Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this regular board meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order.
Katy ISD · Regular Board Meeting Agenda
Katy ISD Regular Board Meeting, October 30, 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.
- 0:04 to 9:59 1. Call to Order
- 9:59 to 12:38 3. Recognitions
- 12:38 to 16:06 4. Oaths
- 16:06 to 46:22 5. Public Comment
- 46:22 to 46:45 6. Closed Meeting
- 46:45 to 48:49 7. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 48:49 to 1:14:52 8.1 Presentation of the District's rating on the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST).
- 1:14:52 to 1:36:30 9.1 House Bill 3 (HB 3) 5-year goals and targets for the district, elementary campuses and high school campuses report.
- 1:36:30 to 2:02:02 9.2 Strategic Design 1.3 Elementary Literacy Update
- 2:02:02 to 2:03:33 10. Consent agenda
- 2:03:33 to 2:11:29 11.1 Board Committee updates
- 2:11:29 to 2:12:34 11.2 Recap of Board member requests for information.
- 2:12:34 to 2:12:53 12. Future Meetings
- 2:12:53 to 2:13:18 13. Closed Meeting
- 2:13:18 to 2:15:48 14. Reconvene
Full transcript
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1. Call to Order
Today is Monday, October 30, 2023, and the time is 5 p.m.
Dr. Gagorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the previous provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to notice for this meeting?
Mr. President, I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting this evening.
We're going to go ahead and start with the Pledge of Allegiance and our National Anthem.
So if I can invite up our special guest, Carly Wajaja, if you would please come up to that podium right there in front of you.
Carly's fifth grader at Wood Creek Elementary.
Her principal is Ronnie Mosier.
Parents are here, Henny Ramali and Darwin Wajaja.
students special interests drawing dancing playing piano and making slime however that
is done favorite subjects math I don't know if that involves the making of the slime or not a
couple of statements I'm gonna go ahead and read here from mrs. Odom fifth grade reading language
arts and social studies teacher Carly's a wonderful student I feel privileged to have her in my class
this year she's eager to share ideas and thoughts while still showing the utmost respect for her
classmates. As the first usually raise her hand when a question is posed, she always waits
patiently to be called upon. She listens attentively to the responses of her classmates as well.
Additionally, she is helpful and considerate. She is willing to assist other students at her table
with tasks and directions. She is truly a joy to teach. And from Ms. Carden, fifth grade math and
science, Carly is a wonderful student to have in my class. She is the most hardworking, dedicated
student I have ever met and shows kindness and friendship to everyone
around her in the short time that I've gotten to know her Carly has shown me
that she will some she will be someone big inspiring and life-changing one day
which makes me even more proud than I already am to be her teacher so with
that hold tight on saying the pledge just yet because I also want to
introduce our Haskett junior high orchestra it was in here in the front
and to my left over here.
So those members of the orchestra,
if you just stand and we'll recognize you all at once.
Sasha Lawson is here and Sharon Rivero.
You guys can come forward if you like.
Yeah, we can do it that way.
Tolu Toyenbo, Spencer Derrick, Valentina Rivera,
Oliver Sanchez, Lincoln Kennedy, Santiago Ponce,
and Jeremiah Cooper.
Cooper. This is our orchestra tonight who's going to do the national anthem for us. A quote from Mr. Daniel, music director. I am very proud of the hard work, dedication and leadership of these musicians. Through today's performance, they continue to exemplify our school's mission to foster community relationships, create authentic experiences and empower themselves and those around them to make a difference and achieve greatness. So let's go ahead and stand and we'll first start with our Pledge 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 thee, Texas, one state under God, one and
indivisible.
© BF-WATCH TV 2021
Mr. Rebman, one second before we do that.
I know, Carly, you have some prepared remarks you're going to share with us.
If you would share those, and then we'll go ahead and do a photo.
Good evening, President Perez, board members, and Superintendent Gorgoski.
My name is Carly Wajaja, and I am very honored to represent Woodcreek Elementary this evening as a pledge leader.
Three years ago, I was sitting in my bedroom in California staring at my computer for six hours a day.
It was my only interaction with my teachers and classmates during the pandemic.
Fortunately, my family decided to move to Katy because Wood Creek was open and had an
outstanding rating.
What I didn't know at first was how kind, caring, and passionate the teachers were throughout
my years.
The school events like the house rally were always so entertaining, especially the teacher
games.
I met a lot of new friends participating in the student council club, and I find it rewarding
to learn something new and advanced in my weekly challenge class from economy to meteorology.
Some hobbies that I like to do are drawing, playing piano, dancing and making slime.
I will miss all the remarkable teachers, friends and the Ranger culture that the school has instilled in us.
