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Katy ISD · Special Meeting
Katy ISD Special Meeting, March 20, 2023
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- 0:03 to 1:01 1. Call to Order - Upon announcement by the presiding officer that a quorum is present, the meeting will be called to order. The presiding officer will verify that the meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted for the time and manner required by law.
- 1:01 to 1:16 3. Verification of Compliance with the Provisions of the Open Meetings Act
- 1:16 to 4:33 4. Public comment- In accordance with BED(LEGAL) and BED(LOCAL), the Board shall hear from persons who desire to make comments to the Board on posted agenda topics only. Persons who wish to participate in this portion of the meeting shall sign up via email at publicrecords@katyisd.org by 2 p.m. on Monday, March 20, 2023. Speakers must also sign in at least 15 minutes before the meeting begins.
- 4:33 to 36:24 5.1 2022-2023 Mid-Year Budget Update
- 36:24 to 2:18:23 6.1 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the campus staffing plan for the 2023 - 2024 school year
- 2:18:23 to 2:18:43 7.1 Regular Board Meeting - March 27, 2023
Full transcript
Automated transcript, not human verified. It is a way to find a passage, not a quotation.
1. Call to Order - Upon announcement by the presiding officer that a quorum is present, the meeting will be called to order. The presiding officer will verify that the meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted for the time and manner required by law.
we're going to go ahead and get started noting that a quorum is present i hereby call the
special meeting of the board of trustees of the kt independent school district to order
today is monday march 20th 2023 and the time is 5 pm chief call will lead us in the pledge of
of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.
Thank you, Chief.
Dr. Gorski, will you verify that we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to notification for this meeting?
3. Verification of Compliance with the Provisions of the Open Meetings Act
Mr. Schulte, I do confirm we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting tonight.
Okay, now proceed into the public comment section of this meeting.
4. Public comment- In accordance with BED(LEGAL) and BED(LOCAL), the Board shall hear from persons who desire to make comments to the Board on posted agenda topics only. Persons who wish to participate in this portion of the meeting shall sign up via email at publicrecords@katyisd.org by 2 p.m. on Monday, March 20, 2023. Speakers must also sign in at least 15 minutes before the meeting begins.
since today is a special board meeting we only have public available to speak
on posted agenda items and there's only one speaker tonight and it's Mary Ellen
Kizella good evening time this evening since you're discussing a mid-year
budget update and staffing plans for next school year I wanted to share some
feedback for that I've gathered in recent conversations with Katie IUC
teachers and transportation personnel for teachers pay is not the reason they
get into the teaching profession they usually become teachers because they
love teaching kids job satisfaction is the key so decreasing their
administrative workload keeping the classroom size limits and backing them
up with a consistently enforced discipline policy are essential in
helping to attract and retain teachers when we address these factors teaching
Teaching teachers can do the job they love, and they usually stay.
But I do understand we could have an unmanageable teacher shortage, possibly.
Crosby ISD has had to go to a four-day school week because of their teacher shortage.
With this in mind, job satisfaction is not only crucial, but so is pay,
especially also since we're living in high inflation.
It's a given that our KDISD teachers should be paid a salary and offered benefits
Comparable to surrounding districts from what I understand this is not the case
I recently spoke to the couple who are both teachers with a young son
The father recently left the district and went to spring I see while his wife stayed in Katie to teach
I asked why is he now willing to make an hour commute to spring?
He explained he's getting a substantial pay increase and his co-pays for routine medical needs have substantially decreased
Is there a way to give a pay increase?
exclusively just for frontline teachers can they also have a more desirable
benefits fact package offered if you increase your job satisfaction and offer
them an increase in pay and better benefits or even a bit more we are
surely going to help teachers choose Katie and choose to stay here also have
you considered hiring back retired teachers or teachers who've left to
start their families by offering a part-time or half-day option through
Through conversations, it seems to be a popular idea.
The same holds true for bus drivers and transportation personnel.
We've had a shortage of bus drivers already for a couple of years.
They are paid less than surrounding districts.
I also understand that Cyfair and Fort Bend are now raising their bus driver pay again,
so transportation here in Katy expects to lose more drivers.
The district already had to contract with outside bus driver companies to address the shortage.
The contracting need will likely increase because of the pay disparity.
If we want to retain and attract great teachers, bus drivers, and transportation personnel,
we need to pay them comparable, if not a bit more, than surrounding districts.
Lower pay and inflation don't add up, literally.
Building fancy new schools and not addressing teacher and transportation pay doesn't add up either.
I hope you'll find a way to address this.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
This concludes the public comment portion of our meeting.
We'll now proceed to agenda item 5.1, which is a report for Mr. Chris Smith on the 2022-2023 midyear budget update.
5.1 2022-2023 Mid-Year Budget Update
Good evening.
Well, good evening, President Schulte, Superintendent Gorgorski, and trustees.
I'm here to talk about where we are, kind of what we know anyway through six months.
It's not on here.
I'm going to have to log on to my site real quick.
Sorry.
Daniel can you pull the presentation up onto the screen just using board Doc's okay
Getting close.
All right.
Thank you.
All right.
I think I've done it through the back door, and there it is.
I hope that didn't take as long as it gruelingly took to do that.
With pressure and fat fingers, wow.
So there we are.
We're six months through, and there's some things that we know.
And, in fact, I'll start off by last August when we adopted a deficit budget
because we are in an environment where we're on a fixed income with the state of Texas,
and we did offer raises to our staff that put us in a deficit.
and I've mentioned to you from this location at the time that I'm not going
to lose much sleep over that deficit because there are some things that I'm
aware of that usually happens and and and at some point during the year we
all will we manage it all the time at some point I would report it and it
would make sense to do so at six months so from a revenue update I'm gonna just
going to go through in these these only six items and just talk about them and
say that that there's some positive things and some negative things that we
we know that are happening with our revenue.
As I mentioned before, we do not budget ESSER indirect cost.
An ESSER indirect cost, if we put that
in the original budget, we would get used to it
because those costs are going to just drop off like a cliff.
And so when those costs drop off like a cliff,
the indirect costs drop off like a cliff.
So our budget needs to be used to what is routine
or in what we can count on. We'll amend the budget at some point for that
indirect cost but right now I'm estimating that to be 2.5 million dollars
or more when we do as budget for it and normally in last year we budgeted in
the indirect in the final amended budget in August. Again don't put it in the
original budget because it will not be in the original budget at some point in
the time and it would be a cliff. URI storm damage insurance claim I'm it's
It's kind of frustrating to talk about this yet again.
I expected this money already to be here well over a year ago.
We're still with that $3.4 million in the estimate,
and it is unknown whether that will happen or not.
So I guess if I could put it in italics, I would have at this point,
because that I'm going to tell you now, I'm not a betting guy, but that is not for sure.
recognized change in comp ed students this is a for sure we've gone over the last couple of
years from 30% eco disc or around low 32 percent do I think it's 44 45 percent eco discs are
economically disadvantage population is increased substantially there's funding associated with
that the basic allotment you all heard me talk about that is upped by those students that qualify
qualify for the number of students that qualify for free and reduced lunch or economically
disadvantaged. And we expect that increase from last year to this year because of the large
increase, again, to be worth $7 million. We estimated a regular increase of student population
growth at 3 or 4 percent, but it came in well above that. And there is an effect of that. And
that is a real number. And that is unlike the one above it. That's real. Property value audit,
it uh mr heinz and myself have been working closely with mr pawanka these last few weeks
in fact uh i would say within the last hour we received an email from him and i'm very confident
that uh as he moves forward with that both a 2020 uh tax year audit and a 2021 tax year audit that
those will uh be a a very good wild card number i don't want to guess what that is uh but it'll be
it would be the largest number on this screen if it were up there at this point uh from a positive
standpoint but again we don't know if there's a process that we'll be doing in
the next couple of weeks with completing that that process and sending that over
to the comptroller and the comptroller may take a month it may take six months
and that's why we don't budget for those audits but but we are expecting that to
be fruitful and and again if they audit at the comptroller works on that
that immediately as soon as TA gets it they'll process it because TA is not
spending their budget because of various several other things like average daily
attendance statewide being very low and property taxes being very up and because
of that their budget is very flush as you've probably heard in the news right
now and so when they get that they'll process it fast they won't hold on to it
until they can get their budget renewed as well recognize additional interest
INTEREST EARNINGS, INTEREST RATES HAVE SOARED WITH WHAT WE'RE GETTING ON OUR DEPOSIT SINCE OUR ORIGINAL BUDGET AND IT'S CONTINUED TO GO UP.
AND WE THINK THAT THAT'S A CONSERVATIVE NUMBER OF WHAT'S NOT IN THERE.
AGAIN, WE HAVE $300 MILLION ON AVERAGE INVESTED, AND AS THOSE EARN MORE INTEREST, THAT'S GOING TO SWEETEN THAT NUMBER.
AND SO THOSE NUMBERS HAVE GONE UP SINCE THE ORIGINAL BUDGET.
NOT TO THE POINT WHERE I'M READY TO AMEND IT.
that'll happen later this summer when we can be a little bit closer to it versus
just taking another another stab at it and then there's an unfavorable with our
revenue and that's our average daily attendance our enrollment is
substantially up over what we budgeted but average daily attendance is down
about 2% and if you think about 2% on 90,000 kids we'll just round to 90,000
and that's 1,800 students.
Well, that offsets our big boom in our enrollment growth.
And so we're expecting that to be
it's going to hurt our budgeted enrollment.
And it's probably going to be a larger number than that, not
much, because there's some other things from a student
standpoint, like that comp ed that kind of ebb and flow
in there.
and so we're thinking that's a that is going to affect negatively our revenue
but by and large there's some positive things out there again that biggest one
being the property value audit that's still up in the air from an expenditure
standpoint we are under spending you can see that each month in your financial
reports that the board has provided when we think that's going to be a
conservative number at ten million dollars that's an it always happens we
never spend our entire budget and payroll is is the largest portion of
that and so we're expecting that to be under spending of about ten million
dollars unfavorable increases are if we get that transfer of the URI money of
three point four million dollars my recommendation is going to be to put
that towards health insurance because our health insurance fund is not doing
and well through the first few months of the plan. It is going to need cash again like it got last
year. So that would affect our expenses. If that money, if the revenue comes in, then I'd like to
put, I'm going to recommend to put that money towards our health fund expenses. Additional
funding for KSAT, additional funding for some program startups. Those are small, but we're
expecting those to be additional things that are out in the budget. And then portable building moves.
We're expecting that number to maybe be worked on and come down some, but we're accounting for it as a negative impact to our expenditures.
And an additional premium for property insurance.
You're going to hear about that Monday of next week.
But when we presented that to the board in January, we were over budget.
And as the invoicing came in last week, or I guess the week before spring break, the invoicing came in higher than we anticipated.
So on the summary of that, as their amended budget in February was a 16.7 or almost a 16.8 million dollar deficit there at the top in red.
Those favorable changes I talked about are total about 24.8 million dollars and the unfavorable changes are about 10.4 million in total.
And so we think that that would have a positive impact on our deficit of about 2.3 million dollars.
Again, where I didn't need to be conservative when it came to expenses, I wasn't.
And on income, I think that we were conservative in that.
And so I would like to think that we would have a surplus budget if it really all said and done,
especially when we get the value on that property value audit.
If that $3.4 million in the URI claim does not happen, that increases that to, what, 5.7?
I do think that any property value audit would are the two property value odds would cover that and I feel confident
That that would be the case. So
I'm not still not losing sleep over it and through six months. There's some good and some bad
That are going on that that we're managing every day
with that said I think
Esser is is something that people talk about because it's been a big a big influx of
to this district over these last couple of years.
And so, you know, essentially with ESSER II,
we have a current balance of $4.7 million.
And basically, with what I'm going on all this,
I think that we'll have about $7 million of ESSER funds
that are available to the district
that are not encumbered or planned for at this time.
