Good afternoon. Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this work-study meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order.
Katy ISD · Work Study Meeting
Katy ISD Work Study Meeting, August 21, 2023
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In this meeting
The headings and the descriptions beneath them are the district’s own words, taken from its index of this recording.
- 0:05 to 0:36 1. Call to Order
- 0:36 to 1:25 2. Pledges of Allegiance
- 1:25 to 12:20 3. Public Comment
- 12:20 to 12:48 4. Closed Meeting
- 12:48 to 13:36 5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 13:36 to 26:02 6. Reports
- 26:02 to 52:27 7.1 Presentation of the 2023-2024 Proposed Budget and Tax Rate
- 52:27 to 54:38 7.2 Receive public input regarding the 2023-2024 Proposed Budget and Tax Rate.
- 54:38 to 58:51 8.1 Discuss and consider June 2023 Financial Reports.
- 58:51 to 1:08:47 8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the proposed 2022-2023 final amended budget.
- 1:08:47 to 1:12:23 8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of a resolution to commit and assign fund balance.
- 1:12:23 to 1:13:43 8.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2023-2024 State Compensatory Education funding and other End-of-Course Assessment funding budget, as required by House Bill 5.
- 1:13:43 to 1:15:42 8.5 Discuss and Consider Board approval of the proposed 2023-2024 Official Budget for Katy Independent School District.
- 1:15:42 to 1:17:42 8.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of the TASB Risk Management Fund Interlocal Participation Agreement for the administration of workers' compensation claims for 2023-2024.
- 1:17:42 to 1:20:43 8.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of the proposal for the renewal of the Excess Workers' Compensation Insurance Policy.
- 1:20:43 to 1:39:38 Items 8.8 & 8.9
- 1:39:38 to 1:41:42 8.10 Discuss and consider Board approval of Amendment Two to the AnslowBryant Construction, Ltd. contract related to the addition and kitchen/cafeteria expansion to West Memorial Elementary School.
- 1:41:42 to 1:42:37 8.11 Discuss and consider Board approval of the design services associated with the Northwest Transportation Center and Maintenance Facility.
- 1:42:37 to 1:53:05 8.12 Discuss and consider Board approval of a Resolution to declare a good cause exception for House Bill 3.
- 1:53:05 to 2:25:15 8.13 Discuss and consider Board approval of FFJ-Student Welfare: Parental Authority and Gender Fluidity Matters.
- 2:25:15 to 2:32:28 8.14 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2023-2024 Board Operating Procedures.
- 2:32:28 to 2:33:04 9. Information Items
- 2:33:04 to 2:33:24 10. Future Meetings
Full transcript
Automated transcript, not human verified. It is a way to find a passage, not a quotation.
1. Call to Order
Today is Monday, August 21, 2023, and the time is 5 p.m.
Dr. Gorgorski, will you verify that we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to the notice of this meeting?
Mr. President, I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting tonight.
Thank you. KDISD Police Chief Henry Gahl will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
2. Pledges of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for
which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the city of Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.
Do we have any scouts in the audience this evening? No, I guess not.
At this time, the Board of Trustees will give members of the public an opportunity to speak
3. Public Comment
in accordance with kdisd board policy bed local as defined by board policy speakers who signed up
by 2 pm on monday august 21 2023 provided their first and last name and signed in 15 minutes
prior to the start of the meeting will be allowed to address the board speakers who signed up to
speak on posted agenda items will be allowed three minutes to speak if a speaker has not finished
If you have finished speaking by the end of the three minutes, the audio will turn off.
If speakers wish to share written material with the Board, please provide 10 copies to
the Secretary for Board Services before the meeting begins for Board members, the Superintendent,
the Chief Communications Officer, and permanent record.
If a speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through proper channels
as stated in Board policy, the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to seek
resolution through the appropriate policy. Finally, pursuant to Texas
Government Code sections 551.074 and 551.0821, the Board will not permit the
presentation of personally identifiable information regarding a student and will
not discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties,
discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee, or to hear a
complaint or charge against an officer or employee. Should a speaker wish to address one of these
issues, they must do so through the appropriate legal grievance policies, F&G local, DGBA local,
CKE local, or GF local. Our speakers will be called forward in the order they signed up to speak.
Our first speaker this evening, this afternoon, is Cameron Samuels, and after that, Logan McLean.
Welcome.
Good evening.
Thank you.
Silence does not mean that the community supports you.
Silence is what you create.
When you diminish our education, deprive students of our education, deplete our school libraries, and discredit our educators.
For many of you, silence is who you are when you are elected on a platform simply to ban
books that you disagree with ideologically.
You know, books is not on the agenda.
So if you're going to talk about books, we're only talking about agenda items.
Your agenda on gender fluidity matters is rooted in bigotry.
It's discrimination when you seek to suppress students and our education on the basis of politics.
Students are not political pawns, and you are bringing politics into our education.
into decisions that directly impact students and harm us when we can't find ourselves in the libraries,
when we can't find ourselves in our education.
You were elected, many of you, on a political issue,
and you're not fit to serve a district of 90,000 students with bigotry.
Thank you. Your time is up.
the next speaker is logan mclean
good evening board my name is logan mclean and i'm a 2023 graduate from single ranch high school
i'm here to talk about agenda item 8.13 parental authority and gender fluidity now i wish i could
stand up here and pick apart every word of whatever policy comes out of this discussion
but i can't i don't even know what is on there yet since it was never put on the board documents
but i do know how it made me feel when i saw this on the agenda list for today's meeting
my blood just ran cold i know where this discussion is going to go and i am scared
I know that the fact this even made it onto your list of priorities is indication enough
that KDISD is on the backwards track to become a welcoming home to hatred and hostility towards
your students.
I can speak as a student who has been in this system for the past 12 years that of all the
things this district could have done better with my education, addressing gender fluidity
had never crossed my mind.
But you know what did?
retaining our quality teachers, the bus driver shortage, mental health services, bullying,
security from gun violence. I no longer believe that the precious time spent in these meetings
is truly addressing major issues KDISD is facing. The fact that books like The Day the Grounds Quit
and Judy Bloom's words are on the list for internal review is proof in itself that our
concerns are skewed. This district is going to face the consequences of electing a board who
who piggybacked off political mania and will continue to prioritize non-issues above giving students a quality education.
Tomorrow, I leave for college in Canada.
I worry that I'm leaving behind friends and family in this district
who are about to be subject to so much hate and censorship brought on by this board's future decisions.
I've heard this board preach its mission to protect students,
but I have yet to see it do anything that would protect its most vulnerable.
vulnerable. LGBT youth are 4.5 times more likely to attempt suicide and six times more
likely to experience depression than their straight and cisgender counterparts. And yet,
this board's mission has been to remove the essential resources that could truly protect
this group. The Trevor Project, a suicide hotline that has saved lives, is still blocked
at the elementary level. This month, we removed books about LGBT youth mental health, like
flamer and laura dean keeps breaking up with me books that helped me through tough times that my
peers can no longer access tonight in your discussion of gender fluidity and parental
authority ask yourself who am i protecting your lgbt students will continue to exist regardless
of the outcome of tonight you can't erase us no matter what you decide we will fight to exist in
schools equally without shame and without compromise thank you thank you our next speaker is ann russi
welcome hi hi my name is ann russi i'm a mom to two young kdisd students and i am deeply troubled
by this board's plans to dedicate district time and resources to discussing and adopting
a student welfare policy on parental authority and matters related to gender fluidity.
My comments are primarily directed at the four of you who recently campaigned on platforms of fear-mongering and are backed by far-right
anti-trans politicians and PACs.
Your continued attacks on the rights and freedoms of students, parents, and educators who think, look, believe,
love, and vote
differently than you aren't going unnoticed. It's never really been about the books for you.
And my hunch is the policy you plan to discuss tonight is going to make that infinitely more clear.
Being elected to this board does not mean you possess some sort of God-given right to assert moral authority over everyone else's kids.
No parent needs our board to adopt a policy dictating what this board feels is right when it comes to their own authority as parents, especially on matters related to the gender identity of our children.
I wish you would spend your time focusing on real problems that plague our school district like excessive staff vacancies
Discipline and opportunity disparities and actual safety and security threats to our campuses and our kids
Instead you're putting the political agendas of yourselves and the PACs who endorsed you ahead of the 94,000 students you supposedly serve
Lance
Don and Rebecca y'all have served on a conservative leaning board for years
I think you know whatever these four are proposing regarding parental authority and gender fluidity is
Not rooted in conservative values
They are taking most of their moves straight out of the Christian nationalist extremist playbook
They and their supporters are challenging books about climate change and civil rights
embracing endorsements from pro voucher packs and
Opposing desperately needed bond measures which have not passed could be detrimental to our public school district
Now they're very likely planning to insert themselves into the private lives
of transgender students. Your willingness to call it out and stand up to it
matters to those of us who see our district hopelessly sliding
down the slippery slope of extremism and feel powerless to stop it. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes the open forum of our meeting. The board will now
4. Closed Meeting
convene in closed meeting as authorized under section 551.001 of the Texas
Government Code for the following purposes Texas Government Code 551.071
551.074 and 551.129
The Board will now reconvene in open meeting.
5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
Today is Monday, August 21, 2023, and the time is 617.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's work study meeting.
meeting. Each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Friday,
August 18, 2023. The board will receive information and recommendations from staff,
administration, and the superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting.
Board members will be able to ask questions, receive answers, and should be prepared
to take action. The board has just reconvened from closed meeting. In accordance with Chapter 551
in the Texas Government Code, any action arising from discussions in a closed meeting must
be taken in open meeting.
6. Reports
The next item of business is Chief Financial Officer walkthrough of the KDISD Financial
Transparency website, and our presenter is Christopher Smith, Chief Financial Officer.
Good evening, President Perez, Superintendent Grigorski, and trustees.
I'm going to run through this website real quick just to familiarize the public and the
trustees with this.
This is our KDISD website, KDISD.org.
From our website, you can go to financial transparency right there on the district links
site and boom, you're on our transparency website.
And I'm going to spend the next few minutes going over this.
I've actually got a timer on so I don't go too long, but I wanted to just get the basics going here
So the comptroller of public accounts here in Texas gives us stars to meet their minimum requirements
And we feel that we go above and beyond their minimum requirements
with this transparency website, but we do have the
traditional finances and the debt obligation
Stars from the comptroller we have information about our tax rates now
Now this will be changing over the next 40 days when we adopt a new tax rate.
That will change.
But we've got stars to the transparency website or links to the transparency website
because the state of Texas also puts information that's transparency related about KDISD on their website.
We have the financial management handbook that we provide to our schools and our departments
departments to give to their booster clubs or to let them know where it may be. So
KDISD is not the booster club. We can't control that or raise or spend that money,
but we do have a handbook on kind of some good rules for them to follow since some of them may
not be financial experts, but that's about all we do for booster clubs. Here's our efficiency audit
report that we did and presented to the board in October of last year. That's still on there.
But we did, this board did hire an efficiency audit, and that looked really well, if you'll recall, when we went over that back in October.
But it rests out here.
Tonight's meeting to discuss the budget and tax rate, that notice is required to be put on our website.
It was run in the paper.
There it is.
Here is a copy of our expenditure budget draft.
The financial, our org chart in my area is the org chart.
Financial Accountability System Resource Guide. This is the rules that TEA say that we have to code things to.
So that's a link to TEA's website. So when you hear about Function 11 and instruction, that comes from TEA because they prescribe that for all districts.
And so that's their rule book that we are required to follow. All school districts are required to follow.
So we've we've had that link out there on our website. Here's our Municipal Advisor Exemption Form.
We have, and I'm going to go ahead and click this link, we have all kinds of information about our fund balance.
This is our fund balance ending August 31st, 2022, $326 million and what makes up that fund balance.
Mr. Hines will be presenting an agenda item tonight in which I will be assigning this blue section we'll be talking about tonight.
But it talks about what a fund balance is, what it's not.
Here is the history of our fund balance over the last 10 years.
And you can see it's relatively stayed flat, which is a good thing.
And then those dotted lines represent our targets.
So for our full fund balance, our target is four operating months.
And for our unassigned fund balance, our target is three months.
And you can see where we lie above or below our target.
And there's the benefits of the healthy fund balance.
How a dollar is spent. This is a very simple thing that shows a dollar.
Sixty-six percent in 21-22 of our money was spent in instruction in the classroom, as it should be.
They're very consistent from year to year. Two cents on every dollar is spent on general administration,
et cetera, you know, for a dollar. And here's their 88 percent,
88 cents of every dollar we spend is in payroll.