Thank you so much to my parents, all my Woodcreek family and my wonderful teachers for supporting my
educational journey. Have a wonderful evening.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you Carly and thank you to the Haskett Orchestra. That was awesome. Thank you so much.
Do we have any scouts in the audience this evening? Any scouts?
No? Okay. At this time, the Board of Trustees will give members of the public an opportunity to speak
in accordance with KDISD board policy. I hate to interrupt you. We missed the recognitions
of a couple of principals. No worries. If you don't mind, I'll jump in and do that.
and then yeah awesome all right we got a couple of recognitions never mind that
3. Recognitions
then I want to go ahead and start with and we have a new principal over at
Morrill Parkway Elementary Nellie Baccaro where yet Nellie Nellie it looks like
you brought a few family members out tonight and some friends who do you have
with you there if you would please introduce those folks awesome thank you
so much and an awesome staff thank you all appreciate you guys coming out
tonight before I introduce the next soon-to-be new principal I want to go
ahead and I think is Tammy Wilhelm did you make it here Tammy where yet there
you up front i couldn't see with podium there but tammy is soon retiring here at christmas after 36
years in education and 33 years serving the kids of kdic so thank you for what you've done jimmy i
appreciate it anytime a good one goes out another good one comes in and out there is latwanda wilson
who will take over for Tammy there's the
fonda she will take over at Christmas
and look 20 you brought some folks with
you awesome well thank you very much
we're looking forward to that appreciate
it okay now at this time the board
trustees will give members of the
public an opportunity to speak
And this time we'll have Peace Officer Oath of Office of Katy Independent School District
4. Oaths
officers and the presenters are Henry Gough KDIG chief of police and Kate
Kevin Tabor KDIG deputy chief of police
good evening what president Victor Perez or trustees superintendent Gorski I have
have here tonight are swearing in candidate for the for our police
department so let me introduce you all to our newest officer officer Sokol
Thomas Sokol Thomas was born and raised in Houston Texas
officer Thomas is the second eldest daughter to parents Teresa Thomas and
Kenneth Thomas officer Thomas moved to Katy where she was only 10 years old and
she attended McDonald Junior High School and graduated from Morton Ranch High
school in 2018. Officer Thomas attended University of Houston Victoria and is
working towards finishing her law degree. She aspires to become a prosecutor for
criminal and family law to help those in need. Before becoming a police officer
Officer Thomas worked for Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office in the jail as a
correctional officer for three years. She worked the night shift and took this
this time to her advantage to attend and graduate from Wharton College Junior Police Academy in 2022.
She's an ambitious young lady and has accomplished so much in her career. She is hoping to gain as
much knowledge as possible from working in law enforcement to help her community. She is now
a member of our KDISD Police Department family and is very much enjoying her time here.
They affected and will, with the responsibility
of the Bureau of Protection and Defense,
the Constitutional Law, the United States,
and other states of WIU.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
5. Public Comment
2 p.m on monday october 30 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 speakers that signed up to speak
on non-agenda items will be allowed i believe two minutes and 30 seconds if a speaker is not finished
speaking at the end of their allotted time 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 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
speaker to seek resolution through the appropriate policy.
Finally, pursuant to Texas government codes, sections 551.074, 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 local grievance policies,
FNG local, DGBA local, CKE local, or GF local.
Our speakers will be called forward in the order they were signed up to speak.
and we didn't have any anyone sign up for agenda items the speakers are all
for non agenda items the first speaker is blue legang lay and after that patty
Lacey good evening everyone today I would like to address the issue of the
the school board proposal, can you please vote against the school board proposal in
the recent election? First, taxpayers will pay more tax soon as our country is in debt
seriously. The government only connects tax from taxpayers, but it does not generate profits.
Right now, the U.S. government has a debt of more than $33 trillion. So on average,
everyone here owns more than $100,000 in debt.
For a family with four people,
the total debt is more than $400,000,
which is more than higher than the house value they live in.
In three weeks later,
the US government debt will reach the ceiling again.
How can taxpayers pay off all the debts?
Second, inflation is more than 9% in recent years,
which hurts our economic conditions.
Most residents in Katy does not have a salary increase
of 90% every year.
So we must cut our expense.
And to buy less food from H-E-B and Costco,
on the other hand, more cost as gas station
and even cost and more tax
from the recent school bond proposal.
We are spending our saving.
The saving will be gone soon or later.
Therefore, I do not think the bond proposal is sustainable for us and for our community.
Finally, we need common sense in our financial decisions.
KTSD needs to save money for unexpected situations, not like many families living paycheck to paycheck.
