.
Good evening. My name is Lillian Walcott. I am a KDISD parent and resident with
with children in elementary and junior high school.
I am here to speak on agenda item 10.5.
On December 20th, 2022,
the NAACP Legal Defense Fund wrote a letter
at the request of Katy ISD parents
and requested Katy ISD to change
from at-large trustee representation
to a single-member district representation
for future trustee elections,
beginning with the May 23 election.
Election. The letter stated, all seven members of the KDISD Board of Trustees are elected at large by voters district-wide to specific numbered places.
KDISD has used this practice since it became a school district in the early 20th century.
We believe this at-large system dilutes the votes of KDISD's voters of color and may violate the Voting Rights Act because it prevents black and Latinx voters from electing their preferred candidates to the Board of Trustees and from participating in the electoral process on an equal footing.
Elections from single-member districts would ensure that the diverse communities residing in different parts of the district would all be able to elect candidates from their local area, leading to a more representative Board of Trustees.
To this day, all seven members of the Board of Trustees reside in a concentrated area of the district south of Interstate 10.
I propose the board change from at-large trustee representation to single-member district representation for future trustee elections, beginning with the May 2023 election.
Let us not be like Richardson ISD and Grand Prairie ISD, both of whom who had to face lawsuits and mounting legal fees before they made a change.
Louisville ISD is currently in the middle of costly litigation. Those taxpayers were not given a warning before litigation was filed.
Katy ISD has been given a chance to fix our system without going to court.
In conclusion, I propose the board change from at-large trustee representation to single-member district representation for future trustee elections, beginning with the May 2023 election. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Yumei Yang, and the speaker after that is Hongzhang Jin.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
While reading the letter from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund addressing KISD at-large board
member election, it gave me a very distraught impression.
The letter drew the conclusion that the at-large method of electing the members of the KSD
Board of Trustees may dilute the votes of voters of color by assuming that people with
a certain skin color only vote for the candidates of their own color.
Also the NAACP LDF asserted that candidates with one type of skin color ignore the interests
of other races.
Is the NAACP LDF implying that all the trustees sitting here, as well as their predecessors,
have promoted agendas favoring certain groups of students only based on their skin colors?
These assumptions are baseless and irresponsible, not graceful as well.
I will clarify my standing by giving you an example.
it seems it's a stereotype that Asian students,
not including those with Indian heritage,
are not good at playing basketball.
So they are rarely selected to play
on their school basketball teams, I'm sorry.
In this case, should Asian parents cry out to the coaches
to request that quotas should be implemented
in order for our children to have representation
on the teams, even if our students don't qualify
As an Asian parent, I would say no.
Obviously, doing so will compromise the team's competitiveness,
and that is not fair for the better players who will have to then pull the weight for the entire team.
For the same reason, we should select the best qualified possible candidates to be our KSD Board of Trustees,
regardless of their races, skin colors, or geographic locations in the district.
I believe all the parents want the best possible education and experience for their children.
As a result, when parents select the trustees, what really matters are the capabilities, values, and experiences of the candidates,
not as the NAACP LDF would suggest, their skin colors.
KISD has been recognized as a good school district for a long while, proving that the
enlarged election method has been functioning well.
If the school district agrees to choose the election method that focuses on the candidates'
skin colors rather than the merits of the candidates, KISD could face many silent protests
from parents by moving to other school districts or by homeschooling.
So please don't destroy something that works fine.
I request that KISD reject switching to the single-member district model or hybrid model to maintain...
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is Hongzhen Jin, and the speaker after that is Angie Waller.
Good evening.
Thank you.
Thank you. Hello Board Members. I am a father of three current KTISD students and I stand here today to express my strong objection to the proposal of KTISD changing from at-large trustee representation to single member district representation.
representation.
Firstly, as a larger representation
can lead to more accountability for the actions of the board
as a whole, as all trustees are elected
by the entire community rather than just
a specific neighborhood.
This can make it more difficult for a small group of trustees
to push through their own agenda without the support
from the majority of the community.
Secondly, at-large representation can also prevent gerrymandering, which is district lines are joined to benefit a particular party or group of people.
This can ensure that the trustee election is fair and representative of the community as a whole.
If we were using single-member district representation today, only one trustee would likely care about what I am saying.
thing. Why would the other trustees care anyway when they are not elected by me and not representing
me? Furthermore, at-large representation can also encourage greater voter turnout as the
entire community is eligible to vote in the trustee election, while single-member district
representation only allows a small group of individuals to vote. More than a decade ago,
I moved to Katy and raised my family here, not because there was an Asian trustee on the school board,
nor did I try to buy my house near a trustee,
hoping he or she could better represent my interests as my neighbor.
It doesn't matter
which neighborhood our trustee is living or what their skin color is.
In reality, at-large representation actually allows for a more diverse group of trustees to be elected,
because the community as a whole can elect our preferred best candidates based purely on their merits, while being racially blind.
Any agenda designed to benefit a specifically selected group of people at the cost of the community as a whole should immediately be dismissed.
Missed.
Without approval from the majority of the KTISD
community, this board should make no dramatic changes
to the election procedure.
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is Angie Waller.
And the last speaker tonight on agenda topic one is Kuan Gu.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Good evening, board.
My name is Angie Waller. I've had three kids
I've graduated from KDISD and I've been an active volunteer in the community since we first moved to KDISD 18 years ago
I'm here to ask that you make the switch to single-member districts instead of the current at-large system
We have now our district includes an array of communities, but the board that go
Has not historically been representative of those communities
To this day all seven of y'all
All seven members of the Board of Trustees reside in the concentrated area of the district
south of Interstate 10.
I believe it's important to have equal representation of all of our schools.
If moving to a single district voting is impossible, then let's switch to cumulative voting.
The current system does not work for equal representation.
With cumulative voting, we can vote for any of the candidates running instead of just
one per seat.
and yes last year we did elect a minority he ran on lies and fears of CRT
which is not in KDISD and he still uses that same fear during all of the school
board meetings he still uses a fear of CRT he claims KDISD was filled with CRT
which is just untrue he was backed by organizations that spent big money to
get others elected onto school boards using the same fear in other school
districts MLK worked with in double ACP for the Voting Rights Act and the Voting
Rights Act was led just was a legislation that he spearheaded so if we
want to use the MLK as an excuse why don't we do what he suggested looking at
what has been happening at Pato with the problems they've had not one school
board member has shown any concern for that school because it doesn't concern
concern any of y'all. I haven't seen y'all. So when racial slurs were used against them during a volleyball game, not one of you stood up to address the children or concerned parents. And I know some of y'all do care. I'm not saying that none of y'all do care. But if this was, if we had single member district, the person who represents Pato probably would have spoken now. He probably would have addressed it during a school board meeting. Not one of you addressed it during a school board meeting. Not one of those parents showed
any concern for those parents. They have come up here, they have asked for your
concern and you have not shown it. I also feel that we should move our elections
to November. It's been shown that voter turnout is significantly higher in
November due to higher profile races taking place. Let's fix a broken system
and represent more of our district than what we have now. Thank you.
Kwon Gu, good evening.
Good evening everyone. My name is Kwon Gu. I'm a Navy veteran
and my children are attending Peter McElwain. So to those who celebrate
Lunar New Year, Happy Lunar New Year to you guys.
So recently I have learned that the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund has written a letter
to a district board to express their concerns about the representation of black and Latinx
voters in Katy and urge you guys to adopt the single member district method for the board
member election. As a citizen and responsible registered voter, I've been
very cautious and skeptical as always about to whom my vote should go. I would
carefully do my own research just to be concerned that my vote goes to
candidates who share similar values with us and who I believe that can deliver
deliver the most optimistic result if elected. Of course there are many different voting methods out there like plurality voting, multiple rounds, condorcet voting, etc. These methods are historically, mathematically proved to guarantee a fair result. However, if the single member district method is adopted, my legitimate right to choose the best candidate and to vote for that
candidate is greatly jeopardized. Therefore I urge you do not, do not
adopt the single member district method and maintain the same at large voting
method for our upcoming board member election. Thank you. Thank you. Now we'll
call the speakers who signed up to speak on non posted agenda items. By policy a
The maximum of 30 minutes has been allocated with the time divided equally among those who have signed up.
Mr. Graham, what's the time allowed for the speakers tonight?
We've got two minutes and nine seconds.
Two minutes and nine seconds will be allowed for each person to speak.
The first speaker tonight is Philip Haddad, and the second speaker tonight is Rose Asnar.
Good evening.
Hello.
Thank you for letting me speak tonight.
Real quickly, because I know time is tight.
Last time I was here I spoke to you about lack of oversight, the Band Booster Club,
and I thought I was being told the truth, but there's some people in this room who lied
to me and told me you had no oversight.
On December 22nd I talked to a gentleman, and I know I'm not allowed to name names so
I won't, I talked to a gentleman at the UIL who told me you absolutely have oversight
of the Band Booster and the band clubs.
Later on from someone else you'll hear more about that and the out date information on
the CHARMS website.
website.
I was lied to. You have oversight.
And furthermore, the gentleman at the UIL told me that the way you do exemptions in the school is illegal based on fees.
It is not legal.
I have done a lot of homework since I spoke to you.
I've gone to the TEA. I've gone to the UIL.
And now I've been forced to, because no one will hear me, I've been forced to trade e-mails with the district attorney's office
and a public corruption official's sworn complaint.
complaint that's where it's gone because no one here wants to admit fault no one
here wants to say yes we do have oversight yet it's very clear in a UI a
website or the UIL and talking to this gentleman Austin that you have oversight
but I was lied to some people are in this room lied to me told me you have no
oversight whatsoever they have free range the principal of the Morton Ranch
High School told me they addressed this issue with a leader a director there the
very next day the very next day I have a text of the whole entire conversation
all 12 pages of it the director told me he sent that email that recommended
illegal activities because he approved of it the day before the principal sent
me a letter that she addressed the issue with him yet still he says he approved
of it he approved of what is it what according to the UIL is an illegal
activity and how you do not allow kids to be exempt from their finals based on
fees and unfortunately I was lied to that you have no oversight now we go to
district attorney about a band booster club thank you very much the next
speaker tonight is Rose Adnar and the speaker after that is Donna I'm sorry
the speaker that is Sadie Townsend good evening everyone I have exhibit a and
exhibit B. These are Morton Ranch High School Maverick bands, dated 28, 2019, and this one
is the parent information manual, dated 2013, 14, and the reason I say that because these
are outdated, totally.
It's embarrassing.
It's 2023, and we still have old junk.
And this was posted on the charms, so anyone who has access to this whatsoever.
I attended the board meeting on the 12th of December and was told again that there was
no oversight for the UIL.
I wanted to confirm and listen to the parents, to the community.
I was told and then the same day, that afternoon, I again voiced the concern about the Boaster
club having total power over the kids being held back or not exempted from the
exams due to the band fees on page 19 of the parent informational guide which is
stated and I have highlighted it it says the following the superintendent is
solely responsible for the entire UIL program all activities and events and
personnel are under the jurisdiction of the superintendent it is imperative that
that the booster clubs recognize this authority and work within the framework prescribed of
the administration, which at this time we have not experienced that. The individuals
at the school band program, they have stated that they have total power and total control,
which is not true. It is here. It is written in black and white. This needs to be updated.
This needs to be brought up to their attention.
Obviously, they're not having that information as rarely as one thinks.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN BRYANT LIMAGE.
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is Donna McElmory, and the speaker after that is Sadie Townsend.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
That person didn't sign up.
Sadie Townsend is our next speaker.
The speaker after that is Luther Moeller.
Sadie Townsend here.
Good evening.
Hi, my name is Sadie Townsend and I'm a student at Katy High School.
I first heard about Denim Day at the beginning of January last year and it became something
very important to me.
I know that most of you probably have no idea what Denim Day is.
You might be aware that April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
What you might not be aware of is that the last Wednesday in April is recognized as Denim
Day.
Supporters wear denim to support victims of sexual assault and to provide awareness around the issue.
This day originated after the Italian Supreme Court made a ruling on a case involving the assault of a young girl
and claimed that the perpetrator was not guilty because the victim's jeans were too tight.
Supporters of the victim flooded courts across Italy wearing their own jeans.
These protests gained attention across the world and led to the birth of Denim Day in 1999.
To you, the act of wearing jeans may seem insignificant, but it can mean everything
to someone whose entire world has been flipped upside down through no fault of their own,
but the actions of someone else.
One in three men and one in six females will experience sexual violence, and girls ages
16 and 19 are four times as likely to experience sexual assault than the general population.
But why am I telling you this?
Sexual assault leaves devastating, lifelong effects on the victim and can be extremely
difficult and maybe even seem impossible to heal from.
While KDISD has measures in place for reporting such crimes, even anonymously reporting can
still be scary and victims might not have the courage to report.
In fact, only about 310 out of every 1,000 assaults ever gets reported.
So it's important to provide support for those who might not have the courage to report.
I'm asking your permission to go to each high school and give a presentation about
Denim Day as well as provide a list of resources to help victims who are struggling to make
it through the aftermath of their assault.
I understand that a student has never gone from school to school and presented like this,
but I believe this is a very important cause and it deserves special attention.
I'm able to see how you may view having a video being played or a staff member speaking may seem like a better plan,
but as a student myself, I've sat through staff presentations and videos,
and I know that these just don't get attention, and my peers even mock them sometimes.
But as a student, I feel that my peers will be able to relate to me,
And a young victim might be able to reach out and actually feel comfortable speaking up because they can relate to me as a student.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is Luther Moeller.
The speaker after that is Janet Godfrey.
Good evening.
Good evening, Superintendent and Board members.
It won't be very long.
I and my family appreciate you for assuring that there's age-appropriate books
and curriculum in the schools.
Next thing, I understand that somebody has asked to use schools
or have access to schools for political fundraising ideas.
And I understand you turned the person down.
I remind you if you allow one in, you open the door to everybody.
Even those ideas we may not like.
So you need to keep the door shut for such purposes.
In closing, I ask the superintendent to have whoever is in charge of attendance and testing
policy arrange a meeting with me and whoever is in charge of band to do the same thing.
It would be more appropriate to talk to them behind the door than here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Janet Godfrey.
The speaker after that is Sheldon Cummings.
Good evening.
Good evening, Board.
I'm Janet Godfrey.
I am a substitute teacher at this time in Katy.
I am a retiree.
I am president of the Katy Local Unit of the Association of Texas Professional Educators.
ATPE is the largest nonprofit educational organization or educator, sorry, organization in Texas.
Our members are Texas public school employees, which includes bus drivers, food service workers, teachers, aides, custodians, and administrators.
administrators we are not affiliated with any union and Katie local has
1554 members making us the largest local in region 4
We appreciate all that you our school board do to support
Our educators and the education of our students and we just want to wish you or thank you for teacher appreciation
Whatever. I'm sorry. I kind of lost it but
you also each have received a little token from us tonight and thank you thank you
the next speaker tonight is sheldon cummings and the speaker after that is audrey west good evening
good evening to all of you on the board and everybody in attendance at this meeting
my name is sheldon cummings and i've been a resident and taxpayer of katie for the last
eight years. I have two children, a boy and a girl, eight and ten years old, that
they both attend KDISD. I'm here to discuss two issues. One is a response to
the letter addressed to the board from the NAACP Legal Defense Educational Fund.
The other is CRT or critical race theory. Before I make my point, let me make a
quick background on who I am and where I'm from. I'm originally from the
Caribbean island called Trinidad where I grew up very poor. I immigrated to this
great country, specifically New York, when I was 13 years old. I served in the
United States Navy for four years during the first Gulf War and after leaving the
Navy I joined the New York City Fire Department where I survived 9-11 and
then retired from the fire department eight years ago. After leaving the fire
department I immediately escaped the People's Republic of New York. The Legal
Defense Fund has claimed the system at large elections we currently have in
Katy is disenfranchising black and Latino voters at the polls. I completely
disagree with this claim and as a naturalized black American citizen I
I view this unsubstantiated claim as utter nonsense and insulting to black, Asian, and Latino voters in this district.
Everyone in KDISD has a fair and equal opportunity to run for the board or participate in voting for whom they think is capable of doing a fair and competent job.
On the second issue, I'm also against CRT being taught in schools.
CRT emphasizes that if you are a member of a minoritized racial group, then you're a victim of the system that is rigged against you, and the system does not want you to succeed.
On the other hand, if you're a racist privileged, then you're deemed an exploiter whether you
intend to be or not.
CRT begins with the assumption that racism occurs in all interactions.
We cannot allow CRT to rob KDISD and American children of their dreams.
I was taught by my parents that you should judge people by the content of their character
and not by the color of their skin.
Thank you for hearing me out.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is Audra Fuest, and the speaker after that is Danielle Gilman.
Hello.
Good evening.
Hi.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight.
My name is Audra Fuest, and I'm here to speak about the author visit that was scheduled at Robertson Elementary on January 13th and then was canceled.
My son is in kindergarten at Robertson.
My husband and I started reading books to him while I was pregnant.
Even as a baby, he would stare at the pages and watch our mouths as we read each word.
From a very young age, our rule has been to read at least 10 books to him daily.
He's now almost six and starting to read on his own,
and I can tell you that he lights up whenever he brings a new book home from school.
His thirst for knowledge and joy about knowing how to sound out words is incredible to watch.
So when he learned that a real live best-selling author was coming to the school to read to him,
he was pretty psyched.
Although he wasn't thrilled about having to wear his handsome clothes,
He was looking forward to it and the school made it feel like a celebrity was coming.
And then suddenly it was cancelled and the reasoning behind it seemed weak at best.
We were told via email that it was about use of the F word on the author's social media.
After finding the one tweet that was referenced, it seemed that the issue wasn't the F word,
but what she was using the F word about, gun violence.
Her tweet was about the Uvalde shooting, which many Americans were angry about.
Putting that aside, she was going to be speaking to our little ones about hats and using your imagination to use anything to make a hat.
My son wasn't particularly disappointed about the whole thing, I mean he's five, but what he doesn't understand is the why and frankly neither do I.
So I'm here because I would like to understand exactly why this happened because using the F word on social media in one tweet can't possibly be what this was really about.
Was there a policy followed and how do we the parents have input into creation of and adherence to a policy so that everyone's voices are heard?
It's not about this book, this author, or her tweet.
It's about having a public policy in place so that a small group of people don't have the power to influence
decisions like these. It should be crystal clear about how any presenter is chosen to speak to the students and in what extreme instances
it would need to be cancelled.
My son and other kids shouldn't miss out on these types of opportunities just because a small group of moms aren't happy about it. In
In this case, parents did have the option to opt out, and that should have been upheld.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is Daniel Gilman, and the speaker after that is Shawna Gallagher.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Thank you for having me.
I'm Danielle Gilman, and I am addressing the cancellation of New York Times bestselling author Emma Straub on January 13, 2023.
I am a Robertson Elementary Kindergarten parent, the PTA library chair, and I am here speaking
from my perspective alone.
On January 4th, in accordance with school board policy manual for library materials
under parent request for library restrictions, parents received the flyer announcing the
author visit and were given the option to opt their child out.
As of 2 p.m. on the day prior to the visit, only seven of 160 students at Robertson and
and one student at Cimarron had been opted out.
Even though the book was not yet in circulation,
which was the other reason given,
23 personally signed books were ordered.
The same process to vet this author visit
based on interest level and policy
was used as any other guest speakers to Robertson.
For instance, the dentist, the firemen,
the police officers who have already visited our campus.
The board policy that was updated in September of 2022
was put into place to prevent this exact incident
from occurring by giving parents the option of opting out, by allowing any
person with alternate beliefs from a guest speaker full authority to veto the
visit regardless of the majority voice sets the precedence for all future
visits and goes against school board policy. Canceling this author visit
creates a slippery slope than any parent with differing points of view can run to
the board with an unestablished grievance and remove valuable
opportunities from our children regardless of the policy. It is our hope
that this unfortunate event will be avoided in the future and the district
will continue to protect the integrity of our hard-working professional staff
by following the school board guidelines that are already in place to provide a
wide range of library materials for students and faculty that support
student achievement and present varying levels of difficulty diversity of appeal
and a variety of points of view thank you all for your time you the next
Next speaker is Shana Gallagher and the speaker after that is Logan McLean.
Good evening.
Good evening.
My name is Shana Gallagher and I'm here to speak about the abrupt cancellation of the
guest author scheduled to visit Robertson Elementary on January 13th.
Three of my children attend KDISD schools with my oldest daughter attending Robertson
kindergarten.
kindergarten. The cancellation was last minute and the reasons given were insufficient. One
reason was foul language on social media. After contacting campus administration and
receiving no response, I find myself here. The last time I was at a school board meeting
was in 2018 in Santa Fe ISD after a mass shooting at the high school left eight students, two
teachers dead, 13 wounded and a small town traumatized. This is something you never want
to go through as a parent on may 24 2022 all my memories flooded back to me i watched through
tears as the news of 19 children and two teachers were murdered in uvalde another small town in
texas traumatized by gun violence the reason given for the cancellation was foul language on social
media so i had to go look for myself one post used the f word that post was made on may 24 2022 the
the day of the Uvalde tragedy.
One post on social media,
something no kindergarten or first grade student would ever see.
Because I have received no answers from the school,
I can only go by what I know.
A post on the Robertson Elementary School Facebook page
was made the day before the visit.
Shortly after, I received the email that the visit was canceled.
If I put two and two together,
it seems like one parent's personal views
was the reason over 160 students missed an opportunity
to have a New York Times best-selling author visit their school,
an opportunity to learn about the writing process
and the importance of using their imagination.
I am here to be the parent that says,
I trust my educators, I trust my librarian, I trust my teachers.
I know they are making the right decisions for my students.
I have faced real threats of having my children in public school,
and foul language on social media is not one of them.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
The next speaker tonight is Logan McLean,
and the last speaker tonight is Andrea Norman.
Good evening.
Good evening.
My name is Logan McLean, and I'm a senior at Cinco Ranch High School.
Be continuously guided by what is best for all students of the district.
This is the last and maybe the most important rule in the board's code of ethics.
While I understand the board is under daily pressure, I challenge that this rule has been broken consistently,
as KDISD's hostility to LGBTQ plus students and submission to bipartisanship has only worsened each month.
I'll start with the board's continuous refusal to unblock the Trevor Project for grades K through 5.
While the justification for this is that it's not age appropriate, specifically for its chat ability,
We know the district doesn't actually have a problem with the feature itself.
The substance and alcohol abuse support chats are unrestricted for all grades.
I checked today, Sexaholics Anonymous is accessible at my school under KDISD Wi-Fi.
And while I'm not advocating to remove any of these websites, why is the Trevor Project the only one that is blocked?
Drug and alcohol abuse is illegal and certainly inappropriate for children, but being gay is not.
I ask the question, why is this the one group being singled out?
Secondly, I stand with Emma Straub as yet another author who bears the consequences of KDISD submitting to a political agenda.
Since when has this district monitored the words of a non-employee spoken outside of a professional environment?
By these standards, are we going to judge books based on the author's Twitter page?
Are we going to screen parent volunteers' social media before allowing them to enter classrooms?
classrooms. It is clear to onlookers that the language was not the true problem with the author,
but rather her views posted on her personal account. We are towing the line of censoring
non-employees' freedom of speech outside of schools. And as a final note, why does profanity
appear to deviate from KDISD values, but protesting a fundraiser to provide clothes for transgender
youth doesn't? As we enter a new election cycle for board members, please work to make it more
equitable and safeguarded from political interests. Uphold your duties in the
ethics code. KDISD cannot continue a legacy of hate. Be guided by the words
all students and leave no exceptions. Thank you. The last speaker tonight is
Andrea Norman good evening good evening I came to speak about agenda item 10.5
and I've been here before it's nice to see you all in it they referred to
to supporting the removal of vulgar or disapproval,
or excuse me, of vulgar books or disapproval
of critical race theory as being racial rhetoric.
I have a testimony to share with you on this.
So when I was maybe about 19 years old,
I worked with a group of kids and we were really close
and one of them ended up drawing something
that depicted someone who could look like a brother of mine or my father
hanging from a tree. Okay, it was terrible, shocking, disheartening, and jolted my
spirit like it just and after that point I looked at right more so skin color
than the content of character right I looked at I was judging based off of a
bad experience through a close friend. I was judging people based off of that. I
was almost at a standoffish, you know, point because it hurt so bad. Later I
ended up working for the MGM Grand, which is the most diverse place to work in the
world at the time, and I also gave my life to the Lord. And when I gave my life
to the Lord, everything made sense. He says whether Jew or Greek we're all
members of the same body in Christ Jesus, whether Jew or Gentile. And then I was able to thank you
Jesus, open my eyes up to what it really is, which is the character of a person. That's what it is.
I ended up making so many great friends and great memories that I would have missed out on if I
would have just had that closed vision that I had before. So I would urge you all to and encourage
you to continue to go in the way that you've gone with protecting the kids concerning critical race
theory i disagree with it and also the books that you all thank you thank you thank you thank you
this concludes the open portion form of the meeting the board will now convene and close
6. Closed Meeting
meeting is authorized under section 551-001 of the texas government code for the following purposes
Texas government code 551071 and 551129. Thank you.
I might have forgot if I did let me check.
Mr. Schulte that speaker signed up for an agenda item which has a public hearing.
Oh, it's a public hearing is scheduled later in the meeting. That's later in the meeting.
It's the board's president decision on how to run this meeting, but this particular
speaker signed up on an agenda item which has a public hearing later in the meeting.