So that's out there. That's very simple to understand. We also put some stuff out there like this. I've referred to this in a budget meeting that shows a 10-year trend. That information comes right off the TEA website, so anybody can hit this link and find those same things that are supported in these reports that the agency publishes statewide.
statewide.
So going back up, let's go with the transparency, traditional finances.
I'm not going to go through all these, but we do show all this information that we put out there by student,
our enrollment trends, our total revenue, both state and local percentages,
general fund spending per student.
Again, lots of information, check tax rate information.
Let's see.
On our debt, we've got a lot of information on this.
Some of it we actually just put up.
The comptroller's office is doing a review.
They did about a month ago, they did the first star I looked at this last week.
They're doing the second star.
And there's a couple things that we had to go update because they've updated their requirements.
And so we got that refreshed and updated.
But here's an example, and this kind of goes back to last month.
This is our total debt ratio.
We talked about ratios in the meeting.
And so you can see that what's in blue there, if you go back to 2015, our last eight years, we've been somewhere between 4% and 5%.
If you take our total debt and divide it by our tax base, we've been somewhere between 4% and 5%.
four and five percent. We're getting more debt, yes. Our tax base is growing, and so we've
maintained in that between that three and four and five percent, and you can see the green.
That's the assumption that we sell bonds these next four years. Assuming the bond election were
to pass, we would still maintain a very good debt to tax base ratio. There's a lot here,
but this shows our bond outstanding principal.
And you can see again there at $2.5 million is where we're going to end 2024,
assuming we have a bond sale.
So all that in green and in purple is an assumption.
But remember, we're paying well over $100 million in principal a year,
and we don't sell the full $840 million at once.
We'll sell that in three or four tranches,
depending on how fast we're spending the cash.
and it'll be spent over two or three maybe even four years and so we don't
anticipate the debt oh the total debt burden to ever ever go above 2.7 billion
dollars I say ever could in a future authorization three or four years from
now but I don't anticipate that with the authorization that's in question right
now and then here's our property values but property values by bond outstanding
standing principle against basically the same thing. This is a heat map of where debt is across
the state of Texas. And I will point out that very obvious triangle that follows from Houston to
Dallas, Dallas down to San Antonio and back over to Houston. That's where all the fast growth school
districts are located. And you can see that similar to how I've told you when we when we
build schools, we're on our own. Same with those other school districts that are considered fast
they're on their own, they're issuing debt to keep up with that growth.
Here is the fast growth school districts are by definition of how many students
they've grown.
Remember, Katy ISD over the last five years is by about 2,000 students,
the fastest growing district in the state by the sheer number of students,
over 14,000 of them over the last five years that are new to our district.
That's where we are in brown or blue when it comes to where we are.
That line you can see goes up that graph real well.
It's tough to see up there, and I apologize to you all up there,
but it is on our website.
You can go look at it when you get home.
And there's a lighter line in there, which is the average.
So we're quite a bit below average.
You can see that all fast-growth districts are having to issue bonds
because of the growth, and we are the fastest-growing.
Let's see.
And then I'm just going to go to – I'm going to go back to – there's something I really wanted to focus on at the bottom here.
This House Bill 1378 is a legal requirement.
It was a law that passed that said that districts must put information about their debt on their website.
I think it's I think it's elementary compared to the other stuff that we have
And not as easy to read but it's in the format that they that the law prescribed and so we've met that and update that annually
We also have issue our bond issues
Listings both in Excel and PDF so anybody can look at all they want. We have a link to the Texas bond review board
And they again, there's the comptroller of public accounts
So links are everywhere.
And then we've got some things over here that I want to point out.
Here's the last six years of our financial audits, or our ACFERS, that we publish out there.
And we will drop 2016 when we add 2023.
I'm out of time.
But those are out there.
The awards that the district has received.
Here's our full schools first information.
Information so the last
There's goes to TAS
information on schools first
Let's see
Check registers think this is important
We have all the check registers that go back out here
This is the last year when you when this board approves the financial report tonight will put mr.
Hines will present that we'll put the June check register out there the next day and
and so our check register go out there.
We also have an archive where we have several years going back to 2020,
all the check registers that could be out there,
and those are in a downloadable Excel format,
so somebody can download, sort, and do whatever they want,
or search for Chris Smith if they wanted to see what check was written to me,
or et cetera.
You can do those searches, or any taxpayer can do those searches.
So that's it in a nutshell.
I just thought it was important that we cover this so the public knows
and the board knows where information financial is when it comes to talking about things.
And obviously there's email addresses of mine on this as well as yours.
We're required, the comptroller requires us to put a link right here directly to your email addresses.
Here's information on public information requests on the instructions in the form to get that.
So anybody that wants to do a public records request, if they can't find it on here, there
it is.
They can do it because from the CFO's perspective, there's nothing to hide or nothing that we
shouldn't share to the public.
So that's my update on the transparency website and I'd be glad to answer any questions should
you have any.
Thank you.
Any questions?
Any questions?
Okay, thanks.
The next item of business is 7.1.
7.1 Presentation of the 2023-2024 Proposed Budget and Tax Rate
The presenter again is Christopher Smith, Chief Financial Officer.
It's a presentation of the 2023-2024 proposed budget and tax rate.
All right.
All right, we're through July, and I told you last month that this would be faster
because I went through the ad nauseum stuff last month.
But we're required to adopt a budget by August the 31st, or we can't do business.
We could adopt a budget tonight.
We could probably adopt one in July, Ms. Butterfield.
But we're ready to adopt it.
Annual growth rate in our assumptions is 3.8%.
We're opening, we opened two schools last week and we had a 15% increase in our tax
based growth.
A lot to come on that here in a minute.
The budget reflects a 3% across the board salary increase.
M&O tax rate of 72 cents or 72.9 cents and an INS tax rate of 39 cents.
A lot to come on that here starting now.
This is a trend of our tax rate information going back to 2006, 2007 and when the state
started buying down those tax rates.
and you can see there on the far right that 73 cents that I mentioned earlier
is a 18 sorry it is an 18.5 cent reduction in the M&O tax rate that's
your 16 billion dollars the state gave us to go to tax relief do need to
disclose that 16 billion dollars went to education in the form of tax relief it
did not go to the classroom and I think it's important that the board be
be reminded of that and the public know that $16 billion, we all deserve the tax relief
and we all need it, et cetera, et cetera, but none of that went into the classroom.
I just think that's important to do.
And then we have a 39.7% projected tax reduction over the last five years.
I'm sorry, six years.
So 18.5 cents is what I expected to go down.
This is the anatomy of our tax rate, and I'm going to just point out two things.
That top line, that compressed rate, that's what TEA controls.
TEA set that rate for us at 80.46 cents a year ago, and based on the new laws that this legislative session have done, it's being lowered to 61.92.
That is the 18.5 cent tax reduction.
the golden pennies and the copper pennies that maintains an 11.02 that is
our enrichment pennies if those went away in other words if they if the board
or any board any school districts board lowered the tax rate they would lower
the the those enrichment pennies and those would never be able to be brought
back without an election so as I've said it in a meeting before if it was ever
gonna happen I'd go pull the fire alarm and say let's get out of the building
building so I can talk some sense into folks because not that's not nonsensical because
everybody wants the burden to be less on taxes but but that would be something that we would
never get back and those 11.02 cents that we have in enrichment pennies are a huge advantage
to districts that do have enrichment pennies most districts and without an election only have five
golden pennies and no copper pennies we have eight and three respectively and that's a
That's a good thing.
Again, there's your 39 cents.
I'm going to just blow by this stage.
I want you to look at the bookends of green on the far left and the far right,
the 15-16 and the 23-24 school year.
This is, I'm going to focus on that.
This next slide shows that, and then the next slide is really the humdinger that.
is fun to look at. But that shows those same things, but in a graphical format. It also shows
inflation adjusted. So folks are actually paying less because of inflation than they were back in
the 2016-2017 year. But you can see that orange big decrease there, sharp drop, and that's the
18 and a half cent tax reduction so let's talk about what that really means in 2015-16 the market
value of the home the average home in kdisd was 274 thousand dollars average market home in all
of kdisd was 274 thousand dollars and based on the tax rate at that time which can be found two
slides earlier uh we had uh they paid three thousand seven hundred and eighty two dollars
in taxes uh this lack next year the year that the 2023 tax year those values are still being
protested and all that at the county appraisal districts but uh those those have now increased
to four hundred and thirty thousand dollars so the average home now in katie is valued at four
and thirty dollars four four hundred thirty thousand dollars we've all felt it we've all
all paid more in taxes every year because the property values are going up. It's not the CADs
doing a bad job. CADs are doing their job. It's supply and demand. People want to move to Texas.
Property values are going up all across the state. They're especially going up at a faster rate
here in Katy because people want to be part of this district. So $430,000. So now in 23-24,
with the Homestead exemption and that 18.5 cent lower tax rate, a taxpayer is going to pay
$3,680 on the average home. That is a decrease of $102. So with that substantial decrease
in the tax rate and the increase in the homestead exemption, exactly what $16 billion should
do for the state of Texas is happening here in Katy ISD. We have an equity increase of
So $155,000 over those eight years.
But our taxes for the first time are actually going to go down by $102.
And so that's a good thing.
And we want those values to continue to go up.
Don't want to pay more taxes.
I expect the tax rate to go down again next year.
I don't know how much yet, but it should go down next year.
It won't be 18.5 cents, but it's going to be big.
But we want our market value to go up because we want to be able to sell our house
and sell it for more than we bought it.
It's the biggest investment many of us will make in our lives.
So we want that trend to continue, and that's a good trend,
especially when you're paying less on taxes on it now.
So with that, this draft has shifted significantly from 45% state funding to 55% funding from the state.
The state's paying more towards that basic allotment when they decreased the tax rate 18.5 cents.
And the homestead exemption, they had to increase their portion of the budget, and so they did.
It's about 55%.
Forty-three percent come from local revenue.
Obviously, the largest portion of that is in taxes and then miscellaneous things like interest income, gate sales, et cetera.
And then only two percent is in federal revenue.
In the general fund, 88% of our budget is still in payroll.
Salary and benefits, 88%.
Utilities is number two.
the biggest part of that piece of the pie is electricity, water, and gas.
Electricity is, between those three, it's about $20 million a year we spend in this district on utilities.
And water is increasing at an alarming, the cost of our water bills are increasing at an alarming rate as well.
Software supplies is the number three largest thing in our budget is software,
software, then probably supplies and fuel are about all even. But software is number three at 4.4%. And then other operating is 2.4%. Capital is less than 1%. And then .02 also is this, and I never can remember it right, it's a subscription-based information technology, what's the A? Agreement. So it's a GASB thing. It's not increasing any expenses. It's just reclassifying.
expenses that were required to do that as a part of a governmental accounting standards
board release 96.
What statement?
96?
Yeah, 96.
So this is, we're still plugging most of our money into the classroom at 67%.
I think I showed you where the actual dollar was spent at 66.
So hopefully we've spent more in our classroom.
Again, that's what we're all about and what we should be doing is putting the money in the classroom.
But 82% is spent directly on our students and in the classrooms.
So our general fund budget, our July amended budget showed an ending fund balance of $324 million.
I'm expecting that to be somewhere in the 330s, maybe 340.
when we actually end the year.
Again, we have some underspending.
And as I've mentioned before,
we're going to try to shore up our health fund.
Our health fund's had another tough year
in the wake of COVID.
And so we're going to try to expense some more
to generate some cash to keep that thing healthy,
no pun intended.
So we have a billion and 24 million in revenue,
a billion, 24 million in revenues.
This shows, I don't have it to show you exactly,
But there's been a $100 million shift or greater than a $100 million shift from local property taxes being lowered and state program revenues being increased because of that tax relief.
So that's what's happened since July.
Again, that all happened the week before our meeting.
There's no way to calculate that and to put that in that presentation.
But I mentioned that big shift, and that shift has indeed happened.