Again, I'm real proud that the ESSER dollars have, by and large,
will really have all been got that have gone toward learning loss or to doing
things that are growth related to keep ahead of the curve so we don't have
learning loss and so I'm very very pleased that the district's done the
right things with those dollars thus far but it does look like we're going to
have some monies left over for decisions to be made at some point that we can
continue doing good things for for the district and so that's that's that's
ultimately a positive and that's that's all I have on your report on my report
and I'd be glad to answer any questions who should you have any any questions
board members thank you mr. Smith well one of the things we've talked about I
guess what I'm hearing there is we feel like the deficit is made up for the most
part and then we have extra funds left over from Esther and so we've talked
about several times over the past couple months even one of our strategic design
goals is teacher retention favorable culture has there been any discussion
on I mean we've seen what other districts have done with with those
Esther funds knowing that if we don't spend it it goes away doing some type of
like a like an employee retention bonus or the other item we looked at before
was trying to equalize that IOO pay rate have we we looked at that or would y'all
be able to put something together for us to maybe move forward something like
that yes I'm gonna probably let mr. dr. Gorg or skis speak to the details on
that because of outside of my pay grade but I do think that that we you know
based on those extra dollars that there would be funds available to do something
like that and I would I would again based on this through six months and
knowing that that that that would be something that I could be palatable with
from my perspective so what I what I would add to that is Chris and I talk
talk about the budget more than anyone probably would believe as much as we go through this and
I feel good about our budget this year and I feel good about the additional revenues as Chris has
explained to you guys the s or dollars yeah that's correct if we don't use the s or dollars when it
expires we just give them back so that could be a worthy expenditure from Esther if we have as Chris
put on the screen chris can you put that screen back up on that esser was i saw seven point
something million dollars i think uh yeah just a little bit over seven million dollars we could
come through and we could do something this is that time of the year that we will see other
districts doing things to attract and retain and other districts have done in the past different
types of i don't want to use the term bonuses but i'll use the term lump sum type payments
or retention-type stipends and those types,
we are bringing to the board this month,
which is a week from today,
we bring our teacher contracts that we approve every year.
Did administrator contracts last month.
We're doing teacher contracts.
We could do something tied to that
in terms of retention strategy,
and we could use those ESSER dollars for that,
and we could put in something of some kind of lump-sum payment
tied to our folks that are returning,
possibly as a retention some sort of lump sum payment of that type we can
work on that I could work with mr. Schuss on that this week I think we
could put an item or some items for consideration for the board for Monday
night if you'd like to take a look at it that soon I think that'd be great I
mean my experience on the board has been every time we've gotten a report like
that from our finance office Harvey insurance payments came back well who he
We took that and made that a 1% lump sum to everybody.
At the end of the year, I think there was a, I don't know if it was after the freeze or when that happened again, we've kind of done the same thing.
So I think that's kind of been our MO the entire time.
Anytime there's extra funds that come back that weren't budgeted for and we have a plan with everything else is to put that in our employees' hands as quick as possible.
I agree with you on that, Mr. Redman.
And we've done that in the past when our budget figures show up to be a little bit more favorable than expected and things are good.
And we've been good stewards of the dollars that we come back if we have a few potential extra dollars to spend.
And like I said, these dollars will expire, as you see there, through 2024.
So that could be a good use of those dollars to do something with retention type, something in there.
You also mentioned looking at the compensation.
I know we had talked a few times about equalization of that pay grade that is a little bit out of
Adjustment in there some adjustments we could bring back an item on that as well to talk about how we had equalized to that moving
Forward to ensure what we do from here on out if that's something acceptable to the board that we would
Equalize that moving forward and get that to ensure that our comp plan is all squared away for when we approve the new comp plan
which would be later in June.
Do you guys have any idea what the cost of those,
I heard of two items, one is a 1% bonus
is what we've typically done.
What's the, I think I remember the cost of that,
but it's in the six to seven million dollar range
for a 1% and then I remember on the equalization,
as I recall, that was in the five to $600,000 range
for the 001, somewhere in that range.
I think that's right.
Okay.
Well, you guys can get us information.
I just want to kind of get a feel what kind of range of budget impact that we're talking.
So it's in the – for one, the bonus is $6 million to $7 million, and the equalized, the instructional coaches is an additional $500,000 to $600,000 range.
That's how I remember it, yes, sir.
You can get us the details on that by Monday.
Yes, sir.
I'm sorry.
I don't know the exact percentage of 1% right now.
I should.
I don't. I've known it before. I can't pull it up and I don't want to mislead you, but I do remember it to be somewhere between seven and a half million dollars.
That's what I thought was in it.
And it's about a half million dollars on the other topic. I'm less familiar with that one, but that's about what I remember as well. But I can find out.
Mr. President?
Yeah.
First of all, thank you, Mr. Redman, for bringing that up because I think that, like Dr. Cricorsi said, if we could use the money to, you know, pay some kind of incentive for our teachers and also equalize the instructional coaches, as Mr. Redman had suggested, because we've all been a little bit concerned about that, you know, for the past couple of years.
So I think that will make a lot of people very happy.
But I have a question about ADA.
ADA.
Just so that the audience who I know is riveted to hear this information, can you explain
the formula of ADA a little bit?
I know it's average daily attendance and we're paid based on that, but there's the yearly
allotment and how is that figured into all the ADA and everything?
Could you basically describe that?
So, again, all school districts in the state of Texas are paid based on the basic allotment,
and that's currently $6,160, and we're building our fifth budget.
I believe it's our fifth, fourth or fifth budget with that amount.
So until that changes, districts all across the state, whether you're in the Panhandle or in the Valley or Katy,
are stuck at $6,160.
$6,160. And so the easy part to think of is every average daily attendance is worth $6,160. It's not
on enrollment. It's on children that come to school. We staff on enrollment, okay, but it's
based on the number of percentage of students that come to school. And we typically run, let's just
say 97%. It's some decimal points, but we're running around 95% post COVID. Districts all
across the state are running lower average daily attendance than they are
it seems like from my perspective this is my perspective that it's just not as
important to come to school because everybody got used to working at home
and hey you got the sniffles to stay home with me and more mom and dads in my
opinion are working from home and it's just easier to keep keep the child home
than send them to school. But basically one average daily attendance is worth $6,160. And we're down 2%. And 2% of 90,000 kids is about 1,800 average daily attendance that we're down.
Now, we're up in our enrollment, but we're down further in our average daily attendance percentage.
And it's not all about money on that.
We need children to come to school, and children need to go to school because they need to learn, first and foremost.
But money is tied to that.
And there's an effort at the state to fund schools off of average daily enrollment.
And if that were to be the case, if that were to work its way through, it's a huge fiscal note.
But some districts would rise from an average daily attendance rate of 90% and get all the way to 100.
And we would go from 97% and get to 100.
But the fiscal note, the real money is from getting districts with very dismal attendance rates that they've had for a while.
And to get them up to 100% is where it costs all the money.
And so, you know, again, it's a money deal.
I get it, but more importantly from my perspective is we want children to come to school
I hope that answered your question with a little bit of rhetoric in there about children need to come into school
But it's what six thousand one hundred sixty dollars and then miss champagne again if they're bilingual
It's an adjustment on the six thousand one hundred sixty dollars if they're special needs that adjust that six thousand one hundred sixty dollars because
The funding form of the state of Texas is just those upwards based on those those types of students
but the average student is $6,160 and that's that's what you lose when when
with everyone average daily attendance down thank you very much for explaining
mr. Perez you had one earlier yes and I agree with the using the answer funds
funds because for a lump sum because that's a one-time thing as opposed to
taking on the expense on a go forward basis where do you show maybe it's in
the ESSER balance the remaining is for balance where do you show the the cost
for the the new reading materials and curriculum where is that there they're
They're netted out of the ESSER III.
I believe it's ESSER III.
Yeah, it is ESSER III for sure.
They're included as part of the district initiatives that are still happening.
They're baked into that cake.
So those taken into account minus that is what we have left over.
So we could use the ESSER funding for a lot of the cost of the new reading materials.
Yes, and that plan is to use and has already been accounted for to take a large chunk of that initiative
out of those ESSER funds. Okay. So that's net of that action. Okay. And then I just
want to be clear we could pay for a retention
payment can't be a bonus we could pay a retention payment with those extra funds
we could not pay for the equalization with that's your funds they go away that
would be a hit to the general fund so that would be an added expense to the
slide that I had before this but the majority would be the lump sum yes sir
yeah yes one more thing just so I understand it on the seven million
positive which is that change in comp at numbers that's greater than a higher
than expected enrollment of disadvantaged students?
Yes, yes sir.
Where the district gets additional funds?
Yes sir.
Okay.
Again, and that number is not determined off of attendance. That's the number that was
that this district had on its snapshot date, which was the last day on Friday.
That's the number of economically disadvantaged and where on the TEA's geographic spectrum that
they live and so that's a hard formula whether kids come to school or not that's going to be
a real number that we can count on it's not a subject to average daily attendance and i feel
confident that that's not going to move okay thanks a lot and can we get a copy of these slides
absolutely okay yes sir thank you is it i was out friday before spring break okay and so i apologize
I apologize for the fact that if it's not in Board Docs, that's my fault.
I don't think it's in Board Docs.
It's my fault only.
And I usually come down here to check to make sure my stuff's in there.
And the first time I never did, here we go.
But I found it relatively quick.
I apologize for that short delay.
Thank you.
Ms. Fox at the ghetto.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Mr. Smith.
the when you talk about the six thousand one hundred and sixty dollars per
student on the average daily attendance that's the same number that we have been
we've given that an amount of money for how many years we've been given that
amount of money by state law for since they adopted House Bill 3 in 2019 so we
did the 1920 budget the 2021 budget the 21 22 budget 223 budget and we're gonna
to build i am we are building the 23 24 budget off of that number until legislative actions happens
so what you see for me next week will be based on current law which is 6190 uh 6 160 dollars
so no matter what inflation has done we have we're on a fixed income no matter what instruction with
that same amount that is that is 100 accurate and 1800 students times 6160 is a lot of money
yes ma'am budget yes ma'am so the I appreciate what mr. Redmond brought up
about the giving leftover ESSER funds to our employees into their hands I like
that ESSER funds as I understand it superintendent Gorkowski are finite
dollars so they expire but they are not they don't have a parameter that says
you have to do a capital expense with them the way that our ins dollars or our debt service
dollars are is that correct we can use them as retention for our teachers we can use them anyway
yeah we can go ahead and use it for a one-time payment okay i appreciate that and then the ic
equalization is around 500 000 hope we can work that into our budget because it is a recurring
RECURRING COSTS AND THE 1%, AS LONG AS WHEN WE DO THAT, I THINK IT'S IMPERATIVE THAT WE COMMUNICATE TO OUR EMPLOYEES THAT THIS IS A ONE-TIME AMOUNT THAT WILL NOT RECUR IN OUR BUDGET.
SO IT'LL BE SOMETHING THEY CAN HAVE, BUT IT DOESN'T BUILD TO THEIR BASE.
SO I APPRECIATE THAT.
ANY OTHER QUESTIONS?
THANK YOU, MR. SMITH.
I'M SORRY, I DO HAVE ONE MORE.
We need to talk about payroll underspending of $10 million.
How's that happen?
How's that happen?
Is that teacher shortages?
Is it using substitutes and people?
What happens there?
Well, here's what we know.
We don't have all our teaching positions filled.
We don't have all our custodian positions filled.
We don't have all our food service positions filled, all our bus driver positions filled.
And in addition to that, so we're not spending that money.
In addition to that, when we have a faculty member, whatever job they do, when they go on any type of leave for medical reason, if they have a child, they go out on leave and typically, if they're a department, the rest of the members of the department pick up that work.
if they're on the campus and they have a classroom we put a substitute in there
and and when they and that that those or when somebody gets a you know their
their spouse gets a promotion and moves away we we typically that position is
not filled and when you add all it up in a district our size you're looking at a
ten million dollar number big number as that number changed with the teacher
shortage or is that kind of consistent and not ten million but maybe
percentage-wise stayed consistent I wonder if we can budget knowing that
we're gonna have that ten million dollars of underspending how how will
that pay going forward I'll tell you in 100% transparency and Sherry throw a
rock at me if I'm wrong, but we always budget under spending. When you guys get the budget,
we take into account some of that is going to happen and has consistently happened,
and we don't want to, and we want to take that into account and not show a budget that's not
going to be real when it comes to salary and benefits anyway. And so we do take some of that
out because we know it's going to happen. Now it's happening at a little larger pace now. In fact,
you know if we hadn't taken some of it out that number may not be 10 it may be
20 million but but but but it is it is gotten higher as a percentage because of
the fact that we don't have all our positions in maintenance and custodial
and food service and and teaching positions filled Thank You mr. Smith
We'll now proceed to agenda item 6.1, discuss and consider future board approval of the campus staffing plan for the 2023-2024 school year.