Later in the agenda.
We should follow.
We're going to follow the agenda.
Okay.
Thank you.
Good evening, everyone.
7. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
The board will now reconvene in open meeting.
Today is Monday, January 23, 2023, and the time is 7 to 1 p.m.
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, January 20, 2023.
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.
8.1 2023 - 2024 Budget Update
We'll now proceed to Agenda Item 8.1, which is a 2023-2024 budget update.
The presenter is Mr. Chris Smith, Chief Financial Officer.
Good evening, Mr. Smith.
Good evening, President Schulte, Superintendent Gagorski, and trustees.
these this is going to be a quick budget update it's our first one of the 23-24
school year we start this formally every year we've been working on the budget
now already but this is our first formal discussion about the budget for the next
year of course our goal is we start this process is to have a balanced budget we
want to have come continue to have competitive compensation it's always at
at our forefront. We want to continue maintaining our own health plan and not
participate in other options such as TRS, their health plan. Obviously we
always put a high priority on student and staff safety. That's going to
continue. We're going to plan for opening new schools. We'll open the two
elementary schools. They're already in the 22-23 budget but obviously
Obviously, they'll be in the full force budget of the 23-24 school year, as will junior high,
18, and high school 10.
State funding, I'm going to have a couple of slides that talks about state funding and
the questions that surround it.
And then, of course, ESSER is a big part of our budget since it was a large amount of
money and that expires in the 23-24 school year.
Taxable values, we're projecting average growth.
Enrollment projection or increase in ADA, that's how we're currently funded.
We're projecting average enrollment growth that number is 95,352 is what we're building the initial staffing plan off of, 95,352.
Campus staffing units are built off that enrollment number through formulary methods.
of course salary increase. We hope we can do something with the salary increase. We hope the state helps us out again. We had a TRE and we've strained our budget because of inflation and the ability to do things that are meaningful to our revenue or limited because of the state funding formulas and mainly the stagnant basic allotment that we've dealt with for now five years.
and then of course tax rates. We're budgeting another decrease in the
maintenance and operations tax rate. The state is continues is going to continue
to buy that down. Initial things over the last couple weeks are going to buy that
down significantly and of course the debt service tax rates not affected by
any changes in state funding at this point and so that tax rate should remain
the same based on the trends that we've done in the past. Eighty-eight percent of
of our budget is currently based on in payroll that will continue the second largest is our
utility expense after that there's not a lot of money really those are the significant
dollar amounts with over 20 million dollars in utilities and 88% salary and benefits we
have reduced the tax rate mainly the maintenance and operations tax rate by 21.2 cents that
It's currently $0.91 in the maintenance and operations and $0.39 in debt service.
This is my topographer deal, and I read that one time that when they make maps, and you've heard this before,
but those of you who haven't, when they make maps, the further they get from what they know,
they draw monsters and stuff because they're just not clear what's back there.
And so I think it's been, especially in a legislative year, to continue with that theme of monsters and what could be lurking that we just don't know about that's out there on the horizon, which leads me into state funding.
The legislature started a couple of weeks ago.
The big question is how they're going to use that $30-plus billion windfall that they have.
What are they going to do with the basic allotment?
It's been static now for five years.
We do, in Senate Bill 1 that I've read, they do increase the Tier 2 yields.
Actually, the House bill does too.
The Tier 2 yields, by law, have to follow property value growth across the state,
and those are showing a significant increase in the Tier 2 or the golden penny yields, which is good news.
But any really meaningful things that districts need across the state is something to be done with that basic allotment.
And we know that there's been bills.
specifically filed around the basic allotment which is hopefully good news
we've got to be concerned about funding caps and limits specifically in the fast growth allotment
which is a big deal for kdisd as well as the new instructional facilities allotment there's
several other uh where they say okay we want to spend a hundred million dollar we want to spend
in $100 million only for fast growth districts.
Well, when all that adds up, those entitlements add up, it's over $100 million, so everybody
gets drawn back, clawed back to a smaller amount, and that's happening to us significantly
in the fast growth allotment and several other allotments.
And then the state TRS is obviously something that we'll be following this session.
I also saw, and I forgot to mention this to Mr. Nauman today, that there's some relief in there for the state TRS plan like there was last year, just a one-time influx of cash.
I did read that today.
Again, what are they going to do with the surplus?
ESSER, we know there's a funding cliff coming across the state when the ESSER funds run out.
I think this district has done a very good job of protecting and being prepared for that and
Trying to ease off of those ESSER dollars as those
expire
There's local uncertainty. Of course. The economy is always a
Concern is enrollment going to reach those trends with higher interest rates at this point?
Continuing to see the the enrollment gains that we're having daily. It's hard to believe that we wouldn't meet that goal
but you never know what six months could change.
And our local property values, when it comes to debt service,
our local property values will be very important because, again,
it doesn't matter on the general fund by and large, but on debt service,
every gain that we get in local property values helps us make those bond payments
that we have to keep up with the growth.
growth. We're going to continue to monitor in the 22-23 budget our expenditures and massage
and manage those as we see we can to save money. Prepare for growth. I mentioned earlier
the new campuses, the staffing based on that new enrollment number that we're projecting,
our operations and our programs. Those are always continuous improvement efforts and
and we're going to continue to work on those as we build this budget.
As I mentioned, we are opening elementary 45 and 46 to be named in a few minutes.
And we've already budgeted for that startup or basically the month of August,
but then next year they'll be rolling.
Enrollment growth, that's how we're funded.
The more students we have, the more money we get, and vice versa.
property value growth is it going to continue to be robust some of the things that i've already
read is is there's going to be large buy downs of our maintenance and operations tax rate
or it appears that there may be that seems to be the the flavor and the rally cry which is good
news for our taxpayers i just hope that there is still money to go back to our hard-working
teachers where we can give them the things that they need to to stay in pace with inflation
This says economic uncertainty, COVID and oil and gas.
Really, it's everything that came about since COVID that's the concern for me at this point.
Not COVID itself, but supply chain issues, teachers, national teacher shortages,
those type of things that have raised their head over the last couple of years
continue to be a concern as we build this budget and everything that is going to be considered.
So here we are in January.
I just did the introduction for this year's process, February.
Next month, Jeff Robert from Hilltop Securities will be here along with myself to discuss
our debt plan and our debt budget for next year.
It's usually done at just the one meeting, and we'll follow it up in July and August,
specifically on our interest in sinking fund.
In March, we'll look at the budget projections as the staffing plan starts to kind of firm
firm up and how that affects the general fund. In April, I'm going to present some of the things
that looks like may be happening in Austin and how it may affect us both positively and
negatively when it comes to finances. That may happen in May, just depending on the timing there.
But in May, we'll also look at a closer look at the projections for our budget. In June,
probably the same since it's a legislative year and then preliminary budgets will be done.
and then largely complete by July and then in August we'll have our public
hearing and adoption of those budgets that's where we are and that's our kind
of our plan for this year and at this point I'll be glad to answer any
questions that you may have any questions mr. president thank you mr.
Smith for that I have only one question and that was you brushed through a thing
about TRS retired teachers funding? Do you have any insight into what's going to happen
there? I don't. One of the things we've been talking about a lot of legislative advocacy
and everything. And one of the things that is burdensome is the TRS, the laws that are
frankly, number one, hard to administer when it comes to statutory minimum and all the
the reporting requirements tied to TRS. There's a TRS tax in the form of TRS care in which basically
our district is taxed. Is it 1.5 percent or 0.5 percent, Sherry? 1.5 percent of all our payroll
goes to TRS to fund the insurance plan, not to the employees at KDISD. So we obviously watch that and
have hopes and cross our fingers and pray when it comes to some of the things on that so that
that our retired teachers are taken care of,
the health needs of people across the state are taken care of,
and also that administratively we can handle the things
to make it where teachers want to come work here in Katy
and hopefully work towards retirement here in Katy
and help the kids of this district.
I'm hearing from some of our retired educators
that they don't get a cost of living either.
They get like one extra check at the end of the year.
We're going to give you one extra check.
But they don't have anyone fighting for them to tie it to inflation, yet we know what inflation has done to all of us.
And then we have these single teachers who are trying to decide to pay the rent or have groceries.
And, you know, so I hope that they do look at that, too.
And I know you'll keep us updated as legislation goes on.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Thank you, Mr. Minton.
8.2 Discipline Management Plan
We'll now head into agenda item 8.2, Discipline Management Plan.
Presenters are Sherry Ashmore, Discipline and Charge Administrator,
Rasheen Smith, Assistant Superintendent for Elementary School and Leadership and Support,
Dr. Emily Craig, Assistant Superintendent for Secondary School Leadership and Support,
and finally, Ronnie Edwards, Assistant Superintendent for School Leadership and Support.
Good evening.
Good evening, President Schulte, members of the board, Dr. Grigorski.
Thank you for this opportunity to present.
This is very timely for us today.
You might remember that in the summer I always bring forward changes to our discipline management plan
So tonight we're just going to check in on what that process looks like the input we gather and
You're gonna get to hear a little bit more in detail about our elementary and secondary levels
Although you may not be surprised to see me up here. This was a collaborative effort over multiple departments
Including our assistant superintendents. Mr. Morgan. Dr. Dr. Craig. Mr. Edwards, dr. Washington. Dr
Dr. Carlson-Skruggs and Mr. Smith with Dr. Coffey in special education. So definitely a team effort.
Before we get started, I just want to provide just a few reminders for context as you listen
to this presentation today. As a reminder, all of our discipline decisions here in KDISD must align
with your board-approved discipline management plan and student code of conduct.
And you're going to hear two words kind of over and over again in this presentation,
behavior and discipline.
And so student behavior can be addressed by any adult
on a campus and it's usually done so informally,
such as redirecting a child, right?
And so when we talk about behavior,
we're talking about those informal interactions,
but when we're talking about discipline,
we're talking about a trained administrator
issuing a consequence in accordance
with the discipline management plan.
So I know sometimes those can kind of feel like
the same word, but those are different
and that's the context we're using them in today.
day. As a reminder, the purpose of student discipline is to change student behavior and
to facilitate a safe and orderly learning and working environment.
As we look ahead for discipline input that's upcoming, we always remember that legislative
updates certainly come into play. There are certain things that the legislature will push
forward that we're going to have to honor, and historical examples include limiting the option
to assign out-of-school suspension to certain populations,
added placements for a mandatory DAP,
and the required use of the six factors,
such as intent, self-defense, disability, and more.
We also have campus visits and committees to provide feedback.
So I personally visit each high school campus in the spring.
I had my first one this morning at Singer Ranch High School.
And we use that time to discuss what are the needs,
what are the concerns, what's working, what's not,
so that when we make a recommendation, we have that direct campus feedback.
Elementary and junior high administrators each have representatives serve on a committee
so that we can have those same discussions.
What are your needs at elementary or at junior high?
What's working and what's not?
Additional district feedback is collected through the teacher leadership forum,
surveys, AP toolbox, principal collaboratives and meetings,
Arcadia Improvement Council, which you know has parents, community members,
and business representatives, and reviews with our assistant superintendents.
So those are all options of communication that are open and going on throughout the year
that there's an opportunity to provide behavior feedback.
And then stakeholder feedback.
When we look at our campuses, anything related to behavior can certainly be generated
through the campus advisory team and campus-specific teacher-led teams that review data
and trends to make recommendations and to discuss data with the administrators.
So we have a lot of different ways that people are looking at our behavior information.
And by the time this process is over, when I make that recommendation to you in July,
just some rough estimates, but I think I'm going to have at least 250 individuals I will
have personally interacted with in over 20 meetings discussing what is the best version
of this discipline plan to recommend forward for your review.
Parent feedback is collected on a year-round basis, and that's through phone calls, not
not only through my office, but other district departments,
and that participation on the campus advisory teams.
There's no surprise here that student enrollment is growing, growing, growing.
And so when I checked this morning, I believe it was still at 93,317 students.
So, you know, that bar graph won't surprise you.
But go ahead and keep that in mind, because we're going to bring up enrollment numbers later.
Here's a view of total disciplinary incidents.
Okay, so this is every incident that was formally addressed by an administrator.
And what you're going to see here is you're going to see the 18-19 school year starting all the way on the left.
That was our last full year before COVID.
And then in 2020, we remember that the school year ended in March.
And then for 2020 to 21, we had intermittent learning and a virtual first six weeks.
So no surprise there that the discipline went down, right?
We didn't have all the students in the seats for the whole year as from all the way from
August to May.
But then if you look back in the 21-22, we have a full year of comparative data and I
have a snapshot for you there all the way on the right for 2023 where we are right now,
how many instance we have.
The blue line is secondary and the green is elementary.
elementary. When we look at discipline incidents per enrollment, if we compare the last full
year before COVID and last year, the 21-22 school year, you can see how that enrollment
spike jumped up 10,000 students. When we look at the incidents per student, we see that
there's virtually been no change in the percentage of how many incidents we're dealing with per
per the enrollment of students.
Before I turn this over to the assistant superintendents
to talk more about elementary and secondary,
I just wanted to touch base on a few of the exciting things
that have been going on the past couple of years
that really have been proactive discipline supports.
The first one is electronic teacher referrals.
You might remember a time when there was a whole lot
of paper, kids would walk the paper down to the office
and then the administrator would address it
and there was this paper trail floating around.
Now our teachers log into the Teacher Access Center.
They electronically can submit a behavior referral.
The administrator is notified in real time.
They get an email, and they can address that behavior very quickly.
A nice feature with electronic behavior referrals is that teacher can go back in,
log into TAC, and see what consequence was assigned
or what the status of that referral is.
So it's definitely more transparent than the piece of paper floating around and certainly more efficient
We also have the use of e-hall pass all of our junior highs and select high school campuses use e-hall pass
To monitor time outside the classroom. So, you know who's in the hallways and who should be in the hallways?
So that's been a great thing
Campus view of historical behavior trends
We've really made sure that select campus personnel have the access to see those behavior trends so they can know
what sort of offenses they have on their campus that need to be addressed and
implement interventions as needed. You might remember when our bus cameras
got an upgrade and everyone is very excited about that. Those campus cameras
on buses and upgrading to existing security cameras also provide support to
our campuses when investigating discipline concerns. Our multi-tiered
system of support focused on behavior has been piloting campuses
for the 22-23 school year.
Those are meetings I've even been a part of.
And it's given campuses an opportunity
to really look at their behaviors on their campus,
not just the discipline, but behaviors even as a whole,
and look at what kind of interventions they need
or what type of systems they need
to help keep that safe and early learning
and working environment.
And continued campus choice.
You know that in your discipline management plan,
we have those nice level charts.
There's lots of options to choose from.
And that gives campuses autonomy to choose a consequence that not only best will change the student's behavior, but meets the needs of that campus.
So we always want to continue that choice through the level charts to make sure that campuses have that autonomy.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Mr. Rahsaan Smith, our assistant superintendent for elementary school leadership and support.
He's going to share with us a little bit about elementary, followed by Dr. Emily Craig on secondary.
And these are the perfect people to present on this as they are most recently from a campus
So I'm sure they can remember the good old days of being on the campus and can share their insight
All right, good evening
As she stated my name is for sign Smith and I am the assistant superintendent for elementary school leadership in support
And I will be briefly talking about elementary school discipline as it applies to KDSD
At the elementary level here in KDISD, the approach that we use is a PBIS, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support system,
and we also go by the KDISD Discipline Management System.
Now, we choose to take a proactive approach in our elementary schools, and it's proven to be a deterrent to unwanted behaviors.
For behaviors that persist beyond the PBIS approach, teachers and staff have a vast amount of tools at their disposal
proposal in accordance with the KDISD discipline management system in which our campus administrators
are proficiently trained.
And I can honestly say from just being a principal, I'd say about maybe seven months ago, the
system that we have is very effective and it works.
And we have a lot of administrators, teachers, and staff who put in a lot of quality time
to service our students, which might I add are the best students in the nation.
All right, the next slide will show discipline trends from 2018 through January 20th of this current school year.
As demonstrated by these graphs, there are a small percentage of incidents in comparison to our overall enrollment of just over 42,000 students.
So, yes, with an estimated 1,000 more students this year, we're on track to have several hundred less incidences this year than last year.
The data is trending downward, and that is a great thing.
Okay, on this next slide, I will review what our top reported incidences are currently
and compare them to a list of pre-COVID incidences.
And as we see the behaviors themselves, they are consistent.
These are things that we see every day in elementary school as teachers, as staff, as
principals.
From 2018 to now, we have the same types of offenses.
These things haven't changed.
Our kids are still kids and our whole goal is to make sure that we grow our kids and teach them the correct way
to
To manage their behavior in a school environment
All right, so now I do want to brag
about some of the things that we do to be proactive in our schools and as you see up here on this list or
A lot of different activities that you will see in all of our elementary schools
schools.
Every elementary school has the opportunity to kind of pick and choose which ones suit
their campus culture best.
But a few of these that we have in every school are, for example, the Multi-tiered System
of Support for Behaviors, also known as MTSSB, which includes proactive strategies for supporting
appropriate student behaviors, has been very instrumental, and also Purposeful People,
which is a pre-K through five character curriculum.
So as you see, we have a lot of proactive things that we use.
So hopefully by the time that our elementary school students make it up to junior high school,
a lot of the things that they had to go through and the incidences that we see in elementary school, they're no longer there.
They're not as prevalent once they get to junior high school.
Our administrators and our elementary staff work very hard to train our kids and get them to where they need to be for the next level.
Thank you.
Good evening. I'm excited to talk to you all about secondary. As Rahsaan said, he just left
a campus about seven months ago, and I did as well. So I'm excited to talk to you about this
disciplinary data for secondary. So as we talk about secondary discipline incidents, it looks
like there's a lot of incidents that here, and you see that spike there in 2021-2022, similar to what
you saw at elementary but when you look at our last year pre-covered in 2018 2019 to 2021 2022
our enrollment in secondary increased by 14 but our number of disciplinary incidents only
increased by seven percent so it's a large number but in in relation to our enrollment at secondary
level um it didn't increase at that same rate so we have seen um some adjustment with that as well
Again, like Rahsaan mentioned with elementary data, our secondary discipline data looks a little bit different for what those top offenses are.
But what you will notice is that there is a lot of similarity between our pre-COVID to our current 2022-2023 top offenses.
One thing you will note is that ID badges and compliance with using that is new to the 2022-2023 versus 18-19, primarily because in 2018-2019 we weren't enforcing the use of ID badges, but that is something that we have been doing at the secondary level in accordance with our district safety protocols that have changed.
So you see a little bit of adjustment that has that has changed
But those are the top offenses that at secondary level that we are we are working with two on each campus
Again with the secondary systems interventions and solutions you will see a lot of overlap between the elementary and the secondary
It's very important that we are working on a full k-12 spectrum of support so that as students
students matriculate through our system that they see consistent language consistent practices used
through each of our campuses in addition you'll see a few other technical additions at the
secondary level that we work through to make sure that students are are behaving in the way that we
would expect them to do so wanted to take a few minutes to talk about our district's daep which
you know as our opportunity awareness center so when you look at this graph this is a list of
secondary enrollment versus level four offenses so students are placed at the dap um if they have
committed an offense that rises to the level of level four and you'll see that's a very small
number i would point out we have you know when we look at this and we look at 2021 2022 we look at
you know why might there be an increase in 2021 2022 compared to previous years with our return
from COVID. We know that there was a spike, some in discipline, but in addition to those things,
we increased the number of seats available at the OAC for last year by when Rain was able to move
out to its own building. So we're able to actually accommodate more students than we had been
previously. Additionally, we had some significant changes with our DMP, our board approved DMP,
about second vaping offenses I'm going directly to the to the OAC students
engaged in two or more fights in addition to some other pieces that we
hadn't previously had as mandatory and permissive placements so we added some
things because we knew getting those behaviors from the comprehensive campus
or alternative campus would best support the instructional environment on our on
our comprehensive campuses and in addition just as a kind of a side note
So my fellow secondary principals will note, there was a time when getting a permissive placement at the OAC was very challenging because we didn't have space to be able to do that.
But just to give you some insight, between 2018-19 to last year, we were able to triple the number of permissive placements that we were able to offer to campuses by making some adjustments to our Opportunity Awareness Center.
As we've done with elementary and secondary, just so you know, these are the top offenses that might be offenses that a student might have that would get them sent to our DAP.
You'll notice that vaping is on our current year was not part of the top offenses pre-COVID.
But it's also that this offense was added since that year.
And it's a response to campuses and changes to our discipline management plan.
So as I mentioned, now second vaping offense is students go to the DAP, and that was not something that previous in that 2018-19.
With all of our campuses, we believe that creating a positive school culture and climate is essential to helping students feel like they are connected to their campus.
And we know that kids that are connected are less likely to engage in behaviors that require discipline.
And so even starting as early with our kindergarten roundups,
sixth grade orientations, to fish camps, making sure that we welcome students to campus,
let them know expectations on campuses are important pieces of that,
but also giving them opportunities to lead and opportunities with additional responsibilities to help create
and set their own campus behavior expectations with leadership circles is an important piece.
As you know, we have many, many students involved in fine arts, athletics, academic, career, and technical education programs, and we think that these are all very important pieces that have helped our students maintain that positive campus school culture and climate.
At this time, I'm going to have Ms. Ashwarne come up to talk about district-level supports.
Thank you.
Thank you. So looking ahead, you know, asking ourselves the question, how does the district support student behavior, right? Not just the discipline piece, but the behavior piece too. So we have employed a lot of experts in the district. We have KDISD police who assist us as needed. Our social workers are an amazing group. We have the speak up app that I know you're familiar with that give us that 24-7 monitoring.
We have weekly meetings not only for our behavior threat assessments, but also for those district
level permissive requests.
We meet weekly on that.
Principal and staff surveys, but I kind of think most importantly, we're a dedicated
district of experts.
We have experts in everything and student behavior is no exception.
So we have student behavior interventionists, student behavior specialists.
We have a dedicated position to help with investigations for bullying and harassment.
We have student intervention experts, not only for academics, but for behavior as well.
Student discipline and students with disabilities, both 504 and special education.
Here's, I would say it's a short list, but it's actually pretty long.
And I know the type is small, but I just wanted to be able to provide for you a little bit
of what the special education team provides to campuses related to student behavior.
And not just student behaviors for special education students, but all students.
students. So campuses can request any one of these topics and more and the behavior
team goes out and provides that either directly to teachers, with admin team. So there's really
a lot of good information there. Proactive strategies, verbal interventions, how the
brain influences behavior, behavior in my classroom. So a lot of really great resources
that are available to fit the very specific needs of a campus. And then we have general
professional development that you know a broader scope can can join as well we
have our student support summit put on by our school leadership and support
team we offer professional development and learning so some upcoming spring
offerings on classroom management are posted there we just offered one on the
third about pre-k teaching behavior skills because that's it's challenging
going to school I'm sure for the first time AP tool back sessions we want our
administrators to be up to date on the best practices related to discipline
discipline, investigations, behavior.
And then any new administrator to the role or to the district in accordance with your
discipline management plan must be trained officially before they can start assigning
discipline.
So at the beginning of the year, we onboard everyone who's new.
And if you're hired mid-year, you get to hang out with me a little bit and we make sure
that you have all the training and access you need to do that job confidently.
And then returning administrators on a yearly basis are going to get an update on those
best practices any policy changes and any changes related to the discipline
management plan so as we look towards the future kind of back to that timeline
we're looking at preparing for that summer approval of the discipline plan
we're going to continue to receive that feedback from campuses directly we're
going to consult with district leadership on behavior needs we're going
to continue pull surveys for campus feedback the school leadership and
support department issued a fourth six weeks whole survey to campus principals
to gain feedback to make sure they were receiving the customer support that they
needed from that department and so that information has been reviewed it will be
returned back to the principals and that whole survey process is going to
continue and then we're looking ahead to summer planning and no summer off you
know here for us we're going to be working on student support summit we're
going to be working on professional development special education does a
toolkit for teachers again not for special education students only but for
all students on behavior and we're going to make sure that all the administrators
who are returning or new and get their onboarding they need for behavior and
discipline and then our multi-tiered systems of support behavior focus is
going to give campus trainings to make sure that those administrators know how
to provide appropriate behavior interventions when needed as well thank
Thank you for your time.
Thank you, trustees.
Are there any questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I have a few questions, and thank you very much for the presentation.
I know that was kind of a last-minute thing, and it was a lot of information.
There are a lot of really wonderful things that are going on,
but I want to say that I feel that the disciplinary incidents may be underreported.
especially with the when talking about cell phone usage vaping and dress code
issues I I've witnessed and heard of many incidents that have been broken and
I doubt that they've all been reported because of
they've been reported and nothing was done.
I'd rather believe they weren't reported because nothing's been done about it, you know, oftentimes.
I'm not saying every time.
So the stats that you give may be underrepresented of what's actually going on.
Because I myself, for example, dress code issues, I've witnessed, I walk down a hall
and see three or four girls with shirts from here to here and kids telling me
that other girls are dressing like that and nothing happens to them so I
understand it's a high school by high school thing but there's also the
DISCIPLINE MANAGEMENT RULES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DISTRICT WIDE.