Here's our expenditure budget, $906 million.
dollars there's that 88 percent salary and benefits purchases and contracted
services against almost 50 million dollars the vast majority of that the
biggest chunk of that is is utilities so that shows a net change to fund balance
of eight million seventy eight thousand dollar deficit it does not give me one
problem I've not lost a wink of sleep over that there are things that are
unbudgeted that i know will happen it should happen over the course of the year that will
help us just like it did this year i'm expecting that they're just not structurally sound to budget
or their stuff that i don't i don't know that the amount i just know that they're going it's going
to come but the amount i don't i'm not i'm not confident enough to budget so i'm not worried
about that at all that small deficit especially since we're going to be heading to our fund
balance this year, a nominal amount. The food service fund has started out with a $19.6 million
fund balance. That's too much. It's significantly too much. We need to spin that down. We have a
plan to spin that down. You just got to get to that plan. So if you're building a house, as an
example, you don't buy the microwave, the dishwasher, and the oven that go in the house until
that the cabinets are in. We're at the stage where the cabinets may be in sometime during this school
year and and and during next summer that we can actually go ahead and install that and spend some
of this excess balance they've just not gotten to that stage we've been bidding a couple years ago
when we tried to spend it down they were building the foundation then they were framing it and sheet
rocking it now we're finally hopefully in the window that some of that can be spent because
we do need to spend that fund balance down uh debt service fund uh starting out with the healthy fund
balance of 60 million dollars uh property taxes on that at 39 cents is 225 223 million uh two
million dollars is in that number is is interest interest on that 60 million dollars that we'll
earn throughout the year this additional state aid for homestead exemption has increased substantially
this is what pays again we don't the state of texas does not help us pay back our bonds to
build our new schools except for when they increase the homestead exemption so when they
they increase the homestead exemption from $40,000 to $100,000, that substantially decreases
our revenue capacity in the debt service fund.
And so the state is, since they're changing the rules of the game, they are making up
for that.
And so it's, but moving forward, they're not.
So any bonds that have been approved and are outstanding prior to September 1, 2023, are
going to receive the benefit of ASAHI.
but moving forward, a SAHI will not happen. But again, I'm not concerned. Our long-range
debt plan has been updated to reflect that, and I still think that the debt service tax rate
is adequate to handle that and being able to confidently say without a tax rate increase.
There's our principal and interest payments. Principal, there's $139.4 million in principal
that we'll pay this year. You heard me say earlier we pay over $100 million a year
in principle. Of that, $16 million is being proposed to be the fees or just paid off.
There's our interest payment of $100 million, and bank fees are just some things that we have to
pay. We don't normally pay near that much, but that's just stuck in there as an abundance of
caution. So with the $16 million defeasance, the 39-cent tax rate, that's pretty much a break-even
budget. This is all our funds combined, our budgeted funds combined, for a total
of 1.3 billion dollars in revenue and 1.33 in expenses that you can see there.
And then as a function standpoint, oops sorry, there it is per function. Again
I'll point out the facilities, I'm sorry the debt service and SBITA, that's the
the one I mentioned earlier. So we don't have any debt in the debt service fund, none. But that
agreement that we have with our subscription-based technology is being put on there per GASB 96.
And then, of course, there's our debt budget over here in the debt service fund.
So those are just the three funds that are budgeted, all brought together in one schedule.
schedule. So you've heard our update for the budget for the timeline for this
year. This is the last you'll hear of me from me on this budget until we start
amending it. But through the through the rest of the year like this year
we're going to closely monitor all our expenditures. We're going to prepare for
growth. We're going to continue to grow so we're going to compare continue to
prepare for it. We are indeed opening two campuses next year. One being a
big one at a high school 10 and junior high 18 we're opening two elementary
schools this year next year when you open a high school in the junior high
that'd be like like opening four elementary schools from a mass standpoint
there's a there's a lot that goes into opening a junior high and a high school
compared to two elementary schools but we're planning for that and some of the
money that is in this budget that you'll be asked to approve next week our
expenses associated with high school 10 and junior high 18 because we're gonna
bring that the principal's already on board and uh and we're gonna they're gonna be opening that
school in august of next year which will still be in the fiscal year uh budget that we're adopting
um we're going to continue to monitor enrollment growth property value growth and of course the
economy so what's next i would expect budget amendments uh that late legislation that happened
in July had the appraisal districts on the edge of their seats kind of they were getting it because
they this was all new to them but they had to by that law comply with the school district so we've
already gotten amended property tax stuff like like you wouldn't believe and so how that shakes
out between now and November I would expect some changes because it was all so new for ISDs across
the state and also the county appraisal district so I would expect that we're
gonna have a couple of timing amendments not near the level of timing amendments
that we had a year ago because the supply chains have gotten a little bit
better and or we've gotten better at managing them but we we are gonna have
some things that are gonna need to amend the budget we just talked about for
expenses that have been ordered that just they're not going to show up by
August 31st special session number three is what's also next we've been told that
it's going to happen in october not certain on that but we've been told that is and uh there's
4.5 billion dollars that's been approved in the budget four billion of that's for public education
and uh if somebody asked me what would you do with that four billion dollars if it was your
if you were the ledge chris i'd say you'd put it all in the basic allotment that wouldn't be that
much in the basic allotment not in not as much as the basic environment needs to keep up with
inflation but if there's four four billion dollars out there i would say put it in the basic allotment
and let's move on because it's equitable and it's fair throughout the state of Texas.
And that's what I would suggest.
And if those monies are not put in a bill by themselves,
they'll be unspent over these next couple of years.
So hopefully they'll get something done for the classrooms and the teachers across the state.
That's really all I have on the 2023-24 budget update.
Thank you.
Any questions?
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
Mr. Smith, thanks always for your very in-depth report.
I have a question that you may want to punt to someone else.
Just back to the enrollment growth, the very first slide that says 3.8 percent.
Is that last year or is that?
That's budget to budget.
Budget to budget.
So it will not be three points when we ended the year just under 95,000 students,
just under 94,000 students.
It's not 3% on top of that.
It's on top of that we budgeted a year ago.
We try to keep budget to budget and end of year to end of year any comparison because
once you break that, it's really hard to put together.
But it's 3.8% from one budget to the next.
We got real close.
But I'll be honest with you, our enrollment as of today, we got a ways to go to get to
our budgeted enrollment.
enrollment. So we grow throughout the year. We grew 2000 students from October of last
year until the end of the year and we're going to grow, continue to grow and we're not too
worried about that enrollment number at this point.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Any questions?
Yes, may I please ask a question?
Mr. Smith, thank you for your, all that you do, your passion is really overwhelming with
this accounting things i love it but um i do have a couple of questions one of them is
i know that the reduction in the in the property tax and rate and all that and the
homestead exemption and everything is so good news for our taxpayers but can you sum up what
what that means for KDISD.
It means our taxpayers are getting the relief they deserve.
But it doesn't mean...
But it does not affect our classrooms at all.
That's what I wanted to hear you say.
I want to make sure that the public understands
that although this is great for our taxpayers, I'm happy,
but it doesn't mean any more money for...
Because that's a big misconception I think a lot of people have.
The other thing is, is talking about the enrollment.
last not too long ago we had a presentation by some of the area
superintendents about the incentive for the ABA and for improvement do you know
if anything has been started with that oh yes a lot has been started about it
I'll let miss hack hit it if I don't if I don't give enough details but but yeah
they're excited about a campus or as are excited about getting it going again
kids need to be in school to learn period they learn a lot more in school than at home and
catching up because they went out of town for a long weekend it's important for kids to be at
school it's important in state of texas financially but more so from a from a curriculum standpoint
they need to be in school and so that that is happening and campuses are well aware of it
and we hope we're able to pay off on that to get kids coming back.
All right.
So will we be periodically updated with the progress of that?
Because I think that would be good for us to know.
I can take that question.
Dr. Wierworski?
I was just going to ask for a clarification.
Do you want updated about what the plans are on the campus and what they're doing,
or do you want the update on the percentages of ADA every six weeks when we track it?
I would like the update of every six weeks and what that means in dollars and cents.
Sure.
Mr. President.
Ms. Teeming.
Okay.
Chris, I just had a question.
So I'm looking at our enrollment.
We were projected at 95,346, and currently we're at 93,661.
Is that normal?
We're about 2,000 below.
Do you know where we started last year?
I looked at that, and I can't quote numbers,
but I'll tell you it's not quite as good a position as we were last year.
We were a little closer last year.
But it's really, I have to remind, you know, after all these years here, I have to remind myself, until after Labor Day, you're never going to be able to know.
When we get back from Labor Day, we'll have a really good idea where we are with our enrollment.
But, again, knowing that we grew so much between October and May of last year, if we have that much to grow between now and October, I'm confident that we're going to be okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, what I'm concerned about is I know we discussed maybe we, and I'm not talking about campus personnel or staff.
I'm talking about anything above that because I know we have a teacher shortage, right?
So what I'm concerned about is if we use ESSER funds to bring on new support staff, anticipating the growth, and then we don't have the growth,
how do we protect our income our revenues well there there is not there
is not any growth units in the general in the budget that you saw tonight that
are that are s or it's all it's all the general fund in other words three years
ago when we got the s-er we advanced some of those but a few positions to be
be able to get that using ESSER funds knowing we would grow into it. Well again over those last
three years we're up 10,000 kids so we actually got there. We just brought them on earlier than
we normally would have trying to do some stuff to work smarter. Leverage technology more,
those kind of things to try to get ahead of the curve and I think it was helpful but it's been
put back in the general fund by and large. Okay thank you and are we anticipating to use the
the remaining ESSER funds to bring on new support personnel?
Well, some of them, it's already happened,
but the others that are at the campuses especially,
they've been told that those personnel go away.
Now, as a district and management,
we're going to be looking at those positions and say,
hey, we really need to keep these.
If we're going to keep these, what are they in lieu of?
Because unless they do something in Austin that increases our funding rates,
we're not able to add programs to the general fund so hopefully you know
something will happen in Austin or we're gonna have to make tough decisions on
those because but we've known for for three years now that they're not gonna
be here but and they go away okay and I just want to reiterate I don't think
anyone is saying that we want to get rid of to any teachers we have we
understand I think as a unanimously that we have a shortage of teachers right now
yep yes mr president any other comments or questions mr president are we 100 staffed right now
no we still do have vacancies what was the question thank you i just wondered if we're
100 staffed if we're talking about not needing them we're not even 100 staffed because we're
sure i wasn't talking about teachers across the board i was talking about i wasn't either okay
Okay.
And let me say one thing.
In a growing district like that, I think if they're ESSER funded, we're still going to
have a place for them.
We're going to hire new staff because we're going to grow and there's going to be a group
of teachers that are going to retire.
And so those two things, I mean, I don't think that just because the ESSER funds run out
and some positions are being funded by ESSER at the campuses that those positions are going
to be out of a job.
We'll have a place for them.
I can't say that 100% because there obviously could be a dud of the group or whatever,
but by and large we'll be able to bring those on through regular growth.
Any other questions?
The next item is to receive input, public input,
7.2 Receive public input regarding the 2023-2024 Proposed Budget and Tax Rate.
regarding the 2023-2024 proposed budget and tax rate,
and we have one person that signed up, and his name is Chris Smith.
to speak as a citizen.
You're going to speak as a citizen, I guess.
Good evening.
My name is Chris Smith.
I live at 6922 Harvest Lane up here in Kane Island,
and I'm married to a teacher of 30 years.
She's 30 years as a teacher.
I'm in a 30-year marriage.
We're high school sweethearts.
We have two children. One is an inaugural class 2016 of Tompkins High School and one is a senior at Raines High School this year.
I'm here to talk about the 23-24 budget from my perspective of living on 6922 Harvest Lane or my third residence here in Katy.
I've been here 20 years, and what I want to do from a taxpayer standpoint is to thank
somebody, and that's Sherry Butterfield.
This is going to be her last budget of 26 that she's put together because she's going
to retire.
And I wanted to stand here not as a boss, not as a manager or administrator, but as
a taxpayer because I'm telling you, I've been able to see from the front row in my job,
my day job, what kind of work that she's done to keep this together.
Now there's a lot of administration that does a whole lot of work this board
Etc etc. There are a lot of financial clerks throughout the district
There's hundreds of people that are involved
But nobody has been more intimately involved over the last 26 years of sherry butterfield, and I just wanted to
From a taxpayer perspective thank her and she deserves it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you
Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you.
The next item of business is 8.1, which is to discuss and consider the June 2023 financial reports.
8.1 Discuss and consider June 2023 Financial Reports.
And presented is Jamie Hines, Executive Director of Finance.
Welcome.
All right. Good evening, President Perez, Trustees, and Superintendent Grigorski.
You should have your financial reports for August in front of you.
Included is our financial statement through June of 2023, and that includes an analysis
of our revenues and expenditures by function and object for the first 83 percent of the fiscal year.
You should also have a copy of your tax report, our construction or capital report,
and a summary of our check registers for the month of June. And this goes back to what Mr. Smith spoke about. He showed our actual check registers that are published on the website. Once those are approved by you next week, then we'll put the actual detailed check registers up on the website. This is a complete summary of the check registers just for the month of June.