6.1 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the campus staffing plan for the 2023 - 2024 school year
Good evening.
Good evening.
President Schulte, Dr. Kogorski, members of the board, happy to present the 23-24 campus staffing plan to you this evening.
It's hard to believe that it's been a year, but it has, and here we go.
I've also got Dr. Nita Hill with me tonight to answer any questions.
And as we've done the past couple of years, I've got a few slides on the staffing summary.
Then I'll invite Dr. Coffey up.
She'll talk about special education a little bit and their requested needs.
And then obviously we'll be here for questions.
Okay.
As you know, this is just kind of a recap.
We get kind of our near final enrollment projections mid-January.
And then we have those final projections come at the end of January.
And immediately after that, we develop staffing reports and meet with our school leadership team to discuss each and every campus and their recommended staffing based on the staffing standards.
And then that obviously culminates in today and next Monday for final board approval and final release.
And we're also having our job fair on Saturday.
So everybody's excited about that.
Hopefully we get a bunch of folks hired.
Before I get into staffing numbers, Dr. Gagorski and I were talking and thought, you know, we had a couple of bits of information that might be important to share with the board because there is a lot of talk about teacher retention and the teacher shortage.
And this is information, one, that compares KDISD to Region 4 in the state of Texas.
And you can see, you know, there on the left, in 19, 20, 11.5, 20, 21, 11.4, and 21, 22 went up about 1.7% to 13.1.
um and you know we felt that there was going to be a little bit of an increase in our in our
turnover rate but if you look at us compared to the region and the state we are still considerably
lower um than uh than the region in the state and this is this is teacher turnover um sorry mrs fox
i saw yours i knew what you were thinking i'm sorry this is uh this yeah this is teacher turnover
um but again this is how we compare to region four in the state of texas and historically we've
always been lower than the region for in the state of Texas and if you look at
how we compare to several districts that are local districts surrounding
districts you can see where they're on the left again you see us at 13.1 and if
you just kind of look across that chart you can see that that we are lower than
most everybody else we've got one district that comes in point one percent
lower than we are at 13 but in general we are lower than these folks and then
if you also look at our increase I say we had that increase of the one point
7%, many of these other districts that had an increase were higher than that.
So while it is a concern, you don't ever want to have an increase in your retention rate.
With everything going on, we knew that potentially was going to happen, but I think we're pleased
that that was the increase, and certainly that we're still, if not the lowest, one of
the lowest in the area.
Of course, teacher retention and recruiting, recruiting and retaining the best will always
be our top goals and we'll continue to monitor this move forward as we move
forward and give updates to the board as needed also something we wanted to show
we've got our strategic plan goal 5.3 Katie I still implement a compensation
plan then it seeds the market median for classroom teachers each and every year
TASB compiles a ton of data from school districts and and one of those pieces of
data are our teacher salaries and so this compares kdisd to region 4 for teacher salaries that's
current year 2022 2023 so if you see the the graph we're the blue line the market median for region
4 is the black line so you can see we are above the market median and then you can also see it
outside of the graphical representation in the chart on the column that says comparison to market
You can see all those benchmark salary years of 0 5 10 15 and 20
We are above the market as as compared to the region and we got this information from TASB
It's been a little over a month ago. So we thought that was good to share with the board
Moving on into staffing projections 23 24 growth as determined in January. We're looking at projected enrollment
95347 students
next January
Enrollment this January used for projections was 93,280.
So we definitely have to staff for that growth.
But 22-23 projected enrollment was 91,872.
So this staffing plan has got to encompass all of that growth.
It's because we had unanticipated or growth that wasn't projected this year.
So really this staffing plan encompasses the growth from the 91,872 to the 95,347.
Staffing summary, and you have a more detailed staffing summary in your agenda.
of the the campus staffing summary and the campus uh support summary as well but uh high level
elementary additional staff we're requesting 265 new staff members a secondary additional staff 240
additional staff members camp total campus staff that includes 50 growth units 555 campus support
staff of 67 for a grand total of 622 additional staff members for the 23-24 school year one thing
that i would like to point out 216 of that 622 are for opening our new campuses uh falden and
youngblood elementary and uh that's that that's the high level of uh of the needs for growth
um and now i will bring up dr coffee to give the special education report and we'll be available
for questions thank you so much um for letting me be here today president schulte board members dr
Gorgorski, I'm going to expand a little bit on our special education staffing request.
I believe, and Mr. Schuch will kick me if I'm wrong, but I believe these numbers are in the
reflected summary numbers, but we're just taking a closer look at our special education numbers.
So this slide depicts our historical growth numbers and KDICR enrollment numbers. And what
you're looking at, those two different colors, the blue color reflects enrollment at our PEIMS
snapshot which is the final friday in october and the orange number reflects our end of the year
once we get through everything our end of the year enrollment and so as you can see um this is
special education enrollment so as you can see across the last several years we've been consistently
increasing and we project that when we're all said and done by the end of this year we'll be at just
at or just over 15 000 students for comparison i ran the numbers um shortly before coming down and
we're currently at 14,696 students in special education. So I do not think it's unreasonable
that we will reach that 15,000. We have about 1,500 students in referral, and typically 80%
or so will meet eligibility requirements. And so it's very reasonable to think we'll hit that number.
This looks at our percentages based on KDISD enrollment, which is the orange on this slide,
and then special education enrollment, which is blue. And you can see our percentages continue
continue to increase. We do anticipate, and of course this is a somewhat projected number, but
based on what we project for overall district enrollment and based on what we're projecting
for special ed, we believe we'll be right at that 16 percent mark by the end of this school year
that we'll be serving students in special education, 16 percent of our overall population.
So I do have to apologize to you because we had an oops on this slide, but you do have the correct
slide the slide that's projected here is incorrect that slide should read 29
teachers and 108 paras the numbers in your CAP campus staffing summary that
was provided by mr. shush are correct so this was just an error on this slide and
I do apologize but we are asking for instructional staffing at the campus
level to add 29 teachers and 108 pair of professionals a large number of these
are due to the two new schools that are opening and we'll have specialized
specialized programs such as life skills, children with autism programs, ACIP, and some other
different programs. And those are usually staffed at one teacher and depending on the number of
students, two to three paras in those programs. And so it is a rather large staffing lift. And
that is where you see a lot of these positions that on your piece of paper are correct. And again,
I apologize. This next slide is new. And so I do want to talk to you about this. I'm going to talk
to you about a couple of different things related to behavior tonight. This is what I'm going to
affectionately refer to as phase one of our behavior recommendations so we know behavior
has been some we've had some concerns related to behavior the board has contemplated those concerns
in several meetings i know that we've you've talked to community members as we have as well
and staff members and so dr gregorski charged us with coming up with an idea that would resolve
this and so there's been a cohort of principals my team which is uh gratefully here with me tonight
to answer any questions i might not have the answer for i've put our heads together we've
looked at some different districts and we've come up with two phases and the
first part of this this response is here we are recommending 12 teams we have
four campus behavior intervention teachers right now so we're recommending
adding eight more and 12 campus behavior support pair professionals which go
through and we have some of these pairs and our specialized programs now they go
through a higher level of support and training and these teachers and Paris
would work together as a team and they would support four elementary campuses
and those campuses would be determined based on campus need historical campus
need for behavior support whether or not there's already a behavioral support
person or program on the campus we would align those together into teams that
would cover us through 48 elementary so it would give us some growth space and
then we would deploy those and they would be under the supervision of the
special ed department because my team is the team that has the specialized
specialized training in the area of behavior support and things like ABA principals and that
kind of thing, but they would be able to serve general and special education students on the
campus and be there for real-time, in-the-moment support on our elementary campuses to help address
some of these pieces. They could handle some of the PBIS implementations and hopefully intervene
in behaviors before they become disciplinary issues. We really feel like this would be a
strong response to the concerns that are out there. I feel like it'd be very helpful. And
And campus administrators, we've talked to campus administrators.
I've gotten some parent feedback and various things through the community,
and there's a lot of support for some very actionable pieces.
And so we feel like this is phase one.
I'll get to phase two in a little bit.
And so those requests are in there, and this is a new request.
We've not taken this forward at this level before.
Then we also have assessment staffing.
As you know, in special ed, we do a lot of assessment for students,
and these positions exist in our district now.
We're just asking to add some additional positions.
A lot of this is due to opening two new campuses.
So two more ARD facilitators, which are those individuals that run the ARD meetings for
us, admission, review, and dismissal.
Speech pathologists, two more licensed specialists in school psychology or LSSPs, and five interns.
We've had some very innovative opportunities to use some cohorts and things like that to
do grow your own programs in areas that we've seen shortages in across the state.
And LSSPs are an area.
We have five interns now and we'd like to add five more to keep that pipeline going and continue to have those individuals ready to be hired
Diagnostic clerks at the campuses. Those are campus positions six of those and then two more diagnosticians for our new elementaries
So that is an overview of the special education staffing and I'm also happy to answer any questions that you may have about those
specific staffing requests
Any questions?
Mr. President?
Yes.
Thank you, Dr. Coffey.
I have some questions.
Sure.
The campus behavior intervention and the campus behavior support paraprofessional, it's going
to be a team.
Yes.
And they're going to be assigned to four campuses per team?
Yes, ma'am.
So that they'll all be covered.
Mm-hmm.
And it's only for elementary, right?
That is correct.
So are those paras, are they, are they, are they, are they, are they, are they, are they
going to be paid more? Our proposal is that we pay them in the same way that we pay our
behavior paraprofessionals that work with our students who have high behavioral needs,
and it is a little bit of a higher pay. Okay. So in the secondary schools,
these aren't needed, or we already have them? We have some supports already at secondary,
but for the most part, the need is at elementary where students are still really actively learning
behavioral techniques and things like that and let me add I'm sorry to we do
have some of these on my team already so we have people to help with second okay
good so so as the team but let's let's act like it gets approved and you're
gonna hire them and all that so when are they actually gonna start this would be
for next school year okay so when will they be trained so that they'll know
No, but they're doing as a team, not as professionals, but as a team.
During the summer.
So when our typical teachers would come back on contract and begin those duties,
these individuals would come back on contract and go through some of the training pieces.
Although we would hope, if approved, to hire these individuals this spring
so that we could target some professional development opportunities for them during the summer.
Okay.
And I just want to say I really appreciate that you're doing this.
I know that you've gotten feedback, and throughout the years, not just since I've been on the board,
but I have friends that work with special needs and various elementary
schools and I you know I know that they need that support and I really think
that they're gonna appreciate this I think that'll really help retain a lot
of our teachers because it's not that they want to teach and they want to
there they felt they feel led and that's their calling you know is to help with
the special ed population but it's you know sometimes it can be challenging so
So I think they're going to really, this will be good.
And I wanted to ask you, you put something in, I don't know if you did it, but it looks like you did.
And our board docs with the 18 plus?
Yes, we're going to talk about it.
Yes, ma'am.
That's my place too.
I'm really excited about that.
Me as well.
Okay.
Thank you for those recognitions.
Mr. President?
Yes.
So I have some special ed questions, and then I have some from Mr. Shush, because you don't get off the hook either.
But can I ask the special ed ones?
Okay. So how do we compare? Thank you so much for the presentation. Like I am in love with the behavior staffing model. I think that's going to be so beneficial to our, to our students, our families in our campuses. So beneficial.
So how do we compare to other districts with the percentage of SPED students? Like Mr. said, some region and state or other districts aren't our percentages higher than most?
So what I would say is that if you look around our immediate districts, we are slightly higher.
I think we run pretty close with Cy Fair, but Fort Bend's a little below us.
These are my understanding of their numbers.
Let me say, I don't want to just, you know, I haven't run them this month, but in the past, historically, that's been the case.
But most of the school districts that I would compare Katie with, for example, Northside ISD or Northeast ISD, we run about the same.
It's pretty close, about 16%.