AND SO I FEEL THAT WHEN PEOPLE, WHEN GIRLS OR BOYS ARE DRESSED
INAPPROPRIATELY OR WITH THE WORDING THAT THEY'RE NOT
SUPPOSED TO HAVE OR WHATEVER, THAT'S DISRUPTIVE TO A GOOD
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR THE OTHER CHILDREN THAT ARE THERE.
there. So also cell phone usage. I've read, I have it all quoted here. So I don't have
any problem with the discipline management guide. I think it's been written well. I think
the rules are good. But I just feel like the rule, a lot of the rules aren't being followed.
And like cell phone usage, I mean, I continuously hear about kids cheating, you know, using
cell phones, the disruptions in the classrooms with the phones ringing or vibrating.
I'm not sure if the teachers are not following the rules or they're afraid to follow the
rules or maybe they don't know that other kids, the kids are using the cell phones.
I'm not sure.
Vaping, the same thing.
Somebody told me that there was a kid vaping in the classroom the other couple weeks ago.
So, you know, I think that I have no problem with the guide itself.
And I like all the things that we do.
You know, we ask the stakeholders, we talk to the, you know, the different administrators
and all that.
I'm not sure how often you go to witness things at school campuses.
I know you went.
Do you go to one school once a year?
I mean, do you go to each school once or, you know, I don't know.
If you're walking the halls, how long you're there, what are you looking for when you go?
So how often do you go to witness this?
I think I'm going to go ahead and defer to my colleagues who are on the campus much more
often than I am.
So I'll go ahead and let Dr. Craig and Mr. Smith provide some feedback on that.
Yeah, I would say there are various district administrators that are out on campuses very frequently.
So we meet with each of our principals specifically along the way as well as anything that may come up.
I can tell you I was at multiple campuses last week.
I was at a campus this morning, and I know that all of our assistant superintendents are as well as well as
administrators from outside of the school leadership department
So we try to make sure that we are on campus as much as possible so that we can keep a pulse of what's happening
With what's going on as well as getting that feedback from principals when it comes up
Yes, not just second that and I can say from the elementary standpoint
point our principals are very good at sticking to the discipline management plan and if there
are any ever any concerns uh sherry ash horn's office has always been there readily available to
assist us you know with elementary we we try to be varied by the book especially when it comes
to this because these are our district's babies so they're very important to us um so we do follow
that and uh we we from what i know elementary principles very rarely deviate from it
Okay. Do the teachers know about the behavioral training available to them? Do they know about
that list that you provided? Do the teachers themselves know about that? The resources?
Yes. Each of these are posted in our Eduphoria system, which lists all available training. Some
of them are offered online so that they can take them at their own pace. Some of them are offered
in person. So they are available, as well as our district behavior specialists, if there's a
specific concern our campus principals can also contact our district behavior specialists if
there's something specific they want to come and bring to their campus okay and then i just have
a couple more about truancy um the i know that there's been some deviation from some of the
rules that we had to follow because of covid and all that but are we back on to what we were doing
before in 2018-2019 as far as has that changed has it has the truancy rules
changed I'm gonna go ahead and speak up here that the truancy rules truancy is
an issue that our legislators have been trying to tackle for a while and they
were approached a couple of legislative sessions ago and said truancy is breaking
the backbone of the court system.
You can't, we as courts can't deal with the number
of truancies that you're filing with us.
So the state made it very difficult to meet the burden
to file for truancy.
But, so to answer your question directly,
the rules have changed, certainly in the time periods
that we have shown, and it's made it much harder
on campus educators, teachers, and even the campus principal
if they want to hold a student and that student's parents' feet to the fire for truancy reasons.
It's been made much more difficult by the legislature.
Having said that, I know that our district at our highest levels,
and maybe your superintendent can speak to this,
we have been asked by the legislature to say, hey, we understand this is an issue.
How can we help you?
If we're going to look at this legislative session,
do you have any creative ideas about what we can do from a truancy perspective?
So from a pure legal perspective I can answer the question is yes
It has changed certainly in the time period you've been on the Board of Trustees, and that's again
your court system the
Judges were saying you're bogging up our courts with this truancy stuff. It's not that important for us
So we had to change kind of midstream what we've been doing
But hopefully there's a renewed focus on this in in Austin this spring
But as I understand it, parents still receive letters if they've been, you know, more than
10 absences in six months.
Yes.
So, again, we still have attendance requirements.
It's just hampered our ability to actually get a parent into the core where the core
can say, hey, parent, wake up.
The school district can't do it all its own.
the minimum absolute barrier to participation in education is showing up at the campus.
And again, we do a lot of positive things to encourage,
and you saw the list, to encourage attendance at the campus.
But again, truancy as far as being able to hold a parent's feet to the fire in the court system,
our capacity is diminished from a legislative perspective.
Okay, and then just one last question.
So, if there is a problem at the campus level, for example, with the dress code issue, let's
just say, so let's say it's from a, so what I've heard is from male teachers, it's hard
for them to approach a female student and tell them that, you know, that they're not
dressed appropriately.
I think that's a challenge for some, but they should just report this to the principal,
right?
And then if they don't get anything there, then they go to one of y'all.
Okay.
Right.
Absolutely.
And having been a male teacher and a male administrator, having to address these challenges.
At any given time, we have female administrators on the campus that we can go to if someone feels uncomfortable having that conversation.
But the goal is to enforce the discipline management and code of conduct.
and if a male teacher ever feels uncomfortable with that,
then at all times they're encouraged to get someone to help them with that
that would help them feel more comfortable.
Okay, thank you very much for your time.
Ms. Shammott, I'd just like to add on to that.
So remember we have that teacher electronic behavior referral system now
where that teacher could put that in,
and it would send an email to that administrator in real time
so that they could go investigate without having to have that direct interaction.
Okay, so to piggyback on that, does everybody, all the schools have that now?
everyone has access yes and also just wanted to say something else about the e
hall pass i've seen that in action i really think it's great um but are all schools using it and are
all schools required to use it or secondary i think it's only secondary i can speak to that so
this is the first year that all junior highs have had e-hall pass so anytime that you implement a
program for the first time right you have different levels where it is it is in that process of of
beginning so a couple of campuses piloted it the last year and so
obviously they're a little bit further ahead with using it and then we have
some targeted high schools using it too to see if it's something that we would
want to look at on a larger scale with that so they are using that at the junior
high but again anytime you you start with something that first year that
level of implementation might vary some I think that's great for safety of the
the students so that you know if there was some kind of major event at a
school we could know where the student is I think that's awesome you know the
questions yes and miss champagne pretty much asked a question that I have I just
have follow-up about the behavior trainings available to campuses and
there's over 30 almost 40 different trainings available and some are very
specific some are a little more vague but if I'm a teacher especially a newer
teacher and I have a specific challenge what is the resource they can see this
list it is an incumbent on them to like go home and do the training or what's
the campus level support as far as knowing this is out there knowing it's
specific you know that to support the teacher to be able to teach but also to
make sure a child is in crisis we're just you know disrupting the classroom or whatever like how do
they you how do they know to go to this list of 35 different trainings and what's the support system
right and so all of our new teachers to the district and to the campus especially our brand
new teachers have a a specific mentor that's assigned to them as well as a new teacher program
And actually this past year that used to be a ratio of about four to five to one new to one mentor and now we've
This year it's two new teachers to one mentor to really kind of hone that in
So that mentor has specific training on how to guide a new teacher and what to look for how to help them tap into those
Resources that are available to them
We've also extended that from their first year to their first and second year and then of course
campus administrators as they might notice that there's an issue that might
be happening helping teachers see what's available to them as well a lot of those
training on that large list are things that we might bring in to a whole group
of people maybe it's a group of teachers or a team of teachers or a whole campus
as well as then some targeted ones for individual teachers and I'm guessing
this is not just for secondary because there's correct I gave them a sticker
why won't they behave I don't think yes although they do like stickers that
secondary too but yes um you know so i just i this is this is k through 12 or pre-k through 12 right
um and i also find it interesting there's proactive behavior strategies for young males
but there's nothing for young females as far as proactive behavior behavior strategies i just find
that interesting i don't know why there's the delineation of giving that to sport for young
males where you know besides being all the girls being dress coded all the time there's not a whole
THERE'S NOT A SPECIFIC ONE FOR FEMALES.
I DON'T KNOW.
I'M SURE THERE'S A MINDSET BEHIND THAT, BUT THAT'S THE OTHER HALF OF THE POPULATION.
SO MAYBE THAT'S SOMETHING THAT COULD BE LOOKED AT IN THE FUTURE, SOME SUPPORT THAT'S TARGETED
DIRECTLY FOR YOUNG FEMALES.
NEW SPEAKER ANY OTHER QUESTIONS, BOARD MEMBERS?
NEW SPEAKER I THINK THIS IS THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENTATION.
I THINK IT'S A HUGE ISSUE BECAUSE WE KNOW THAT DISCIPLINE AFFECTS STUDENT PERFORMANCE
AND AFFECTS TEACHER MORALE IN A BIG WAY.
And we've seen in surveys that discipline or the lack thereof is very frustrating for teachers.
And it's one reason that they leave the industry, because of discipline issues, repeat offenders.
They're tired of dealing with it all the time and maybe not getting support from their campus leaders.
And it really varies a lot, as I understand it, from campus to campus,
depending upon the culture in that campus and the culture from the top down.
So I think that's critical.
In terms of cell phones, are we happy with how things are going with cell phones?
Because I understand that they are tools for, they can be tools for threats or bullying
or cheating in terms of the availability of, I'm speaking particularly of the secondary.
The fact that, my understanding of the policy is that they can have their cell phone with
them during class it has to be off well it has to be in silent mode correct
which can make it also disturbing as it is with phones vibrating all over the
place and then they have access to the cell phone in the hallways and at lunch
I know that other school districts have experimented with different variations
of that to reduce the like maybe the cyberbullying and also reduce just the
the disruption in the classroom.
Do we have any ideas about other alternatives,
other possibilities that would reduce this disruption?
Because I hear that it's, I mean, you get feedback,
board members get feedback as well
about what are the issues,
and this is one that is considered, I think,
by a lot to be a big problem is cell phones.
And I can tell you that it is definitely something
that campus principals think about
and look at all of the time,
because the safety of kids is the most important thing both their physical
safety but also their their emotional safety that's important and so there are
several campuses at the secondary level that have implemented different types of
strategies looking at ways to possibly you know restrict camp cell phones
during the school instructional time or place some regulations on different
grade levels as we kind of gradually release them to more responsibility
coming say from an elementary school to a junior high where the freedom opens up
so campuses are looking at some of those things and our campuses do have the
autonomy to be able to do that and and finding some success with that and
working then with each other to see what the needs are on their campus and how to
best address those right and I understand that if there's an emergency
and parents want to get hold of their students. However, per our policy, the
cell phones are not to be used and parents are not supposed to
call the school to begin with and they're not supposed to have the cell
phones on. So really the cell phones in an emergency, if they're following the
policy, don't really help the fact that they don't have them or they're off.
Are we looking at what other districts are doing in the area, like
what might be some alternatives to to maybe cutting back on the disruption is
there anything interesting out there that we could look at I think a lot of
our campus are kind of using some of those creative ideas such as providing
that additional level of restrictions so a campus I talked to quite recently they
have the pockets that they check in the phone into before class and the teachers
have the autonomy to confiscate that phone either for the rest of the class
period or the rest of the day so it gives the teachers some autonomy and
make sure that the phones are out of the way especially if it's a day where cell
phones are not used as part of the instructional process and that campus
seemed very happy with with the results they were getting and felt like students
and parents were very responsive to that so your discipline management plan
allows for campuses to create additional rules or restricted restrictions based
on campus need and so as long as they communicate that to parents and have
have clear expectations and guidelines,
then that's something that campuses
who might feel like they are struggling with cell phones
certainly have the ability to do something
a little more restrictive.
Like Dr. Craig mentioned, you know,
like a junior high saying, okay, you're in sixth grade,
so maybe you don't get the full freedom
that comes with a secondary cell phone.
We realize you're still trying to use that.
And a junior high example is for seventh graders,
it's restricted in the first semester,
but it's a privilege they can earn for the second semester
so that they can prepare to experience a little bit
with having that cell phone before they go on to high school.
And so I thought that was a really clever way
to kind of have graduated availability
of that cell phone device.
But there's lots of creative options out there.
I'm not aware of any specifically from other districts,
but I think our campuses are doing a good job
at identifying what their concerns are
and working within our framework of the discipline plan
to come up with a solution.
Yeah, I definitely would encourage those because also what I hear about also is improper videoing,
videoing of improper acts, if you will, that then results in texting and, again,
it results in fighting and just bullying, et cetera.
So a lot of stuff associated with the cell phone that I would encourage that we take a hard look at that.
And I would echo the concerns about the dress code, because I hear about that as well.
In terms of not just the girls showing their midsection, but also guys
that don't have their pants belted at the waist, things like that, like they should.
Vaping, fighting, I think you've covered these, seem to be the biggest issues.
You know, somebody can't use the bathroom because they're vaping in there, and if he says something, then they're going to know who it is.
You know, just issues like that that affect students.
So I'm of the opinion that, you know, creating a positive school culture to me means taking care of the repeat offenders so the rest of the population can study and can perform.
That's where I'm coming from.
I don't have any other questions.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I have a couple, a couple-ish.
Thank you so much.
I think talking about this now instead of waiting until summer when kind of things are
you know and the stories and the calls are not as fresh in our heads you know to be able
to ask.
So thank you for bringing this so timely especially between semesters as we look.
I have a question about discipline referrals because we see a half mark, halfway mark.
Do you see more in the spring or is it about equal?
Do we think we're on track to be about the same?
I wonder if spring has more.
Do you know?
You know, anecdotally, I will tell you spring sometimes has more.
However, you know, where we are on track is through the pretty close to the end of January.
So it's not quite a full, you know, it's a semester plus a little.
And while we might have a few more incidents this year,
what we're seeing in the trend line is that it is on par with the ratio to our student population
so we have added quite a few students but it's pretty much the same ratio okay i can tell you
as of when they pull this information friday at the end of the day friday 91 days into the semester
we have 81 days left so 53 plus through the year we actually have a thousand more students in
elementary almost a thousand more students this year in elementary and we're on pace to see those
numbers actually be less than they were last year so we're actually see even with a thousand more
kids those numbers look to be less this year that's a that's a great information because i
i don't know if you know this about me but i'm really good at mental math and i kind of just
doubled the numbers thinking that was one semester and we might be a little head so
So thank you for that.
That's really good.
Okay.
Since COVID, we're hearing that children came back from COVID and their discipline, no, not discipline, their disruptive behaviors were the biggest concern we heard.
It's like what happened that they, and we know, you weren't here for a year, year and a half, and so you don't know how you behave at school and those things.
I hope those are getting better.
I, but some of my questions here are from those things. Love the e-hall pass, like Ms. Champagne
said, that's so good. I think it keeps track of where kids are in the hallway and it's like,
how long has she been gone, you know, when she said she needed to take a pass? And that vaping
and bathrooms locked and things like that, I like how principals are managing problems by taking
taking control of their of their things and when TikTok challenges happen and they rip off the soap
dispensers and things like those I hate to see bathrooms locked and we hear from parents going
why is the bathroom locked I was like well because children are destroying our the things you're you
know our resources so I like how uh principles manage those kinds of things and so I want to
give kudos for that here's one injuries to employees and this is probably more Mr rassan
on for you for elementary schools because we some of our employees are injured by there's a
protective hold they can do on children who are maybe having some control issues of their own
but that our employees are getting injured do do we need protection for our employees
when children are physically strong and it would that be legislation that we could help with would
Would that be parents?
How can we, or do we have enough already in place that our teachers who are getting broken bones and bites and sprains because of trying to help boys and girls control themselves?
Yes, ma'am.
So I'll speak to it from my professional opinion and having been a principal.
And just from my experience, I've been an administrator over a campus where I was the sole administrator over discipline for an entire campus.
And so I've learned a lot over the years.
But I will say what KDSD has, and the whole you're talking about is CPI,
the things that KDSD has in place I do believe are very highly effective.
At times, do incidents occur on campus?
Absolutely.
But I'd say that the district personnel that we have
and the departments that we have that we can reach out to
and address those situations is very professional.
You don't need me to try to lobby for, I mean, advocate for additional help or anything.
I don't know if parents could be more involved or how that happens, but I just want our professionals
to be able to, when they're doing that, there are a thousand other children in the building
who need them too.
Yes.
I see some of that and my heart just breaks for both the boys and girls and also for the
educators who are trying their best to get them ready to learn. Yes ma'am. If you
think of anything that we could do from a talking to our legislators or a parent
I don't know a parent contract or something that says you know come to
school with your baby until he learns to you know. Okay let us know about that
because all students deserve the right to learn and when there's a continually
disruptive student in a classroom and you have 22 children and you have one or two
that don't it it's not fair to the others right so I I know I know that
administrators are very competent in what they do but if they need more help
from me in any way that I could help I want to absolutely thank you okay
because I also hear from teachers they wish they had like an OAC but for
for elementary, something appropriate where boys and girls could go and have maybe some
more structure or more, I don't know what the words are.
So I don't know if that's a, talk to Dr. Gregorski about it another time.
So good news.
We do have an elementary DAP, but that is through our district level committee process.
We really work because in elementary, we're focusing on that behavior piece and we know
the disciplines out there too but we're really trying to focus on the behavior
so we do have and in our discipline management plan placement procedures and
offenses for elementary students those placements are up to 20 days but that
can be longer shorter based on review with the assistant superintendent for
elementary and school leadership and support so dr. Washington dr. Carlson
Scruggs mr. Smith they're intimately involved with those in this conversation
Is that at a place, at a physical place?
For fourth and fifth grade students at the OAC off campus.
Below fourth grade is an on-campus setting.
So kind of imagine, you know, like an ISS setting on a campus, right?
Like a room with a student and a teacher.
Would that be an AB room as well or something different?
Different.
It would not be related to special ed.
Yeah.
Okay.
Separate.
AB is a special ed specific.
I believe adapted behavior.
Right.
is special ed specific. Okay, thank you very much. Yes, you're welcome. I really like your create
leader. I'm almost finished, I promise. Create the leadership. Oh, your cross-campus collaboration
with best practices. I already had that written down and then you came to it and I was like, yes,
because we all know of schools who are, you know, using some things very effectively.
And when I ask principals, you have to tell other people about that. No, no, no, I don't know better
better than them and they don't want to brag on themselves or see what's happening.
So I love the cross campus collaboration of best practices.
You did one January 12th it looks like.
Describe that just to us in just a short kind of thing.
How many people were there?
What kinds of collaborations were shared?
You want to talk about that?
So with that one, basically what we did was we surveyed our assistant principals and we
We asked them different topics that they'd like to collaborate with each other on, and they gave us some feedback, and it was very good feedback.
So then we brought them together for the AP toolbox, and we had an unconference conversation where they can sit in their groups, and we were not the ones giving them the information.
That was them talking to each other, sharing what works on their campuses.
So the feedback from the APs was that was one of the most powerful pieces of professional development that they've had because they were learning from one another what works on their individual campuses.
I love that so much because that's what it is, share best practices and what works for you.
And oh, great to hear that.
Thank you.
I love that so much.
I remember a principal one time as a campus visit that I did, and he talked me to his leadership class.
And it was a group of boys.
And he goes, these are my leaders.
And they were wearing shirts and ties and the whole thing and leaders.
And he shared with me privately, these boys are leaders, but they were the leaders of the difficult boys.
And so he said, I can see your leadership qualities, and I want to make you leaders.
And he had them working with younger kids, and it flipped them like that into like, I'm a leader, right?
And the power that they had in getting people to follow them became positive and not negative.
It was brilliant.
I loved that.
How can we be confident rules are administered consistently across the district?
and I'm probably mostly talking about dress code because we all kind of said we know dress code is
not consistently followed how can we be confident that it is because we don't need to change our
dress code policy from what I can read but we hear a lot about it right and I I can tell you it is
you know as a as a principal who's just left a campus it's it's obviously important we don't
want students to be in any way distracted for whatever the case is
however as we're looking at it you know sometimes there are some things that
take precedence that we're wanting to make sure that we're keeping kids out of
being engaged in behaviors that might be you know more significant than that and
so as we look at that those are pieces that the principals do have to choose
from sometimes and oftentimes I will tell you for me as a campus principal my
goal was to keep students in the instructional environment as much as
possible so if it could be corrected and we could do that swiftly without it
being a discipline situation but we could correct that in some way whether
that was bringing up an outfit or having a sweater whatever that might look like
that was our primary goal because otherwise we're removing kids from the
the instructional process for that.
And in the grand scheme of all the discipline
that a campus might deal with, that's
the one we want to make sure we have them in class for the most.
OK.
The ugly t-shirt works pretty effectively, though, with girls.
This is my last one.
So I'm going to jump on the cell phone usage thing,
because we're hearing so many districts that
have new ideas of how to control the cell phone usage,
because it's such a distraction.
you know it put aside the bullying and the that it's such a distraction and
when I hear students give reports that say there's some sort of pocket thing
you put it in for the day or whatever and they can't get to it unless it's an
emergency and they're like just knowing that I can't get to it makes me be able
to focus more because if it's in my pocket and I feel it buzz and I know I
have a text I want to look at it well you know so do I right so it's that
That thing that when you know you can't, the focus is better, the learning is better, and they liked the freedom of knowing that there were only certain times of the day they could use it, like lunch.
And so I wonder if a survey of our teachers or something like that would be something that would give us, what would they support?
Because I don't want to make them the cell phone police.
They have so many other things in their day.
Is it a problem?
Do they be like never mind? We're used to it. I know parents are not gonna like it, but if it's best for learning
That's our job. So I don't know survey
Check with teachers see it's not really a big deal or I
Know those things are a little bit expensive those pocket things that I've seen it's kind of new if we look into something like that
I don't know where we go with this, but that would be something I'd be interested in
querying.
Is that the right word?
COVID took my vocabulary.
President,
I would just reiterate what you're saying.
It'd be great to hear, to see other
options or alternatives that we could look
at on the cell phones.
And I'm a little
concerned at your response about the dress code.
Like it's not
that big
a deal because it's bigger issues.
That's a
a common complaint that we're hearing.
Mr. President, I'd like to say something too about the cell phone.
When I read in here, so I've copied this from the discipline management guide, that during
this instructional day, students should not use the devices to receive or place personal
calls or send or receive personal messages during engaged instructional time.
And the use of telecommunication devices, okay, noncompliance, the following will occur
And there's all these things that should happen to a student if they're not following the
rules with that.
But just from my own experience and the people that I talk to, I don't find this to be happening.
So I'm trying to understand, and along with the dress code too, I thought these rules
applied to the whole district.
And I understand, you know, there's some discretion between the principals and everything, but
we have to enforce the rules that we've made.
You know, you bring the disciplinary guide to us, you know, every year and we approve
the guide.
And then so we are seen as the people that, you know, we said yes or whatever.
And you know, then they come to us, you know, why aren't these rules being followed or why
aren't people, why, you know, are no consequences being given?
So that's why a few of us asked for this to be put on the agenda tonight is because, you
YOU KNOW, I WANT TO BE ABLE TO BETTER ANSWER THE
CONSTITUENTS WHO TALK TO ME ABOUT THOSE THINGS.
SO I GUESS MY QUESTION WOULD BE, WHY AREN'T WE
TRYING TO REINFORCE THESE MORE THROUGHOUT THE
DISTRICT, AT LEAST THE COMPLIANCE, AT LEAST THE
COMPLIANCE, NON-COMPLIANCE RULES THAT WE HAVE IN PLACE?
Thanks.
So I'll just speak from kind of the chair that I sit in in the district office.
So yes, your discipline management plan and student code of conduct as approved by the
board takes the force of policy.
So it does.
It needs to be followed for sure.
And campuses have some of that discretion whenever they're determining how they're going
to send consequences.
They can certainly add those additional rules or restrictions in addition to.
to, but when we're talking about whether or not something's being followed, certainly
I don't know where your information's coming from, if it's a teacher or a parent or an
administrator, but there's certainly opportunities to report that, either through the electronic
behavior referral system, which would show what was requested, show when it was sent,
who it was sent to, and what that action was, whether it was closed out, created to an official
formal incident or if it was resolved and so there's different selections an
administrator can make to close that out or whether or not that's a conversation
with the assistant principal associate principal and without having you know if
there's not a positive conversation there you know our assistant
superintendents are always happy to take questions and phone calls they get many
phone calls from parents from staff members and so they know all those
avenues to address it. But as far as you know any formal process we have of going
and looking at you know the 45,000 incidents and how many were or weren't
applied, I can't speak to that from my chair. But I can just reinforce what you
said that these are the rules right and if there is a concern a campus has or
someone on the campus has there's certainly individuals they can speak to.
I'm always happy to take phone calls from individuals who have questions about this document or what the rule is or isn't or says or doesn't.
And so I'm certainly a resource someone could use as well.
I'm going to just kind of second that.
As a campus principal, I would definitely like to know, because our job is to enforce the code of conduct.
It is.
So as a campus principal, I know if there is talk about maybe some rules not being followed on my campus,
I would I would definitely want someone to come tell me and say hey I heard XYZ is going on
Let's talk about it and that way a campus principal is in the know and can make sure that they address those issues
Any other questions can I ask one
I don't know if this is necessarily in y'all's purview or if this goes larger than this
But having had a child just graduate last year and have another high schooler in one of our local high schools
one of the things that I have constantly seen for years is that my my children need a tech device to get through the day or
Instructional purposes they're taking quizzes. They're looking at the information that's being presented
So I can argue pro cons for textbooks all the things I was in high school
Albeit many many many decades ago
And you know I had to carry a stack of textbooks that were this thick
My students don't, and it's all here, and I'm going to advise you, too, in college, it's all here, too.