I'm just going to briefly go over a couple of things. If you look at our 6,100 payroll costs
and go all the way over to the right in our expenditures, you'll see that we're at
81 percent, and again, we're through 83 percent of the fiscal year. So again, this is another time
I'm just going to bring forth that we are still seeing underspending, but if you'll go just to
to the right of that you'll see last year we were at 80% so we're actually at
almost a point below a percentage point below in underspending in other words we
have less underspending than we had last year and I'll be kind of discussing that
through the next couple of items as well so I just wanted to point that out other
than that this this report is here for you I'd be glad to take any questions
again this will be included next week in your consent agenda and I'd like to
to answer any questions if you have them. Mr. President. Mr. Reins, do you think part of that
underspending is the work the finance department did to pull out what our underspending was last
year and recognize those things? Is why that's a smaller? So, well, it's that, but also it's just
that we actually had more positions that weren't filled at this point last year. Understand this
is all the way through June. This isn't through the entire fiscal year. And so in the next item,
I'm going to talk about kind of what we're expecting over the next couple of months and give you some more
estimates, but really I don't know that it's anything that the finance department's done because we've been
In terms of budgeting we've used the same formulas
We've used the same percentage for underspending that we've budgeted for but the HR department has done a great job of
Hiring more individuals and and we've filled more of those teacher positions this year than what we had last year at this same point
So since you mentioned that about the underspending, in the 6200, the purchased and contracted services, you're showing to date quite a bit of underspending compared to both the year to date as well as the prior year.
Anything that you can think of that jumps out?
I couldn't tell you specifically I would say that in these last couple of months the last three months of the
Fiscal year there really are a lot of things that are that are getting finished up
Or things that are arriving and so you know it's it's we're really don't know where we're gonna end up
This is kind of for the next item to talking about where we're gonna end up at the end of the fiscal year
But we don't know where we're going to end up
So you know it could be just one more thing getting completed that would bring that percentage up right now what we've done
Again, this is going to the next item
And we've we've looked at the actual expenditures through where we're at and then we'll project that and I'll talk about that when we do
The final amended budget in the next item as well, okay, thanks
Any other questions on 8.1
Okay 8.2 is
8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the proposed 2022-2023 final amended budget.
is for approval of the proposed 2022-2023 final amended budget.
Again, Jamie Hines.
Any questions on that?
Good evening.
So you should have before you the proposed final amended budget
for the 2022-2023 fiscal year.
The budget, as approved by the board, will be filed with the TEA
in accordance with applicable law
and be included in our 2022-2023 audited financial statements.
I want to talk a little bit about the process,
kind of what got us to right here.
A year ago, in August, this board approved our budget for the 22-23 fiscal year.
Since that time, each month, Mrs. Butterfield and Mrs. Rios have brought you budget amendments
and an amended budget, and then I've brought you our financial statements,
which are our actual revenues and expenditures up through June.
Now we're bringing you our final amended budget,
which is going to include our actuals through June and then also projections
for the next two months so this is kind of putting all of this together and
trying to project where we're going
be. We'll continue to bring our financial reports through each month through the end of the fiscal
year and then in January we'll bring our comprehensive our annual comprehensive financial
report and that will have our audited final budget included in that and that's what will be presented
to TEA. Now once we upload that to TEA that will be the end of the 22-23 fiscal activities for this
year. So I'm not sure if you got any questions, but I just wanted everybody to kind of understand
the process of where we're at for this. Okay. Now, getting into some of the details, let's go ahead
and just look at the very bottom left. You'll see the $333 million. That's our projected fund
balance right now. And what that is, is that's an additional $6.9 million being added to our fund
unbalanced so as of now we've had to be very conservative obviously for the next
couple of months I think my battery died
so we've been very conservative with the estimates or our analysis of what's
going to happen over the next two months? Just my luck. All right. And so that 6.9 million,
understand, as Mr. Smith told you last week, he believes that we're probably going to be between
$335 and $340 million at the end of the year. We still believe that. I'll also say that there is
some additional revenue or additional expense that is included in this that's going to go toward
our health fund to kind of prop it up we're probably going to have to add some
more but based on our analysis and and I'll point back to this Kayla Smith is
in the audience our director of accounting we believe that even after
we've done that we're still going to come between that 335 and that 340
million for a final fund balance if you move over you'll see the food service
fund the projection there is to add 1 million to the fund balance but as mr.
Mr. Smith pointed out in the last presentation, there is a plan for spending that down this next year.
We know that that's too high.
And then debt service, there was $4 million or between $4 and $5 million that's been added this past year.
And really that's the result of just more interest income than what we had planned on.
And, again, this next year, Mr. Smith commented earlier, we will be using that to pay down bonds
and to reduce the interest payments for the taxpayers this coming year.
So again, this will all go into the consent budget.
Before I finish, let me just go back.
Mr. Smith showed you a chart, and there were a lot of them,
but one of them showed what our fund balance should look like
and had a line that was at 25%, which essentially that's at three months out of the year,
and then our real goal for our fund balance, which is at four months out of there.
And you notice we were right now we're right above that line this past year our fund balance
And that's a ratio that he's pointing out there
It's a ratio of our actual fund balance to our expenditures for that fiscal year that ratio this past year was 36 percent
Again, we're trying to to come in right around that
If we were to stay at this exact ending fund balance that we've projected we'd be at about thirty four and a half percent
But again, our expectation is there's going to be more underspending that falls out over these next two months.
And once that adds up to that, we project that we're going to be around 35 to 35.5% in fund balance.
That's going to be that ratio.
So it is a little bit lower than this past year, completely within what's necessary.
Again, the first, the financial integrity rating for the schools or system of Texas, the first rating requires that we don't go under 25% to get all the points for that.
It's item number seven.
So that's our floor.
But really that 32 to 36 range is where we want to keep it.
So right around 35.5 is very comfortable with the district.
Leaves us in a comfortable position.
It's a healthy fund balance.
it is not a really large fund balance.
There are districts with over 50%,
but that's keeping a lot of money
that could be in the classroom sitting around doing nothing.
So that's really what we look at,
and that percentage is what I base most of my thought
of where we're at, and that's what we kind of follow.
So anyway, if there are any questions,
I'd love to answer them.
So therefore, since you're finishing the year
about $10 or $12 million higher on the fund balance,
that's going to mean at the end of next year it should be a similar improvement
well if assuming that no big changes those if it runs through the following
year if you will your 316 will be ending 326 etc or something like that well you
can you can look at it that way I don't want to speculate on budget for next
next year. I think Mr. Smith has covered that pretty well. Obviously, we hope that we've got
that, but we also hope that we fill all of our positions and so we have a little less
underspending. So I don't want to say that that's necessarily going to happen. I would much rather
us have all of our positions at 100% full and we've got more teachers out there.
Thank you. Any questions? Mr. President. Mr. Fox. Mr. Hines, you and Mr. Smith both
both alluded to we need to spend the money in the food service, food debt service fund.
We have to get that spent.
Can you explain to us why, you know, why wouldn't we just be like, oh, it's good to have more savings.
Why does it have to be spent?
Well, that's actually, and I'm not sure.
Let me get that.
Go ahead.
I'm not sure of the percentage, but there is a percentage that the auditors tell us to stay at,
and we're well above that percentage.
We got that way over these since COVID because we became extremely efficient.
Every student in the district received free meals.
And so with that and all those reimbursements coming from the feds, we just became a lean food service machine.
And they did a great job managing through that, but there was revenue associated with less expenses,
and we were way down in our food service staffing as well.
So those grew the fund balance to an alarming level three years ago that we were supposed to start spending it down, but it's grown every year these last few years because of our efficiencies.
Now, things have gone back to normal, and we expect that we'll start breaking even again.
But we've got to spend, and we've got plans to spend it down.
Why would they take it from us, Ms. Fox?
I don't know.
That's been what we were told that the United States Department of Ag, FDA, they could take it from us.
Well, you know, that would be bad because it's ours, but we were given it through very efficiencies that they helped us with,
and then they also came in with grants for supply chain grants, and we applied for those,
and that kind of kept our supplies or our expenses down significantly as well.
So we're going to get there this year, I think.
Follow up, Mr. President.
So the government is really looking at us like if you have too much, we're going to take it back.
So that's part of it.
The other thing, should the bond pass and the renovations that we're going to do at some of our older campuses,
I'm assuming these funds could be used in the kitchen renovations.
In future years, you know, it will take us two or three years to get to that point,
but we would be able to do that assuming we weren't able to get it spent down.
but I think we're going to get it spent down this year.
I hope we are to a level that's very comfortable.
Again, Mr. Hines just alluded to it.
It'd be great to have a 50% fund balance.
It's great to have this money,
but we want money that actually works for kids,
and the United States government doesn't want us to have all that money.
It's not helping anybody.
It's not helping anybody sitting in the coffers,
but we're going to make it help our kids,
and things are going to get back to normal as we move forward.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Any other questions?
The next item, the next presenter is also Jamie Hines,
and it's to Item 8.3, discuss and consider board approval of a resolution to commit and assign fund balance.
8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of a resolution to commit and assign fund balance.
Okay.
You have a resolution before you to commit a portion of our fund balance in the following amounts,
5.5 million to our district's health plan and 10 million to unanticipated expenditures and or loss of revenue.
What this means is that we're reserving a portion of our fund balance for these specific needs.
The fund balance is we're required to categorize it and it is done in committed, assigned and unassigned portions.
And of the general fund, these are what are called orders of availability of those funds.
The highest as far as in the hierarchy is this committed portion.
So this $15.5 million have the highest priority within our fund balance and can only be used for the purposes stated.
Now, understand there's no plan specifically to utilize these,
but they have to be earmarked within the fund by policy as promulgated by GASB,
specifically statement number 54.
These, by the way, are also the same amounts that we brought to you this past year.
So there's no real change to this.
This is kind of an accounting thing that we have to do.
We're required to categorize our fund balance and how it would be spent
and essentially hold these funds there for these health plan and for these categories.
categories.
Okay.
I had a question on the $5.5 million for the health insurance plan.
Yes, sir.
So as I look at the health insurance plan that we're going to look at, it's projected
to lose about $7 million, something like that, something in that order of magnitude?
Or a little more, yes, sir.
Okay, a little more than that.
So is the $5.5 as a cushion on top of that, just in case, or is it to fund part of the
$7?
Well, understand we're backing that. We're backing up the health plan this year with our general operating fund amounts. And so, yes, this is kind of planning for that in case we didn't have the underspending, we didn't have it there, then we would have that. But again, we are working, you'll hear more about the health plan tonight as well. We're working to bring down that overage that we're seeing there too.
But I assume that $7 or so million plus has already come out of the budget.
That has already come out of the budget.
Okay, are we going to the 22-23 school year?
That has already come out of the budget.
So this is not actually saying that we're going to spend these funds.
It's just earmarking this in the category of the absolute need that we were to have spent out all of our general operating fund this next year and needed to pull that out.
Okay.
Does that make sense?
Okay.
Mr. President, I have a process question.
I'm really grateful for the work study meeting where we can have all these discussions and
take time before we make the decisions.
So the decision for this will be next week.
Do we need to read the resolution into the record or because it's published, that's good
enough?
I believe our council would be able to help with that.
We usually read them all the time.
Legally, we don't have to read them into the record.
I mean, it's here. Yes, sir. We have it. We used to always read them into the record. I just wanted to make sure that we didn't need to do that for you. Thank you.
And again, thank you. Thank you for that. What sign will be in the part of the consent agenda for next week? Any other questions?
Thank you.
We move on to 8.4, and this is to discuss and consider Board approval of 2023-2024 State Compensatory Education Funding and other end-of-course assessment funding budget as required by House Bill 5, and our presenter is Esperanza Rios, Director of Budget and Treasury.
8.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2023-2024 State Compensatory Education funding and other End-of-Course Assessment funding budget, as required by House Bill 5.
Good evening, Board President Perez, Board of Trustees, and Dr. Kragorski.
Item 8.4 is the end of course assessment funding as required by House Bill 5.
We've had this requirement for several years now.
The district identifies a special project budget of $105,000 called student interventions.
This is included in the 23-24 proposed budget, which will be seen in Item 8.5.
And this budget is distributed by school leadership area assistant superintendents
during the second semester to campuses that are in need of additional tutorials.
This agenda item documents the district's compliance with the requirement to budget funds
for accelerated instruction related to satisfactory performance
on end-of-course assessment as required for graduation.
Are there any questions?
Thank you. Any questions?
Mr. President, I just, how much was it again?
$105,000.
That's what I thought you said. Okay, thank you.
The next item is 8.5, and that is the approval, considered approval, of the proposed 2023-2024 official budget for KDISD.
8.5 Discuss and Consider Board approval of the proposed 2023-2024 Official Budget for Katy Independent School District.
And the presenter, of course, is Esperanza Rios again.
I'll provide highlights of the 2023-2024 proposed budget for the three funds to be considered for approval by the board next week.
Mr. Smith has kind of gone over those.