KDISD, and you know because you historically have been here, and you all have always been
very supportive of our efforts in all areas, but I'm going to speak to special ed, and we have
always, you know, when there was some concern about the cap and all these things happening,
we've always been above because we've always done what's right by kids.
I know that KDISD has that reputation. I was just curious about the numbers there
as a comparison. Okay, so now I'm going to ask a very specific question. Special education
special education diagnostic clerks? What's their role? So those individuals work at our campus.
They help with all of the various paperwork pieces related to special education. So they
help schedule ARG meetings, make sure the teachers are there and are in attendance. For SLPs,
they help schedule for, those are kind of a separate ARG. So it might be a speech-only
student they schedule for, or it might be a student that receives more services. But they
schedule the ARGs. They help keep the audit folders and the paperwork in check. They help
make sure timelines are running accordingly and submit necessary documents related to those pieces
are these the ones that work with like four different categories of professionals lssps and
things like that sometimes they do yes ma'am and what is their um designation they're an ioo
um i'm not sure whatever that's called that's that's they're like entry level they're the same
as a receptionist at a school?
I believe that is correct, yes, ma'am.
Would you say that their work level is equal to those?
I think that it would depend on probably the schools.
I'd need to look at it and see how many are on each campus,
but we try to staff the campuses accordingly.
So, for example, a high school is going to have more special education students,
so we have more clerks there to help distribute the load.
I'm not sure I can fully access or answer that information piece because I don't really see I mean
I certainly have seen what a receptionist does but in Katie I see receptionist
I've worked with at the elementary level only so I would feel ill-equipped to answer that question for like a secondary school
And I'm not a hundred percent sure of their designation. So I think that would maybe be maybe if we looked at their
their job description and the number of things that they're responsible for.
Because this is the bottom level, entry level person who is taking care of all the art,
serving eight professionals, helping all of that.
I know some and I know the amount of workload they have and maybe the turnover rate for that is really high.
I mean, what's the turnover rate? Do you know?
I do not know ma'am. I prescribe how many we need but I don't track that side of it under special education such a
Quality person these they're doing a lot of work
They're helping all those families and one person changes their mind about an art. They're rescheduling everyone
It just seems like a very complex job that we're asking them to do and because it's the entry-level position
I think I worry about turnover rate on people who really are you know?
Takes a quality person be able to do that kind of thing all of our people are quality people
but I think if we look at their job description and the task they're asked
to do we might want to consider looking at an adjustment there as those things
happen yearly for sure yeah mr. Shoshana I think would be happy to have that
conversation and perform that task absolutely okay miss Fox I'm gonna jump
in on that one and make sure because tonight we're just doing the staffing
approvals but our comp plan will come later in June but I what I can offer the
the board is if the board has any specific questions about positions or where they're at
in the comp plan and you would like hr to take reviews of those positions just email me what
those are and i'll get with brian and sit down and i'll get him that data he can spend that time
between now and the adoption in june that gives us a pretty good window to examine any position
that's in there and that he can come back with a recommendation of is the person in the correct
category is the job description accurate for that person in that workload and
then that gives us this good amount of time to be able to review any position
the board would like us to review I I did that last year and I'll do it again
this year ask for that data thank you very much any other questions mr.
president when do we ask mr. Schuss the questions oh yeah I think now I think
that's you can ask you okay because I do have some questions I have a few did you
Do you have special aid questions before she leaves, though, Leah?
Yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't see you guys raising your hand.
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
No, it's okay.
Dr. Coffey, I just wanted to touch on one thing.
So when you said that you're wanting to hire the eight behavior intervention teachers plus the 12 paras,
I understand those will be teams.
Are you controlling those teams and where they're dispersed are those teams going to specific schools in mind already?
Like because we need a more dedicated focus specifically so a little of both
So we do know the dedicated schools that that certainly require a little bit more support
But all of our schools require some level of support
Which is why we think it's very doable with four campuses per team
team because some campuses don't require as much support while others might require a little more.
So we're going to intentionally pair campuses so that that's reflected in the idea and the
intentionality behind where they're being assigned. But our department will work with campus
administrators, work with assistant superintendents, and work with the historical information to make
sure that those campuses that are connected under a single team, it makes sense so we can maximize
my support thank you I didn't know if I missed that thank you any other
questions for special ed no minor for both for both okay well I guess well
special is up you want to I think you're primarily for mr. Schuster yeah go ahead
Victor okay no so my question relates to the the ratio or the number of
paraprofessionals versus teachers like sample 28 29 teachers and 108
108 paraprofessionals.
I notice also in the,
as far as the new hires for elementary,
we're asking for 265,
but only 125 of those are teachers.
And the bulk, or about 117 are paraprofessionals.
So is that a cost situation,
or is it a question related to both the staffing
for special ed as well as just overall,
all in terms of the ratios in terms of only 47 percent of the additions in elementary school
are for teachers is that because we'd like to get more teachers but we can't so we rely on
paraprofessionals and it's also a cost but what's the philosophy of the i guess what i'm asking so
for special ed part of it is because we're opening a number of new programs and the way that we staff
our programs is a ratio based staffing generally it is one teacher and then two or three paras
depending upon the type of program.
So we're opening several new programs at the new elementary,
and that's why you see quite a few paras,
because for every teacher for that program,
I might have two or three paras filling that program.
So that's where, for our piece,
it's not about needing to hire more teachers.
It's maintaining that ongoing staffing ratio for programs
is where the bulk of the paras are coming from.
And also, I think for dyslexia,
we're not adding anyone that I could tell at all,
as far as teachers.
Those are encompassed within the teacher request for dyslexia.
Okay.
And really a question I had overall is we're at, I think, the last approval last year was for about 6,500 teachers, 6,587, something like that.
That was for 22-23 that we're in now.
So how many of those have we filled?
In other words, how short are we from what we budgeted or asked for last year?
So that's a great question.
And I don't have the overall vacancy number for it.
I know as far as teachers go, we're still sitting around 200.
But of those positions that you see, the 6,500 or so, I mean, those have all been allocated to the campuses for hire.
So those would encompass any vacancies that we have.
And so, you know, so for growth this year, we're building on that number for growth because all of those positions have been allocated to the campuses.
Right, so we need we need to hire 200 plus we want to hire another three hundred three hundred and two
Based on the growth. Yes, sir, to accommodate the growth. Okay
which makes the things we're talking about as far as teacher retention and
Compensation and all that just absolutely critical. Yes, sir. So we really need 500 teachers
ideally and
How do we determine?
and the ideal number of teachers that we need?
In other words, is it grade, like, for example,
I know we have limits or requirements on elementary school.
What about, say, junior high or high school?
Do we have some of those on the phone that we use?
Yes, sir.
In the secondary level, most are at a 24 to 1
when we look initially at the ratios.
Like you've mentioned, elementary school,
elementary is 22 to 1 when it comes to teachers.
But, yes, sir, those ratios are in our standards.
Like, for example, a history class in history eighth grade or geometry eighth or ninth grade,
is there a maximum for those classes?
Well, so, no, when we're looking at it at this point in the game, I mean, we're looking
at it from overall enrollment numbers and ratio by campus based on overall enrollment.
Okay, so not necessarily saying we need...
Not boiling down all the way to the individual classes.
Okay.
But say if we were to staff up to the 500 that we need, would that fill, would that
get us to what we consider to be a good number in terms of like size of classroom?
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
And again, those numbers are based on the ratios in our standards.
Like you said, for example, the 22 to 1 at the elementary level, I believe most of our
secondaries are 24 to 1 overall but again when it gets into second secondary
and you get in you know you get into class scheduling you know you still even
even if you're completely full you still could have some classes that are over
that number maybe some classes that are a little under that number but we're
staffing on a ratio in general any other questions I think yes I have some
questions two categories one is instructional coordinators and one is a
further fine arts in the elementary so first on the instructional coordinators
I have been explained what that what the difference is between an instructional
coordinator and structural an instructional coach but I want to know
what the difference is I want to know you know how they're paid differently
and also how they're chosen.
The instructional coordinators, there's only 23 or whatever at the elementary level.
So I'm trying to understand how we decide which elementary schools receive an instructional coordinator,
and are they paid more than an instructional coach,
because it seems like their job duties might be more.
It seems like from the teachers, I mean the principals I've talked to, the instructional coordinator works more with administration and instructional coach seems to work more with the teachers.
And so first of all, you can answer that if you can.
And then I have another question about instructional coordinators after that.
Okay, so as far as instructional coordinators and pay, they are both on the same pay scale.
instructional coordinators are paid 187 days and the instructional coaches have
believe 195 days so the instructional coaches work a few more days which which
would equate to more income because you you know paid on a daily basis so that's
it for the way but they are on the same pay scale okay so when we talk about the
additional money you know that we could potentially pay I'm wondering if the
the instructional coordinators could be tied into the instructional coach also?
So that's a good question.
In my mind, Dr. Gorski, please stop me.
But when we're talking about equalizing the IOOP scale,
it's not just the instructional coaches that, you know,
we had the teachers that were given a certain raise
and then everybody else in that IOO pay scale.
And there are many categories in that IOO pay scale
that I would think if we moved to equalize,
that would be equalized.
Would be equalized.
Yes.
So the other part of that question was,
how do we determine,
let me summarize why I'm asking this question.
Because I've been told by some assistant principals
at schools that based on the quota,
they have one fewer assistant principal.
But some of those schools who have one fewer assistant principal because they don't have
the numbers also don't have an instructional coordinator.
And they feel that if they could have an instructional coordinator, even though they couldn't have
the assistant principal, that that would help fill a void of, you know, not having that
extra assistant principal.
So what I'm trying to get at is, you know, is it possible that every elementary school,
especially the ones who don't don't have the extra assistant principal could have
an instructional coordinator okay so and I know you said earlier about the you
know 23 that they qualify from the standard we do have I believe about
another 20 or so as maybe it's 18 or 19 that do have an instructional
coordinator through title 1 funds or through ESSER funds so right now I
I believe we're sitting at about five or six elementary campuses that don't have an instructional coordinator.
So it's either through the standard or through Title I or through ESSER.
The standard, and Dr. Hill, correct me if I'm wrong, but the standard, I believe,
is once you cross the 800 range in enrollment and you have a couple of special education programs,
then you can get an instructional coordinator.
Or if you're over 1,300, you can get an instructional coordinator.
So those would be the 23 campuses that you're referring to.
But again, we have many others that have an instructional coordinator either through title 1 or s or when I'm looking at because I have
the numbers here when I'm looking at the quota for the
Elementary school assistant principal is 0 to 649
have only one
Assistant principal and
They would not qualify for an instructional coordinator
So those schools, let's say they have 649 kids, the other school has 650.
So one school has 650 and has two assistant principals and may even have an instructional
coordinator, maybe, based on other criteria.
But the one that has 649 or less only has one assistant principal and may not have an
instructional coordinator either.
So they may only have a few less kids, but they're having such less support.
So what I am proposing to find out, I'm not, you know, I know I'm one person, but I'd like to find out what the additional cost would be to have an instructional coordinator at every elementary school.
Okay, so let me speak to that a little bit because I think this would be a good time to, we have these conversations often.
And when you really talk about adjusting staffing standards.
And so, for instance, with the instructional coordinators, you know, we look at that and we see, okay, only five or six don't have instructional coordinators.
And those five or six are more than likely because, you know, whether it was Title I or S or they could have chosen instructional coordinator or a counselor or something and chose one thing instead of another.
Okay.
So we start thinking, okay, well, that's maybe not that big of an ask just to add five or six more instructional coordinators.
But that's where kind of the snowball starts to roll down the hill, okay?
Because if we changed the standard for instructional coordinators where every campus just got one,
say every campus gets an instructional coordinator,
then all the campuses that receive an instructional coordinator through Title I,
Title I wouldn't be able to pay for those instructional coordinators
because it's not over and above what the standard is.