So with that, do we have a one-on-one for every single student in our district to have technology in the classroom to support that?
I'll go ahead and take that.
That's a little bit off topic, but it's related, I guess, to the cell phone use, and you're correct, Ms. Wilson.
A lot of the kids prefer to use the device, the handheld device, to access things for instructional purposes in the classroom.
That gets a real challenge when I'm doing instructional stuff, but I've used this as my device, but I'm also doing some non-instructional things, and the teacher's got to monitor that, so that's just a round-around that goes.
goes so we are in this district or we've been for a long time something called one to need
which means first of all we put out a survey every year and that survey the survey results
have informed us that our parents tell us that 90 percent are better and i think at one time it was
as high as 96 or 98 percent of our kids have access to a device so that kind of drives our
decision-making on the one-to-one one-to-one would get expensive you know
I mean imagine if we went I know I'm not talking k12 but 93,000 kids buy device
issue them and manage those devices for three four or five years and then they
wear out so there's some challenges in there about going to one-to-one so we go
to one to one to need so any kid in this district who needs a device if their
parent can't afford to get them a device they can check out a device from the
library and we have many devices I I would bet this and this is shooting from
the hip but from memory of discussions I've had with Dr. Alaune on some of this,
probably less than 10% of our devices in the library get checked out. Okay, but the
kids can go down and get them if they want to do that. What we're finding out
is most kids don't want to carry a device we check out from library which
might be their laptop, most likely a Chromebook or maybe a tablet of some
sort, but a lot of Chromebooks. The Chromebooks are no fun to carry around
where a phone is and a phone does other things for me and our device doesn't do
the fun things my phone might do. So there's some real challenges in that, but we did on the last
bond we had, the last school's bond, appreciate our community support for technology where we
went from a 30 percent device, so number of students, 30 percent of that, that's how many
devices you got on the campus. We're up to 50 percent devices on every campus to meet the
student need and we do the one to need through a library checkout where you can get a device
JUST LIKE YOU COULD GET A BOOK OUT OF THE LIBRARY, SAME THING.
SO I FEEL REAL GOOD ABOUT WHAT WE OFFER OUR KIDS TO DO,
AND THOSE ARE OPTIONS IN THERE.
SO HOPEFULLY THAT ANSWERS SOME OF THAT QUESTION.
THANK YOU.
YEAH.
ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?
THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
MR. PRESIDENT.
YES.
SO MY QUESTION ABOUT CELL PHONE USAGE,
LIKE DO TEACHERS HAVE A FEELING AND THINGS LIKE THAT,
But is that just going to be captured on a...
It's good.
Ms. Vance captured it as an action.
We'll come back to...
Because I don't think we're going to solve it tonight, but I think it's something that we take on.
I just wanted to make sure that that's something I'd like feedback on.
It is captured.
Mr. President, I just want to chime in on that one, just to be sure, because the board has brought up a lot of instances in here.
Okay.
If the board has some specific questions or concerns or needs data or would like information about a specific campus, certainly reach out to me.
I HAVEN'T RECEIVED ANYTHING ABOUT ANY OF THIS OR REQUESTS FOR DATA OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT.
I'M PERSONALLY NOT AWARE AND I DON'T THINK MY TEAM IS AWARE OF OTHER DISTRICTS THAT HAVE
IMPLEMENTED SOME KIND OF NEW CELL PHONE TYPE POLICY THAT IS VERY EFFECTIVE FOR TACKLING
THESE VERY CHALLENGING ISSUES FOR WHICH WE SAY.
THEY ARE IMPORTANT ISSUES, BUT THEY'RE VERY CHALLENGING.
BUT IF ANYONE ON THIS BOARD KNOWS WHAT DISTRICT HAS TACKLED IT EFFECTIVELY, SEND THAT ON AND
And I will send my team to go to those districts, call them and ask them, what have they implemented that works?
Because I've heard a lot of information tonight, but I haven't ever received any real specific examples.
Now, I know Ms. Vann's over here capturing some notes, and she's kind of whispered over to me so we can try and tackle this together on what the board would like me to do.
But I'm still confused on what you want me to do about the cell phone unless you guys send me some districts or we can reach out and try and find some.
them, but I don't know what the board would even want me to do with surveying about cell
phones to our teachers.
If you can help me on that one, happy to do it.
Well, I would think that we have contacts in industry associations, TASB, whoever, other
districts in the area, other, just that we could, that your staff could contact their
counterparts at those districts and see, hey, what are you doing?
We could do the same, but I mean, I think y'all can, there's enough industry associations out there that should be able to gather some information as to what's available.
Yeah.
What have they done?
That's certainly an option because, yeah, we have a lot of organizations.
We could reach out and ask, hey, does anyone have a cell phone policy that's been really effective as part of your DMP that's implemented in a large district like ours?
We can ask that.
But what I was hearing from the board tonight, maybe I misunderstood that, was that our board members have heard about other districts that have been effective in this.
And if they had that, send that information to me.
I heard it as a question, not as a – I heard it as, is there other districts?
Dr. Gorski, I will send you what I know.
Okay.
And for my request, everything else that we've talked about is covered and I think can be enforced through our discipline management code of conduct.
But I don't think that cell phone usage, when it's like if they're using it, the discipline, I don't think teachers have time to know if children are looking at their phone and getting a text message.
That would be impossible for me to expect teachers to enforce that every single time.
and I just wonder if teachers even care if we do they care enough for us to
implement something that would make like I know that some teachers say turn your
phone top right corner of your desk upside down right there where I can see
it some put it in a in a shoe holder plastic shoe holder or exchange it for a
calculator right there are many teachers who do it effectively but do they need
our help so that our students when they're there face to face with those
incredible educators get every as much of that learning as possible and that
this device is not distracting them from the great learning that they could have
that's why I'm asking more specifically for cell phone there's no way with a
pocket and with earphones and earbuds that they can hide you know and listen
to something that's distracting them could we do that better that's where my
question I guess to move on from this issue we spent a lot of time on this
issue it's great feedback it's clear we're not going to solve it tonight what i would ask is
can we table it and as dr gorski said if any any board members have specific things that they want
to see or ideas that they have can those board members get with dr gorski and share that and then
we'll investigate this man's got it captured as an action item and then we'll leave it follow up at
another future meeting on what the uh what what we find out is that is that acceptable to everybody
i i do but i i don't want to bring something forward and put it out there if teachers don't
I don't really even care.
I think that's part of the discussion, right?
Part of the discussion is let's figure out if we're going to ask that question.
I don't think we need to decide that today.
Okay.
Does that make sense?
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Thank you for the discussion, Mr. President.
Yeah, it was a great discussion.
Everybody complete on that topic for now?
And again, it's not dead.
It's captured as an action item.
Okay.
9.1 Presentation on the 2021-2022 Annual Report to include the Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR)
Thank you.
We'll move on to agenda item 9.1, which is the public hearing session of the meeting,
presentation of the 2021-22 annual report to include the Texas Academic Performance Report,
REPORT, OR TAPER.
PRESENTER IS NATALIE MARTINEZ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT.
GOOD EVENING.
GOOD EVENING, PRESIDENT SHULTI, SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS, AND DR.
GRIGORSKI.
TONIGHT I'LL PRESENT TO YOU THE ORGANIZATION OF THE 21-22 ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REPORT.
I'LL ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE, AND WE WILL ALSO HAVE A PUBLIC HEARING AS REQUIRED
BY STATUTE.
WHILE MUCH OF THE INFORMATION INCLUDED IN THE ANNUAL REPORT HAS BEEN AVAILABLE SINCE
August. The official release of the Texas Academic Performance Report or TAPER in December
triggers the creation of the required full performance report and public hearing. All
of the pieces here can be found on our webpage. They are already published and available for
our communities to see. The information is published on the web each year under the Research
Assessment and Accountability site. Each section this year is linked for easy access.
Section 1 is the taper which is compiled by the Texas Education Agency and includes information
from PEMS, student achievement on staff and programs.
Section 2 is our financial standard report.
Our financial department updates the board throughout the year and there is an additional
report in the APR which is created by the agency.
agency. Section three shows the district accreditation status. There was not a status
for the 21-22 school year. Because COVID is still historically in our data, we are not ready to have
that accreditation status, but it will continue in the following year.
Section four houses our campus performance objectives.
Campus improvement plans are housed on the web for each campus, but the performance objectives
are pulled together for the annual performance report.
These objectives were approved by the board in September of 2021.
Section 5 relates to the special education determination status.
In KDISD, we receive the highest status of meets requirements.
Section 6 shows level 4 and level 5 offenses by campus.
Data is masked but includes the number, rate, and types of incidences by campus.
Section 7 relates to postsecondary institutions.
The information is provided by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and reports on
students' GPA in the two or four year college or university.
As of this afternoon, this information has not been updated, but the link is live on
on our web and shows prior year data.
They promised an update mid-January,
so check back if you're interested in this data.
Our final section refers to the House Bill 3 goals, which
were adopted by the board in July of 2022.
I'm sorry, in July of 2020.
These goals include third grade meets and masters
for reading and math, along with CCMR at the high school level.
Progress is reported to the board twice a year,
in January and July.
AGAIN, EACH OF THESE PIECES ARE OUTLINED ON THE RESEARCH ASSESSMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
WEBSITE AND ARE AVAILABLE TO THE BOARD AND TO OUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS.
AT THIS TIME, I'LL ADDRESS ANY QUESTIONS THAT YOU MAY HAVE FROM THE ANNUAL PERFORMANCE
REPORT.
ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS?
OKAY.
WE'LL PROCEED TO AGENDA ITEM 9.2, WHICH IS THE PUBLIC HEARING ON THE 2021-2022 ANNUAL
9.2 Public Hearing on the 2021-2022 Annual Report to include the Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR)
REPORT.
those individuals requesting to speak regarding the 2021-2022 annual report
for taper and signed up by 2 p.m on monday january 23rd 2023 will now be called 30 minutes has been
allocated for this public hearing the time allowed will be divided equally among those requesting to
speak no presentation may exceed three minutes is out your name please come to the podium and state
your first and last name for the record our first speaker this evening is regina johnson and our
Our second speaker tonight is Mary Ellen Kizella.
Good evening.
Thanks.
I'm going to be straight up honest.
There is a confusion in requesting time from earlier.
So I've been awarded this time, and I've got permission to take it.
So I'm going to take it.
One individual was unable to speak because she didn't show up in time to sign off at 445 to speak for open forum.
Her name is Shawn Scott.
She's a co-founder of Urban Conservatives of America.
I'm here to express our thoughts on the letter of the NAACP regarding the single-member district method of election for the KDISD Board of Trustees.
We strongly disagree with this premise.
KDISD is ranked second best.
Mr. President, this topic is solely, this time is to solely speak about the taper report.
Okay, and I asked you and I said, do you care what I said?
And you said, I don't care what you talk about.
Yeah, I don't care that you're a reading off from someone else, but I assumed it was about this. Oh, no, sorry
I didn't clarify that with you. Yeah, sorry. No, I don't have anything on
This specific thing and I don't know if I'm allowed to provide comment to what we just heard on the discipline stuff
No, no, sir. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you
Hi, I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak to you again tonight. Thank you.
Tonight I am focusing on the Texas Academic Performance Report, TAPER,
why ratings like the TAPER might be important, and what inputs are used for this rating.
I'll also explain a little bit about me and why we moved to Katie.
My name is Mary Ellen Cuzela. I'm a fifth generation Texan. I'm a native Houstonian and a longtime resident of Katy.
My husband and I have raised our three children exclusively in Katy ISD schools.
We are vested in this community and school district.
When we were a young married couple looking for a place to put down roots and buy our first home, we analyzed the academic ratings of the schools.
Katy ISD stood above the surrounding greater Houston areas from top to bottom.
So we bought our first home in Katy over 20 years ago and have resided here ever since.
While there is definitely room to discuss how academics get rated, how low or high the bar is set for different student groups,
or whether COVID shutdown learning losses are reflected in the district's rating,
tonight I want to simply focus on the fact that the primary inputs for the taper rating are academics.
Things like academic programs, advanced placement courses, and UIL activities,
are measured to arrive at our school district's taper rating
there are many different groups that want a piece of the public school system
i've attended a good majority of school board meetings over the last couple of
years i've heard a myriad of different groups
asking for different interests to be addressed
these different interests should be heard and some should be addressed
but the focus and attention on academic excellence should never be compromised
none of these special interests are part of the metrics used to rate our schools
at the state level for all students to perform well academically they must be
protected for all teachers to deliver academic excellence they must be
encouraged supported with the right academic resources and backed up by an
excellent consistent discipline plan with consistent enforcement from their
administrators to sum it up when we focus on academic excellence protecting
students in standing with parents and teachers we help our students perform
well they are set up to succeed whether they move on to higher education or get
their first job when students succeed our community flourishes to new families
seek out to buy their first home in Katy families stay and Katy's economy economy
remains strong let's never waver from focusing on academic excellence and
and protecting all students.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This concludes the public hearing portion of the meeting.
10.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of naming Elementary School #45 as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
We'll now proceed to agenda item 10.1,
discuss and consider board approval
of the naming of elementary school number 45
as recommended by the naming advisory committee.
Presenter tonight is Dr. Andrea Grooms, Chief Communications
Officer.
Good evening.
Good evening, President Schulte, trustees, and Superintendent
Grigorski.
In accordance with board policy, CW Local,
the Elementary School Number 45 Naming Advisory Committee met on December 5th
to review all name nominations and supporting documents for Elementary School Number 45.
The committee per policy held a public forum on December 14th to solicit input on the selected name
and reconvened after to consider the testimony.
The committee is now recommending for the board's approval
approval the selected name for elementary school number 45 David and Terry Youngblood Elementary
Mr president yes I moved that the board of Trustees named elementary school number 45 located at 25600
loganbaugh Road David and Terry Youngblood Elementary School as recommended by the naming
Advisory Committee second I have a motion by Mrs Champagne a second by Mrs Fox we'll now proceed
to vote well before that does anybody have any comments before we go we can
have comments after we go to everybody can vote the motion pack look there we
go the motion passes congratulations
Congratulations.
Any comments?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I would like to say that I'm very honored to know Mr. and Mrs. Youngblood, and I know
that they're going to be great representatives at the school that's going to be named after
them.
And the students, the staff, the community that that school will be in are very, very
very fortunate to have the two of you represent all of them and be a great representative
to for all of KDISD actually.
Thank you very much.
Any other comments?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I think for both of our new namesakes tonight, you know, our current living namesakes are
quite an example, right, and both of you have expressed to us that it doesn't seem right
to be in the same sentence with the roosevelt alexander and anody tompkins but of course
but of course it makes complete sense to us and the first night when you were here when
when we just learned of the names before the before the process started the room was full
this is a generational honor and a generational gift for you for your children who are in
education and for all those who are coming in the footsteps behind you um it's just very fitting and
And we're so excited.
And you deserve the honor.
Yeah, and I'll just add, this was my first time being on a naming committee.
And everybody said, you're going to love it.
And it was just amazing the amount of people that submitted and the amount of people that have dedicated their entire lives,
the husband and the spouse in many cases, to KDISD.
And certainly reading the resume and what you guys have done and the testimonials, it just gave me goosebumps.
I mean, it was just incredible.
So I can't imagine what an honor it must be. It's certain. It's well earned and
Congratulations, you guys deserve it very incredible both of the namesakes tonight
Okay, we'll proceed now to agenda item 2.2
10.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of naming Elementary School #46 as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
Yes, I'm sorry. Um, I
Move the board of trustees names elementary 46 located at two five six one five clay road Russell and Cindy
Faldin elementary school as recommended by the naming advisory committee second
Second.
We have a motion by Mrs. Vann and second by Mrs. Fox.
One option to vote.
Board members, please record your vote on the screen
via your keypad.
Motion passes.
Congratulations.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I'd like to add, also, after we announced the naming of 46,
I, like Mr. Schulte, was able to serve on the committee of the naming for 46.
And I've had the privilege of knowing the Faldens through different, you know, walks of life, through leadership and through mostly, let's be honest, I'm just really excited.
We've finally got some Taylor High School blood in both these namesakes.
You came before me at Taylor High School.
Coach, I'm glad you were there when I was there.
And I just think it's about time we got some Taylor blue out there in those namesake cases, right?
Yeah, but couldn't I be more happy for both names?
Welcome to the namesake family.
Thank you.
Congratulations again.
Mr. President.
Yes.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's no longer Elementary 45 and 46,
but it's Youngblood Elementary and Fowlton Elementary.
Congratulations.
It sounds crazy, right?
Say it out loud.
Mr. President, I would like to say something to the Fowlton's.
I have known them for a long time also.
And Mrs. Fowden was Connor's third grade teacher.
And he, you know, I'm sorry, Connor, if you're watching, he's not.
But he's 26 years old now, and he was a little pistol.
And that's what Mrs. Fowden would always say.
No, he's so sweet.
And I'm like, well, okay.
I really appreciate.
And then Mr. Fowden was the assistant principal or the, what do you call that,
the second in command at Taylor High School when Connor was there.
And so you both got to witness him.
And by the way, he did fine.
And I really appreciate you, both his parents, Michaela and Connor, same age.
They went through school together.
We did NCL together.
I really, really so happy for you all, just like the Youngbloods, and I just couldn't be more happy.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
We'll now proceed off the fun stuff back to business, right?
10.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the annual financial audit report.
10.3, discuss and consider board approved the 2021-22 annual financial audit.
The presenters tonight are Mr. Christopher Smith, Mr. Lupe Garcia, partner of Whitley Penn,
Ms. Laura Lynch, Manager of Whitney Penn, Mr. Jamie Hines, Executive Director of Finance,
and Ms. Kayla Smith, Director of Accounting.
See how exciting you can make an audit report, Mr. Smith.
Oh, this is going to be exciting, I promise.
Here we go.
You've been waiting all day for this, right?
Yeah, it'll be a lot better than my budget update.
date. No, Texas Education Code 44.008 requires us to have an annual audit. One could argue that it's
ongoing, but it formally started in June with Whitley Penn's interim audit and their presence
here for a couple of weeks. They've been in our district the last month and have been performing
the audit and of course the glue that holds it together holds this audit
together from the district's perspective is sitting over there Kayla Smith she's
our director of accounting no relation to me just just another fortunate person
with a common name but she holds that there's an accounting department
together and has done a fantastic job keeping the books of this district and I
think mr. Garcia will will reiterate that when he presents and I'm going to
turn it over to Mr. Garcia of Whitley Penn.
President Schulte, members of the board, Dr. Grigorski, good evening. I'm here tonight to
present to you the results of fiscal year 2022's financial statement audit and federal single audit.
Members of the engagement team included Laura Lynch as the senior manager,
Leanne Kerendang was the senior associate, and Uma was the associate working here on site through
fieldwork. Tom Peterson was the second partner reviewer. He was the engagement
quality control reviewer. He reviewed the annual comprehensive financial report,
the federal single audit report, and key work papers in our audit file. The audit
process itself takes several months to complete. There's two main phases of
fieldwork. During interim fieldwork, which occurs during the summer before the
fiscal year is over, we focus on testing internal controls or transactions that
are processed in accordance with your policies and procedures. We identify the
the major programs in the federal single audit and perform the majority of the compliance testing
during interim field work. Once the fiscal year is over, we return in the fall for final field
work where we focus on the account balances and testing the transaction classes in preparation
for the release of this report. During each month of these audits, we are gathering audit evidence
to support the opinion that we express on the financial statements. Ultimately, that's what
what we've been engaged to do is to express an opinion as to whether or not your financial
statements are fairly stated. I'm happy to report that our opinion on the district's
financial statements for fiscal year 2022 is unmodified. That is the best outcome in a financial
statement audit. So at the beginning of the financial section of the annual comprehensive
financial report, you'll find our letter that includes that unmodified opinion indicating to
the users of the financial statements that the financial statements are fairly presented and
and that they've been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.
We also issue a second report on the district's internal controls over financial reporting and
on compliance. Our audit procedures did not identify any material weaknesses or significant
deficiencies over internal control, nor did we identify any material noncompliance to the
financial statement. So good news here as well. And then the third and final report we issue is
over the district's administration of its federal programs, major programs for fiscal year,
2022 included your ESSER funding, which included several components of ESSER, as well as Title I Part A.
Your total expenditures of federal awards were just under $115 million for the year.
We also expressed an opinion in the federal single audit over your compliance over the requirements that are applicable to these major programs.
And the opinion here was unmodified as well.
No question cost and no noncompliance noted in the federal single audit.
So good news.
Looking at some of your financial statement highlights, your statement and net position is your balance sheet as of August 31st, 2022.
On an accrual basis of accounting, your total assets and your deferred outflows of resources total $3.4 billion.
Of that balance, that's primarily comprised of your cash and investments and your capital assets, your land, buildings, construction and progress, vehicles, furniture and equipment netted depreciation.
Your total liabilities and your deferred inflows of resources totaled $3.2 billion.
Of that balance, that's primarily comprised of your outstanding long-term bonds payable, $2.4 billion.
And then you report two liabilities related to your participation in the teacher retirement system at Texas.
The pension liability totaled $120.6 million.
And then the other post-employment benefit liabilities related to retiree health care was $244.2 million.
Those are two large numbers. TRS has auditors and actuaries that remeasure these amounts each and every year. Every employer that participates in TRS has to report their proportionate share of these liabilities in their financial statements.
This proportionate share is determined on total contributions made by each employer in relation to the total contributions made into the plan each and every year.
The difference between your assets and your liabilities and your outflows and your inflows is the net worth of the district as of the end of the fiscal year.
And that was $148.4 million as of August 31st, 2022.
Looking at the net pension liability, I just mentioned earlier it was $120.6 million.
You can see there was a significant decrease from the previous year when it was $240 million.
The TRS net pension liability is one year behind.
The $120.6 million net pension liability was measured at August 31st, 2021.
For the 12 months ended August 31st, 2021, the plan performed very well in regards to financial returns, investment returns, dividends.
that has changed dramatically since then so expect that liability to come right back up in the 240 to
250 million dollar range next year overall the plan is almost 89 percent funded so the pension
plan administered by TRS is a well-funded plan it's a great plan that teachers can rely on for
being there for their retiree benefit the net OPEB liability however for retiree health care is not
as well funded. You can see for fiscal year 2022 the percentage funded was six percent.
That's by design. This plan is not intended to have assets set aside earning interest for future
benefits. All the contributions that go into this plan each and every year from the employers, from
the state, from employees immediately go out to pay current year benefits for current retirees.
That's just how the plan is structured currently. The OPAIL liability was $244.2 million
million dollars as of the end of the fiscal year, which is in line with the prior year.
Looking at your general fund revenue, which is the district's main operating account,
total revenues in the general fund were $907 million.
Of that amount, 49% comes from your property taxes, another 42% comes from state funding,
and then you have the remaining 9% come from other state funding sources, which is primarily
primarily TRS on behalf. And then you have 2% that come from both federal funding and other
local miscellaneous funding. Looking at the expenditures in the general fund for fiscal
year 2022, those totaled $888.3 million for fiscal year 2022. Of that amount, 67% is related
to instruction and instruction-related services, 9% for facilities, maintenance, and operations,
7% FOR INSTRUCTIONAL AND SCHOOL LEADERSHIP.
STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES REPRESENTED 6% OF YOUR GENERAL FUND EXPENDITURES.
SECURITY MONITORING DATA PROCESSING SERVICES WAS 3%, AS WAS STUDENT TRANSPORTATION.
EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES AND GENERAL ADMINISTRATION WAS 2% OF YOUR GENERAL FUND EXPENDITURES AND
1% WAS OTHER EXPENDITURES.
I DID JOT DOWN SOME NUMBERS HERE TO PUT THESE PERCENTAGES IN PERSPECTIVE.
I do work on the audit of Fort Bend ISD, Lamar Consolidated ISD, Aleaf ISD, and Spring Branch ISD, which all happen to be neighboring districts.
So some of the percentages that I want to point out, instruction and instruction-related services, 67% for fiscal year 2022 for KDISD.
Fort Bend's percentage for fiscal year 2022 was 61%.
Lamar Consolidated's percentage for fiscal year 2022, 65%.
A-Leaf 64% and Spring Branch 63%. So you can see that Katie is putting more dollars on a percentage
basis into the classroom in comparison to those other districts. Looking at general administration,
which is just your general overhead of the district, the district's percentage for fiscal
year 22 was 2%. A-Leaf and Lamar Consolidated also had 2%, but Fort Bend and Spring Branch's
percentage was 3%. So just to give you an idea of how Fort Bend measures up with some neighboring
DISTRICTS IN THOSE CATEGORIES. GENERAL FUND BUDGET TO ACTUAL,
REVENUES WERE GREATER THAN BUDGETED AMOUNTS BY 4.3 MILLION.
EXPENDITURES WERE LESS THAN BUDGETED AMOUNTS BY 12.7 MILLION.