The general operating fund will use $8,078,929 of fund balance for the 23-24 proposed budget with $1,030,067,442 in budgeted expenditures.
The district provides for campus and department non-salary operating expenditures, but the majority of this budget is related to district salaries and benefits for existing and new staff.
staff. Revenues are budgeted at $1,024,488,513. The proposed budget for food service includes
a use of $16,390,955, the fund balance, with an expenditure budget of $61,125,203 and revenues
revenues of $44,734,248.
The debt service budget reflects an increase to fund balance of $90,374,
with expenditures of $240,670,000 and
revenue of $240,760,364.
Any questions?
Are you addressing also the tax rate in this?
No. Okay. Just the refunds.
Any questions on 8.5?
I will move on. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
We move on to 8.6, and that is discuss and consider board approval of the TASB Risk Management Fund Interlocal Participation Agreement
8.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of the TASB Risk Management Fund Interlocal Participation Agreement for the administration of workers' compensation claims for 2023-2024.
for the Administration of Workers' Compensation Plans for 2023-2024,
And the presenter is Lance Nauman, Director of Risk Management.
Welcome.
LANCEN NAUMAN, DIRECTOR OF RISK MANAGEMENT, WELCOME.
Thank you, President Perez, Dr. Grzegorski, and Board of Trustees.
Board policy CRE Legal states that the district shall extend workers' compensation benefits
to its employees by entering into interlocal agreements with other political subdivisions
providing self-insurance.
Administrative services for the KDISD self-funded workers' compensation program have been performed
by the Texas Association of School Boards Risk Management Fund to an interlocal agreement since
2006. The scope of services to this agreement has not changed for the renewal period beginning
September 1, 2023 and ending on August 31, 2024. Claim handling fees for the renewal period will
be $175 per claim, a change from the expiring rate of $150 per claim. Indemnity claims have
have increased from $775 per claim to $875 per claim.
Both claims represent a life-of-claim pricing model.
Expenditures for these services are based on claim frequency
with an estimated cost of $253,000.
This cost is budgeted and paid for from an internal service fund
for workers' compensation as authorized through CRE Legal.
It is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Interlocal Participation Agreement
for the administration of workers' compensation claims through TASBIC Risk Management for
the period September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2024.
Thank you.
Any questions?
Now we move on to 8.7, and that's the actual considering the Board approval of the proposal
8.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of the proposal for the renewal of the Excess Workers' Compensation Insurance Policy.
for the renewal, correct? Correct. Of the excess workers compensation insurance policy.
Recently, risk management conducted a market survey by issuing an RFP for pricing related
to the renewal of the excess workers compensation insurance policy. As a result, three proposals
were received for analysis. To protect against very large specific workers compensation claim
occurrences, KDISD currently purchases reinsurance for its self-funded workers' compensation program.
The Risk Management Department seeks the renewal of the excess workers' compensation reinsurance policy
through Midwest Casualty. This policy has a flat renewal rate from the expiring period.
However, the actual premium increases as payroll volume increases.
The policy is auditable at the end of the term for final calculation of premium.
The plan carries a self-insured retention of $550,000 per occurrence with an estimated premium of $149,176.
The offer of the program is a flat rate of .0178 for 2023-2024 and 2024-2025.
The policy term is September 1, 2023 through August 31, 2024.
24. Expenditures for this insurance will be paid from the Workers' Compensation Fund, a budgeted
internal service fund approved by the Board of Trustees. Authority is granted to acquire this
insurance through CR Legal. It is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the renewal of the
Excess Workers' Compensation Reinsurance Policy offered by Midwest Casualty Company with a $550,000
specific retention for an estimated deposit premium of $149,176 for the period 23-24 and
a flat rate renewal for the period 24-25.
Thank you.
Any questions?
Yes, I have a question.
Sorry about this.
Go ahead, Ms. Champagne.
Thank you.
I'm just a little bit, just want to make sure I understand something.
We're going to re-renew in Midwest, but when I look at the figures that you provided, respondent
number two, figures are not that different than Midwest.
I'm just curious as to why the decision was made for the one over the other.
Well Midwest offered a flat renewal for two years.
the respondent number two offered a rate increase in year two.
Okay, I just didn't see that.
That's fine.
All right, thank you.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Items 8.8 & 8.9
Okay, we now move to 8.8,
which is the board approval of the self-insured health plan for plan year 2024.
I'm going to switch if you don't mind.
Okay, go ahead, Mr. Nelman.
You want to introduce the rest of the group?
Sure.
Yeah, thank you, Mr. President and board members.
My name is Tommy Harris.
I'm president of employee benefits at Inns Group, and I'm a health plan consultant.
And this is my colleague, Travis Tucker, that runs our private sector team.
Thank you.
Good to have you.
We're going to team up.
Yes, can you hear me now?
We're going to kind of team on this presentation this evening.
As you'll recall, earlier this summer I came to you with what the plan was doing and what we're anticipating for plan year 24.
And that's what we're here to discuss this evening is plan year 2024.
We have engaged the services of Inns Group, which is a consulting firm, to help us with the loss projections and plan management as we go through the upcoming years.
and Mr. Harris is going to talk about some of the things that we have on the agenda for tonight.
First off, we're going to talk about our plan year 2024 projection, our plan year 2024 premiums,
and then we're going to wrap up with plan year 2024 voluntary benefit discussion.
Mr. Harris, if you would kindly go.
Yeah, so what we do is what our underwriting team does.
We have in-house underwriting and actuarial services, so we take prior years data and we project it into the future.
It's just as simple as that depending on the size of the population
Depends on how much historical data you need to be able to press that forward being that this is a large fully credible
Account just based on the law of large numbers
We can take one year of claims experience and very accurately project that forward into the future
And so we do have our budget here that I have full confidence that my underwriting team has gotten
Within just probably a half percentage point that you'll probably see next year of being accurate on this
Now, the two biggest cost drivers that you see within the health plan are going to be
inpatient hospital and pharmacy.
And always the headwind is going to be medical inflation or trend.
So what are we doing around these two large cost items regarding the medical inflation
or trend?
And I've been exposed to a lot of large employers all around the country, and I will say that
Katie, the team is very innovative on the way that they're providing population health
management to their people.
One, when you look at this large medical expense, what are we doing around population health
management and high performing networks?
We have put in some networks to where we're able to drive utilization in an atmosphere
that is both cost effective and has great clinical efficacy of care.
The other piece is what are we doing around pharmacy?
We have carved out the pharmacy.
The rebates are very important that you see on this page.
rebates are basically incentives by manufacturers to pharmacy benefit
managers that employer large employer groups who structure their plans the
right way are able to capture that spin instead of that going to the insurance
company so we have Aetna as our claims manager we have Express Chris as express
scripts as the pharmacy but the other thing that I see here that is extremely
innovative and that falls under the one of the line items of the program
oversights is direct primary care and being able to have your members access
to maintenance medication without the burden of having to go see a physician
every single time for those chronic conditions like diabetes hypertension
hyperlipidemia that's all been an embedded to this and so you're going to
see more and more savings in the future as we try to erode the trend cost my
underwriting team has our medical trend right now set at 5% pharmacy is around
around 10. And that's just with the high cost of specialty drugs. But the specialty drugs also
represent the most rebates that you see. And we are getting almost $10 million in rebates. So even
though we do have a large specialty trend and we do have large trend in the pharmacy section,
we are capturing those rebates within the plan. And so depending on the way a plan is designed,
you can see medical trend or inflation as high as 12 or 13 percent. So it's just going to be
continual effort for us to be able to buy our hospital claims and our pharmacy claims
at the lowest common denominator.
In this exhibit, you will see our proposed premium increases for plan year 2024.
And to dovetail what Mr. Harris was saying is we try to increase our premiums relative
to that medical inflation trim.
As we've seen, everything does go up.
But we want to follow in a health plan. You want to stay up with your current so you don't get caught behind
So any comments you would like to add to this?
No, it's just that then you're gonna you'll you'll keep hearing me coming back to this trends everything like $100 this year
We don't want it to be 112 dollars next year
We want $100 this year to be 102 dollars next year and people ask me throughout the 30 years
My career is like why don't these premiums ever go down? Well one Houston's a high-cost area. I'm 30 years in this market
We have the best health care in the entire world here. So it's always going to be on the forefront of innovation
So in Houston, Texas, I will say that health care costs are never going to go down
All we can do is hope to maintain them and level them out into the future
The
second piece of the discussion this evening
centers around voluntary benefits and
The voluntary benefits that we've offered our employees have grown over the last few years and these benefits
are paid by the employee through direct payroll deductions. Katie does pay for
life insurance but as you will see we offer long-term short-term disability
dental HMO and PPO vision supplemental life which is paid by the employee
spouse life which is paid and child life which is paid by the employee as well as
legal and identity theft protection, accident insurance, emergency transport, hospital indemnity,
critical illness, and we also offer employees a flexible spending account to defer some
of those expenses as well as we offered two years ago the health savings account.
We looked at some enhancements to our plan this year and one enhancement that we're exploring
right now is a whole life policy.
This has never been offered to our staff and a whole life policy basically is you're able to build some cash accumulation and you're able to port that with you.
It has portability if they decide to leave and it builds up over time.
So it's a good product that we're exploring.
And part of that is also, as I mentioned, the district life insurance.
And if you could expand on where we stand right now in terms of looking at these rates for plan year 2024.
So it's looking very positive so far. We're currently out to market. We have about half of our market survey complete. We'll have a full evaluation done this week. One point I wanted to also add about the whole life. We get lots of it's been years since I've had people want to talk to me about long term care. It's becoming very important these days. And it's very, very difficult to get long term care in an individual situation. So what we're exploring is one of the options is a whole life policy that builds cash value with a long term care rider. So basically you have this policy for 24 hours.
or 30 years, and then you're able to erode some of the death benefit if you ever need in-home
nursing care. So I think this is a new trend of coverages that are going to be asked for
with all types of employers, public or private sector into the future.
Mr. President, if I may, we went from discussion item 8.8 to discussion item 8.9. We've kind of
transitioned there. I think it's okay so long as the board knows we're talking about both 8.8 and
8.9 so any questions you have once he's done presenting i think we'll ask questions on both
items if you if you're comfortable with that got it yeah okay thank you okay any questions you might
have at this time can you um kind of walk us through walk us through on the health plan
what sort of either recent or expected in the future process we expect to go through or have
gone through in terms of shopping around and taking new bids, shopping the market
and bidding out from suppliers and providers? Sure, I'll be glad to. We will
be going out, keep in mind we're self-insured and when we think of
insurance companies, we're presently with Aetna, okay, they're providing claims
claims administration, claims support, paying our medical bills, case management, all those things.
We buy a service from those providers.
And for an employer our size, there's about four markets that are available to us to research.
We will begin.
in January of this about this time next year maybe early June we will be and
begin looking at going out to the marketplace for shopping that that
program if you will because we'll be ending up our deal with Aetna so we'll
as a normal process we will begin looking at those markets and those
services so that will be for plan year 25 25 okay so we did we do that for 24
earlier no we do not because we're in a five-year deal with okay and those and
those usually happen in five-year blocks good okay thank you mr. president go
ahead thank you for the presentation I appreciate you being here but last month
when we got the presentation about the health premium and all that I don't know
how to say this but did the the premiums were different they were more for
example because I pulled up the old information so what we've done is we
shopped for something better now because the the figures that I'm looking at
for the presentation that we saw last month.
Okay.
So a bigger increase, I believe, than what I'm seeing now.
Has something changed? No?
Let me, a point of clarification.
Are we talking about voluntary benefits or are we talking about health plan?
Health plan.
Health plan.
To the best of my recollection, we did not bring any premium.
Okay.
So that must have just been my misunderstanding.
I'm sorry.
This is the first time I'm bringing these plan year 24 numbers to you.
All right, because what I hear from people a lot is that our health plan is expensive and all that.
But what I am glad to see is that there's not that big of an increase, it seems like, from last year to this year.
So I'm hoping that our employees will appreciate that,
that it doesn't seem to be as significant as I think some people feared.
I can just make one comment which there's still some lingering effects of COVID.
And we see this, I work with thousands of employer groups and
we still see this from our underwriting teams.
And there were really three big issues.
One was the intensive nature of catching COVID and
being in the hospital ICU for a period of time.