So, you know, there's all these intricacies that come into play,
and then you think it was just five or six and now all of a sudden it's 25 and
so it gets much more expensive so anytime we look at and not just that but
anytime we look at anything with the staffing standards many times we're up
against you know something like that and I completely understand what you're
saying about you know the line 649 650 and there's got to be a line somewhere
and and I'll be honest there are times and we don't make many many exceptions
But that's why we meet with our school leadership team and go over each individual campus because they know their campuses very well
And they'll say hey, you know, I know that you know, they're gonna lose a hundred students and that's gonna put them at 649
So they're gonna lose an assistant principal or whatever
You know often in that situation because of the support they're losing we might make that exception for a year say, okay
Well, let's tell you what let's hold on to it for a year and and see what happens with enrollment
Maybe you don't lose that many kids
so we have a lot of conversations about that and and i understand what you're saying uh with the
staffing standards but more often than not when we start to look at changing it it becomes you know
much bigger than we originally thought okay i i appreciate your answer and i'm hoping that the
that the people who have reached out to me are watching this so that they can hear your
explanation because i'm just i think that that's a good explanation you do have to stop somewhere and
And if they were offered this or that and they chose that rather than this,
that would explain that.
The other question, I'm going to go on to my fine arts question.
So do you know how many schools receive or have only two elementary schools,
two art and music teachers?
I do not have that number off the top of my head.
I apologize.
Could I get get that information we can certainly get it to you I could have to you tomorrow
Or I can get it to dr. Kugorski and he can share with the board
So I was I would just like to know know that all right and so which elementary schools have only only two fun
Because they have less than 800
And
And then, you know, yeah, that's all I want to know.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. President?
Yes.
Thank you very much.
I have a couple of questions.
An instructional coordinator and a testing coordinator, is that the same thing?
No, ma'am.
Okay.
Because I had another question about when you don't have a testing coordinator, that generally falls to an AP, probably?
It could.
And that's, I don't know how you determine that, but with, I know since we're kind of struggling right now with new discipline problems and that kind of thing, assistant principals are called away to help with students a lot in classrooms and to mediate and do those kinds of things.
And then they still are testing coordinators so that their length of day is longer and things like that
So whatever consideration you're thinking about there. I'm not I'm not prescribing anything. I'm just bringing that to the attention of
What that looks like because I think that's different in the recent couple of years
Do
do hold on i have something here
so when mr perez was asking questions about how many students in a geometry class or something
like that is it true that the principals give an autonomy on how to to distribute staffing
at the campus depending on who their students are how many they have right and the more complex it
gets at high school the harder it is to do that yes ma'am so so you give correct me if i'm wrong
you give them staffing based on a 24 to 1 and then here you are principal put your staff where you
need the most and they choose if they do one more history or those kinds of things is that correct
Yes, ma'am, that's correct.
And not all classes can be equal because certainly in high schools, the schedules are, you know, I want to take art and I want to play basketball.
So now I have to go to a class that only has 18 students because that's just a little bit my schedule.
Scheduling can be very complicated, yes, ma'am.
Yeah, that's that mass schedule, right, Mr. Beerling?
Mr. Beerling can speak to it, yes.
Master schedule, the nightmare of every principal.
Okay, great to know. So I have a couple of requests. I would like to look at job descriptions when it comes to the entry level and see how those weigh out. Like when a special ed diagnostic clerk is helping those eight professionals, how does that weigh with other people at that same entry level to try to save some of that turnover?
because I know the training is intensive there and I know they really love it but
for eleven or twelve dollars an hour it's like no thanks they're gonna move
to something else and do we have a turnover rate it's a way to get a
turnover rate by category somewhere like if you see something that has a great
turnover rate it's like oh maybe we need to look at that and adjust something
maybe that would be it and I would expect I know the entry-level positions
like you know a mom loves being at school with her children and so she sits
at the front desk and she loves that but that's always just the step to go to the
next one and and more pay that's normal but is there one that's kind of sticks
out that's a turnover maybe we could if I could ask for that turnover rate and
job descriptions thank you any other questions yes so my my total focus
on this is class sizes and teachers.
And so I'm curious, since we're low on 200 now,
and I realize we don't have to have another 500 teachers
day one, but how do we plan to add 500 teachers?
And I'm just curious, Mr. Schuess, from you
on the front line in the HR area,
what are our biggest challenges in terms of
when we go to job fairs, what are the biggest objections?
projections, you know, what are your top three, four, five sort of must-haves in terms of
being able to fill those positions that you think are key, that we need to beef up?
Well, and, you know, going to job fairs and really amping up our recruiting trail efforts
this year has been key.
I mean, we have an enormous recruiting schedule this year, and it's each and every day got,
We've got several people, several of our HR coordinators out.
And actually, if you walk down the hall, there's two or three suitcases by their offices because they just got back and they're leaving the next day to go to these recruiting fairs.
We're going all over the United States.
And I do believe it has been pretty successful.
What we're hearing over the past couple of years, what's been a problem is in-person job fairs haven't been all that successful.
But this year, they're coming back.
Even our job fair last year, I don't want to say it wasn't successful, but it didn't have the number of participants that we normally see.
I believe we normally see about 2,000 or so, and I think they're around 1,000 last year.
But I feel that Saturday, hopefully we're going to see that come back.
And, Dr. Hill, you can add to this, please.
But what we're hearing from the coordinators out on the recruiting trail is that there are a lot more folks attending these job fairs than they have over the past couple of years, and we're actually seeing some success.
Of course, a big hurdle when they're out on the job fair is, you know, if they're in South Carolina, you know, trying to convince somebody to move to Katy, right?
right? But just a couple of days ago, and I think it was, was it Clemson? The Clemson job fair,
Robert Russell was there. And I know this is just one, so this is just a little anecdote.
But, you know, talked to a teacher about moving to Katy and she said, you know, I really think
I want to do that. And had a great conversation with her. And just a couple of days ago, we hired
her, you know. So, you know, and again, that's just one, but it's one at a time. And 500 is a
a lot it certainly is uh that's your biggest challenge in terms of like in your sales pitch
what's what's your biggest thing you have to overcome besides the the location you know
location obviously obviously uh a pay is important to folks the culture of a school district is very
important to folks the success of a school district is very important to folks um you know
many teachers have different reasons for wanting to be a teacher you know and and
so biggest challenges overall and dr. Hill you could add I think I think that
covers it but but at times you have teachers that that are searching to
teach in just a title one school right and and so so then for Katie sometimes
you know that might be a challenge but but but I believe pay culture location I
I believe those are our biggest hurdles.
If you're going to Clemson, you've got to go to Virginia Tech, right, Dr. Cassidy?
Did we go to Virginia Tech?
I can't.
Yeah, I think we did go to Virginia Tech.
How'd it go?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'll get that answer for you.
But I've got to say the recruiting efforts this year for the team have been impressive,
And they're really running themselves ragged for the district. Thanks a lot appreciate it
So and then we'll continue to do it because it's um, it's been been successful
Miss Wilson you have one more question. Yes, please and actually it's for dr. Coffee. Thank you. Mr. Shush for everything
I appreciate it. Dr. Coffee. I just wanted to touch on the pair of professionals real quick
I know with the two new schools and the special ed components that we're putting there
There is a higher stake but are some of these Paris that you're putting here also the ones that are supporting
all of our kids that are in traditional classrooms that need that extra level of support?
Yes, ma'am.
This encompasses all of our paraprofessionals.
Yes, so it does include students that are paraprofessionals supporting students in in-class support
or other areas outside of just specialized programs.
Perfect.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
Any other questions for?
Mr. President.
On the staffing.
Any other questions on the staffing?
I have a comment for you, which is thank you very much for the conversation and the opportunity to ask questions
And while some of them may feel like deep dive
As school board members we get to see this once a year
and so saving up comments that come through the year and having the things and being able to look at it and
Sometimes we ask and then it doesn't change and then through the year you think about it some more and have more information
And so I and I know the compensation is separate
Dr. Gorgorski, that's coming soon.
And so these conversations that are had here will prepare us for what that looks like.
And maybe it also gives our staff an opportunity to know our values and what will resonate
with board members when that comes.
So I appreciate the opportunity to have the discussions.
And I absolutely want to say to both of you, well done.
Your staff, well done.
and throughout our community of KDISD, we have the best people,
and everyone wants to be here because we're excellent,
and this board wants to continue to drive excellence
and to encourage you all to have everything you need
to continue the excellence our boys and girls deserve.
Thank you.
Can I say one more thing?
Yeah, absolutely.
When we're talking about the job fairs,
I just want to make sure I don't send the wrong message.
Our coordinators love selling KDISD, love it.
it's you know it's easy to sell and you know we have we have folks come up to
our booths because it's Katie and that's that that's all over the United States
so I just I wanted to get that point in because that they love it I mean I mean
they have a lot of fun out there selling Katie so excellent mr. Smith I think you
had something yes sir I feel compelled to kind of tie this back to my
conversation when I talked about the basic allotment and funding based on
average daily attendance six thousand one hundred sixty dollars whether you're in the panhandle
the valley east texas or katie doesn't matter and so we're all tied to those same amounts and i
think i look at it as a as a bowl of soup and the soup in katie tastes pretty good uh dr mr shuss and
superintendent and this board and and dr caskey mishak have done a fantastic job academically
with these ratios in my time in this district,
it made pretty darn good soup.
Would we like to do more and add more ingredients to it
and do more things?
Yes.
But we are completely at the mercy of to do more
for our state legislature,
and that's why it's important for us to advocate
because the only way we can do more now
is to do less somewhere else.
And where does anybody want to do less?
Nowhere.
We're spending 90% of what we spend in our classrooms on our students.
90% of this budget and very low, the lowest administrative costs in the state.
And we're spending the money in the classrooms and everybody in this room that loves children
wants to do more.
It's important for this board and this public to understand that we are limited to our funding
amounts and we all want to add more to the soup.
but we need we need that in Austin and you'll hear a larger report on me next
week but right now the appetite's not looking real good when it comes to what
they do changes proactive good changes that they're gonna make for children
across Texas in Austin is from as I understand it I thought I'd tie that
back around it we all want to do more we all want to pay more we all want to do
everything but we are limited at the state level and I think it's important
I'M GLAD WE'RE ADVOCATING AND IT'S REALLY TIME TO ADVOCATE NOW THAT WE NEED THE STATE
LAWS TO CHANGE SO WE CAN DO BETTER FOR OUR CHILDREN.
NEW SPEAKER Well said.
Chris, I'M GOING TO GO ON TOP OF THAT AND JUST SHARE A COUPLE OF THOUGHTS AS WELL.
I THINK IT COULD ADD VALUE TO OUR CONVERSATION TONIGHT.
YOU'RE EXACTLY RIGHT THAT WE ALWAYS WANT TO DO MORE FOR OUR TEACHERS AND FOR OUR STAFF
AND FOR OUR SCHOOLS.
WHAT WE'RE BRINGING FORWARD TONIGHT ARE OUR NEEDS.
These are what we've run our formulas, we've looked at our models, we've looked at what we need to make a difference with the kids, and these are our needs.
Could we possibly do more in the future?
Well, that's dependent on what Chris was just talking about there with funding.
If more money comes through, nothing prevents us from coming back to the board with more solutions.
Some of the things you're hearing about tonight, so for example, like the instructional coordinator position.
Okay, so Ryan and I sat for about an hour and a half on a meeting just recently with elementary school principals asking them, and I'd asked them probably three months ago, come to me with what are your biggest problems and challenges, and how can we address those?
what's important to you one of them being the behavior issues for which dr.
coffee spoke about and that was her solution to come to that okay that's a
big add to the budget this can be about eight hundred thousand dollars for that
model okay but we think it's going to add value so we're going to do it the
other thing that elementary folks were asking for the instructional
coordinators okay that's going to be about a million dollar add to our budget
it so the day may come that the legislature does something outstanding
with the basic allotment and we have a whole lot more funding we can come back
to this board and say you know what I think we can't afford to do this above
and beyond or I think we can do this above and beyond or I think we can do
this above and beyond but I also can tell you this beyond what we're asking
for and staff tonight this meets our needs for the district moving forward
anything above that would be something we'd want to add on with additional
dollars that might come from the state but I can tell you this I've got a list
in my office probably of 10 or 12 ads that people have asked for across the
district whether it's elementary junior high high school or departments I've got
lists of ads and it adds up to millions of dollars so what our team has to do is
look at the dollars we have and say okay what are we gonna prioritize from this
list what is most important in this district if we are going to do more ads
so right now I can't tell you what those ads would be I'd like to see the state
do some some different things I'd like to see them increase the safety and
security allotments I'd like to see those line items go up as well I'd like
to see the state not do any reductions in current funding formulas what I'll
remind the board and and mr. Smith tell me if I've got this one wrong because
just coming from memory, we lost $8 million this year on the fast growth allotment because of a cap.