OVERALL, THE DISTRICT DID INCREASE ITS FUND BALANCE IN THE GENERAL FUND BY $19 MILLION
FOR AN ENDING FUND BALANCE POSITION OF 326.8 MILLION. THAT FUND BALANCE GETS REPORTED INTO
A FEW DIFFERENT CATEGORIES. YOUR NON-SPENDABLE FUND BALANCE IS 3.1 MILLION, WHICH IS RELATED TO
prepaids and inventories you have two categories of fund balance that are earmarked for specific
purposes by the board that's the committed fund balance or by management that's assigned fund
balance neither of those amounts have been spent they've merely been earmarked for particular
purposes those were 15.5 million and 64.1 million and then unassigned fund balance is what's
available for spending on any lawful purpose of 244.1 million that represents 27 and a half percent
OF YOUR GENERAL FUND EXPENDITURES,
WHICH IS MEETING THE BOARD POLICY,
WHICH IS SET AT HAVING AT LEAST 15%
OF UNASSIGNED FUND BALANCE OF OPERATING EXPENDITURES.
YOUR FOOD SERVICE AND DEBT SERVICE FUND
BUDGET TO ACTUAL RESULTS ARE ON THIS SLIDE.
REVENUES IN YOUR FOOD SERVICE FUND
ARE GREATER THAN BUDGETED REVENUES.
EXPENDITURES OF $40.5 MILLION
WERE LESS THAN BUDGETED EXPENDITURES BY $300,000.
OVERALL, YOU HAD AN INCREASE IN FUND BALANCE
IN THIS FUND OF 15.8 MILLION FOR AN ENDING BALANCE OF 26.2 MILLION. THE DEBT SERVICE FUND
HAD ACTUAL REVENUES OF 182.8 MILLION. THIS IS THE INTEREST AND SINKING PORTION OF YOUR TAX RATE
FOR THE REPAYMENT OF PRINCIPAL AND INTEREST. EXPENDITURES WERE LESS THAN BUDGETED AMOUNTS BY
0.1 MILLION. OVERALL FUND BALANCE IN THIS FUND DECREASED BY $3 MILLION FOR AN ENDING FUND BALANCE
OF 59.9 MILLION. THE DISTRICT'S ACCOUNTING POLICIES ARE IN LINE WITH INDUSTRY STANDARDS.
the district's following all current pronouncements. The district did implement a new
pronouncement related to how leases are accounted and reported in the financial statements, so that
implementation did take place and was made by management. There are estimates in the financial
statements. Estimates can change in the future. Some of the more significant estimates include
anything related to state funding and those accruals, your allowances for uncollectible
receivables, and anything related to pension and other post-employment benefits is by far the
largest estimate your financial statements these have been recorded and presented in accordance
with generally accepted accounting principles happy to report that we didn't have any difficulties in
performing and completing the audit so i would like to thank the district district management
the entire district staff for their cooperation because we do ask for a lot of information we
select many samples and we ask to meet with a lot of individuals so the audit was given
an utmost priority by the district at all times so we do thank the district for that cooperation
our procedures did not identify any misstatements that we had to bring to management
attention no disagreements with management on any matters the last form of audit evidence we
obtained as a management representation letter from the district indicating to us that they've
provided us with all the information we've requested and that nothing's been withheld
that would need to be recorded or disclosed in the financial statements as far as we're aware
THE DISTRICT'S NOT CONSULTING WITH ANY OTHER AUDITORS OR ACCOUNTANTS ON ANY MATTERS.
AND THEN THE LAST BULLET ON THIS SLIDE, DURING THE YEAR WE ARE AVAILABLE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS AND
PROVIDE INFORMATION AND GUIDANCE IN REGARDS TO AUDITING OR ACCOUNTING OR FINANCIAL REPORTING,
BUT IN NO TIME DO WE FEEL THE WAY WE ANSWER THE POSITION WE TAKE IS A CONDITION AS TO OUR
RETENTION AS THE DISTRICT'S EXTERNAL AUDITORS. SO THAT CONCLUDES MY PRESENTATION OVER THE AUDIT
RESULTS AND THE AUDIT PROCESS, THE HIGHLIGHTS AND THE REQUIRED COMMUNICATIONS. IF THERE ARE ANY
QUESTIONS, I'D BE HAPPY TO TAKE THOSE QUESTIONS AT THIS TIME.
NEW SPEAKER I WOULD JUST LIKE TO TELL YOU, YOU WENT THROUGH A LOT OF INFORMATION VERY
QUICKLY.
THAT WAS AWESOME.
THANK YOU.
THAT WAS IMPRESSIVE.
ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS, BOARD MEMBERS?
NEW SPEAKER PRESIDENT?
NEW SPEAKER YES.
NEW SPEAKER JUST SINCE YOU WENT THROUGH ALL THE NUMBERS FOR THE OTHER DISTRICTS, I ASSUME
THAT THERE'S A COMMON CHART OF ACCOUNTS THAT EACH DISTRICT BOOKS EVERYTHING THE SAME WAY
AND THEY'RE ALL COMPARABLE NUMBERS TO EACH OTHER?
NEW SPEAKER YES.
Yes, all school districts in the state of Texas have to follow the same chart of accounts.
The percentages I mentioned earlier were all for fiscal year 2022 audited figures for all the school districts.
Okay, thank you.
Any other questions?
Mr. President, I'm just curious, how long does this take for your company to do?
I'm just curious.
We start in the spring with preliminary planning, interim field work.
we're on site for two weeks but we're planning in preparation for that a two
week field work year in field work is another two to three weeks where we're
on site working with the district I mean that only adds up to you know four to
six weeks on site so we're not here 52 weeks out of the year like your staff is
that's why we rely on on sampling to ensure that the conclusions that we
reach is representative of the overall population so I just wanted to say that
you spend a lot of time doing this and then like mr schulte said you summed it up within like three
minutes and i really appreciate that and although some people may not think that this is riveting
information my daughter is about to be an auditor for ernest and young so she would probably love
this i really appreciate um the work that you do thank you any other questions if not i'll
entertain a motion did you have something mr smith i just i just want to wrap up by saying
and we're not quite done with this yet.
We're gonna spit shine the document
that you have in front of you,
the 178 page document that you have.
That was an internal document that obviously they review,
but Ms. Smith and her staff of what, seven accountants
work on that report and we do that in-house ourselves.
Some districts hire Whitley Penn to do that.
We do it ourselves.
But we will submit this,
in fact we've already packaged the data,
the numbers from every campus all the way up to this report has been packaged
up by Miss Smith and her staff in PEMS that will be submitted to the Texas
Education Agency this week or in the next week ten days and that is how we
get the information and the state keeps it in their database to compare all the
other districts when with instructional expenses etc etc so that's going to be
wrapped up we'll upload this document this 178 page document will be uploaded to tea within the
next couple of days we'll do reporting to the federal clearinghouse and eight or ten other
agencies that we have to report and send this information to and it's still a lot of work that
that needs to be done but that all starts after the approval of the board tonight and again i want
to thank mr garcia and his team for their partnership and their thorough review of our books
and then again Kayla and her accounting staff and Jamie Hines in his leadership
for that department too for all the work that they do again they have a regular
job to do and when the auditors come in it's just layered in on top of it to get
everything to prepare for them to be in and so appreciate y'all's efforts on
that great effort great results this president relations Finance Department
Mr. Farmer, thank you very much.
And Mr. Garcia, thank you as a board member,
knowing all the things you just shared that y'all do,
just gives me the confidence knowing,
I already know they do a great job,
but it's nice to have that additional look at it to say,
and everything's above board.
So thank you very much.
Mr. President, I move that the Board of Trustees
approves the 2021-2022 Annual Financial Audit Report.
Second.
We have a motion by Mr. Redman.
minutes second with a tie so I'm gonna by miss van will now proceed to vote
board members please record your vote on the screen the motion passes 7-0 will
10.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of an instructional materials adoption for elementary literacy resources to begin implementation district-wide in the 2023-2024 school year.
now proceed to agenda item 10.4 discuss and consider board approval of an
infant in instructional materials adoption for elementary literacy
resources to begin implementation district-wide in the 2023-2024 school
year the presenters dr. Sine bell assistant superintendent for teaching
and learning. Good evening. Good evening. I know Mr. Smith thinks his topic is the most exciting,
but I think I have the most exciting topic tonight. Good evening, President Schulte,
board members, and Dr. Gagorski. Tonight I will be presenting an elementary literacy update as
well as making a recommendation for an instructional materials adoption for elementary literacy
resources to begin implementation district-wide in the 2023-2024 school year. Before I begin,
Again, I would like to acknowledge the members of the Elementary Literacy Task Force,
which is comprised of teachers, instructional coaches, principals, and central office staff,
including assistant superintendents for elementary school leadership and support.
And we have many of those members here tonight.
In addition, I would like to recognize the consultants who have assisted us through this process,
and they include instruction partners, which is led by Ms. Melody Blackwood, who is present this evening,
AS WELL AS DR. THEA WOODRIFF, WHO IS SERVING AS OUR INDEPENDENT LITERACY CONSULTANT.
DR. WOODRIFF HAS TRAVELED FROM AUSTIN TO BE WITH US THIS EVENING.
THE ELEMENTARY LITERACY WORK IS PART OF THE DISTRICT'S STRATEGIC DESIGN GOAL 1.3, WHICH
CHARGES THE DISTRICT WITH CREATING A 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 the guide for literacy curriculum, instructional, and materials
adoption.
To achieve the strategic design goal, I have outlined the scope of the work into four phases.
Phase one, which included assembling the support team, applying for the TEA Strong's Foundation
Grant, and applying a rubric to determine which instructional materials to review, was
completed in August.
Details about the work in this phase were shared during the October 24th board meeting.
Phase two, which I will focus on tonight, includes the development of the literacy framework,
the selection of new materials, and rewriting of the reading language arts curriculum, as
well as instructional guidance.
Phase 3 and 4, which focus on the training and implementation of the curriculum, will
begin in June of 2023 and conclude in August of 2024.
The Literacy Task Force has met monthly since September and has engaged in independent work
outside of the scheduled task force meeting to provide input on the collective vision.
Each task force meeting has included learning sessions about research-based instructional
INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES AND THE IMPORTANCE OF USING DATA TO ADDRESS THE NEEDS OF STUDENTS
FROM ALL BACKGROUNDS.
THESE LEARNING SESSIONS SERVED AS THE FOUNDATION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE KDISD ELEMENTARY
LITERACY FRAMEWORK, AS WELL AS THE CREATION OF THE INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS REVIEW RUBRIC.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LITERACY FRAMEWORK WAS FACILITATED BY INSTRUCTION PARTNERS, WHO
IS SERVING AS OUR TEA APPROVED TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE PROVIDER.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INSTRUCTIONAL FRAMEWORK IS A REQUIREMENT OF THE TEA STRONG FOUNDATIONS GRANT PROGRAM.
THE PURPOSE OF THE GRANT IS TO SUPPORT A COMPREHENSIVE COLLECTIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE AMONG CAMPUS AND DISTRICT STAFF
THAT FOCUSES ON THE TEXAS ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS AND WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS ABOUT HOW STUDENTS LEARN BEST AS IT RELATES TO LITERACY.
The goal of the framework is to help districts ensure all existing instructional priorities and practices are aligned with research and to build a shared understanding and unified vision around literacy instruction.
The final version of the literacy framework will be submitted to TEA in February.
The slide you are viewing outlines some of the key activities the Literacy Task Force
engaged in during the Literacy Framework development process.
The instructional material selection process was twofold.
The publishers that were selected to participate in the instructional materials review process
PROCESS PRESENTED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE LITERACY TASK FORCE. EACH PUBLISHING COMPANY RECEIVED
THE INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS REVIEW RUBRIC PRIOR TO THEIR SCHEDULED PRESENTATION TIME
AND WERE TOLD TO ENSURE THEIR PRESENTATIONS WERE FOCUSED ON THE IDENTIFIED DISTRICT NEEDS
AS OUTLINED IN THE RUBRIC. THE FOUR AREAS OF THE RUBRIC THAT PUBLISHERS PRESENTED TO
THE TASK FORCE INCLUDED FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS, TEXT COMPLEXITY, KNOWLEDGE COHERENCE, AND
and writing.
After the publisher presentations,
individual task force members rated each resource
using the instructional materials review rubric,
and then table facilitators led small group discussion
about the resource using the rubric
to compile a small group score on the four components.
In addition to publisher presentations,
the literacy task force engaged in a lesson simulation
facilitated by instruction partners utilizing a lesson
from each instructional resource this helped the literacy task force experience what a lesson would
feel like from a student perspective and what the lesson design experience would feel like from the
teacher perspective the last phase of the literacy task force review process included a deep review
of each instructional resource this included a comprehensive review of publishers materials for
both teachers and students at each grade level in both English and Spanish.
This also included a review of all supplemental materials, assessments, and digital resources.
After the comprehensive review, table leaders facilitated the collective small group scoring
process.
Each group completed the instructional materials review rubric, which included a rating and
rationale for each component of the rubric.
The Literacy Task Force also identified strengths of each instructional resource and areas where supplemental support and instructional guidance would be needed.
Stakeholders, which included teachers, principals, instructional coaches, support staff, and community members, had the opportunity to engage in stakeholder feedback from November 10th through November 30th.
stakeholders also had the opportunity to review resources online as well including face-to-face
from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. during that window the instructional materials rubric was made available
for stakeholders to use to provide feedback before publishing companies that participated
in the instructional materials review process include amplify Texas Houghton milfin Harcourt
which from this point forward I will refer to as HMH, McGraw-Hill, and Savas.
The first part of the rubric focuses on the research-based instructional strategies that align with teaching literacy.
Foundational skills include systematic and explicit foundational skills instruction based on the science of teaching reading,
reading, including phonemic awareness, phonological processing, phonics, oral language, morphology,
word recognition, print concepts, and fluency.
Text complexity ensures that complex texts are at the center of all reading lessons,
including those with unconventional structures, implicit meaning or layers of meaning, unfamiliar
vocabulary, and figurative language.
Knowledge coherence focuses on building background knowledge with students prior to reading to enhance comprehension.
Text-dependent vocabulary is explicitly taught prior to instruction and applied while reading.
Writing includes instruction that is explicitly and systematically taught and modeled.
The next three slides will show how the different groups rated the research-based instructional strategies for each resource.
This graph represents how the Literacy Task Force rated the research-based instructional strategies for each resource, according to the rubric.
This graph represents how the stakeholders rated the research-based instructional strategies for each resource, according to the rubric.
And this is the English Language Arts resource, the English version.
This graph represents how the stakeholders rated the Spanish version of the resource
according to the rubric.
The second part of the rubric focuses on the instructional components of the resource.
Differentiation includes differentiated support based on students' diverse needs to accelerate
grade level content or intervene to close gaps.
gaps. All learner needs are considered. Bi-literacy includes native language foundational skills,
strategic and aligned literacy instruction across two languages, cross-language transfer,
metalinguistic skills, dual language assessments, the use of literacy for and in academic study
in both languages. First Teach includes daily instruction that is systematic and explicit
using on grade level content assessment includes embedded assessments both
formal and informal and materials to drive whole group and small group
instruction that strategically moves towards move students toward grade level
proficiency this graph represents how the literacy task force rated the
instructional components for each resource according to the rubric
THIS GRAPH REPRESENTS HOW THE STAKEHOLDERS RATED THE INSTRUCTIONAL COMPONENTS FOR EACH
RESOURCE ACCORDING TO THE RUBRIC.
THIS GRAPH REPRESENTS HOW THE STAKEHOLDERS RATED THE SPANISH LANGUAGE ARTS INSTRUCTIONAL
COMPONENTS FOR EACH RESOURCE ACCORDING TO THE RUBRIC.
The final section of the rubric focuses on student engagement.
Student talk addresses the multiple opportunities that allow for student-led conversations using academic vocabulary.
Students participate in partnerships, group work, student-driven questioning, and thinking to improve understanding.
student tasks ensure that reading and writing tasks are authentic meaningful
and challenge students that to think deeply about the text questioning
ensures that students are asked to answer meaningful and open-ended
questions that push their thinking about the text independent reading focuses on
using self-selected grade appropriate text independent writing focuses on
practicing the recursive writing process to compose multiple texts that are
meaningful legible and use appropriate conventions this graph represents how
the literacy task force rated student engagement for each resource according
to the rubric this graph represents how the stakeholders rate it
student engagement for each resource, according to the rubric.
This graph represents how the stakeholders rated the Spanish language arts student engagement components for each resource, according to the rubric.
This chart illustrates the overall score for each resource by group.
group. After reviewing all data from the instructional materials review process, the Literacy Task
Force makes the following recommendation. The selection for the Reading Language Arts
Core Resource is HMH. The purchase of this resource includes many instructional components
including hardbound anthologies, teacher and student digital access, teacher guides, trade
grade books, big books, classroom libraries, digital library access, interactive read-alouds,
decodable text, digital assessment program with Tier 1 intervention support, ELL teacher
guide, and 100 days of professional development over the course of seven years.
In addition to the core instructional resource, HMH also has a digital assessment program.
program.
AMERA will replace the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment Program that is currently
used to assess students for House Bill 3 requirements.
AMERA also provides students with targeted direct instruction based on their assessment
needs.
While there are many strong components to HMH collectively, we would like to recommend
selecting a K-3 foundational skills supplement that strongly aligns to the House Bill 3 Reading
Academy.
The selection of this supplemental resource is pending release of the Commissioner's List of Approved Resources, which is scheduled to be released by January 2023.
Phase 3 of the Strategic Design Action Plan will focus on curriculum development, professional learning that focuses on reading development and literacy instructional best practices,
and training on the implementation of new instructional materials.
Once again, this slide shows the big rocks in each action phase.
And I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have.
Before we get started in questions, I would just like to provide some background.
I think this became a strategic goal in, was it April?
Yes.
Or was it April?
Yes.
And then shortly after that, we decided to form a literacy subcommittee from the board,
which was myself, Mr. Redman, and Ms. Wilson.
And we met with the task force.
It seemed like every couple weeks, once a month, it was the biggest gap that we got
because there was so much information.
We wanted to make sure that they felt supported,
and we couldn't wait until every formal board meeting to give you guys feedback.
back so three board members probably have 20 30 40 hours of additional
background at least on this data so we're an unfair advantage I would say so
I just want to see if you see I'm gonna ask some questions because I know other
folks just were not able to because of the open meetings act we just couldn't
have everybody in every review session so just a couple questions I have before
open it up to the floor but I think it's valuable information is we ended up with
with four. Can you give us a little history? How do we go from everything out there? Let me back up even further than that.
I knew nothing about literacy about two years ago. I still don't know a whole lot, but I've learned a lot about it.
And when people say, what are we really doing here? Right. And I have a very simple mind.
This is how my mind thinks about what we're doing. Right. When I looked at the Lucy Calkins or the units of study,
what I found out, again, I'm going to say it the worst possible way.
I don't mean to insult anyone, but it's basically cueing,
or I call it guessing.
You look at pictures, and you kind of guess how to read.
You're kind of guessing, whereas the science of reading
is more based on decoding, where, you know,
if I had a dollar when I was a kid,
every time a teacher said, sound it out, that's decoding.
And anyway, over the years, it's been back and forth,
but certainly the last few years,
IT'S BEEN MORE ON THE CUEING METHOD, RIGHT?
AND THE TEA AND STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION
HAVE REALLY PUT AN EMPHASIS ON MOVING TO SCIENCE OF READING,
AND THAT'S WHERE THEY DID THESE, WHAT WERE THOSE THINGS?
THE READING ACADEMY.
THE READING ACADEMY, WHICH THEY DID A FEW YEARS AGO
WHERE THE TEACHERS WOULD GO, AND TEA AND STATE BOARD,
NO, WE REALLY LIKE THE DECODING METHOD,
SO THEY STARTED DOING ALL THAT.
AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED IS KATIE HAD,
TEA WAS PUSHING THE SCIENCE OF READING,
BUT KATIE HAD SOME RESOURCES THAT WERE MORE BASED
in the units of study. So we tried to mix those two, but they're kind of almost mutually exclusive.
So what we're trying to do is, this is a monumental effort, what we're trying to do here. Dr. Bell
and Dr. Kasky and the task force, it's a monumental effort we're trying. We're basically trying to
change from a cuing teaching methodology to a decoding. It's a big deal. It's a very big deal.
And these folks have put in a lot of time, instructional resources have done a great job.
and I see thanks Dr. Woodruff for driving in from Austin.
I'm sure they told you we'd be on this agenda item at 630,
so we'd probably owe you a dinner or something.
But anyway, thank you for coming.
So I guess my first question for those is how did we narrow down
from everything we could have looked at to four?
Can you give us like just a thumb eye view, a bird's eye view of how we did that?
Sure, absolutely.
So number one, we wanted to make sure that whatever resource we purchased
was 100% aligned to the TEEX.
Secondly, we wanted to ensure that we had a resource that was both in English and Spanish.
That's very important that our teachers are using the same resource.
We also wanted to ensure that we use the TRR, which is the Texas Resource Review, which is supported through TEA,
and they review high-quality instructional materials, and they rate them extensively.
It is on the website. You can go and review any resource and you can see how it's rated and it breaks down different components of that resource.
And so that was the resource that we utilized to ensure that we were meeting all the requirements, including ensuring that whatever resource we selected was aligned to the science of reading.
So when we went through that rubric, what came out was really three resources came out that met all of that criteria.
And we were prepared, getting ready to make a decision on those three, and I kind of got
on the speaking circuit because everybody, hey, Schulte's talking a lot about this, so
people would ask me to come talk, and I started talking to other districts, and I kept hearing
the amplify word, which amplify is something that we ended up adding at the request of
the board because I kept hearing the TEA talking about amplify, amplify, other districts talking
about amplify.
So right before the December meeting, I said, I got to understand why is everybody talking
about amplify but it didn't make our short list so can you again just trying
to tell the story can you give us the just just give us the same two or three
minute on why did amplify get added and what did we find out about amplify so as
you mentioned amplify was added at the request of the subcommittee for us to
review so we invited them in to participate in the review process just
as the others that had met the met the the list I will say that in looking at
the TRR, the Texas Resource Review, Amplify was not on the Texas Resource Review. So that is why
it was not chosen as one for us to invite in. But we answered the call, we invited them to
participate in our selection process. And so there were some additional questions about Amplify and
some of the components of it. So I did visit with members from the TEA to inquire about,
for example there were some grant funds that were available if you were
selecting amplify and I wanted to know if we're utilizing the Texas Resource
Review and this is a viable tool to help districts make instructional materials
selections are there any other grant funds available for resources that may
not be amplify and at this time there are not but what I did learn about
about Amplify is that it was acquired through TEA
as an open education resource,
which means TEA owns it and can modify it in perpetuity.
And so they are working through some of the adjustments
and there are some districts that are utilizing Amplify
and TEA is utilizing their feedback to make the product,
to make it stronger, to meet the various needs that we have.
Okay, I got just a few more questions. Just again, guiding questions, feedback. The other thing, two immediate ones, is how many people participated in these feedback sessions, both teachers and stakeholders? Because I think what I recall was the data was a pretty amazing turnout.
It was our largest ever. So the task force, we have approximately 50 members on the task force.
And then we had 269 rubrics submitted. So 269 individual submissions to rate the resources,
which is the most that we've ever had. We also had 493 views of the instructional materials
via Canvas, which means some people weren't able to come face to face. They may have looked at the
instructional materials online. We were able to track the analytics of how many
people had visited Canvas to look at material. So it's very, very high interest
in this selection. Okay and then the other thing that came up in December,
again we pulled it from the December agenda because the board subcommittee
had some questions that we need answered and you guys answered them all. But the
other, I think the other question we had is how engaged was Dr. Woodworth in the
the review development of the rubrics and the review of the material.
She is the expert, quote, unquote.
I know instructional resource is that expert, too.
But we obviously hired our internal people to do the review.
But we've been teaching this way, and we're moving to that way.
And I wanted to say, well, what would the expert that's been doing it the way we want to go,
what was her opinion?
And I don't know if Dr. Woodruff can speak, but I would, you know,
what we put on what did Dr. Woodruff think of all of those four that we had,
or if there was something else, what was her recommendation?
Sure, and I'll allow her to come and speak, but I'll just say I've utilized Dr. Woodruff's expertise over the course of this process,
including before we selected materials to review, getting her feedback on the ones that we narrowed down according to the TRR,
her thoughts on those instructional materials prior to the review, as well as she has reviewed our literacy framework.
She has reviewed both all of the resources, but she did an in-depth review of the HMH
resource as well as looking at the Amplify resource.
So I will let her speak if she would like to add her thoughts.
And she's here.
I think she can speak.
She drove all the way from Austin, right?
So thank you for- She didn't just come for the Panera dinner.
Thank you for being here tonight, Dr. Woodruff.
I really appreciate it.
I don't know if you're going to be able to hear me.
Hopefully the AC has stopped because this thing is really low.
Yeah, we can hear you fine.
I'm very tall.
all. She's wearing heels. So I reviewed both HMH and Amplify at Sinead's request and the committee's
request. Basically looking at those different components, HMH came out either ahead or even
with Amplify, except for two different components. One was foundational skills. So Amplify was
stronger in K-2 foundational skills. The problem with Amplify, though, is it doesn't have much in
in three through five when it comes to word reading.
So what happens in around third grade
is we start to switch into more like multi-syllabic word
reading.
So there's still some of that in a little bit in kinder first
and second, but we really do a lot with multi-syllabic word
reading in three through five.
Amplify doesn't have much with that.
There's a little bit with morphology,
which means prefixes, suffixes, roots, base words.