The second was the lack of people keeping up with their maintenance medication and going to see in their doctors for physicals
So things that could have been managed over a period of time with maintenance medication
They weren't managed and they blew up the third piece of that is now what we're starting to see was elective surgeries
Mostly musculoskeletal, you know, somebody's been putting off a hernia surgery or knee surgery
It's taken a long time for the healthcare system to smooth out and we're dealing this like the last three years have been
unprecedented in rate increases on health plans all across America and it's
not just the insurance carriers it's the actual overall utilization and then the
carriers also under pricing what they thought was going to be the demand
within the plans that doesn't affect us as much because we're totally
self-funded we're basically just utilizing Aetna's ability to have
provider discounts and manage the plan and large case utilization and large
killing management there so hopefully that will also help us in future years
as we put in these cost containment strategies and population health management.
And I will also add, too, to kind of dovetail into that in terms of the pharmacy spend,
we're seeing a flat trending on our maintenance medications, the generics.
We're seeing an increase of about 3% to 4% in utilization.
We're trying to motivate people to look at generics first.
But as I've historically called them the Saturday morning medications of the ozempics of the world and things of that nature,
they're now being used for other things besides their intended purposes.
We have put control measures in place to keep that specialty med spin under control.
We're never going to try to restrict people's access to those medications,
but we want to make sure they're being used for their exact purpose and plan,
not additional alternative medicine practices.
Okay, one follow-up question, please.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead, Ms. Shepard.
So we personally, my husband and I, have Blue Cross Blue Shield,
and I know that different insurance companies have incentives to reduce the cost of insurance.
For example, we did some sort of blood test and we're going to get a $600 reduction in our insurance now because I guess our results were good, I guess.
Anyway, is there any, I'm sure you shop around for these type of things, but is there anything like that for our employees?
I know that we're self-insured, but is there anything like that, some kind of workout incentive?
We have looked at those incentives in the past and we actually had some and we continue to look at those every year.
So when we go out to the marketplace for the plan this coming year, we will evaluate those and see what we can do to try to move the needle of cost.
But historically, when we have implemented those here in Katy in the past, it doesn't really move the needle.
So you have to be strategic about where your loss is happening.
Where's the money being spent?
What can we laser in on what we can do to impact that spend, as well as making sure
that employees and staff members get the care that they need?
I'm just offering that as a suggestion, not necessarily to save us money, but to save
the employees some money and also incentivize them to be healthy.
Absolutely and and it's it's a we have you look at it from a win-win we won't
always want to make sure if we keep our employees healthy and what we can do to
support that that has that has a benefit factor to the health plan and further
helps keep that that inflation that we were talking about in check so every
little lever that we can pull we explore. And doing an evaluation on where you can
can find the same cost, the same care for a much better price.
We can put incentives in the plan.
We've done this on other employer groups where $0 deductible if you use certain facilities,
$0 co-pays if you use certain facilities.
So we're constantly thinking about those things and doing feasibilities around that.
And we found that's the best thing to do is steer people with their pocketbooks to higher-performing care.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Mr. President?
So I was also going to add that we also offer the accident insurance,
and we also have critical illness that has a wellness check to it,
so where if you go get a wellness and go get a doctor,
then you get a check back from the insurance company.
So we do have some little things that are currently in place today.
Thank you.
Ms. Fox, did you have something?
Mr. President, just a clarification, please, Mr. Nauman or whoever.
When we approved the raise of 3% across the district,
we heard from a lot of people saying 3% raise and a 13% increase in my health cost.
health insurance cost. That's what we're going off of. Why did they say that?
I can't answer why they would come up
with that because we're not increasing
rates by 13%.
It wasn't published until tonight.
We increased last year's premiums. Yes, we did.
But again, that was a small inflation to trend. Now the
The POS2 was a little bit higher because that's where a lot of our losses happen.
Would that have been somewhere in the double-digit increase last year?
In a couple of the tiers, yes.
That must be what they were talking about.
And real quick, can I just make a point on that?
So let's just throw a number out there that medical inflation or trend is 5%.
And for two years, I know the board chose not to pass along the cost to all of the members in the plan through that.
But if you look at two years of trend that was not passed down you have leveraged trend or compound inflation on that
So you you basically missing trend on trend and trend on trend and you just can't get too far away
From what that rate should be until all these cost containment factors are able to smooth that trend down to a one or two percent
So it's just good business behavior not to let trend get too far by passing on flat rate increases for a period of time
I mean the claims of the claims. There's no way to outrun it
without continuing to pass on some of those costs or increase in the budget
spending thank you any other questions mr. president both I was just gonna
share with the board I mean every year I'm having to shop for my company
insurance and I think this year most of those bids came back at a 15% increase
we're looking at 9% on the choice POS too and then the other items are five
and six percent increase in premiums to our employees I mean I feel like what
What I'm seeing as a business owner, this seems to be a really good option that's not keeping up with the other quotes and bids we were getting back.
Thank you.
Any other questions on either 8.8 or 8.9?
Both of those kind of blended in the conversation this evening.
So now we're moving on to 8.10.
8.10 Discuss and consider Board approval of Amendment Two to the AnslowBryant Construction, Ltd. contract related to the addition and kitchen/cafeteria expansion to West Memorial Elementary School.
zero our presenter is lisa castman executive director of facilities planning and construction
to discuss and consider board approval of amendment number two to the annslo bryant
construction limited contract relating to the addition and kitchen cafeteria expansion at
western moral elementary school welcome good evening president perez trustees and dr gorgorski
i have two items this evening for your consideration the first item is the final
guaranteed maximum price for the West Memorial Elementary building addition
and kitchen and cafeteria expansion the design and First Amendment to the
general contract was approved in April 20 of this year the First Amendment
covered procurement of long lead items including HVAC equipment structural
steel and roofing the Second Amendment brings the final amendment for the total
project cost. Any questions? I just had a quick question on the usage of
bond savings. Yes. We can reallocate those as long as they're
within the same proposition that was approved, is that correct? Like the 2021
like say it says bond allocation 7.9 million in savings from another project?
Yes, we can do that.
To be reallocated?
Yes, we can.
Okay, and the same thing with the 2017?
Correct.
We have excess funds there we can reallocate.
Yes, that's correct.
Okay.
Yes, sir.
Can I point a clarification?
She's right, but I just want to be clear.
If we had the need for money to be put into, let's say, the natatorium or the stadium,
We could not use leftover or savings in there to put towards one of those projects, but we can use savings from, say, XYZ renovation for another renovation.
Does that make sense?
As long as they're related to those propositions, they're okay.
Equal.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Any questions?
8.11 Discuss and consider Board approval of the design services associated with the Northwest Transportation Center and Maintenance Facility.
Thank you.
All right.
The second item is the approval of the design services for the Northwest Transportation and Maintenance Facility.
This is one of the final 2021 bond projects, and VLK Architects is being recommended for this work.
Any questions?
So there, just a quick question also on the owner's cost that we mentioned in there, $17.7 million.
Is that not the design, of course, but ultimately?
The construction cost.
That is basically what was put in the 2021 bond?
That is correct, and then we'll finalize that number once we go through design and bid.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Any questions?
Thank you so much.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
8.12 Discuss and consider Board approval of a Resolution to declare a good cause exception for House Bill 3.
Now we're on to 812, which is discuss and consider board approval of resolution to declare
a good cause of session for House Bill 3.
Presenters Justin Graham, General Counsel.
got your attention mr. president dr. Gorski trustees I'm just here to present sort of the
why we're here from a legislative perspective give questions about the actual substance of
of the good cause. We do have some administrators, Dr. Drogorski, Mrs. Hack, and also Chief Gall
that can answer those questions. So what is House Bill 3? Well, when we talk about House Bill 3,
a lot of us think about 2019 and the renovations that that made to the overall process of how we're
doing things within Texas, that 86th legislature. But when we talk about House Bill 3 now, we're
We're talking about safety and security element.
And specifically today, we're talking about the changes that the House Bill 3 from 2023 made to Chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code.
Specifically today, you have a resolution in front of you which says, hey, we're going to take a, if this board agrees, take a good cause exception to the requirements of House Bill 3.
House Bill 3 actually revises Chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code.
and it is aptly titled Armed Security Officer Requirement.
Armed Security Officer Requirement.
House Bill 3 says that you have to have an armed security guard
at every one of your campuses during the instructional day,
during the school day.
However, if you drill down actually in that bill,
we're not actually talking about a security officer.
A security officer is what we would know,
the guys that you see like for those of us that know this building well Johnny
he's a police officer he's a he's a security officer when you drill down in
the text of House Bill 3 when it talks about a security officer it's actually
defined as a school resource officer or a peace officer which actually means
it's a commissioned peace officer commissioned police officer basically so
I don't know why they named it armed security officer require they should have
named it armed police officer required but that's the standard under House Bill
Bill 3. And if you as a district that this bill is effective September 1, cannot have an armed
police officer at every one of your campuses starting September 1, this board has to ask for
a good cause exception to that. You'll see in the resolution that's in front of you,
it has two different reasons that are listed there. First and foremost is the staffing.
When we talk about, and Chief Gall can talk to you about this, we average anywhere from
six to eight vacancies at a time for the current police officers that we have in Katy ISD.
So even if we were to add another 40 or 50 officers at the elementary campus level, we
can't fill the vacancies that we have.
So I think it would be disingenuous to think that we could fill another 50 positions, certainly
in the next couple of weeks before September 1. The second is financial and
that's a smaller piece. The state of Texas did up the security allotment
per student by 28 cents a student from $9.72 a child to $10 a child with
$15,000 extra per campus but that's not specifically earmarked for House Bill 3.
Those are for all the other security things that you have to do like we do
do the security vegetables that you've seen if you're a parent and you have to go in and show
your ID and you have to go through two sets of doors, or the fencing that's around the schools.
Those are all part of the safety and security process. So what this resolution allows us to do
if this board decides to move forward with it is we would take a good cause exception to it.
We would say, hey, we're going to revise our emergency operations plan to have an alternative
standard here in Katy. Having said that I would turn it over maybe to the
superintendent or Dr. or Mrs. Hack to talk about what we think that standard
would look like here in Texas. I will tell you Mr. President I've talked about
this a little bit we're going into a security discussion you know most of the
time we have those security discussions behind closed doors because we won't you
wouldn't want to tell the bad guys where the security alarms are in your own
house right and so that's sort of the reason for that for that requirement but
I do think we can share the this administration can share some of the
specifics about the the ways that they're trying to address this so dr. G
Thank You mr. Graham and you're correct in the resolution and we've discussed
this that even if the board wanted to go to a standard of a certified peace
officer school resource officer at every campus we're not going to be able to
find them that might be something we can do on a long-term goal at some time to try to to get to
that standard but i don't see us getting that standard anytime soon so what we've built right
now and we've been proactive on this for a number of years with chief gaw and the plans that he's
put together with our safety coordinator reuben martinez that we we're in a good place for most
of our buildings that we have certified peace officers at the high school and the junior high
So our secondary schools are covered.
So that leaves 46 elementary schools that we have to do something about.
We think our best plan moving forward, and I've sat with Chief Gaw and his team,
Deputy Chief Tabor is out there and a few others that we've sat down to try to come up with,
what can we do to meet the standard and protect our kids and our schools without it being a police officer
because we don't think we can find them anyway.
way and that's to do what they call a level three guard level three guard is
state approved state trained state certified and we have some level three
guards on our in our buildings right now we're moving towards a plan to get them
trained up and they would be assigned as a security guard who is armed and they
They will be on every campus, all 46 elementary schools, during the instructional day.
And that's our plan as an alternative assignment.
In the meantime, as we're working towards that goal, we do have, and we've always had in place,
Chief Gaw and his team has in place what we call Certified Peace Officer Rovers.
And they are right now assigned to any number of elementary schools,
whether that be three, four, five in that general area.
and they patrol those schools and they go onto those campuses.
They'll continue to do that rover model until we can get all of our Level 3 guards trained,
outfitted, and on our campuses in compliance with House Bill 3.
Thank you.
So as I understand that, we have the guards.
The issue is getting them trained and outfitted and on the campus as armed guards.
guards. It is correct. We've got enough guards who would like to take that position. It's different
than our current guard position. We have security guards at our secondary campuses. We've always had
that, but they don't carry a service weapon. They don't have, they're not armed, but we do have
enough who will cover our campuses to go ahead. We just need to get them trained and outfitted.
Mr. President.
Ms. Teeming.
Can you tell us how long you think that would take to get them trained and up and running?
Deputy Chief Tabor has put together a solid plan for training, and they will start training in September.
He is walking up towards the podium.
If you would like to hear directly from him about the training schedule, I'm sure he can tell you a little bit more about it.
He designed it.
Good evening.
I finalized the training schedule already.
They will all be level three certified by September 15th, and that includes taking a psychological exam.
The biggest holdup is going to be receiving the equipment in.
I've been told the service weapons will take anywhere from 21 days to 90 days, depending on what's in stock or not.
The rest of the equipment, I've got POs ready to drop as soon as September 1st hits.