We lost $5 million on IMA because of a reduction of IMA.
So what has to prop up IMA, the general fund?
Instructional materials allotment.
So if the state will not cap certain funds, will not reduce funds,
and would raise up the funds, security, safety issues,
I could hire more officers with those dollars. Okay if they come in but that's gonna
I mean some of the things we need to do really hinges on what is the state gonna do about funding for schools?
Between now and the end of the legislative session, but we'll bring more back to the board if we can afford it. Definitely so
Dr. Gorg, or ski can I say so it's a million dollars for
for additional instructional coordinators,
but he said that there was only five or six elementary schools,
so I'm trying to understand.
And also, where would that, I don't know your list.
I only know the one about the instructional coordinator.
So where would instructional coordinator, you know,
you don't have to tell me one, two, or three,
but is it in the middle or is it in the top or is it at the bottom of your list?
Yeah, that's hard to say.
A couple of thoughts on that.
Okay, so what Mr. Schuss was explaining with instructional coordinators,
We have purchased some from title funds and some from ESSER dollars.
Okay?
When the ESSER dollars dry up, we've got to pay for those out of GOF.
So that's more coordinators in there.
The title funds are unique to this.
I'll try to explain it in the most simple terms I can with title.
There's a difference between supplement and supplant.
Okay?
Once we create a standard that this is the standard, okay,
I can't use those title dollars over here to fund those any longer.
If we don't create that as the new standard, so that's not the standard, I can use those funds over there.
So it's all about the funding rules tied to federal dollars on that.
So if we create the standard, everyone gets one.
I've got to now absorb anything we were paying for out of title, and I've got to bring that back into GOF, or we'll be out of compliance with our title funding.
So that's why it ratchets up from just five or six or seven folks to about 20 folks because they're funding out of different pots.
So, but yeah, it's a priority.
I talked to the elementary principals about that.
But like I said, the principals have come to me with probably three of their top priorities.
and it was probably about a total of five or six million dollars of ads okay
what can we afford okay now that's when we carved it down and looked at a couple
things in there but like I said there'll be other staffing we bring we haven't
even brought department staffing okay and we do know we're gonna need some
folks okay talk to chief God this morning what do we need for police
officers we had that discussion we need some things but that'll be a discussion
We can have a little bit later about prioritizing that list priority first is always take care of the campuses
And that's what we're doing tonight
Any other questions
Thank you, thanks everyone
The next regular board meeting is March 27
I'm back again. Oh, do we got one more? Okay. I didn't know that don't see it on here. My apologies. That's all right
Part two part two phase two. That's right. I'm back again
It's exciting, yes ma'am. Okay, so I'm here at this time, this evening, to propose expanding two of our current KDIC special education programs, our Behavior Transition Program, or BTP, because we love acronyms in education, and our post-secondary or 18 plus program.
And these proposals are both based on district growth and identified areas of ongoing need.
need. So before we get started and I discuss these proposed expansions of these two programs,
I want to take just a minute to provide some brief information related to special education
to ensure that we're operating from a point of shared understanding. So special education
is an area of educational practice that is incredibly complex, partly due to its individualized
nature and then largely due to the various laws that intersect and govern its provision.
special ed is a mandate under state and federal law these laws such as the
individuals with disabilities and Education Act which most people have
heard of we call it IDEA or IDEA prescribe how school districts should
locate evaluate identify and program for students with disabilities so the
proposals I'm going to share with you shortly are predicated on the
requirements found within these various laws and under these laws KDIC is
charged with providing students who have disabilities with a free and appropriate
appropriate public education, which we also have an acronym for, it's called FAPE.
In order to provide a free and appropriate public education or FAPE to students, sometimes
it's necessary that we address non-academic areas of need, such as behavior or post-secondary
needs.
As I spoke to you about in the previous presentation, we have seen increasing enrollment in the
area of special education.
We see across the last several years this increase, and as I told you, we're currently
We are currently sitting at about 14,696.
So I was almost there.
14,696 students.
And KDIC has historically offered innovative options
for students with disabilities,
and I have heard us referred to on multiple occasions
and multiple meetings as a destination district
for special education because we do have
highly individualized offerings for students,
and it has historically been a priority
of this board and this district
to be sure that we are providing high quality services
to our students with disabilities.
So as our numbers have consistently increased
across the last nine years, as I said,
we've continued to go up.
We're currently sitting at about 15.67%.
We anticipate to be about 16% of our overall enrollment
by the end of this year.
So what that means is that KDISD serves in special education
alone more students than many Texas districts serve in total.
We have a very large number of special education students.
And as we look toward the future and we begin to build out,
demographers anticipate that we should have approximately
approximately 117,000 students once we're done.
And if we continue, that means about 18 to 18,
or 18 to about 19,000 students
will be served in special ed.
So we consider and project that we will only continue
to grow more.
So as our overall numbers of students grow,
so do the number of students who require
specialized interventions and programs.
So the first proposal that I'm bringing forward today
relates to behavior programming in KDISD.
And as I said earlier, behavior has been an area of concern.
I know that the board has discussed and has considered for some time various things.
And we talked about the first phase earlier, which was the 12 behavior teams to provide on-campus immediate behavioral intervention support for both general ed and special ed students.
This would be phase two.
And in order to first talk about the proposal, in order to talk about the proposal, I want to talk about the current conceptual programming for behavior in KDISD through special education.
So our current conceptual model, if you think about it, can kind of be simplified down into three specific big buckets for the whole continuum.
The first bucket would be supports that are provided to a student that can be provided on that student's home campus.
So if the student is zoned to a certain campus in KDIC and requires specialized supports and services through special education,
we have a variety of supports and services on our continuum for special education support that can be provided on that campus.
Sometimes students' ARD committees, which is another acronym for admission, review, and dismissal, it's the committee that makes decisions for students with special education services, decides the student needs a little more specialized programming.
And those we have scattered throughout. We don't have them on every campus, but we have them on many campuses.
Those are programs such as our Children with Autism program, Life Skills, ECSE, some of those programs.
We have those scattered throughout the district, and an ARD committee can have the student transition to a designated campus to receive those supports.
And sometimes for our secondary students, they require such significant behavioral support or intervention that they need to be served on a centralized campus or a centralized behavior program at a centralized campus, which is currently our behavior transition program.
So those are kind of our big buckets for how we serve students with behavioral needs in KDISD conceptually.
So what do we need to do differently? Well, we've seen some changes. We've seen changes throughout KDIC and in all student populations following COVID, but some of these changes in the area of special education and with behavioral needs specifically require some conceptual shifts to our current model for programming.
programming. And so as we look at that need, we look at the current programs we have to serve the needs of students. And I do want to be very clear that our current programs are serving our students. I do not want to give the board the impression that we're not serving students. We are. But part of the job of the Department of Special Education is to project. What trends do we see? What needs do we see coming in the next several months or years? And so that's partly what this presentation is addressing. So as we see that overall increase in the needs of students, the number of students that require behavior supports, whether it be programs,
or services or even adaptations to their environment their learning environments like for example
homebound we also see that the the types of behaviors that we're seeing in students are
more severe and occurring with greater frequency so we see those two layers not only are there
more students requiring it but the types of needs we're seeing are greater in in in need and in
frequency and then severity and so what that hat what that results in is a greater impact
to the functioning of all students, the student who's experiencing behaviors and the students who are in classes with students experiencing behaviors.
So what that tells us is we've got a little bit of a changing need for what we need to look at as far as our conceptual model for behavior programming in KDISD.
So looking towards that conceptual shift, this slide talks about four areas we feel like we need to consider moving into the future for behavior programming in KDISD.
We need to look at our centralized behavior programming.
We see elementary students needing some of those same services that we currently provide to secondary students.
So we need to look at expanding that centralized behavior programming.
We need to provide enhanced options for our general ed and our special ed students.
And some of that we talked about earlier.
The part one of that is the campus behavior support.
But in grades K through 12, we want to incorporate therapeutic interventions into those centralized behavioral programming
so that we can serve students who require some therapeutic-based intervention,
not only just behavior intervention.
And we want to increase the capacity of our current staff
to serve the overall needs of the students in our district.
We want to ensure we are maximizing the efficiency of our staff
and providing our students with everything that they need.
So we are proposing another acronym.
We are proposing, the Department of Special Education
would like to bring forward a proposal for the BLC,
or the Behavioral Learning Center.
The purpose of the BLC would be for it to be designed to assist both general education and special education students in grades K-12, mitigate the impact of emotional or behavioral disorders that affect the student's ability to be successful in a traditional school environment.
The primary objectives as listed here on the screen would be to address environmental variables that impact behavior and thus student learning, to be able to tailor their environment a little more directly, provide intensive behavioral and therapeutic supports for students as systematic embedded components of that learning environment, reduce their interfering or challenging behaviors and thoughts, and increase the overall success of the student.
So what does that look like?
Well, we propose four specific areas that would be kind of the big buckets within the
BLC.
The first one is BTP.
BTP is our current program that's centralized.
It's effective.
It is research-based.
It has proven to be successful for quite some time with students.
It's a very strong program.
What we'd like to do is expand that as one component of the BLC.
We'd like to offer some elementary options for students that they can access as needed
needed at the BTP.
Additionally, the children with autism programs, CAP programs,
we have these on comprehensive campuses across the district.
And currently, at our BTP, we have a secondary junior high,
and we'll start next year, and high school right now
for students who are too highly stimulated
on a comprehensive campus and really need
that smaller environmental option.
But we believe that in the future,
that will need to be an option for elementary as well.
So we'd like to add elementary to new areas of support
that we would like to add to the BLC that are completely new.
We would like to have behavior life skills classrooms, which
would provide a place for students with severe cognitive
disabilities for whom behavior is also a concern,
an opportunity to have that highly
structured, systematic, embedded learning environment that
would support behavior and academics at the same time.
And again, an environment that is more conducive to their
learning needs.
And then therapeutic support classrooms.
And therapeutic support classrooms are essentially designed to support general ed and special education students who require smaller class sizes or accommodated learning environments.
And they're built using behavioral and adaptive learning supports.
And so examples of a student who might need to access an environment like a therapeutic classroom are students who need to work on developing behavioral coping mechanisms so they can transition back to a comprehensive campus.
Or students whose interfering thoughts require that they have a higher level of supervision during the day so that we can better monitor their interactions, but they can engage in the academics as they would on a comprehensive campus.
And so those are sort of the four big buckets, if you will, that we're recommending for the
BLC.
And we believe that this particular behavioral recommendation alongside the recommendation
that we brought with Mr. Shush for staffing at the campus level will significantly reduce,
I hate to say solve, because I don't know if I can promise that, but we believe that
this would, for moving into the future, really make a huge difference for the students in
and KDISD, all of our students, but specifically for students and families with needs that are
specific like this. I do want to say that the Behavioral Learning Center, just like the Behavior
Transition Program, is not designed to be an end point. The point of this center is for students to
have access to these high-quality interventions for as long as they require them. We're not going
to, you know, rush students through anything, but the idea is when students enter, and this is true
of our BTP, there's a transition plan in place. And so I do want to be clear, we're not trying
to remove students we're trying to give them in a small environment the opportunity to learn strong
skills and supports in the area of behavior and therapeutic management that would allow them to
transition back to their campuses so i'm going to abruptly change direction now because that is the
first proposal for expansion and consolidation and move into the second which is a totally different
proposal it has nothing really to do with behavior at all although arguably behaviors and everything
everything we do. This particular proposal deals with transition and post-secondary programming
and the proposal we would like to do change that versus what we do currently. I do want to say
that transition is a broader conversation. It doesn't only involve 18 plus programming. 18 plus
programming is a portion of transition programming. But as a practice, transition refers to
the requirement through federal law to plan for students' needs after they have met academic
graduation requirements. Some of our students require ongoing programming and
so it's talking about transition to a post-secondary environment is where the
name comes from. So who is eligible for transition or post-secondary programming?