And there's a little bit with etymologies,
which is kind of interesting because etymology is not
something that's been researched really about teaching kids the etymology the
history the word history right of words it's kind of fun stuff kids kind of like
to learn about that stuff but it's not essential necessarily so we don't have
research that shows it's essential and amplify didn't seem to have much with
that there's some in third grade with spelling but then once you get into
fourth and fifth grade there's not a huge amount HMH actually has some stuff
more so in third fourth and fifth grade they apply from what I could see the
the materials I'm looking at.
But you would need to build in some more with HMH
around morphology and around more explicit instruction
so that there's kind of daily activities
and daily practice with that.
The other area where Amplify came out a little bit stronger
was assessment.
But you're replacing the Fountas and Pinnell
with a different assessment now, which incorporates
like TPRI, for example, which is an evidence-based assessment
in K through 2, which actually goes to K through 3
if you want to use it. So that's good. But HMH was stronger in several areas. English language
learner support, much stronger than Amplify. It was also stronger with differentiation to some
extent, differentiation for English language learners based on language, you know, using
TELPAS data, right? It was also slightly stronger in a few other components like
questioning component. It's actually probably one of the strongest when it comes to writing.
So, a lot of the other programs don't do as good a job as building in writing and writing
in response to reading.
And HMH is probably, in the materials I look at, is probably the strongest.
You will have to still focus teachers and teach them how to do that a little bit more
explicitly with the materials, but it's definitely got the best foundation when it comes to teaching
writing.
So, my recommendation was HMH has a lot of these other components that are pretty strong
or you know stronger or equal to amplify so I said why don't you just get it and
get a foundational good foundational skills to kind of beef up that K through
two or K through three I mean I would say K through three just because it'll
be hard for third grade teachers because they got star and they don't think about
teaching word reading as much as they probably should but but I would say K
through three and then you're already looking at replacing the assessment
piece so that would be my other record so just to simplify all that very good
Very good summary is your recommendation after reviewing it was go with HMH
Get a different assessment tool and get you guys know my term was to bolt on get a bolt on for the foundational skills
Yeah, and that's a good
That that's a that's a good recommendation. That's what you support, right? Yeah
For me, you know, again, this is not my backyard, right? I'm an engineer and project manager
I was thinking there's this one-stop shop. We're gonna go out there and there's gonna be this. Oh, it's gonna come down
It's a one-stop shop and it's the best on planet Earth and everyone's indisputable and that just doesn't exist every like said amplifies
Good, but not good. HMH is good. Not good
So there wasn't anything perfect. The other thing just to be for full transparency is
Some of the concerns that some of the board members had about HMH was they have a leveled reading component
Which is carryover from the stuff that we don't want to do anymore
Yeah
And tell us what you would say about the leveled reading component of HMH.
So the leveling part of HMH is really about their small group instruction.
So that is one of their recommendations when they look at differentiation is using leveling.
They do have other options, so that's kind of one of them.
And what I would just say is you're moving away from using that assessment already.
Your teacher should not be leveling students anyway.
They should not be using an assessment that levels students.
So you really can almost ignore, because all that does is it just says use your leveling information.
Well, you're not going to be collecting that.
My recommendation would be you're not going to be collecting that data anymore.
So that's just like one little piece.
If you look on the differentiation page, it says use your leveling data.
You're not going to have that anyway, so you can just ignore that.
And then we can teach the teachers.
The other, my big emphasis is instruction.
You all are focused on curriculum and curriculum.
I'm focused on teaching teachers actually how to teach in the classroom.
And so I would say what you're just going to need to do, and this would be true in any
program you get.
I have yet to see a core, what I call these, core reading program that does a really good job with teaching teachers how to differentiate in small group based on word reading, right?
So these foundational skills.
So you're already going to have to go in and help teachers collect their data, analyze their data, and then differentiate their instruction in small group based on that data.
So based on your TPI data, your oral reading fluency data, and not leveling students anymore.
more. So that's just that. That is actually kind of a small piece of HMH that you can just teach
teachers to ignore and then fill that in, fill that gap in with the more evidence-based kinds
of data and then showing them how to actually teach in those small groups. That's what I have
to do a lot of when I go to districts and do this work. Typically, one of the first things I get
asked to do is, one, help them analyze data. I'm going up to a district up in North Texas in
February. I'm going to help them analyze all their middle-of-year screening data and look at
beginning-of-year to middle-of-year, help them use that data to group students. And then I go
in classrooms that actually model what to do in small groups because teachers just don't
know how to take those foundational skills and teach them in small groups.
That's really what you should be doing in small groups because you get four times the
impact doing that word level stuff in small group than you get doing it whole group.
You don't really get much of a difference doing comprehension stuff.
It's good in whole group.
It's good in small group.
There's not really much of a difference.
What we have to do is we have to help teachers understand what that small group, that differentiated
small group instruction looks like.
There's no program that does a good job of doing that.
That's really on instructional coaches and your CNI department really providing that support to teachers. I think I asked you
You know in our last meeting I asked you I said, you know if we're going this direction
I don't want to spend ten million dollars. I mean go in this direction. I must spend ten million dollars. I won't be going
That's the goal here and and you said what I heard you say, you know what words you I'll tell you what I heard
What I heard was HMH
WITH THE NEW ASSESSMENT TOOL, WITH THE BOLT ON FOR FOUNDATIONAL READ K-3, WE'RE GOING
THIS WAY.
AND PROVIDING THE INSTRUCTIONAL SUPPORT.
AND DR.
BALAEVA, THAT'S PROBABLY MY FINAL QUESTION.
I'LL OPEN IT UP.
THE FINAL QUESTION IS PART OF THE NEXT PHASE IS NOT ONLY THE CURRICULUM RUNNING, BUT IS
THE INSTRUCTIONAL TEACHING TEACHERS HOW TO, I THINK THAT'S WHAT THE READING ACADEMIES
DID TOO, BUT THEY'RE GOING TO HAVE THE READING ACADEMY, THEY'RE GOING TO COME BACK AND HAVE
INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCES AND CURRICULUM THAT MATCH WHAT THEY'RE LEARNING IN THE READING
academy and they're going to have the the one-on-one or whatever teaching to hey we're going
this way now and really help them it's going to be hard it's going to be bump it that sure there's
going to be some resistance but but that's what we're going to do the way you say that makes it
seem like i wish i can snap my fingers and say yeah it's done it is going to be a lot of work
in fact this is the easiest part of the entire process is selecting a resource it was it's a
a very important and critical part and I feel after today we really will begin to
move forward full steam ahead on all of those components in terms of teaching
support training support and not just for our teachers but training for our
administrators training for instructional coaches getting everyone
United around how we teach literacy and KDISD what that looks like in the
classroom what practices we will keep what practices we will sunset it is
going to be a process and this is a huge case study and change management and how
you you change a district in terms of meeting the needs of 45,000 students and
thousands of teachers so this part right here is very critical and important but
the real work really begins tonight in my dreams when I begin to think about
next steps and does the 10 million include the bolt-ons the new assessment
tool and the K-3 foundational skills? Yes. And so I will say that we are awaiting the commissioner's
list of resources. So I can't give you that hard. This is the final, but that should encompass
everything, including all of the additional supports. It does include the assessment and HMH,
and then we will stick to that ballpark that we have to kind of play around with in terms of that
that number to purchase the supplemental foundational skills resource.
I know we close off every board interaction with you, and I think all the board members ask you,
but I ask you, is there anything else you need from us to be successful?
And I want to do that in public here because I want everybody to hear,
do you need anything else from us to help you get this done?
Yes, I will need additional staffing.
We are currently not staffed to support a change of this scale.
You know, you can't sit at central office and work and then think that we had a board meeting, we have new resources, now everybody go do it.
You've got to be out in the field and in order to do that I'm going to need some additional support to help implement the change.
And so I'm working with Dr. Caskey on a recommendation for the staffing units that will be needed to support our instructional coaches.
They're going to need the support as they're supporting their classroom teachers.
So I will need additional staffing support.
And that'll be built into the budget that Mr. Smith's working on, correct?
Yes.
Okay, I'll quit talking now, and I'll let all the other board members ask questions.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for all this work.
This is amazing.
This is really monumental.
It's a great step forward.
So I just had some real basic stuff,
but we're going to be doing more basic, explicit instruction of reading,
more just sounding out words focusing on the letter and sounds so we're shifting
to more of that versus what we were doing before correct okay well our kids
be better spellers well we have spelling tests well a component of HMH includes
and that part of the assessment component does include spelling and
word study so I can't tell you exactly what all those components are going to
look like and will spelling tests look like spelling tests like when we were in
school but there will be study explicit instruction in spelling explicit instruction in word study so
those skills that teachers have learned in the house bill 3 reading academy will directly transfer
into what they're teaching and how they're supporting students in the classroom okay do
thank you do we think that this will this change will maybe reduce unnecessary sped referrals
and interventions, identifications over time?
Well, I think any time you focus in on maybe some things
that maybe have not been as strong in previous years,
it potentially could.
Not all of those SPED referrals are related to reading.
So I think what I will say, I don't think it's going to harm children.
So I would hope that we could begin to see a reduction in SPED
and dyslexia referrals, if that's what you're referring to.
Yeah, will this be a difficult transition for teachers because a lot of them have been,
they were raised, if you will, but also they were raised under the old sort of regime, if you will,
and maybe still hanging on to that.
It will be a significant change, yes.
And that's where the support comes in.
I think the support is very important and also the time to implement the change
and not to expect some magical result overnight.
night. Anytime that you form a new habit, there is that grieving process of what was as you embrace
what's new. And so there will be significant change management pieces that will have to be
very intentional about. But the support definitely is critical in being there to help teachers feel
supported through the change process. And this will be implemented across the board, in other
In other words, every school?
Yes.
Okay.
On the $10 million, what's the timing of those expenditures?
Well, that kind of, once we have the approval of the resource,
then we can begin to look at those pieces.
We'll work closely with the finance department, grant finance as well.
There will be a lot of different places where we'll pull the money from.
And so I think once we have the approval,
what we can begin to talk about when we can start procuring those materials we have a lot of
different things to work through in terms of where we're going to store those materials we definitely
need them for training we definitely need them as quickly as we can for the development of the
curriculum so as quickly as we can begin moving um we'll we'll do that but it would be all in
what the first year or spread it out over two or three years or any idea in terms of acquiring the
resources the 10 million any any any thought i'll just say that you know as soon as uh
we determine what pocket it's going to come out on later this this week we'll uh we'll prepare a
budget amendment that will come to the board next month um for the any expenses that in this fiscal
year out of the general fund uh and i will probably uh start approving requisitions between
now and this time next month so we can get some of this stuff in the works and
get it going we don't want to wait on getting this stuff in so we can start
implementing this these materials so I will have to start doing some overrides
so I ask for your forgiveness now but we will follow it up with a budget
amendment at this next month meeting and some of these costs are going to be one
time front and loaded run and loaded I get to be so the cost that you saw takes
takes care of this adoption until the next adoption, which is 2031.
Okay.
So this will be our resource until we have our next IMA adoption.
Any ESSER funding available for part of this?
There will be ESSER funding that will be available for this, yes.
The general fund in ESSER is what we've discussed as the primary resources to procure this.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Yes.
Yes.
So I have several questions.
I'm going to ask a couple, and then I'll let Mrs. Champagne talk.
So I could hear, is it Dr. Woodruff is her name?
Yes.
I could listen to her talk all day and night.
So smart, I want to be her.
So when I heard something very different than I think what Mr. Schulte heard,
so I would kind of like to ask her.
She was talking about Amplify has this, and HMH has this, and you could do Amplify,
or you could do.
I felt a more even kind of this one has this hole, this one has this hole.
Sorry for saying holes, but that's kind of what I had.
So my question is if Amplify is adopted by the state, they own it,
and they can make changes to it as they want to, as they see the need,
is that the better fit for us?
I saw the bar graphs.
I saw that it wasn't rated as highly as HMH.
But when Dr. Woodruff talked, she said this one has a really good piece here,
but it doesn't have that and now we're having to out in a foundational piece because hmh is missing
something when amplify can be modified because the state owns it and because there's a grant
why is that not the better fit for us i'll answer the question and if you want to hear from dr
woodruff i can always yes i can do that for you as well um i did speak with tea about the amplify
product and that's where I learned that it was TEA is working through improving
the product based on those districts who are using it in the pilot version is
what TEA told me and so over the course of the next several years extending into
2025 TEA has published the changes that they are proposing to amplify over the
next three years per se and so in looking at that particular resource is
Is it packaged ready?
And this is where Dr. Woodruff can give her expertise.
Is it packaged and ready to go right now in a way that meets all of the needs as outlined by the rubric?
And the assessment that you saw is not scoring like the other resources are.
So I'll let Dr. Woodruff kind of give her opinion on that.
I expected by the bar graphs that she would be like, oh, no, it doesn't come close.
but when I heard you speak, I felt a more level field.
So let's...
Yeah, I would agree with that.
I think it's more level than what the bar graphs show.
I do think there were more components that HMH...
I don't have my...
Like, I'd have to open up my computer
and actually look at my rubric to, like, tell you exactly which ones.
But HMH came out above Amplify on more items
than Amplify came out above HMH.
There were several that were pretty even to me.
So my recommendation was to just go ahead.
since HMH was one that clearly your stakeholders like, you know, and really appreciated,
I'm going to tell you, I'll just be honest to you, and this is not a research or an evidence-based
thing. If you handed me Amplify to start using right now as a teacher, I would freak out because
it is very difficult to look at as a user and figure out how to use it. It's just hard to find
the ancillary materials. It's hard to like read through and do exactly what it's saying to do.
It's hard to find where the differentiation stuff is.
It really like, when Sine sent me the materials and the links, I kind of thought I was missing
something.
Like I was like, there's got to be something else.
Because it really looks like a draft version of a set of materials, honestly.
And when you're thinking about teacher usability, it is something you have to take into account.
Can teachers really use this with some level of ease and not have to be spending a lot
of time trying to figure out how to put this together?
Which probably explains the bar graph.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, yeah.
If it wasn't user friendly, that's probably why it scored low.
And it, yeah.
So I'll leave it at that.
It's a great question.
It's a great question.
Any other comments?
I'm sorry, Ms. Champagne.
First of all, I want to thank you
very much for your explanation of the background and all
that because it did.
Because like you said, most of us weren't on that committee.
So anyway.
And Dr. Bell, that was an awesome presentation.
I just have questions about the instructional part
for teachers to learn. So, you know, I'm not really sure. I know that the reading
academies were required by the state and all that and I'm not sure where in the
process all the teachers are. But this is like a few questions that all relate to
the training of teachers. Does anything in the reading academy translate or help
in the process of learning this new system so because I just want to make
sure that I'm able to support and I know exactly what teachers are going through
I'm currently completing the reading Academy the same one that teachers are
it's very awesome yes it's actually a great experience but it is it's it's a
lot to implement it's a lot of change and it is difficult however the content
is very good and strong and solid.
But what I've learned is that as I'm going through the Reading Academy,
I'm making notes of things that we need to strip right over and plug and play.
We need to do that explicit instructional guidance for our teachers.
So as we're writing the curriculum,
I've spent some time with the elementary CNI department and talked about,
hey, we need to pull a lot of those components that are already developed
in the Reading Academy and bring them over so it's familiar to teachers
as they see this work in the classroom when they're supporting students.
So to answer your question, absolutely, there will be direct pull.
There are things that are already developed.
And then also where we need to provide teachers additional training and support
to implement the things that they learn in the Reading Academy will occur as well.
Okay, so let me just make sure I'm hearing you right,
because I have a lot of friends that are teachers,
and so, you know, I'm not a reading teacher, obviously,
but I did help three kids learn how to read, but they're my own personal children.
But I know that the Reading Academy, you know, was quite extensive.
I just want to make sure that I heard you right, that there are some things in there
that they won't have to double learn.
Like, they've already learned it.
You know, they already know it.
The teachers that I've talked to said that it was extensive, but they liked it.
You know, they actually learned a lot from that.
So I'm hoping that some of the things that they already learned through that
is something that they will, you know, be able to use with the new program.
That's one thing.
I think I heard you say it, but the other thing is how long will it take teachers,
how much more time, I'm not saying that it's not deserved time or valuable time,
but how much more time now will teachers need to spend learning this new program?
So the one thing that I will say is that it's really difficult to go through the reading academy
and to turn around and change your practice right away.
Just because there's so much content to digest.
And then teachers are in the middle of teaching, right?
So you have to have time to take the training in
and then turn it into and implement it with students.
And so where we will continue to support teachers is with that piece
and really kind of developing a plan that helps.
If you recall, the recommendation to pick a foundational skills resource
resource that's closely aligned to the House Bill 3 reading academies will come as a result
of the review that TEA is completing.
That's what they're looking at to put what resources are available and then when we have
that list, we can take the time to kind of call and go through the way in the reading
academy they may outline the order in which you teach certain things and the types of
strategies and some of the anchor charts that you may put on the classroom walls.
There are a lot of things that you can provide some instructional guidance that is not a hard lift,
and there are some things that will take a little bit more time.
But the whole objective will be to align that, that the teachers learn, to what they're doing in the classroom
so that they can see the benefits of their learning in action.
So, I mean, are there going to be, like, summer workshops?
Summer training and ongoing training throughout the course of the year.
So it's training will have to be ongoing.
If I the way that I kind of envision this we may have a focus for the first grading period not in weeks.
Let's really hone in on a particular thing. Let's
go in and model. Let's give teachers feedback.
You have to kind of do these things incrementally when you're when you're making such a significant change.
So that process will be mapped out
very extensively and I'm sure with the Literacy Subcommittee will be sharing those components.
but definitely want to make sure that teachers can see what they've learned in
the reading Academy and they have the support they can begin to see those
things in the in the training really explicitly laid out for them because our
teachers are just so valuable I just want to make sure that you know that
they are going to receive this support that they need you know absolutely yeah
the teachers are the silver bullet the resource is the resource but what makes
the difference are the teachers and so what has to happen is that our teachers
have to feel supported and they have to know that what they're learning is
actually helping to improve their craft but ultimately is improving student
proficiency in reading and then one last question new teachers that are hired
like brand new you know out of college are they having to go through the
reading academies and they are if they have not obtained that certification so
So some universities are beginning to provide them with that certification or some teachers are taking the assessment.
There are some additional components, though, that they may have to take.
But it's beginning to, I think we're in our third year of everyone must at the end of this year be certified in the Reading Academy.
So some of those pieces that were so intense in the beginning are going to level off because we should at this point have all of our teachers trained.
and now we'll just be managing those teachers who are new to the district and that have not received that training.
And just to add to that, I talked to the dean of school at Texas A&M that does all the teaching,
and everybody graduating from Texas A&M right now is learning the science of reading type stuff,
and some of them are like, we're getting out learning the science of reading in school,
and then we go in these districts and they're using this other thing, and they're confused.
So I think what we're doing is we're shifting to align with what they're teaching as the best practice and
Certainly at the local college here Texas A&M and UT and all that so I think it's a it's a good
It's not not this nobody say it's gonna be easy
But you know in my opinion that you know why I put so much time into this but I the school board member I can
Think of nothing more important
Nothing more important than making sure that Katie I see is doing the best and using the best system
we can teach kids to read because I think anything influences your
your future as much as it affects everything.
So that's why I think it's hard, and I think we're going to have some battles,
but we've got the right people in charge, and it's the right thing to do.
I think it's the right thing to do.
Mr. President?
Yes.
A couple more questions, if I may.
So who made up the Literacy Task Force?
Did we have parents or dyslexia experts?
Sure.
We had teachers, and we had principals.
We had instructional coaches, central office support staff that included members from the
elementary CNI team, members from SPED, members from the dyslexia team, members from the OOL
team.
We wanted to-
OOL.
I'm sorry.
Offices of other languages for our EB students.
And so we wanted to ensure that every voice was sitting at the table so that people that
that were evaluating the curriculum could look at it from their lens in terms of the
stakeholders that they serve.
How many people on the task force?
Approximately 50.
Okay.
And I wrote down one of the numbers.
439 people looked at some of it on Canvas.
And how many did the whole thing?
493 views on Canvas.
And then we received 269 rubrics that were submitted.
And I will say that the rubrics were very extensive.
You had to rate each product according to the rubric.
Probably the week of November 10th through the 30th, we had so much traffic upstairs.
There were teams that were coming during their planning periods.
Principals were coming with some of their teachers.
We had constant, it was busy in terms of everyone kind of taking a look at the resources.
So lots of interest, probably more than any other instructional materials adoption that we've had.
I certainly agree with Mr. Schulte.
Reading is the foundation for everything.
You can't do math if you can't read.
It's all so critical.
I appreciate so much the curriculum department to take this on.
One, two, I know your nightmares are not going to be over.
What, hold on.
Just still struggling with the Amplify because of all the things we've heard and across the state,
when we go to school board meetings, sorry, school board conferences,
CONFERENCES, THERE ARE DISTRICTS WHO USE AMPLIFIED AND THEY LOVE IT AND SAY CHILDREN ARE SUCCEEDING
SO WELL WITH IT.
AND I HEARD DR.
WOODRIFF TALK ABOUT IT.
AND BECAUSE THE STATE IS GOING TO ADOPT THAT AS THEIR PRIMARY, I JUST HAVE THIS LITTLE
VOICE IN MY HEAD SAYING, DON'T DO $10 MILLION PROGRAM THAT ISN'T GOING TO BE LIKE EASY TO
to modify or easy to get support for, build in.
And I was so shocked at how poorly the rankings were.
Is that because it was hard for them to understand?
Why is it so successful everywhere?
And because the state owns it, isn't it considerably cheaper?
And there's a grant.
Can you speak about there's different types of Amplify, right?
There's Amplify.
Other districts are using Amplify.
There's Amplify Texas.
and so there's different versions of Amplify.
With TA's going with this Amplify Texas, I actually, I say I,
the subcommittee asked to go meet with Aldine and other people that are using Amplify,
but they're using a different version of it.
They're not using Amplify Texas?
No, no, ma'am.
It's a different version.
They are using a different version.
So there is an Amplify CKLA, which is on the Texas resource review list.
It was not selected as one for us to review because it did not meet our requirements 100% of the TEKS, and it was not in English and in Spanish.
That is the resource currently that you may be most familiar with that Aldine is using, yes.
The Amplify Texas was acquired as a COVID response product in 2020.
20 and so TEA acquired that through open education resources and that just means
they own it and they can make it available for to whomever would like to
use that however it is not free so there are consumables that come with that
there's probably approximately depending on grade level 8 to 12 consumables that
must be printed yearly and so and the teacher materials as well so it's it's
Yes, TEA owns it and they're using it and they're making it better.
Is it in its final product where it meets all the needs?
Not yet, but they are gathering that feedback.
I will also say that in terms of cost, when we received the quotes from all of the publishers,
Amplify was the highest quote that we received.
Have you talked to Districts Housa and Houghton Mifflin?
Yes.
Anyone around us that we know?
I did speak with Tom Ball that has made the shift from Unisiv study to HMH.
Talked about their process in shifting specifically around the whole science of reading pieces
as well as trying to move away from some of the components that they kind of held true
to before.
There are additional districts that I'm aware of north of us that have utilized that, but there's also it's being used
if I remember off my list
software ISD uses components of HMH
I believe a leaf I don't want to keep going down but I have a list of all of the districts that have utilized it as
Well as some of their assessment data over time and utilizing that resource
source. And they're probably not very far into transferring their their styles either probably.
I think the whole state is kind of in the same spot. Getting there. Okay then my last thing is
also about the classroom teachers transitioning because I mean Greg's right we were there and
now we're here and of course they've done the reading academy so they they are going to be
be able to transition and feel that and the teachers of course said we loved
reading academies but it had to go so fast that they didn't get they wish they
could have dug deeper in them so they'll find some of that but how are you
transitioning teachers are you using your ICS or and and if they have to do
it over the summer because I can't imagine not doing this without taking up
some summer time it's that PD will we need to give some comp time what what
What does that look like for our hardworking classroom teachers?
Sure.
So the Literacy Task Force has convened since September,
and we are kind of having the handoff meeting on January 25th, on Wednesday.
And from that point, the task force is turning it over to our instructional coaches.
Our instructional coaches will then be a part of really the development pieces
in terms of how to support teachers, what training needs to be utilized,
really bringing the literacy framework into action in terms of what we see in the classrooms.
Also, the training will happen over the summer.
Of course, if teachers are not able to come during the summer, we'll have to have a contingency plan for those.
But I feel very confident that the majority of our teachers are going to want that training
because they want to be ready for when school starts.
And teachers will be able to utilize the training that they participate in for our flex days,
which they get to flex out of days later in the school year for attending summer training.
And I'm guessing that ICs will be covered up most of the summer with getting all that ready,
or do you think that because you're handing it off January 25th,
will they have time to get ready for that, or are they going to be?
So the bulk of kind of the spring semester is really going to be focusing on developing
developing whatever pieces we're going to include the ICs on. I also want to reiterate that we
receive 100 hours of professional development support from HMH. So all of this is not on the
backs of our instructional coaches. We have an elementary curriculum and instruction team that
they carry the weight of this, but our instructional coaches, in terms of handing it off to them,
what I mean by that is making sure they're a part of this transition process. They're a part of
of when we are developing curriculum,
when we're developing instructional guidance.
They have a seat at the table because they're
going to be critical in supporting
those teachers in the training.
So our instructional coaches are instrumental in what
happens in our classrooms.