So I'm hoping by the 1st of October, all of our elementary campuses will be covered by an armed guard.
Mr. President?
I'm sorry.
Ms. Champagne.
Ms. Teemee, were you done?
I was just saying thank you.
I know that this is a state requirement.
I know that this is a law.
But I just want to say to Officer Tabor and Chief Gaw and Ruben Martinez, Dr. Gregorzy,
for being so good about being so proactive with this and coming up with a creative way to find people to have these jobs.
I also want to say that I have visited a few elementary schools recently, and at every
one of them I've seen the security guards there, and the teachers and staff are so happy
that they're there, and it just really warms my heart to know that they have some kind
of sense of peace about this, and that it'll even get better and better for them.
So I just, I know as a mom or, you know, most of us here are parents that your kids being scared at school is the worst thing.
You know, you don't want to think about kids being scared at school.
So I think that this gives a large, large comfort to parents and kids.
I really appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Anything else?
8.13 Discuss and consider Board approval of FFJ-Student Welfare: Parental Authority and Gender Fluidity Matters.
Thank you. We now move on to item 8.13, which is to discuss and consider board approval
of FFJ student welfare, parental authority, and gender fluidity matters. And I just want
to make some brief introductory comments about this policy that we're presenting. We all
know a topic that is in the minds of a lot of parents and has received a lot of national
headlines has been the topic of gender. I'm referring to issues like the
protection of girls sports from competition from biological males,
safeguarding of facilities, bathrooms, locker rooms, etc. separated by
biological sex to ensure safety and privacy for all students, and the use of
pronouns which are inconsistent with the biological sex of a child. We also want
to address that schools are not teaching or providing instructional materials
which teach gender fluidity by submitting this policy we are not saying
that these are major issues currently at Katie ISD at this time however we need
to establish a policy to provide guidance future guidance the policy is
intended to provide guidance support and protection for all teachers and all
district staff and the protection of children. Additionally, parental authority
and the parents role is paramount and is a key component. Parents need to at
all times have full knowledge as to what is going on with their child and be able
to determine what is best for the welfare of the child. This policy
emphasizes communication and collaboration with parents, teachers, and
and all district staff to jointly work together
for the welfare of the student, hand in hand.
This policy communicates to all, parents, district staff,
and the community, what they can expect from KDISD
on these topics.
The intent is to encourage transparency and trust
for all students and staff to be treated with respect
and to provide an environment for all students
to learn and grow.
And then I just wanted to make some comments along those lines, and at this time, any questions or comments, discussion, et cetera.
Mr. President, I looked up a lot of the family and education codes in the Supreme Court cases that were cited to support this policy,
and some of the references don't seem to match up and I'm just wondering if mr.
Perez if you've checked with our attorney that we've just hired to make
sure that that these references you feel good about these references that are
used to cite yeah we did we did utilize I sought our off-site counsel in this
document and he's reviewed everything and so yes the answer is yes and i'm just curious for
transparency how many hours did he spend on this i couldn't tell you right now i don't think many
i i have a couple other things to say um i i really appreciate the work that y'all done and i'm
appreciative of the committee that wrote the policy but I do have some issues
with some parts of it and this is what it is it's so we we can see it now on
the board docs and I don't know if the public can read it now but the part is
is that since I've been a kid and since my kids were in school the great
teachers that I've known have either when I was a child or when my kids were
children were teachers who were masterful at building relationships and
as we all know good relationships are built on trust and these great teachers
work hard to establish and foster safe and secure places for students to land I
feared that the burden of the policy will fall upon these teachers who will
will now be required to report if a child confides to them about this sensitive subject.
So the trust will be destroyed between the child and the teacher that they have decided
to confide to.
Things at home may not be safe for all children at home.
This may be why the child confides to a teacher or somebody else at the district.
So, I can think of, I'm going to just mention a teacher that has passed away.
He was a teacher at Taylor High School.
His name was Mr. Filson.
Mr. Filson was a couple of my kids' teachers, and I was there a lot.
And he was a person that children went to.
They spent their enrichment periods with them.
They spent, Mr. Morgan can testify to this.
He was an awesome teacher.
and I'm sure that children went to him and told him things that he didn't
constantly report to administration or parents and this allowed the child to
continuously go back and maintain a strong relationship with him this is
just one example I'm just using him as an example there's many many examples
I'm sure across the district that are like this even even security guards and
and all kinds of people.
So that's my issue, my one issue with this new policy.
I just wanted to state that.
Yeah, I think the thinking in this policy is that, first of all, the teacher,
it's really to give guidance to the teacher.
If a child wants to disclose to a teacher or, let's say,
a pronoun is being used in the school that's different than the biological sex, the teacher
with the consent of the parent is free to use that pronoun.
Similarly, the teacher is not required to.
In other words, the teacher is protected from being pressured or required to use a pronoun
or a name they don't feel comfortable with.
So it's really giving the teacher guidance and it's also supporting the teacher.
One thing that's important is not to keep secrets from parents
and that the parent be involved in determining what's best for the child,
unless, of course, there is some sort of serious suspected child abuse going on,
and, of course, which has to be reported.
But basically, the idea is the district should not be keeping secrets, if you will,
concealing things that everybody say knows about in the school and the parent
is the last to find out about it so that that's kind of the approach of the
policy all right but let me just say and part of your the thing says district
staff will notify parents if their child requests he or she be identified as
transgender changes or her name or use different pronouns at school so they're
going to be required to do this they a child won't say i would like to identify as the opposite sex
comma i'm being abused at home so you're not going to know that the child is being abused at home
you're not going to know you know there's different cultures there's different types
of people that we don't know all the people and we don't know all the parents and we don't know
who's being abused at home all the time so if I know so many kids that were like
eighth ninth grade who said that they were binary and now they're married to
opposite-sex people and have kids so sometimes a child is just confused I'm
not saying that this doesn't exist I'm just saying sometimes they're just
confused and so sometimes if they have an adult to talk to about these things
then they can kind of work through their confusion in the safety of a person that
they feel safe with at school so that's just a thought I mean I understand the
guidance part of it I'm for the you know the bathroom issues and the and
everything else but I wasn't going to share this but I've had three friends
whose whose children have committed suicide within the last few years all in
Katie and I don't know what their issues are. I don't want to get upset about this. I don't know
what all their issues were but I know that the general issue is that they didn't feel like they
had someone to talk to. So I just hate for teachers to have this burden of of they're trying to
protect they're trying to protect the child and want them to be safe for the child and then they
report it to their principal and the principal tells the parent and now the child is lost
possibly their only safe place because these children may not have other they may not be in
girl scouts or boy scouts or go to church or have other people other than the people at school
so i just wanted to voice my uh concern about the policy and i realize we're not voting on it
tonight but i just wanted i felt strongly to say this i'm i'm appreciative of the work i just
wanted you to hear from a different point of view as a board member who cares about the children of
our district thank you any other questions or comments mr president when as the committee was
going through um i mean i read through the policy and i see probably 90 percent of it is education
Code, Family Code, Attorney General Opinion, Federal Law. I mean, most of it is just policies
and laws that are in place that we're kind of regurgitating to say, okay, this is the law,
this is what we would do. But one thing I didn't, I didn't notice any actual policies that are
being stricken from the district yet. So as we're preparing this policy, was there anything like,
Like, do we currently have any policies that put multiple sexes in a bathroom or require teachers to ask for pronouns or teach?
We don't have any policies.
I don't think we have any policies.
Really, I think a lot of that.
That's why it's referenced here in the policy to show that the policy is in compliance with law, if you will.
I don't think we have a policy with regard to pronouns, what the teacher's obligation
is, what the teacher, you know, can the teacher ask about pronouns, should the teacher be
asking a class of 25 kids what pronoun they want to be called.
I don't think we have a policy like that.
And then how does the teacher respond, you know, whether they want to use the pronoun,
are they forced to use a pronoun.
just kind of providing some guidance on say for example pronouns so we're right
I mean kids where my biggest concern would be is if our district was
mandating that our staff could not talk to parents about a question their family
had and you're not finding that so that's encouraging that that's that's
not a policy that our district has ever told a staff member that they couldn't
talk with a family member it seems just there's things happen in Michigan and
and Virginia and all over the country that we're just saying those things are coming towards us.
So try and have a policy in place that has some guidelines.
And that we want to get ahead of it.
Exactly.
And that the teachers are supported and they have guidance in terms of what to do in these situations.
Mr. President.
Mr. President.
So I have a concern with that because I know that we're saying that we do not have policies right now
that prevent or that tell our staff that we're not supposed to be telling our
parents one thing or the other unfortunately that's not widely
understood nor believed so this policy helps make that crystal clear and I know
that because I experienced it personally with a counselor on the phone as she
She explained to me that if a child, an elementary school-aged child, came into her office expressing that they wanted to be a different gender, I pushed and I said, well, when would you notify mom and dad?
And she said, when the child decides that they want to tell a safe adult.
Not mom and dad, but a safe adult.
I asked her multiple times on multiple different phone calls, and she believed that that was KDISD's policy.
So even though that is not our policy, we now have a policy that clearly outlines that is not the case if we adopt this.
Because parents should be at the forefront of what is going on with their children.
I absolutely believe that.
And we protect parents for doing that.
We protect parent involvement.
If a parent is so involved that they do take that actionable step to change names, change genders, whatever they need to do, then we as the district respect that.
But we also respect that mom and dad are in the driver's seat, not the district.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
I agree with the parental authority part of education and their children,
and I believe that we have a great track record of that here in KDSD.
My question is what prompted the creation of this policy, who kind of created it,
and of the 94,000 students, how many reported problems do we know about?
Mr. President, I can also speak to that.
I have been notified in this week that at a junior high and a high school,
there were pronouns that were asked of students in classes on day two of school,
of eighth grade students and high school students.
So this is happening actively right now.
We are asking our 14-year-olds what pronouns they would appreciate going by.
Thank you.
And the policy was created by the policy committee and reviewed with involvement of outside counsel.
Mr. President, just want to clarify.
I just want to say people will have to read this policy, so I'm not against probably 90% of it.
What I'm afraid for is we don't always know.
I know that, Mrs. Calhoun, you're a great mother, and I think we all are probably good parents.
We're probably all good parents in here.
But not everybody is like us.
And so not everybody, not all children have a safe place to go home to.
I know people that if you told their parents that, you know,
their child was identifying as another gender,
they would probably get highly disciplined at home.
And so there's a reason why kids don't always go to their parents,
especially as teenagers.
There's a reason why they go to people like Mr. Filson or whoever it is.
So I just fear for those children.
Mr. President, I have a couple more questions, please.
So when you spoke of your introduction said we're protecting children, what are we protecting
them from?
We're protecting children.
From?
Well, for example, you know, I don't want to get into the whole trans thing, but we're
protecting them.
Using pronouns is a way of social transitioning children.
We're protecting them from that.
We're protecting them from that.
That's one way we're protecting them.
Okay.
They're not prohibited from using a pronoun other than their biological sex, provided
they have agreement with the parent.
parent. So we're not saying they can't use a different pronoun, correct?
Correct. The way the policy laid out, the district will respect a parent's written authorization
and involvement in using a pronoun other than the biological sex.
And is it correct that students that we currently have and they have concerns, they have safe
restroom facilities to use is that correct they can go to a staff bathroom
of a single unit the policy mentioned that yes but that already exists is that
correct we are not in policy no not in policy but we already provide that for
students I've ninety four thousand students I I just think we would know
about a prevalent problem if there were a prevalent problem to protect children
They don't compete in each other's athletics.
They don't go to bathrooms that are putting other students in danger.
My concern is this is a solution looking for a problem.
What is wrong with spelling out that we're going to respect the privacy and for the safety
safety sake of biological girls, biological boys separate, the two having separate facilities
and, for example, and then also in the sports in terms of competition.
So we're making clear here, you know, whether it's a problem or whether it's happening,
not happening, whatever.
We're laying out policy, we're guiding, we're saying that we're going to respect the privacy
and for the sake of safety of girls,
that we're going to ensure that we don't have,
we're separated by biological sex.
It just implies that they aren't safe.
It implies that you're protecting them from something,
yet from our practices, they are safe.
Our children are safe.
They are protected.
Well, we have to put it in policy.
We have to say it.
We have to put it in policy.
Okay.
Okay, we'll disagree on the implementation of a policy if, okay.
If it's not in policy, it doesn't exist.
We have to say it.
We have to provide guidance.
Could I interject?
My opinion.
Could I say something, Mr. President?
Ms. Cuzela?
I see a policy like this.
It's called leading and being a leader.
and instead of reacting to a problem that could come,
it's very prevalent.