So I have our state our state rules and information up there but special
education, this particular area of special education is often not familiar
to individuals unless they've had a student access it or they've taught in
in this particular domain, but we are required
to continue serving students who have IEP-based needs.
They're not academics.
They don't think math and science and social studies.
Students who access this program have completed
the subject requirements.
They could graduate.
Their transcript is finished.
These are students who have ongoing needs related
to functioning and transitioning from a school environment
to a post-secondary environment.
And we can continue to serve them through the year
where they turn 21 years of age on or before september 1st so we do have students that continue
in this program with kdisc and as i said don't think reading don't think english or math or the
traditional subject students in 18 plus services are not taking those academic based classes
instead they're working solely on the needs as outlined in their individualized education
program or their iep which is put together by their ard committee meeting where the student
adult student and or parent or guardian and the school comes together and they talk about what's
needed based on various transition assessments and plans and they program for the necessary
needs of the student as as indicated by these assessments to allow them to transition into
adulthood what do we do currently well currently all of our campuses have 18 plus programming
housed on the campus i do want to caveat that jordan will have it but as they add grade levels
You know, we just haven't had any students that had reached the age of 18 to access that,
but they will be adding positions there next year.
So as I said, currently all of our comprehensive high schools have 18-plus, host 18-plus students
at the campus.
Additionally, students that are 18-plus go into community job sites or they access our
work sites at the JCSA based on their IEPs and their individualized needs.
So this service model has worked effectively for KDISD.
However, as our enrollment has increased, the needs of our students have changed as well, and we have the opportunity to reconsider and adjust the way that we approach 18 plus services.
The focus of our 18 plus programming is to facilitate that transition to post-secondary environment and life,
and establishing a program whereby our 18 plus students are able to transition to a unique location that is not the high school that they've been at for the last four years,
I believe would be really powerful for our students help them to really
Practice and generalize those skills that we're teaching them and not only that but it mirrors the experience of their non-disabled peers
their non-disabled peers move to a secondary environment that is different from their high school and
And we want that opportunity to be an option for our students as well. So
We're gonna offer another acronym Katie is deep plus which is promoting learning for universal success
And this would be the proposal designed to intentionally address the needs of our 18 plus students.
So KDISD Plus proposes an innovative transition program designed to support our recently graduated students reach their own levels of independence and self-advocacy.
This graphic that you see in front of you is produced by the TEA and it reflects the various teaching and learning strategies and areas of focus for 18 plus secondary programming.
And essentially the intent of these particular areas are to build skills and supports for
students and families that will promote their ongoing success in their communities.
These students served in 18 plus are often very effective at navigating their high schools
and navigating a high school environment.
What we need to do is help them generalize those skills into a community environment
or a post-secondary environment.
These teaching and learning strategies that we just saw are embedded in the four domains
listed here on the side of adult living, lifelong learning, social recreational
leisure and employment, and again with the primary objectives of helping the
student transition into an environment that mimics a post-secondary setting and
supporting students in the ongoing generalization of skills between that
classroom setting and their post-secondary environment. There are
three different types of learning spaces that we are proposing to be a part of
of this KDIC Plus.
And instruction would occur within these learning spaces.
And again, to help them mimic, for example, apartments.
Little mini apartments would be built
that would include all of the elements of a home apartment,
refrigerators and laundry and dishes and all of those pieces.
So direct instruction could happen there
within the setting.
And we could have teachers to do immediate correction
and response there.
Classrooms that are more traditional classrooms,
classrooms, though they might not look like a high school classroom, but another area
where direct instruction could be achieved.
And then also, as adults, we engage in activities that are recreational and leisure activities,
types of things that we do as part of being in an adult space or a post-secondary space.
And many times our 18 plus students need explicit instruction.
That's part of their IEP goals, how to effectively engage in these types of environments.
And so we would have some recreation and leisure rooms that would have some common areas to teach break skills how to engage in
Various things that would be plugged into that
So another way to look at this is basically a job space a domestic space and a break space
To reflect kind of the most common areas or spaces as adults that they would have the opportunity to engage in
another area of support or
Opportunity for our team plus student would be production labs. So we would have
three production labs a kitchen which would allow us to train and work on the skills necessary to
generalize into fast food service or weight staff service kinds of jobs in the service industry
related to food a crafts lab where students could produce items you know they might produce
you know earrings for christmas or blocks of some kind items that could then be put out and sold or
or shared with campuses in the simulation lab,
which would work on hospitality skills and things such as that.
And so these three labs would allow us to further generalize with students,
teach explicit skills, practice those explicit skills
before we move into the community for the generalization of those skills.
So now that I have shared those two proposed expansions slash consolidations,
what in the world would need to happen to make those two proposals a reality?
What do I need? What are my needs?
So I think even though these are at the conceptual stage, I can say I can give a pretty good indication of what our needs would be.
The good news is that these programs exist in KDISD.
So much of the need is already here.
We would just need to pull it together and consolidate it.
But the big area of need is that our current BTP space is full.
I cannot add any other students or programs there.
So I would need facilities or space for the BLC to happen.
And the same is true of my 18+.
I don't have anywhere that would meet these criteria right now.
And so facilities would be the large area of need.
There would be some need, should this be approved, I'm sure, for some level of staffing and materials.
But that would be minimal because, as I said, we are providing services for many of these things now.
So it would really be more the newer areas that we would need to address because we could consolidate many of those things.
I do believe that we could put both of these programs, if we had the right space,
We could locate them both in the same space with some, you know, intentional design, which would cut down on some of the other costs like administrative costs and overhead costs.
I believe we could cut down on that.
And additionally, many of our students in these programs access related services such as speech and language pathology, our licensed specialist in school psychology, OTs and PTs.
And so having them in a single location, if that could be accomplished, would actually help us in maximizing the efficiency of that staff as well.
So I do believe that we could put these two programs, if we had the right spot,
we could put these two programs together and really kind of reduce that overhead,
provide expanded opportunities for students, and I believe it would make a
difference. And so I wanted to bring this forward for your consideration as a
board to see if this is something we might be interested in moving towards.
And I am happy to take any questions that you may have.
So Dr. Coffey is a proud mother of an autistic child.
A lot of what you're talking about hits home on a very, very personal level for me.
I can absolutely appreciate from phase one of providing additional behavior intervention.
it's not something just children with disabilities need all children need
dedicated systematic rules guidelines supports mine cannot function without it
at home or in the school setting so and then to look here at an option that you
present that such a unique thought process of an ability even if my student
were struggling for a year and in that art meeting we make this decision to
move them for this year to get something even more specific that I cannot get at
a home campus I cannot get some of what you're talking about and it's not
because we don't offer it in bits and pieces but i can't get that honed in where every need could be
met and yes getting that lssp time getting that speech pathology time it was much easier in
elementary school it is almost an impossibility for my high school age child because their
schedules and trying not to pull them out of academic classes that have aid support and all
of those other things so i love the idea that you're really looking at that as a as an entire
whole child construct is how i'm looking at that um i am hoping that and i'm assuming you're
bringing it to us because i can only assume that dr gregorski mr veerling and everybody probably
already has some ideas or thoughts going through their heads on what maybe we own
that can be reconstituted or new purchase into things to make something
like this a reality and I and I want to hone in on 18 plus this won't be a
program that my child specifically needs but I do have multiple friends students
that you require this and to be able to provide for them something that is like
like you keyed on it, that's not just where they've been going to school for the past four or five years,
a unique opportunity for them to get to practice skills and learn skills in an environment that is mimicking what we see in our lives.
When we are sending our kids to a college campus or when we're sending our kids to work full time
and giving them that opportunity to learn and promote that growth and kudos
to your entire team I think I'm really seeing something fully and I thank y'all
for taking that time sorry I'll end oh yeah oh yeah but thank y'all absolutely
I had a couple questions is the post-secondary is the funding for those
folks the same as the regular so there is a weighted and eminent funding is
this gentleman right over here but what I would say is that there is a funding
piece attached to special education there's a weighted funding amount and
it's a little bit more complicated because it depends for our post
secondary friends it depends on how many hours of the day the art committee feels
like they need to be present but what I would say is essentially yes I mean it's
So there's going to be some funding to cover the cost for this, even though they're over 18, is what I understand, correct?
We get some funding for them because they're in membership in the school district and they have ADA attendance and that kind of thing as well.
But it is a little bit more complicated because not all students who require 18 plus services attend all day.
It's a very, what I saw in the one presentation that we got, Board Docs, is a very small amount, like 150 or so.
We have, it was about 165.
We do anticipate, I mean, that's growing because of various things.
But, yes, it's a small number of students.
And at the current campuses at the high schools that have this, you know, all of them, but Jordan has it right now,
do they have all these different labs and all this stuff?
Elements of these things exist across, right.
Labs in the living quarters and the kitchens and all that.
The high schools don't have all that right now, right?
So it would be near impossible for me to replicate what I just described to you on nine, almost ten high school campuses, but all of them have elements of it.
Just not quite as innovative or as grand a scale as what, I mean, we are meeting the needs of students, and we do so in as many ways as we need to.
You know, our teachers are amazing, right?
But this is a different approach.
It's very innovative in its approach.
and I think that you know we worked with several school districts around us and
in the state of Texas and even some outside of the state to have
conversations about what they're doing and what they have and so we took the
best elements that we found out there and combined them into this idea so I'm
maybe this does exist somewhere out there I don't want to say that it
doesn't but I have not found it in the way that we've just packaged it and
given it to you so we really would be innovative in our approach but I also
feel like we would be not only more efficient but I think also as Miss
Wilson indicated we would be offering something to our students that is very
like what our non-disabled students also have when they transition to the next
step after high school and I think that there's I have also spoken with some
parent focus groups about that and I do feel like there's a lot of support for
for that piece of it.
I think just a couple more questions.
And I think it's like Dr. Gorski said.
There's probably a list of things
that we can do that if it was unlimited budget,
we could do all of these things, right?
And certainly this is one that's very creative.
And there's been no discussion on what the cost of this is,
and where that would prioritize against all
of the other needs and all the other benefits
for all the students.
So is there going to be brought forward
to the board on what the cost of additional facilities i mean that's not going to be cheap
right and some of the stuff that you've talked about but when is the uh the cost side of things
going to be brought to the board yeah that's a good question there are a lot of moving parts
with something like this and you're right when you say that mr schulte we've got this priority
list of things that we want to accomplish this is one that is on the priority list and that's
why we bring it to the board for a discussion right now there will be some staffing implications
with it but we're not asking for any board approval at this time we just
want to we thought it was ripe for conversation in here to show you what it
is because we're talking about future staffing and what we might want to do in
this district should we go in this direction but there will be some
upcoming discussions including Monday night we'll be talking a little bit in
closed session about land and projects so we're gonna have some discussions on
what options could be available for something like this we'll also be
talking about in the near future a bond and should something be done differently
than we want to do it could become part of a bond or a bond discussion so there
are a few options in there that I want to bring to the board over the next
coming months but I thought the first step was show you what we're leaning
towards so the board gets an understanding of that and and where we
want to be in the future I don't think we can have anything near accomplished
by August so these aren't staffing things that we would be putting in
immediately we do have some plans that possibly maybe during the school year
something that would impact staffing and future budgets and stuff but we'd be
bringing that to the board with costs a little bit of time as we bring that then
the centralization obviously has a huge amount of benefits right but also like
what about the transportation of the students to the central is that is that
that now become a great for the teachers and it's great for reducing administrative overhead and all that,
but it's getting the students from a local campus to now a central campus.
Is that a burden to these folks or is there a way to get them there?