And so we want to make sure that they are trained up,
not just them, but also our principals as well.
We're all shifting and focusing on some different ways
of doing things.
So we need to make sure that all of our stakeholders who
who are really critical in ensuring that the change happens,
that they're well-trained and well-supported.
I appreciate that.
I just know that I know our instructional coaches,
and they're not going to do just like, oh, we're on summer vacation now.
I know that's not going to be it.
So I really would like us to be considering, and Mr. President,
I'll put it here to you, of a give back to them in some way.
We've already talked about it.
Got it.
I just know what they're going to do, and I know our teachers are going to work really hard,
and we're spending a lot of money on a new program, and we're asking more of them than ever.
And so, you know, Dr. Bell, we'll get you a Panera dinner.
Ms. Wilson, you've been very patient.
I apologize.
I haven't seen you raising your hand.
It's okay.
Not a problem.
My apologies.
I think I probably have less questions only because, like Greg and Lance,
I've been able to be involved in this so I
There are some things though that I've heard in all of these that I want to take a few moments to reiterate
First and foremost. I think we have to thank a lot of different people first informant most of course the entire
curriculum and instruction team
You guys maybe we have dragged you along kicking and screaming at times
Granted the board has I fall into that
But I cannot tell you how proud I am to be at the moment we're at today to see all of this to fruition, to see people excited, to see people have interest.
And I know there are some that are equally maybe not as excited.
And that's okay.
Change is difficult, and I understand that.
The task force.
I don't know everybody that is on the task force.
I know I have an email with all their names buried in my little folder, but I can't thank them enough for all their extra hours that they put in on top of their days that they were putting in to do the job that they do every single day.
That is not lost on me. To our team of instructional partners and Dr. Woodruff,
I know there are countless hours that y'all have put in with our curriculum team. Y'all have
been at those meetings, working through, showing how it looks, listening to us when we have more
questions that we need more answers to. And y'all never let us down with your responses and how
how quick y'all are to respond when we ask for y'all to be at meetings and you make it happen.
So thank you for that. I'm also going to thank the Katie Literacy Coalition team.
Y'all have done an incredible job. I did get involved with them well before I was ever elected
to the school board, but they have done great, I think, as providing a lot of education in areas
that aren't our strong suits.
And though I may have had a child with dyslexia,
it doesn't mean I know everything there is to know about literacy.
I know what it took to help my child through that process,
but I cannot speak for thousands of other students
and what that process looks like.
So I just wanted to start with that, so thank you all.
There were some other striking things, I think,
and I know it wasn't said here,
but I know TEA and the stuff they put out about Amplify Texas
saying that they still felt like it was a little bit of a science project for
them it isn't fully ready and I think it's why other districts aren't going
with it because it's not there yet I would prefer my preference when we have
45,000 plus elementary school students because we're adding more next year and
we're gonna keep adding more it's about picking a resource that we can use and
is ready even though yes we need some extra pieces with that so I like that I
really like the fact that HMH it spoke volumes to me was is equally liked by
our English as well as our Spanish teachers I think again that speaks
volumes to the product at hand and that it's one one project we already covered
on that one that one and I think the last one dr. Woodruff said this in our
last meeting and it just resonated with me and she said that it covered
Alexander to Zachary and every student in between and that is what we are here
for it is about student outcomes did I get it right it was her children but I
loved that it was like oh you know a to Z and and that just was a powerful thing
that I wanted to leave and share with everybody else.
So thank you.
So what I would like to do is vote on this tonight.
And I know a lot of trustees are getting a lot of new information.
And I've had several say, hey, I'm not sure I'm ready to vote on this tonight.
So if we're ready to vote, I would like to vote.
I don't know what else this team can do to get more data.
But if there's a trustees like I have just not ready, it's a big decision.
I get it.
And I'm prepared.
If trustees don't want to vote, we can defer.
I guess my question, we can't defer it very much longer, though, right?
We're going to end up pushing the 2023 start.
Right.
The later we delay, we run the risk of not getting all of our materials.
We back up our curriculum instruction team in developing, trying to figure out training,
because we're not the only ones that are purchasing this new resource.
And so we're really kind of at an impasse.
So if we delay, there's nothing that we can do right now at this point to move this change forward.
I guess for me if there's any if there's anyone not prepared to vote would you let me know and then what is that?
Exactly that you need so you feel like you can vote
If you can't vote tonight, so what information do you need mr. President?
Early on
Maybe even last year we talked about how two meetings a month gave us a
Workshop where we get presentations we have time to think about it delve into it
and we have our meetings in public, but not all public is here,
and then we're not, I haven't heard from any of those people.
Like, oh, I really liked you, I said, Amplify,
I really wish you would have dug in more there.
They don't tell me that until tomorrow, right?
And for people who are listening and for other teachers and community members,
I count on their input because I work for them.
So that's why I love that workshop setting,
and we said that when there was something big, big decisions, long-lasting decisions,
we wouldn't make a decision the very first time we heard it.
So here I am with a, I've made too many decisions, not many, probably three,
without enough time to make the right decision that I've regretted after making it.
And so here I am with a decision that's going to change literacy for KDISD until 2031.
one. And I have some bar graphs and some great conversation and I'm really leaning heavily
toward HMH based on what I've heard. Man, there's that nagging thing of take your time.
I hate that we're up against a deadline that makes me make a decision because I want us to
hurry and get started so that we can be ready for the new year. I don't want to delay anymore.
I don't want to delay so that we can't do it for next school year.
I'm just at a place where I'm struggling.
I wish that...
What I learned, Ms. Fox, I appreciate that, and I really do.
What I learned is the world's not going to start spinning backwards,
Amplify versus HMA.
Neither one of them is perfect, and neither one of them is terrible.
So we can spend...
I always say I make decisions at work.
Perfection is the thief of good enough.
You know we in the ballpark where we've got I think two really good choices
Yes, I think the experts and the and the stakeholders saying HMH is the way to go and I and I totally hear what you're saying
And I guess we just need to you know, we we do have to make a decision
Analysis paralysis we can't I'm not saying we but we can't wait six months for this
So I am prepared to at least recommend that we delay this for a short period of time
days if we can to get the information that that anyone would require but I
don't think we have months that would be my no I'm not asking for months I wish
that every one of you would just nod your head or tell me yes that's a good
idea well I see principals and teachers and I sees that I respect so much and I
just you know so would you like more time I would I would like to see what
the rest of the board is.
Mr. President, we did six weeks ago, we did,
we had a committee and experts and an entire team
that made the recommendation.
We said we'd like a little more information.
And I think tonight a lot of our conversation
covered what Dr. Bell, you all were able to gather
over the last six weeks.
I was incredibly thankful to have
that additional information.
They gave, I think as a subcommittee,
we walked out of our last meeting and said,
that's it that information is exactly what we needed to hear for us to be able
to move forward and make that recommendation to the board here tonight
but I do know we already pushed it back to get that more that information I'm
not sure what else we're gonna be able to get knowing that we've had our our
own people in-house our experts that we've brought in we've had I'm just
wondering what other information we're gonna get knowing that teacher but was
Was that information in public?
Six weeks ago, we weren't here, were we?
Was that, did I miss a presentation?
No.
Where we talked about literacy and options in front of our public, right?
We're spending their money, and that's the piece where I'm like,
I really, really like what I've heard.
Ready?
Mr. Redmond, so is that what you're saying?
Are you prepared to vote tonight, or do you?
I am, yes.
But he's had all the information.
I understand.
And you know where I'm at on it, because I've had a lot more information.
So, Ms. Champagne, are you free and at liberty to say what your opinion is?
I understand Mrs. Fox's concern.
But at this point, I'm ready to vote.
But I would like to say that we didn't have all the information before.
And also, the public didn't have the information before.
And so I will just like to reiterate something that she said.
I do think at times the second meeting is a very valuable thing because more
you know when you had the first meeting we could have had a meeting this all
could have been talked about and then we could have gotten the input from
teachers or whoever and then reevaluated what we were thinking about a week later
but at this point I I know what she I know what dr. Bell saying you know I
think that you know we could just keep doing this ad nauseum and come up with
the same results so I'm prepared to vote but I agree that maybe we in the future
understand if there's something else that's big a ten million dollar thing
that affects children for the next decade that maybe we would get an extra
week understand but for now I am prepared to that miss Van miss Wilson of
course mr. Perez are you a liberty to say what your opinion is
And my concern in this process has been that at the end of the day,
we're gonna get a Lucy Calkins in disguise of some form.
That was my biggest concern too, yeah.
Like a little patch here, a little patch there, but we end up with the same thing.
I don't think we're getting that from what I hear.
I think it's a big change.
I do have a little concern about the foundational skills being still unknown.
known, the supplemental, that seems to be a big piece.
It's not...
Well, we know that the tool exists.
And we're just waiting for the TEA.
We don't want to go buy something and then the TEA says, hey, here's our top three.
So just like we went to the TRR, which is something that's how we got our first one.
Hey, we're a few days away from hearing what the TEA would recommend for the foundational
skills.
So we're just saying we could pick one, but not just wait and see what they're getting
getting all the data from all the districts and they're going to say here's our top three
so it exists it's not something new it's just we don't know what's going to be the top three
mr president yes this hmh is approved by the tea yes through the team yes correct yes because i
felt like what mr perez you know we already now we're adding the bolt on or band-aid or patch or
whatever but i like that it's already there we don't have to teach it for a while and then be
like oh it's critically missing we know what dr woodruff
is this will make it stronger.
And if I could say that, you know, there's good, better, and best.
And in KDISD, we do the best.
And so if we have the opportunity, if we're making changes,
if we're making big shifts, and we want to be explicit and transparent
in everything that we're doing, why settle for good when we can get the best?
And so I know that that supplemental resource, the foundational skills piece,
is like, well, why do we need to add that?
But if we have the opportunity and we can really make the big shift that we want, we want to make sure that we get the best foundational skills resource in the hands of our primary teachers because right there is where the reading journey begins.
So, Ms. Fox, you've heard, I think, every other trustee.
I don't want to put pressure on you.
You asked me to pull the group, and I did that.
May I go back one more time?
I'm going back through the charts, and I see that task force really, really had a gap between the two resources.
So you're saying that's the 50-ish people, right?
And then the stakeholder review is the hundreds of people, a few hundred.
And it was closer, but HMH still doubled the response of everyone else.
So I trust our people.
I trust our people.
I know they care about this.
I know they were looking.
I'll also say that in looking at that, the task force, they engaged in a lesson from
a student perspective and then in the design piece as an educator.
So we had that opportunity that the stakeholders that just went in to review the resource did
not, which I think shows some of the differences in some of the ratings between the resources.
I APPRECIATE ALL THE WORK.
I REALLY APPRECIATE YOU ALL BEING ON THE TEST.
I REALLY WANTED TO BE ON THAT BECAUSE I FOUGHT FOR BEING ON THAT BECAUSE THIS MATTERS TO
ME AT A LEVEL FOR A LONG TIME.
AND I'M EXCITED ABOUT THE SCIENCE OF READING AND I TRUST OUR PEOPLE.
I DO.
ARE YOU READY TO ENTERTAIN A MOTION?
ALL RIGHT.
I'M READY.
it's exciting i move that the board of trustees approves the instructional materials adoption
for elementary literacy resources to begin implementation district-wide in the 2023
2024 school year we have a motion by miss wilson a second i'm going to give mr redmond the privilege
if that's okay uh we'll now proceed to vote board members please record your vote on the screen via
your keypad Wow 7-0 awesome good work okay move on okay we only got another
three four hours to go here we need somebody order some pizza okay here we
go okay ten point five discuss and consider a board adoption of the order
calling for a regular election of the school board trustees on may 6 2023
10.5 Discuss and consider Board adoption of the Order calling for a regular election of the School Board Trustees to be held on May 6, 2023 and authorization of the Administration to provide official notice of the election as required by the Texas Election Code.
presenters mr. Justin Graham general counsel and election administrator good
evening president Schulte dr. Gorski members of this board this is a fairly
standard and routine item that you've seen every year certainly since I've
been elections administrator for the district but we have the standard order
of election positions three four and five that filing period actually opened last wednesday
and will remain open until the 17th february of note we have traditionally had five
early voting locations we have 13 precincts within this district and we have 13 election
day polling locations we feel pretty confident in those we made a little bit of a change last
last year to include Jordan High School so that we can hopefully align with the city of Fulcher.
This is our year. We've been talking with the elections administrator for Fort Bend County
saying this is our year to align those. We've had discussions about aligning them with the city.
The only change that I would have here that I would ask for this board's approval to modify is
is when we look at our five early voting locations,
we have the Merrill Center, Seven Lakes High School,
James Taylor, and Cinco Ranch and Morton Ranch.
So if we think about the big district map,
I encourage anybody to look at it,
our 184 square miles that we cover,
those facilities are pretty far from one another.
However, given the immense growth that's going on
on the north side of our district, when I say north,
north of I-10, west of 99, the Montana Lakes, everything that's around Pato.
If you've seen High School 10 that's going on out there,
it looked months ago that it was going to be in the middle of nowhere,
and then all of a sudden there's homes all around.
So the thought being that we could move the Morton Ranch High School voting location to Pato High School,
that still provides people north of the highway an opportunity to vote.
Again, Pato High School is very close to 99, just like Morton Ranch.
And it also, I think, is more inclusive of sort of that northern portion of our district.
So that would be my only change to the order of election that you have here is for you guys to understand that when you make this motion tonight, my team is going to go back and make that change.
That being said, I'm happy to take any questions or comments from any member of this board.
MS. VAN?
MS. I SUPPORT CHANGING IT TO PAYTOE.
A COMMENT WAS MADE EARLIER THAT MORTON AND JAMES E. TAYLOR ARE
SO, YOU KNOW, PRETTY CLOSE TO EACH OTHER.
EASY ACTS I-10 EITHER WAY.
BUT WITH THE GROWTH WE EXPECT IN THE AREA OF PAYTOE, ESPECIALLY
WITH HIGH SCHOOL 10 COMING UP, GETTING THAT TO BE A HABIT OF A
PLACE TO VOTE AND OPENING IT UP MORE FOR THAT NORTH QUADRANT
MAKES A LOT OF SENSE TO ME IN MY EXPERIENCE WITH ELECTIONS.
Yeah, and I want to be clear, if we make this change, it's not because we feel like we have disenfranchised voters.
What we're saying is we have our lowest turnout traditionally every year that I've done this at Morton Ranch High School.
And so we can move it across 99 and maybe just a little further north into those growing areas.
And again, I think access to the major thoroughfare there makes sense.
Ms. Wilson, did you have?
I did have a question.
Thank you, President Schulte.
A quick question, Mr. Graham.
Why couldn't we just add a sixth school?
We could add a sixth school, but then I've got to duplicate our early voting efforts,
which includes machines, and I've got to hire election judges and personnel.
And that's a little different than Election Day because those are staffed.
Again, you'll remember this board has always been, since I've been in this district,
are committed to having as much early voting opportunity as possible.
So instead of eight to five, like some jurisdictions do it,
we do it seven to seven, and we do it for a period of ten days,
and we also have Saturday voting as well.
So that would make it hard on my staff.
We'd probably be a considerable additional expense
to include a sixth early voting location.
Some questions down here?
President Schulte.
Mr. Graham, why are some of them in the pack and some in the gym?
Because very difficult, like when you go up to a school, you go down to the, and it's like, oh, that one's at the pack, that one's at the gym.
What's the difference with those?
It really is campus specific.
So, again, we have campuses.
When you look at Taylor High School and think about when Taylor High School was first opened, what, 83, 84?
And you look at Pato High School, which was opened up 2017.
2017 so you've got a 35 year 40 year difference between those campuses so
what we what we look at when we look at gym lobby versus pack is where can we
find the best parking the best access we also look at sort of historical history
I'll give you the best example I can give you is Taylor High School Taylor
High School it's always been in the pack even when they have pack events well
well, think about the way Taylor is set out.
Hard to think of another location.
We do our best to block off parking during that time period.
And again, our constituents sort of know where that's at.
That's different than, for example, Seven Lakes High School.
So you can think about the big Seven Lakes High School
in the front of Seven Lakes,
and you can go to that gym lobby.
The gym lobby, especially when we're doing voting in April and May,
We don't have basketball and volleyball games going on during that time period so
Traditionally in the gym Lobby in April and May is the best spot to do it
But again we do it in the pack like we do at Cinco Ranch and Taylor because of the way that those schools are designed
And again, we got schools
You know that are 30 40 years difference apart
So it's just that seven lakes and Cinco and Morton and Pato are all kind of the same
Packs on one end, gyms on the other, and it's just those are the ones that's kind of confusing,
you know, between 7 and 5.
But I just was wondering because when candidates are setting up signs the night before,
you go put them all down there at the thing, and then they're like, oh, voting's at the other end,
and the next day you go back and pick up all your signs and move them to the opposite end of the school.
I was just wondering if there would be a way to streamline that so it always was the same.
And then on voting day, the same thing when you add in of Tompkins and another thing.
Yeah, so voting day is a little bit different, right?
Because this is Saturday.
We don't have as much going on.
It's a temporary kind of one-time thing.
I just don't see the way for us to streamline it given the differences in our facilities.
When we look at, and we've taken a, I mean, think about how much time we spend in every presentation.
Even when we talked about discipline today, we talked about safety being a high priority.
So safety and security of these locations is key.
We don't make these decisions ad nauseum.
We include Reuben and his group, Chief Gall and their team, to make sure that we've got the appropriate security and also the appropriate parking.
I'm going to look at Ted Veerling and his team that do such a really good job of making sure that we've got a few parking spots in what can be difficult, right?
because you guys know we we do have PAC events and gym events are there any
other questions I have a question about the motion should the motion include the
change to pay toe because I agree with what mrs. van said Morton and Taylor are
very close as to I 10 and easy to get to so moving that to pay toes a good good
choice does it need to be that specific no I again guess this is public record
I'm making this recommendation to you now. So I think the way that the that the
Item is drafted in your script. I think that motion language is sufficient
Yes
I'm sorry. Everybody's done. Mr. President. Thank you. Oh
Sorry, thanks so much. I want to make some remarks which relate to this particular agenda item
which ties into the
NAACP LDF letter that we've been talking about where people were talking and
referencing 10.5. And of course my name has been thrown around quite a bit
earlier today as well as mentioned prominently in the letter from the
NAACP. So I wanted to make some remarks about that at this time. So I'm speaking
in response to the statements made about me in the NAACP LDF letter.
This letter makes outrageous and unjustified characterizations of me as engaging in subtle
and over-racial appeals during my campaign and also racist rhetoric.
These statements are false and defamatory.
During my campaign, I listed the following priorities.
emphasize academics, improve educational performance, support our teachers, protect our children, and prioritize spending in the classroom.
I am unapologetic in protecting our students from harmful and obscene material, from identity politics in the classroom.
I have never spoken out against any group based on race or sexual orientation.
Clearly, the writer of the letter does not know me, and it is sufficient information from which to make these libelous allegations.
allegations. My campaign had nothing to do with race. Race was not an issue. The letter claims I was engaged in racist rhetoric because I am anti-critical race theory. I do believe CRT in any form does not belong in a K-12 classroom. This belief does not make me a racist. My belief is consistent actually with Texas law SB3. On the contrary, CRT is explicitly racist. We reject all forms of
to racism against blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans, and we should also reject
the shaming of white kids.
CRT does not unify but divides according to race.
KDIC is a very diverse district.
As a school board member, I embrace a colorblind society where all individuals are free to
pursue their aspirations without shame and without the false burden of presumed victimhood.
Additionally, I had nothing to do with the books mentioned in the letter, directly or
indirectly.
I've never spoken about those books nor had any discussion about those books nor whether
they were to be removed or restricted.
The letter stated I am a Latinx identifying individual.
This is offensive.
I am a Cuban-born refugee, bilingual, Hispanic or Latino male.
I am a Cuban refugee who came to this country.
I learned my English here in this country.
I represent Latinos and I represent all students and all parents in this district.
Since approximately 36% of KDISD are Hispanic,
I wonder how the NAACP determines who is a candidate preferred by Black and Latino KD residents.
What is their source for this statement?
Is it based on candidates that fit a particular ideology, a political litmus test not related to where a candidate lives in Katy?
In this view, conservative minority candidates need not apply no matter where they reside.
It is curious that I, the only Hispanic on the board, is also the only board member singled out and attacked by the NAACP LDF letter.
In May 2022, I was elected by an overwhelming margin by voters all across the district against four candidates, including a white non-minority incumbent.
The letter also ignores the Asian community, which makes up approximately 17% of student enrollment.
We are a diverse district with races and ethnicities spread throughout the district.
district. As a KDISD board member, I have seen the district devote substantial resources
and efforts to programs such as English as a Second Language, bilingual, pandemic learning
loss, special education programs, career and technical education, and additional resources
to assist all students, including underperforming subgroups of our student population. These
These important efforts are and have been regardless of race or ethnicity.
The NAACP letter, the theories which underlie it and
its tone creates division in the district instead of creating unified educational goals for all students.
I just wanted to add that.
Thank you very much for allowing me to do that.
Thank you Mr. President.
I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move that the Board of Trustees adopts the order calling for a regular election of school board trustees to be held on May 6, 2023, and authorize the administration to provide official notice of the election as required by the Texas Selection Code.
I have a motion by Mr. Redman, a second by Mrs. Vann. We'll now proceed to vote. Please record your vote on the screen via QPAD.
Motion passes 7-0.
!
10.6, Discuss and consider Board approval of an amendment of the 2023-2024 Instructional Calendar.
10.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of an amendment to the 2023-2024 Instructional Calendar.
The presenter tonight is Dr. Andrea Grooms and Ms. Sherry Ashworn. Good evening.
Good evening, Board members.
So our first item of three calendar items is something a little different.
We normally don't come back and amend calendars that we've previously approved.
You'll remember that we're on a pretty good process of approving two years in advance.
However, the administration is recommending an amendment to the 23-24 instructional calendar,
and I cannot emphasize enough this amendment does not impact our students and our parents.
This is for staff.
This is regarding our flex days, moving those flex days to throughout the year
and expanding those groups of people, not just returning teachers who have access to those.
So if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.
But before we do that, I'm going to let Dr. Grooms present the survey information.
so that you can see the feedback that we received.
Okay, as is customary with all of our instructional calendar development processes,
we did solicit feedback from the public, from our parents, our staff, students, and the community at large.
Over 16,000 individuals participate in the survey,
and as you can see, 56% were parents and guardians, 26% staff, and others.
Ms. Ashhorn just went over option A, which received the highest amount of support.
52% supported option A, which again only impacts staff, as stated by Ms. Ashhorn.
But importantly, 36% indicated that they had no opinion about option A.
I'm going to have Ms. Ashhorn continue with the presentation of that item right now.
Thank you, Dr. Grooms.
So we'll continue the survey presentation when we get to our next agenda item.
But at this time, if you have any questions about the recommended amendment for next year, we're ready.
For staff, are there any questions?
I have a question.
I was looking at the ‑‑ I know there's two different agenda items about this.
Okay.
So on the 23-24, so it's not a ‑‑ maybe not a big thing.
But May 23rd has a circle around it as a half day,
or early dismissal.
Yes, as the last day of school.
But May 24th is a campus day.
Yes, a teacher contract day.
So when we're looking at the instructional calendar,
we're not only balancing the 75,600 minutes we need for students,
but we're looking for 187 contract days for teachers.
Okay, I got you.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
if not i'll entertain a motion mr president yes i move the board of trustees approves an amendment
to the 2023 2024 instructional calendar second we have a motion by mrs vann a second by miss
wilson will now proceed to vote please record your vote via the keypad uh oh
the motion passes 7-0 10.7 discuss board approval 2024 2025 instructional calendar yes so you'll
10.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2024-2025 Instructional Calendar.
see familiar options available to you for consideration option a we call our district
of innovation calendar it has that early start date and option b is more of a traditional calendar
starting on that fourth monday in august so at this time i'll let dr grooms present the feedback
back from the survey on those two options.
OK, and going to the 24-25 instructional calendar,
you'll see that option A received the highest amount
of support, 79%, from those individuals who participated,
those 16,000 plus participants of students, parents,
and staff.
And then finally, we did provide an opportunity for individuals
to provide open-ended comments.
and you'll see some of the common themes that came out of those comments.
Those who supported option A did so because they liked the balance between the fall semester and the spring semester.
There were some questions and some concerns about flex days.
We received about 1,600 comments out of the 16,000-plus individuals who participated.
I'll let Ms. Ashhorn return to the item.
Do you have any questions at this time about the options available or the recommendation of option A?
Which one was the conventional option?
You said one was...
One was our option A is district of innovation.
Okay, that's the district of innovation.
Yes.
Thank you.
Mr. President?
Yes.
I move that the Board of Trustees approves the 2024-2025 instructional calendar as presented by the administration.
We have a motion by Ms. Wilson, a second by Ms. Fogg.
We'll now proceed to vote. Please please record your vote on the screen via your keypad.
The motion passes 7-0.
President Schulte. Yes. And staff, thank you for, I think it was Mrs.