It's happened around the country with the whole bathroom issue.
Girls have been raped multiple times in their girls' restroom.
It happened.
At schools?
Yes, at schools.
Yes, public school systems.
Public school systems.
So I would, for an issue like this, I want to get in front of it,
and I want to lead,
And I want to show the district has done due diligence on this topic. I
Think it's a good reflection of a board and a district. That's
Takes it seriously
Instead of reacting to a rape or whatnot that confusion with district facilities that might happen
I want to be in front of it
Thank you any other
points
Mr. President, my last comment.
When are we as a board going to move past politics and focus on academics?
This is not politics.
Mr. President, may I ask a question of Ms. Cuzela?
Please explain how this policy dealing with biological sex and facilities is politics.
We all know it's very prevalent in society and politically opposite parties disagree on this.
There was a huge bill about bathrooms a few last legislative session.
and it doesn't help academics it doesn't make our children smarter just like our
library books don't prepare our children for the future of being successful being
able to take care of themselves and their families and to be ready for their
careers their future military library books and bathroom policies don't serve
students well when we're trying to look at the success of their academic prowess
leaving our school district and going on to their futures I think I'm sorry I
mean let me just interject real quick I think we can do both I think we can do
both we can protect children and we can provide for superior academic
performance and evaluate their academic performance it's not one or the other we
We can do both.
Just one comment.
Usually, I've read, and I would assume I agree with it,
students learn better when they feel safe.
So you can look at it from the point of view
of a young female student.
Perhaps she doesn't feel safe because she's
seen some questionable characters entering
the girls' bathroom.
How does she learn well if she doesn't feel safe?
So that's one aspect of this policy
that maybe you could consider that would affect academics.
I have a question.
Mr. President, do you mind?
Go ahead.
So sixth graders, which are 11 years old,
just got into double digits and just figuring out life as itself.
Are you comfortable with them deciding whether they want to be a boy or a girl at 11,
as well as a cat or a dog or a Z or a they or a them or is that something that we're comfortable with introducing into the educational platform that we're supposed to be delivering?
I'm confused on where that is located in biology.
And where are we introducing it to children?
I just told you that they have been asked their pronouns as of last week by a teacher.
teacher, that's where.
That's hardly introducing and teaching sexual preferences.
When a teacher does that, we can know about it, we can have a conversation and say that's
not part of the curriculum that you teach and we can modify that behavior and
That's what the policy is.
So you're comfortable with teachers asking 11-year-olds their sexual preference or their pronouns then?
Am I understanding that correctly?
No, you are not.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I was confused.
You absolutely are not.
Don't put words into my mouth.
I'm sorry.
I apologize.
I was confused for a second, but thank you for clarifying.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
I feel completely offended that Mrs. Calhoun is trying to take my comments and make them into something they completely aren't.
This is not about disagreeing with pronouns, with keeping our children focused on academics.
That's what we do.
I'm really just far too upset to continue the discussion.
I've said what I'm going to say.
thank you mr. champagne mr. president so I appreciate you you mrs. Callahan has
younger children than I do and so she's more in the group of that age group I
understand that but I've been on the board for five years and I'm not
discounting I believe you I believe that that's happened but I haven't I get
emails from people a lot and I haven't had one email in the last five years
about about this so i'm not saying that you know 100 of people to have that is you're going to
contact dawn campaign i'm never saying that you know maybe they don't want to contact me about
that but you know i do hear about a lot of things i just haven't heard about that but i'm not saying
it doesn't exist but i just want you to understand that i don't i don't believe that mrs fox is
trying to say she wants that to be taught to children just because she may be against certain
certain parts of this new policy. They're not the two of the same things. And just like me, I feel the same way. I'm just I'm just questioning one part of the policy. I'm not discounting everything else. I just want to make that clear. Mr. President, thank you, Mr. President, may I clear up that I did not say I'm against how the policy is written, what the policy says. I question why we need the policy when we don't have a prevalent problem. It feels like we're when you said
We're protecting children from what?
You know, I take exception to the fact that that sounds like they are not safe in our schools.
And this is my 18th year on this school board.
And we have kept children safe and we have provided a world-class education for them through our world-class teachers.
teachers and to tell teachers through a policy that if a child comes to you and needs a sounding
board or just needs a word of advice or just like, I'm confused, can you help me?
And now the teacher has to call the mom and tell them.
I'm with Mrs. Champagne about the trust issue of that, and they have questions, they need
someone to talk to.
and I know that teachers will say, you know, Mrs. Morningsong is an amazing counselor.
Have you talked to her?
Go to her and tell her I sent you.
That's what our teachers do.
They're not going to tell children, yes, let me send you to a website that will help you understand that.
Let me get you some materials.
That's not who our teachers are.
They're delivering quality curriculum day after day after day,
and for us to put on added responsibilities to them, as Mrs. Teamey has said,
one more thing for teachers to do is not what we're about that's where i take exception i didn't
say it was against the policy i just don't know that the policy is needed to to start and get
ahead of something that might happen i think our board would be bet better our time would be better
spent talking about how to help our children have stronger outcomes as as educate in the education
education field. Mr President, yes, Miss Timmy. OK, so I am a
former teacher and I met my husband coaching here as well so.
I I'm not no, none of us are saying teachers are bad, so I
take offense to that. I'm not saying that well, but you're
insinuating that we're I'm saying that Miss Calhoun saying
that we're not saying teachers are bad. I'm one of those
teachers so I would appreciate some backup if I were a teacher I would
appreciate a board backing me up in my classroom and I will never as a teacher
turn that down requiring you to call a parent if a child comes to you with a
concern that's backing you I'm not as a teacher I'm not the final decision maker
for a child the parent is my job is to teach math not to adjudicate that kind
kind of topic that's venturing into the parents role.
I think that the issue is imagine if a child is well known in school by a
pronoun is different than biology, biological sex.
And the parent is the last to know about it.
And there's a cafeteria worker, the teacher, the students, etc.
Are all calling using a different name and a different pronoun.
And the parent is ignorant to that.
that's that's the issue is that the other thing is supporting the teacher in
case the teacher to giving guidance to the teacher and what they what they are
not required to do either they're not they if they if they get parent to
parental approval and fine use the pronoun if they don't feel comfortable
using the pronoun then they don't it's their first or right so it's really
supporting and giving guidance to the teacher it's not it's not making the
a teacher. It's not putting a burden on the teacher or saying we need to really police
the teacher or anything like that. It's more giving guidance.
Mr. President?
Yes, Ms. Champagne.
But that's in an idealistic world that all the parents are going to be okay with hearing
this or, you know. But I bet you a million, zillion dollars that any one of the parents
that I know that helped their child has committed suicide recently would have done anything,
would have preferred their child tell a secret to someone else that they didn't know about
if that meant that child was still alive.
Chair.
Mr. President, I hear you, Dawn.
We also have to consider there's a great number of wonderful parents who would lovingly care for their child
and perhaps avoid a suicide with their child by helping them and if they don't
know what's going on they can't do that so there's the flip side as well I
understand and I want to clarify we're not talking about all discussions that
are with a teacher need to be shared with the parent the policy exactly
states specifically except to the extent prohibited by law or in cases of
suspected abuse district staff will notify parents at their child requests
he or she be identified as transgender change his or her name or use different
pronouns at school so it's a very concrete if that decision has been made
by a student and identified directly to the teacher that's a big change and the
the parent should be notified.
That's it.
Period.
That's what the policy states.
Thank you so much.
Really appreciate the robust exchange,
the robust discussion on this topic.
Are there any other comments or questions?
We'll now move on to 814,
8.14 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2023-2024 Board Operating Procedures.
which is to discuss and consider board approval
of the 2023-2024 board operating procedures so you all have the the copy
the marked up copy and any comments or questions about that mr. president I
had to that I wrote down on page five under code of ethics there's a red line
on base decisions on fact rather than supposition opinion or public favor I
feel like that's something we should do as a board is continue to make decisions
based on fact that I'd like to see that left in there and then later on you
repeat that again mr. Redmond sure under the code of ethics now what number is
that okay it was K okay spread lined out I I'd like based decision on facts
rather than supposition opinion or public favor left in on the code of
ethics and then on we get into being that our superintendent evaluations one
one of our more important roles.
We've had this discussion as a board over the past year
many times.
Our instrument used to evaluate is annual summative
evaluation.
So on page 24, it would be 22D, or 22E,
was what it formally was.
It laid out what his evaluation was based on.
And just my experience as an employer,
if I'm going to evaluate someone,
I would like it documented on what that's going to be so that ahead when you evaluate someone
They know what they're being evaluated on and so removing that I think it leaves a little gray area that we should still have in
our board operating procedures
Okay, those are the two items. Thank you
Mr.. President, Michelle Payne, I would like to I had some other questions, but I'd like to address the superintendent evaluation
part of it I
i appreciate the fact of what you're saying um mr redmond but i also think that this list that was
used before was sort of limiting so that to say that we could only evaluate them on these things
um i think that would have been my problem with it so i just want to say that but the other things i
wanted to say was the things that i really really like in this and that is um this meeting having
having a work study meeting. I think it provides for a lot more transparency. Some of it obviously
is uncomfortable because it allows more opportunities for people to come and say how much they love
us and all that. But, you know, it does provide for more of that. It also allows people to,
between this meeting and next meeting, to give us some feedback about the things that
they've seen us talk about so i really appreciate that change also the school visits have become
are going to become a little more relaxed because i just want to say you know we are elected at
large and so we represent the entire 95 000 students and all the campuses so although we
we still have the adopted theater patterns, it's going to be a little bit more relaxed
where we can go and things.
So I really appreciate that.
And also I appreciate getting it to where we only need one other two people to get something
on the agenda because we were one of the very few districts in the state of Texas that required
three.
And one of the arguments for us staying at the three was that if you couldn't get another
person to help you get something on the agenda, then you probably weren't going to get anything
passed, you know, because you have minority people who wanted it.
But I just want to say that some of the things we want on the agenda are just discussion
items and not necessarily things that we want to vote on.
So that's what I want to give you kudos for, and I appreciate you allowing for this to
happen.
Yeah, thank you.
Mr. President, can I answer Ms. Champagne?
Maybe one of the answers we could do is add the other items we'd like to add on to it
rather than remove what it's based on.
Because if as a board we can agree on what we evaluate our superintendent on,
then that's what we should evaluate them on.
But if we remove all the, what's the word I'm looking for?
If we remove all those characteristics, then it just kind of becomes willy-nilly based on if I'm having a bad day or I think he should wear a blue shirt.
suit on Tuesdays and he's not wearing a blue suit on Tuesdays, I'm going to give him bad ranks.
But if we have something we can all agree on, maybe the answer is we add those other items
as a group with consensus. So is this the thought you had? I might just comment on that.
First of all, on the one that you made, base decisions on fact rather than supposition,
opinion, or public favor. We just saw a moment ago that a lot of decisions are made on
on people's convictions, principles, opinions,
and they vary.
So it's kind of hard to say that you always
have to make your decision based on fact.
That's all that was behind that.
And that is obviously that we bring to the table
our different filters and our different opinions and so on.
So that's all that's behind that.
Not that we wouldn't try to use fact as much as possible,
but you have to be able to use your opinions, if you will, when you make decisions.
That's also behind that.
Then on page 24 on E that we're talking about, I recall this was just inserted in April of this year,
and it hadn't been there before, as I recall,
and so therefore it seemed to kind of limit the board in terms of just the evaluation.
So it's just it's in that was a new addition and
so it seemed like it like the abortion lip himself is kind of thinking behind that but I
Appreciate what you're saying
And maybe it's just removing that opinion on because obviously everybody's bringing their opinion
So we agree, but when I first read that and said we're not gonna make decision based on facts that that seems right
But really, we should be operating on truth.
Okay.
On facts.
Got it.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any other comments?
Mr. President, I have one question.
On K-based decisions on facts, et cetera, was that restated or was that just deleted?
No, that line was deleted.
Okay.
Thank you.
But we can certainly modify the deletion.
Any other comments or questions on that?
Okay, we have the number nine is the information items.
9. Information Items
Any questions, any requests as far as the information items?
And Madam Secretary, do we have any requests from the board?
Did you capture any requests?
MS. There was a request that was made by me for the update on the incentive, the
ADA incentive that we're going to get every so often, I guess, and how that's going.
CHAIRMAN BRYANT LISERY. Okay. Well, thank you very much. The next meeting, there will
10. Future Meetings
be a regular Board meeting on next Monday, August 28, 2023, and also the next work study
study meeting will be on Monday, September 18, 2023.
There being no further business for the board,
this meeting is adjourned.
The time is 8.38.
Thank you.
Thank you all.
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