So we're busing a ton of kids already, whether it's to their own campus, their home campus,
or possibly another campus because they don't offer that particular.
um program uh ideally this would be a centralized kind of location something central maybe not at
the upper corner like the northwest side out there or or as far as you know bear creek or something
like that try to get something centralized um but i don't think it would put any undue burden
on our transportation team thank you it's a very clever idea it certainly would revolutionize the
process it seems like so mr president yeah can i ask some questions i just lost it sure i'm excited
um i i hate to mention this but you know project tyke used to be in portables i mean you know and
how long you know there's lucky out there but i mean how long was that you know forever i mean
that that could be um you know that could be i'm just saying that could be a potential
i mean it worked you know it wasn't it wasn't the best but it did work and i think that we have
retired um portables ever portable buildings every once in a while so i don't know i'm just throwing
that out that that could be uh something and if we have the land space for it anyway over like
I'm just imagining you know by reigns or something you know Jean Coleman you know
but I wanted to ask you well first I want to say you know when I was at
Taylor I always noticed students who graduated but stayed on campus and I
know I know a few of them that I talked to that bought that bothered them
because they knew that they graduated you know but they were still there you
know and so i think this is a great idea to let them like like ms wilson said you know go on to
something you know everybody else is going on you know and they can go on but here's a question i
have does everyone who is 18 plus that meets the requirements required to go into that program
they are not um they're not we are required to offer that if it's a need if they meet the
requirements and the IEP goals continue the ARD committee decides whether or not
18 plus programming is appropriate as an offer but in the same way that parents
have the option of enrolling their child in a school they have the option of
enrolling the student in 18 plus programming and one last question so one
of the students I knew that was in the 18 plus program I think she's now aged
out at that but she was going every once while to the Jeanne Coleman building can
you i'm just curious what what do students do there and who gets to go there right that's a
great question so we have um two different groups of students that can access that um
jeannie coleman center so we have um we have set up mock many of the things we talked about here
which is why we have some of the pieces right some of the materials we have some apartments we have
a kitchen and we have some classrooms there and so our work-based learning students and or our 18
18 plus students and those are different work based learning haven't graduated yet.
18 plus have met graduation requirements.
So it's a little bit of a different analysis, but they have the opportunity to access that.
The difference is that the Jeanne Coleman, the JCS say in those labs, there's only a
handful of those.
And so in the same way that we have students who take turns with other various sites in
Katie, I see like the steam center, for example, you know, kids go through and do, I can't
run all of the students through those labs on a daily basis.
And so the access is a calendar based access.
They get to go in.
they get to have those experiences and those experiences are rich and i think
they make a difference for students this would allow us to have those
experiences more
mr president yes thank you very much for the presentation and thank you for
taking the time to voice over the uh the presentation that was super
helpful to understand it before we got to the night
um i love the plus program i was able to host a work site at my previous job and
And to see it in action when no one else is looking is so awesome to see the response.
And in the tough times when there's a breakdown and they're coached through how to respond, I love.
As I'm trying to think of a paradigm, though, it almost sounds like we're almost describing like a younger version of like the day program out of Brookwood.
Very similar.
That we're able to provide for our students as they transition in adulthood.
Is that a good like paradigm in my head to kind of picture?
there are some significant similarities it's it's fundamentally different just because we're a
public school entity and they are not and but our i think our ultimate outcome and intention is for
positive post-secondary outcomes for kids right or adults in this case so i think our intention
is much the same but the procedural side of it is very different thank you any other questions
Mr. President, thank you very much.
That's good information.
I also, like Mrs. Champagne, I love when a namesake's in the room to recognize them.
Martha Aki, it's wonderful to see you here and your life of education with our special ed students.
I'm excited to see you here, and I can't wait to talk to you about what you thought about it.
So I have some questions.
the 18 plus are still in school.
Please explain that for the people who listen to this presentation and
talk to me about people, talk to people who are saying, why are they still there?
What is the state requirement for that?
So special education is a program that is federally required to serve students.
Depending upon their kind of disability, it could start at birth for
certain types of students.
But generally, ages three through, we say 22, but
but it's really you had to be 21 on or before September 1st.
And it's very similar to how you have to be five on or before September 1st to access kindergarten.
It's the same idea.
It's an age piece when they exit.
So that's a requirement under federal law.
If they have needs related to various areas.
And for our adult students, it's needs related to transition into their post-secondary environment.
So what has happened, they've started high school as a ninth grader,
and they have matriculated through ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth grade,
and they have filled their transcript boxes.
They have met all of the requirements to graduate from school with a diploma.
But their ARD committee, again, that's the group that gets together to make decisions
about their special education needs, has determined that there are other areas of need
related to accessing an environment or being able to engage in self-advocacy or self-care pieces.
Work-related, we don't feel like they're ready to take on a job, let's say, without support.
And so there are needs not related to what we typically think about in an academic setting
That continue past the completion of their academic requirements and the school district is required under the IDEA to
Program and provide for those needs through that year where they turn 21 on or before September 1st
So that is what the 18 plus programming focuses on. Is that age changed over the year?
I thought when I first came it was something like 25
five well let me say it i don't believe so as far as i know um it has not changed okay
okay i'm looking around to make sure okay and when you say that you provide parts of that now
where is it housed so right now part of it is at jeannie coleman and sometimes it's work sites in
the community so we go out to work sites um we partner with various people go out as mr redmond
indicated go out to work sites and we coach students in the actual community regarding
those job but also they're they're really housed or hosted at all of our comprehensive high schools
every high school hosts the student zone to that high school who continue to have needs okay
so i think about howdy ice cream and how they have such a great
environment there and their employees are you know incredibly gifted students with you know
personally and when i like what mr redmond said about brookwood but that's a residential those
correct those those um young men and women live there is this similar like what happens now
to students like is it arc the arc of katie also has day programs is that correct is it similar
All of the things that you said are options and generally our adult students either have supported decision-making meaning that they've collaborated with once they turn 18
They've collaborated with parents to help make those decisions or sometimes there's guardianship or various things
And so those decisions are made by families what Katie I see is required to do is offer a way to address those
post-secondary needs and
parents can choose to engage in that or they could choose to
To go to an outside in the same way that parents could choose to enroll their kid in a private school right versus Katie
But though right now those are application and waiting list many of them are in Sam because of the increased enrollment for that
so I
I'm glad that I have funding down here that mr.
Schulte asked already
When I talked to Jeannie Coleman and Martha key and Fred Schaefer and
and Amy Campbell and really understand kind of their life
of serving our boys and girls.
And that this job sitting at this table
is not about checking boxes on a history
in math and English, but how prepared are our boys
and girls to be self-supporting,
to be able to take care of a family,
to be able to live independently successfully and fulfilling lives that's what our mission is
and so i appreciate this presentation i look forward to more details that are coming because
i know there's a long list of things that we want to do for students um but to prepare them for a
fulfilling life is um and we already are we already are yes to make it um cohesive and condensed and
and prepare for the future.
I just appreciate so much the presentation you've brought.
And if I had all the money in the world,
I'd be like, yes, yes, yes.
So I appreciate that our discussions will be ongoing
and what happens from here.
But like the Jeanne Coleman Center
and how that all came to be and putting all that together,
it was, again, it was a vision that we had.
And as a board and the Shaw Center was a vision that we had
and we were innovative with that.
Nobody else has it.
and then they come and go, oh, do that.
And so I appreciate so much you all coming up with it
and thinking about our boys and girls
and just how to serve them and their families
because KDICD is a destination district
that we serve all students, and I'm grateful for that.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
I just had one.
Before, at the board level, we were talking about discipline,
and I know from your presentation you were saying
saying behavior is different than discipline.
Yes.
Okay, so I want to kind of like
talk about that a little bit.
Sure.
Because I think one of the things
that we were talking about then
was not so much behavior as a result of a disability
or a learning disorder,
but more behavior related to the need for enforcement
and accountability and things like that.
So the Behavioral Learning Center,
I guess would help with that the discipline side as well, but at the same time it would primarily benefit, for example, kids with learning disorders or autism, etc.
that are acting out in some way where they need or being aggressive or what have you that need some additional help at a separate location outside of the campus.
Am I describing that correctly?
Yes.
In other words, there's some analysis that has been done to determine like a traditional discipline problem versus one that's related to behavior for some other reasons.
I think that, yes, I think that's a fair statement.
The piece I would say, and the reason I wanted to make that distinction, is that most of
our students who repeatedly engage in behaviors that are maladjusted do typically have some
sort of disability or alternative understanding of what they should be doing.
I don't believe, especially, let me say at the elementary level, students don't misbehave.
they don't enjoy punishment, generally speaking, right?
And so they're misbehaving sometimes,
and they're doing the same thing over and over again
because there's a lack of understanding of what they should be doing and why.
And it could be impulsivity.
It could be that they have an emotional disturbance.
It could be autism.
It could be a number of things.
Many of these students are identified as special education,
and we have plans in place for them.
But some students are not identified,
and predominantly that would be because parents have chosen not to allow testing,
and that is the right of a parent.
And so sometimes we have students who may have disabilities but who have not been diagnosed by the school district or qualified for special education because a parent has said, I don't wish that service to exist for my child.
And again, they have that right.
And so discipline, generally, if you discipline a student for something, you would expect the discipline to change the behavior.
What we're proposing is intervening before it's necessary to really do a lot of discipline for a student.
And I'm not saying no correction, right, but aggressive discipline for a student, because we want to change that behavior and really get the ball rolling the right direction.
We don't want students to only get attention or only respond, especially students with disability, get the attention of adults or have that interaction with adults when something negative has happened, right?
We're talking about really being upfront and intentional in our interventions ahead of time.
And that's what those two phases are designed to do, is to provide them with those coping mechanisms.
And so discipline isn't an issue because we've corrected the behavior through explicit and systematic instruction.
So that's kind of the idea.
It's the idea of when you see a student running down the hallway, right, instead of saying stop running, you say thank you for walking.
Because you've put the suggestion in their mind about what should you be doing.
That's the difference to me in intervening with behavior versus discipline.
And that's what we're hoping to be able to accomplish.
And I do want to say I appreciate all of the comments.
And I really appreciate, you know, I understand that money is one.
It's finite.
it's a finite resource of it. I really do want to also say that I feel like we can not only enhance
what we're providing for students, but we can provide it more efficiently. And so I do think
that while there might be an upfront cost, I would ask the board to consider what the long-term cost
would be and what we're, you know, for example, centralizing 18 plus gives us room back at campuses,
right, which allows us to maximize that space. And so I think we have a unique opportunity here,
and that's why I know Dr. Gaworski and my team wanted to have the opportunity to bring this
forward and I'm very appreciative of your time both that watching the program
ahead of time and listening here this evening thank you I just have a really
quick question something you just said and sparked this you said having this
program would that be able to maximize the on-campus because there's definitely
some students that we have that are 18 plus that meet every qualifications to
stay with us until they're 21 or 21 by September 1st but this new program is
might never really work for them. I mean, right? But disabilities are past the point
of learning to sack groceries or work at a restaurant or that they still qualify and
their art says, yes, this will benefit them. But this apartment kitchen setting might be
too much for them. But having this program off campuses will make, like you just said,
maximize the space per high school campus for those students that don't
quite qualify for this amazing program that I'm very excited about but that's
that was my takeaway from the last statement that you said is that right
yeah I think that you know we're going the special ed is very individualized
right so we're gonna target the individual needs of that student for
some kids that may involve using the kitchen or apartment and you know plan A
but for some kids it might be plan B right they may always need facilitator
or assisted or they may not and so this program would allow us to really have that that flexibility
in a centralized location but it would also free up you know we're using 16 or 18 classrooms at
campuses and so not only are we providing this for our students that are 18 plus but we're giving
classrooms back at the campus which helps us when we're looking at the space on our high school
campuses right so it's it's serving two different needs which i always love things when they serve
two different needs right that's great so absolutely mr president i just have one more
thing that and i know this is kind of profound but actually helping these students who
can go into to our society and and be productive it actually you know we need to look at it as like
long term like this this helps the world actually you know this helps i know that's so profound but
But it's not just about, not everything is just about KDISD.
It's about what KDISD provides.
You know, it's in our mission statement.
You know, we're providing, you know, for the future.
And so it's a long-lasting, you know, this can help families in the long term.
And it can help them, you know, with their entire lives.
Not just to when they're 22.
You know, it's beyond.
So I think that this is so hard to capture the complete results that we could have.
You know, there's no way you could put a number on it or quantify it anyway.
That's a great point.
Lots of benefits.
Any other questions?
Okay, so we don't have an agenda item to capture trustee requests, but I'd capture them.
I'm sure miss man has to and I'll send them to dr. Gregor ski
7.1 Regular Board Meeting - March 27, 2023
Agenda item 7.1 the next regular board meeting. I think I'm saying this we're on this right now, right? No other topics
Is Monday March 27 2023 there being no further business before the board this meeting is adjourned the time is 718
Everyone have a good evening. Thank you
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