Vann who brought this up, to have two years out is so helpful for families to plan, you know,
ongoing and things like that. And even when we have graduation dates and we get those out to people too,
it just helps for travel and things like that.
it's brilliant right to have that two-year plan and then when we make an adjustment it's a
deflects day or something so yeah thanks so much agenda i thank you agenda item 10.8 discuss board
approval of professional development waiver for the 2024-2025 2025 instructional calendar sorry
10.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of a Professional Development Waiver for the 2024-2025 instructional calendar.
it's it's hard to think about 2025 yes um so this professional development waiver is routine you see
it after every calendar approval and this gives us the opportunity to recoup 2100 minutes for
professional development built within the calendar you just approved are there any questions if not
i'll entertain a motion mr president yes i move the board trustees approve the professional
development waiver for the 2024 2025 instructional calendar second we have a motion by mrs vann second
by mr redmond we'll now proceed to vote please record your vote on the screen via your keypad
The motion passes 7-0.
Agenda item 10.9, discuss and consider board approval to form a 2023 Community Bond Advisory Committee and approval of the committee charter.
10.9 Discuss and consider Board approval to form a 2023 Community Bond Advisory Committee and approval of the Committee Charter.
The presenters tonight are Dr. Andrea Grooms and Mr. Ted Veerling.
Yes, sir.
Good evening, Mr. President, board, Dr. Grigorski.
Dr. Grooms and I are here tonight for a very brief presentation on growth and bonds.
I said very brief.
So you've seen the numbers that you're these next few slides, you've seen these numbers.
PASA came and presented, Chris Poole came to present to you in November. So you've seen these
numbers. This is all about growth in the district. I think just about every person tonight talking
about all of these things talked about growth at some point. And we are too. So this is a graph
that PASA puts together, it kind of shows the three bears approach to growth. There's the really
fast growth where there's a lot of kids there's a slower growth that not as many
and then there's one kind of in the middle and that's kind of what we're
looking at so over the next you know eight ten years you know we're looking
at adding 14,000 kids to Katie ISD and so we've got to be ready to do that it's
the stuff that keeps guys like me up at night school enrollment projections
we're just going to focus on the Northwest for right now as you know the
The areas around the district, even areas that are built up,
we talked about Taylor a lot tonight,
and areas like Nottingham and those kind of neighborhoods are regenerating
and parents are bringing their kids, young parents are bringing their kids in.
But as far as the massive growth, we're talking about the Northwest.
Just some numbers on the high school.
Now, you've got to remember here that these numbers don't include the high school 10.
We don't have maps drawn for high school 10 yet, so we can't pull numbers out.
So when you see those numbers out there in 2025,
25. Those aren't, oh my gosh, we got to panic numbers because we got high school 10 in there
to help us with those. But as we look further out, you can see that those numbers continue to
increase. And so we've got to keep an eye on that. These are all numbers without a 2023 bond.
Here again, junior high, we're looking pretty good in junior high. Again, we've got junior high 18
that's going to help us with some growth out there in the northwest side. But if you look at,
if you just take hasket stock dick and add another junior high in there divide all those numbers in
2027 by three and you get a big chunk you got 1800 kids or whatever so you really got to think about
adding uh adding schools out in that area and then here are elementary projections now not every
elementary on this list is going to be touched by a bond some elementaries are pretty well landlocked
and we wouldn't go in and touch those elementaries but others are are going to need some assistance
are going to need some help. If you look at the 2025 column there, Elementary 45, which is now
Youngblood Elementary, and Elementary 46, which is Fowlton Elementary, you can see in 2025,
they're already exploding, right? And Dr. Greworski back several years ago suggested,
we got to open up, we should open up both those at the same time. And we all kind of were like,
really? And thank God we did. And so that kind of drives growth in that area, right?
So by 2025, we really need to have something on the ground to help those two schools.
And then you can see Robertson Elementary down there on the bottom.
Robertson Elementary with Sunterra and all that kind of area up there in the corner, the west corner of the district, all growing like crazy.
PASA, their recommendation is to do a bond.
They feel like November of 23 is a good time to do that.
There's a couple of things.
Obviously, growth is a big one.
And the amount of time that we need to get schools on the ground has extended from, you know, 13 months to now 18 months in terms of trying to get materials, get switchgear to get our electricity up on those buildings.
Greg's shaking his head.
So, you know, these projects, they take forever now.
And so you have to plan that much further out.
So that's kind of what's driving it right now.
And I'll turn it over to Dr. Grooms.
Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Villing.
What you see here in this chart is our history of 11 bonds over the years since 1994.
This school district has a history of passing bonds every three to four years to accommodate its fast growth.
Our last bond, of course, was in 2021.
But as you'll recall, that bond was delayed.
It was supposed to take place in 2020, but again, was delayed due to COVID.
We're here tonight to propose that the board consider the formation of a bond advisory
committee to take a look at the enrollment projections to dig deeper into the data concerning
campus needs at older campuses as well as needs for newer buildings.
If that was something that the board wanted to do, the bond committee structure would
would look similar to past bond committees in 2021 and in 2017,
where you had a core committee of decision makers
of about 150 individuals or up to 150 individuals.
And those discussions and processes
would be open to the public to listen, learn, and hear
about what is taking place at those meetings.
This is the proposed meeting schedule
schedule with four meetings leading up to a potential recommendation from the committee
should they determine a bond is needed based on the analysis of data and needs that would
be presented to them by experts at all of those different meetings.
And the last day for the board to call for an election would be August 21.
And this is just more information about that timeline.
timeline.
The CBAC or the Community Bond Advisory Committee application would be made available February
1st and would be open through February 15th with members being selected after that.
And then again, the first meeting taking place in March and again, a bond package could be
proposed to the board as early as April, should that be the direction the CBAC goes in.
then. Any questions? Thank you, Dr. Grooms. Any questions? Yes, I have a couple questions.
Dr. Grooms, I was on the bond committee, I think it was in 2017, and so what I've remembered
historically, the committee meets in the summer. I mean, you know, we met in the summer. I remember
that in 2017. It seems like the ones I can remember were in the summer. Why is
this not being done in the summer rather you know why are we doing it in the
spring rather than the summer?
bond committee models were as you described we had many more meetings i want to say in 2014 for that
bond and perhaps 2017 as well after covid we were forced to change that structure and look at how we
delivered information to our committee members that structure included providing a lot of
information up front ahead of the meetings for our members to study so they came to the meetings
KNOWING A LITTLE BIT ABOUT SCHOOL FINANCE AND SOME OF OUR NEEDS AND OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE
AND SOME OF THOSE HIGH LEVEL TOPICS THAT WE SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN OR WE USED TO SPEND
A LOT OF TIME GOING OVER THE FIRST THREE MEETINGS BACK IN 2014 OR IN 2017.
SO THE MODEL HAS CHANGED.
SO THERE'S LESS MEETINGS AND THAT'S WHY THERE'S NO LONGER A NEED TO GO INTO THE SUMMER.
ALSO ONE OTHER QUESTION.
and this school was not mentioned on here,
but this might be a question for Mr. Verling.
I understand that a lot of those schools
are going to be overcrowded,
but I'm thinking of one school in particular
that is really overcrowded in the South Side.
It's Campbell Elementary.
Yes, ma'am.
Will any of these new schools that are being built now
or in the future hope to help a school
like Campbell Elementary?
There may be others.
I just know about Campbell.
Not Campbell Elementary, ma'am,
But if you recall the board voted on an attendance boundary modification that we actually
Move some kiddos out of Campbell into Wollman, which actually helped will help those numbers tremendously
And that's what happened. Yes, ma'am that that takes place for the August 2023. Okay. Yes, ma'am. All right. Thank you
Any other questions one question?
As I understand it based on our current debt service tax rate
Based on we know today
We're not expecting, maybe it's a question from Mr. Smith, we're not expecting or thinking that when we do another bond that that rate would have to change based on what we know today.
That the taxes being generated by the 39 cents would be adequate, sufficient for the existing bonds as well as the new ones.
Based on my most recent analysis and the analysis that will be brought to you next month when we do our debt presentation, I do feel that $0.39 would be attainable moving forward.
Should we move forward with a bond?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
If not, I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President.
Yes.
I move the Board of Trustees approves the formation of a 2023 Community Bond Advisory Committee and approves the committee charter.
Second.
We have a motion by Mrs. Vann, second by Mr. Redman.
We'll now proceed to vote.
Board members, please record the vote on your screen via the keypad.
7-0.
The motion passes 7-0.
10-10.
Discuss and consider board approval amending the total project cost for Junior High School,
10.10 Discuss and consider amending the total project costs for Junior High School #18, Elementary #45 and Katy Elementary School.
number 18, Elementary School, number 45, and Kitty Elementary School.
It's been a while since we've seen you, Ms. Lisa Kastman, Executive Director of Facilities.
Thank you.
We're going to get busy.
Good to see you.
Good evening.
See me more next month.
5 a.m.
Good evening, President Schulte, trustees and Dr. Gagorski.
I only have one item this evening for your consideration.
The contracts were approved in February and March of last year for Elementary 45, the
Katy Elementary, High School 10 and Junior High 18.
As the project has progressed, we continue to track our costs and we discovered an error
in our calculation of the total project cost contract amounts.
This requires a reconciliation of the original budgets. The funds to correct these project budgets are available from both project savings and the current bond.
The initial error was made in the emission of the cost for the kitchens in the contract to the general contractor.
The total project cost for these projects will be increased to correct for this error.
The second item to be addressed is the distribution of the costs for the road work and utilities for the Northwest Complex.
complex. The roadworks and utilities portion was carried all by the high school, but it
should have been distributed between the junior high, the elementary, and northwest site.
The new total project cost for these three items would be an increase of $3,546,798 across
the projects.
Thank you, Ms. Katzman. Are there any questions, Board Members?
Mr. Schulte?
Yes.
Just as I look at the motion, the motion has the total cost with the corrections in it
But we aren't approving $63 million.
It's just there are some adjustments.
Should we have the...
It says we're approving it to $63 million, so that is correct, right?
Yeah, so you're amending each of the three.
That's the new tax.
We're amending the total project cost to that.
Okay.
I think it...
I agree with what you're saying.
It's a different way to say...
Yeah.
Other than saying the incremental, we're saying this is the cap.
Yeah, $980,000.
It's not adding.
It's...
Yes.
And I'll just point out that we have included this in the budget amendments and it does not affect
the bond funds bottom line
Any other questions
Just to clarify so even though we're over on this particular project or projects
overall in terms of our bond funding
Because of other projects that are under etc. They were were fine on on the on the authorization on that bond authorization, correct?
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN BRYANT LIMAGE.
Is that good, Mr. President?
MR.
Yes.
CHAIRMAN BRYANT LIMAGE.
Any other questions?
I'll entertain a motion.
MR.
Mr. President?
CHAIRMAN BRYANT LIMAGE.
Yes.
MR.
I move that the Board of Trustees amends the total project costs for Junior
High School Number 18 to $63,964,118, Elementary School Number 45 to $40,011,018, and Katy Elementary
School to $26,732,207.
CHAIRMAN BRYANT LIMAGE.
Oh, second, okay.
I thought I missed it.
We have a motion by Mr. Redman, a second by Mrs. Vann.
We'll now proceed to vote.
Board members, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad.
The motion passes 7-0.
Thank you.
Oh, here it is, 10-11.
Discuss and consider board approval of the renewal proposal for property insurance.
10.11 Discuss and consider approval of the renewal proposal for Property Insurance.
Senator, Mr. Lance Naumann, Director of Risk Management.
Good evening.
Good evening.
Dr. Kragorski, President Schulte, and Board of Trustees.
The renewal of the property insurance program for the policy year 23-24 does not anticipate changes in the design and structure of the expiring period.
Coverage is extended for the following buildings, structures and their contents,
physical damage to buses and automobiles for catastrophic losses, electronic data
processing equipment, mobile equipment, musical instruments, as well as boilers
and machinery. Major perils include fire, flood, earthquake, windstorm, named
windstorm, and wind-driven rain. The current total insured value, TIV, for the
The district is $4.02 billion, with an expiring value of $3.701 billion.
The expiring rate presently stands at $0.169, with the renewal rate to be set at $0.169, respectively.
During the recent policy term, risk management evaluated building values
and added new buildings and renovations from completed bond projects across the district.
Additionally, a review of district-owned assets was completed as part of the review for coverage
related to contents.
Building values have been adjusted to reflect inflationary trends seen in the marketplace
from the trailing impact of COVID and supply chain price increases.
The renewal presented by Berkshire Hathaway was evaluated by the Risk Management Department,
considering the adequacy of coverage, assessment of risk, availability of services, and costs.
The proposal also saw consideration for continued growth experienced by the
district from the expiring term the market conditions have been influenced
by the following. One, the trailing impact of COVID-19, instability in the
reinsurance marketplace, lack of single carrier capacity, and the layering of
limits afforded by carriers. Risk management is of the opinion that the
Berkshire Hathaway proposal represents best value and offers one coverage
limits that exceed the maximum expected losses, renewal data outside hurricane season, continued
increase limits for flood coverage, standalone flood coverage for Creech Elementary, and renewal
options for 2024. This action impacts the 22-23 General Operating Fund for property insurance
premiums by an estimated annual premium of $5,299,200. This action is in compliance with CH
CH Legal, CH Local, and CRB Legal.
It is recommended that the Board of Trustees
approves the renewal proposal for property insurance
as presented by USI for 2023.
Thank you, Board members.
Are there any questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
I would just like to tell Mr. Nauman,
thank you for hanging in there with us,
and thank you for your presentation and all your hard work.
Thank you.
There's no questions. I'll entertain a motion. Mr. President, I move the Board of Trustees
approves renewal proposal for property insurance as presented by USI for 2023.
Second. We have a motion by Mrs. Vann, a second by Ms. Wilson. We'll now proceed to vote.
Board members, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad. The motion passes
7-0. Thank you, Mr. Nalman. Now we'll proceed to the full consent agenda. I'll entertain
entertain a motion. Mr. President. Well, I'm sorry. I have a question about one of these things. Yes.
11. Consent
It has to do with 11.4.
I'm just trying to, so can somebody, like I see the map, okay.
So for those in the audience, 11.4 is considered board approval of the interlocal agreement with
willow fork drainage district for sidewalk conditions at beck junior high school single
ranch junior high school and single ranch high school so miss cassman i think if there's a
question on this oh mr beerling does okay there he is yes sir so okay so tell me again that it's
going to connect some of the schools yes ma'am so what it does is the willow fork drainage district
reached out to us and they have some excess funds that they use throughout the community, right?
The Willow Fork drainage district is pretty big. And so they came to us and they proposed several
different projects. Some didn't get approved by their board and some did. These two did.
And one of the projects is at Beck Junior High and that connects the, I don't know if you're
familiar with it, but the sidewalk that runs along the bayou there, that connects that sidewalk to
to our property. Right now there's just a kind of a kid-made dirt path that the kids walk down
and when it's muddy and that sort of thing. So they were willing to build that for us. And then
the one at Cinco is similar. It creates a walk path for the kiddos specifically at the junior
high to get from that walk path that goes behind Cinco to the junior high rather than walking
through the puddles and in the mud back there and then it also provides a little
bit of a sidewalk for the Cinco high kids as they're coming along that at
that road there so they're gonna pay for it I'm just me they pay for that and
then and we maintain it Nathan will tell you he loves that part but we maintain
it but yes ma'am they'll pay for that all that stuff up front and they work
with our team to make sure that all the engineering and underground is all done
and everything else.
I just wanted to make sure of any of our late-night viewers
who are still watching that we're getting this.
And I just want to thank Willow Fork Drainage District
for doing this.
And I think this will be a good addition to those schools.
Mr. President?
Yes.
You know, Mr. Champaign, that park there that's by
Cinco Ranch High School was paid for by Willow Fork Drainage District.
And they also helped put in all these great playgrounds and things with some other funds.
I live in that area, and that's my thing.
And I'm happy that my dollars are going to help build the community.
They're very, very focused on green space and walking and trails and all that thing.
Yeah, we have quite a few mud districts that are very good to us and communities.
And I know over by Woolman, they've got a great group over there that's done a lot of stuff.
So, yeah, fantastic.
Love that.
Thanks.
Any other questions on any of the consent agenda items?
If not, I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President?
Yes?
I move that the Board of Trustees approves the consent agenda for items 11.1 through 11.8.
Second.
We have a motion by Mr. Redman, a second by Mrs. Champagne.
We'll now proceed to vote.
Board members, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad.
The motion passes 7-0.
We'll now proceed to agenda item 12.1, KDISD Legislative Priority Update.
I understand the presenter is right as I haven't had enough to talk about tonight
12.1 Katy ISD Legislative Priorities Update
I'm gonna do this it's actually my honor to be able to present this report
normally it's mr. Redmond he wasn't able to join us this time so I am giving the
report Katie ice D is one of eight school districts out of the thousand and
30 however many around Texas who were given a text trustee advocacy grant to
participate in this incredible opportunities to go and talk to our
legislators understand how to communicate with them to our voices are
our voices and we're quite loud voices in the room I would say but it's nice
working with the other seven school districts some very small and some large
like us but the important part of this is that our voices are our voices and no
one tries to influence that in any way and it's what dudes your community want
legislators to know and so that's the whole purpose and so together with our
community through the input of those learning circles listening circles all
around the district in the fall we develop these legislative priorities
that we presented at this dais before.
And these are the ones that were important to our community.
So on January 12th, we went to the Capitol
and we met with six legislators or their staff in Austin
and we presented this to them
and talked through our four main priorities,
which, again, school finance, state testing,
teacher recruitment and retention
due to the teacher shortage,
and House Bill 4545. So we went to all that we went to Representative Jaton,
Hall, Rosenthal, Schofield. We went to Senators Kolkhorst and Huffman's offices.
And we also learned through this program the importance of building relationships
with our legislators and their staff because they have staff doing all their
things. They have an educate person just for education, a person for something else
when they're not available. And the importance of keeping that communication flowing while in the
legislative session, and almost more importantly, when it isn't. The 88th legislative session just
began, and it's ongoing until May. As a refresher, Texas legislators meet for 140 days every two
two years. So they pass laws that have a lasting impact for two years. They don't meet like we do
and can change something every month they meet. And we understand how difficult that can be when
they make a decision and then we live with it for years. One example is student funding.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Smith, but our basic allotment for student funding has been
at the same rate for five years.
So that's high on their list of priorities.
It's high on our list of priorities.
We know what has happened to our dollars
just in the last couple of years with inflation,
yet we still receive the same funding
we received five years ago.
And so we're talking to them about an adjustment
to the student.
We're funded based on every student that comes to school,
on attendance, not on enrollment.
There's a focus on talking about enrollment because they say that just because students are sick or don't come to school, we still have to pay teachers and turn the lights on and run the buses.
So we don't get a break when students aren't here.
So there was talk about that.
There is no mechanism to adjust for inflation when they're not in session and inflation goes up.
And can you imagine the size of our district and the amounts of goods and services we have to buy for our 90-something buildings and our 93,000 students using paper towels and soap and all the things, all the things.
So it's important for us to talk to our legislators about the things that matter, and student funding is certainly one of them.
We, I especially want to highlight that when we met with Representative Jaton, he was very in tune with our priorities.
We talked to him through the summer, of course, and constantly.
And he is already working on a bill to talk about student funding and talk about funding based on students.
And it has a tie to an inflation factor.
and he also is talking about teacher shortages because he met with teachers
over the summer it was just really impressive to be there and see he was
like oh and he pulled up a draft legislation right then let me pull it up
and show it to you and he printed it off and showed us what he's working on and
got our in our feedback right there and made adjustments and we talked through
it and we're very excited that the first week he's there before committee
assignments have even been given he might not even be on the Education
Committee, but here he is caring about our KDISD and making recommendations. And I talked to him
today and the bill still doesn't have a number because it's working through committee, right?
I mean, that's good feedback. And he said, as soon as it has a bill number, he'll tell us so
we can follow it as it goes. And it'll be adjusted through committee. We participated in a mock
hearing so we can experience how the legislative process works and how to have our voices heard
when bills are making their way through and they're having the testimony to hear
how does this impact your district if we do this and so mrs wilson and i um wrote up our
you get three minutes just like you do and like just like people do when they come here and
and how to get our points across with two minutes or three minutes and um it was very very helpful
wasn't it Mrs. Tahir because there were legislators who met with us and told us
the things that make it impactful to them and and what they like to hear and
listen to and and all of that so and then they gave us an opportunity to try
it out we talked about like we talked to them about how when a really good idea
HB 4545 came from a student learning loss.
And so they passed legislation to help with learning loss,
but it had unintended consequences
because once it became put into practice,
it had some big problems with it.
And now they're listening to us to make adjustments to that
so that we can address learning loss
without having to have so many requirements
that not all of our children need.
If a student missed passing the STAAR Test by one question, they still have to have 30 hours of tutorials when they don't need 30 hours.
And so a student who passed by one is falling through the, you know, those kinds of things.
So we talked to them about that, and they were very receptive.
Our visits were positive and productive, and our elected officials were so happy to hear from us and to see us there.
And they want to see our community members as well.
So we're still encouraging our stakeholders to be involved, especially during the session.
It's very, very, when you walk up to the Capitol or drive past it, I still don't get tired of seeing that.
And I hope that our stakeholders will go to the Capitol and see how your voices make a difference.
So thanks to everyone who gave their time and efforts to develop our legislative priorities.
We'll keep you involved and informed and updated, and we look forward to continuing to see where this, where having four priorities, I think, is still a really good decision because they can focus on four.
They said it was well presented and easy to keep, and it's really good.
Mrs. Wilson, do you have anything you want to add?
You were there.
No, I think you hit all the points.
of the um good parts it's a lot of halls to walk because our representatives are like here there
and everywhere down a different hallway thank goodness for all of the aids who can help us
they know exactly where you're going um but no it's it's been a great experience so far
and i look forward to seeing um what kind of interest we have from our community to see if
if they're willing to make the trek up there
to continue to talk about what the needs of KDISD are.
We carry a lot of weight because we have a lot of students.
And that makes what our constituents and us
have to say very, very important.
All right, great effort.
And there's been a lot of work put in by the board members
serving on that, and Dr. Gagorski and Dr. Grooms.
A lot of people have been working on that.
So good stuff.
OK, it was a sprint to the finish.
sorry buddy hold on we're gonna go through this pretty quickly 12.2 the board was provided i was
hoping to get done by 11 so we'll see how fast i can read the board was provided the quarterly
investment report 12.3 the board was provided the cooperative purchases contract management
12.2 Quarterly Investment Report
12.3 Cooperative Purchases Contract Management Fees Report for the 2021-2022 School Year.
fees report 12.4 the board was provided the donated items list 12.5 miss van we only have one
12.4 Donated Items to Katy Independent School District
Six hours of meeting. We only have one. On 8.2, there's a request to gather policy ideas and get feedback. So policy ideas as per other campuses and other practices. And to get feedback on cell phone use during instructional days, Rebecca said that she could share what other school districts are doing that she's aware of. So Dr. Tversky can look forward to that. That's all.
12.5 Recap of Board member requests for Information.
Did anybody have anything else they needed that wasn't that's all I had
Okay, thirteen point one. There will be a special board meeting on Monday, February 20th, 2023
13.1 Special Board Meeting – February 20, 2023
The next regular board meeting will be on Monday, February 27 2023
13.2 Regular Board Meeting – February 27, 2023
There being no further business before this board this meeting is adjourned
The time is 1101 and I do want to thank all the staff and community members that stayed
I know it's a late night and you guys all work today. So thank you very much. Appreciate it. Appreciate your endurance
Official documents
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 10.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees names Elementary School #45, located at 25600 Longenbaugh Road, David & Terri Youngblood Elementary School as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
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 10.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees names Elementary School #46, located at 25615 Clay Road, Russell & Cindie Faldyn Elementary School as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 003 · AGENDA 10.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the 2021-2022 annual financial audit report.
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 10.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the recommended instructional materials adoption for elementary literacy resources to begin implementation district-wide in 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 005 · AGENDA 10.5
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees adopts the Order Calling for a regular election of School Board Trustees to be held on May 6, 2023 and authorize the Administration to provide official notice of the election as required by the Texas Election Code.
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 10.6
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approve an amendment to the 2023-2024 Instructional Calendar.
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 10.7
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the 2024-2025 Instructional Calendar as presented by the administration.
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 10.8
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves a Professional Development Waiver for the 2024-2025 instructional calendar.
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 10.9
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the formation of a 2023 Community Bond Advisory Committee and approves the Committee Charter.
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 10.10
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees amends the total project cost for Junior High School #18 to $63,964,118, Elementary School #45 to $40,011,018, and Katy Elementary School to $26,732,207.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 011 · AGENDA 10.11
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the renewal proposal for Property Insurance as presented by USI for 2023.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 012 · AGENDA 11.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's January 2023 budget amendments.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 013 · AGENDA 11.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's November 2022 financial statements.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 014 · AGENDA 11.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the plat for Longenbaugh Road at Katy Hockley Road.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 015 · AGENDA 11.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Interlocal Agreement with Willow Fork Drainage District for sidewalk additions at Beck Junior High School, Cinco Ranch Junior High School, and Cinco Ranch High School.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| greg-schulte | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| leah-wilson | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 016 · AGENDA 11.5
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the interlocal agreement with PACE Purchasing Cooperative.
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 017 · AGENDA 11.6
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards the contract for Fiber Upgrades to Fisk Electric.
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 018 · AGENDA 11.7
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards the contract for Security Camera Upgrades to Accutek Technologies.
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 019 · AGENDA 11.8
Passed(not specified)
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 020 · AGENDA 11.8
UnknownIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the minutes for the December Board meetings. Motion Passes
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 |