For example, Detroit went bankrupt in July 2013.
although Detroit is a large city in Michigan,
if our community does not have a wisdom
on how to use our money,
it can happen to our ISD as well.
If we want to keep ISD and our community to be sustainable,
please vote against the bond proposal.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello. My name is Patty Lacey and I am here to speak to you guys about voting for the bond. So
thank you first of all for putting it on the ballot this year. Early voting is still going
on from 7 to 7 from now until Friday and then voting is on November 7th. So the two proposals
proposals I want to talk about is Proposition C and Proposition D. So Proposition C is for
district-wide natatorium, competition swimming pools, component and replacements. And Prop
D is for campuses, for athletic facilities, road stadium and repairs. As most of you guys
know, if you own a home, you're going to have to upkeep it quite a bit. If you wait to do
basic replacements of things, you're going to be really sorry. I know Amy's looking at
me like I understand being in the business we know that if you let things
go it's just going to get worse it's not going to get better so I ask that people
please support this bond it's ABC and D but as you probably know if you've been
to Rhodes Stadium it's in need of desk just the sorry desperate repair of some
items we don't want to wait until someone gets hurt by the way that the
the facility and the condition that it's in.
So as you probably know, we have band competitions there,
we have graduations, dance teams use it,
the LAMS program uses it, soccer, track,
did I say football?
Football, all the great sports are played there
and it's actually just an outdoor classroom
for a lot of our students.
So I ask that people go out and support the bond
to keep our district an A plus district
like we all enjoy for our kids and our beautiful grandchildren. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next speaker is John Nixon and after that Melissa Edwards.
President Perez, Dr. Gagorski and the board, thank you for your time. I'd like to talk about technology.
I'm the father of three graduates from Katy ISD, one from Seven Lakes and two from Single Ranch High School.
and one of those single ranch graduates is also engaged to marry a second grade
teacher from Cimarron Elementary so my wife Melissa Nixon and I to say the
least are heavily invested for and rooting for the success of this district
it's that success I want to talk about technology in the classroom is
imperative to the success of our children our teachers right now are
having to scramble for laptops in the classroom horse trading from teacher to
teacher to be able to have enough laptops in the classroom just to
complete the basic education we need our students to have. I'm also the vice
president of global strategy for Siemens Corporation, a technology firm, and I can
tell you right now we absolutely must be addressing technology in our classrooms
for KDISD. Our teachers' one job, that one job is to be providers of instruction.
that's their charge they don't need to sit there trying to patch laptops figure
out what operating system they're on horse trading laptops trying to figure
out how to get the technology their students need proposition B addresses
directly the laptops that we need for third grade through 12 so our students
our children our sons and our daughters can be successful on the global stage
artificial intelligence machine learning additive manufacturing robotics digital
twins I could make a laundry list of the technologies that our children when they
are men and women entering the workforce better be prepared for and it starts
with having Chromebooks in the hands of every student in this district so I just
want to applaud the board I want to applaud our community for looking at
investing in the technology our students our children need to be successful thank
Thank you.
Thank you.
Melissa Edwards, and after that, Tomic Rusak.
Good evening.
My name is Melissa Edwards, and I'm
a senior at Cinco Ranch High School,
as well as a representative for the Power Club.
I'm here today to comment again on an issue that
is still continuing to affect all students of KDISD,
as well as myself.
the absence and exemption policy that is currently in place.
I believe that removing a student's exam exemptions at five absences,
especially when it is done with no consideration to the nature of the absences themselves,
is inconsiderate to the needs of students.
From my own experiences, as well as those of my peers,
personal impact that the exemption policy have had included being punished with the loss of exam exemptions
for reasons such as surgeries, mental hospital stays, and even the loss of loved ones.
There is a no questions asked, no excuses made policy currently in place, and it simply forces too much pressure on already overly anxious students.
With growing support for mental health, KDISD claims to be there for their students and act compassionately to their needs.
However, there are many examples of this claim being ignored due to the actions of the district.
And as we all know, these actions speak much louder than words.
An example of this is seen today with the dedication to the health of students with the COVID policy.
As I'm sure you are all aware, the KDISD website currently states the policy for conditions of return to school after contracting COVID.
It says at least five days have passed, symptom onset and fever free and other symptoms have improved.
This means that one case of diligently following COVID protocol already breaks exemption criteria and would cause students to be required to take all of their exams,
which is beyond stressful on its own and especially for someone who is feeling punished for recovering from an illness, surgery or even grief.
grief.
Falsely promised care and support for students and their mental, physical, and emotional
health is seen by the district's refusal to understand that while school is a place
to learn, sometimes life can be challenging and can get in the way of that.
There are students being punished for something so out of control, such as grieving a loss
of a loved one.
In my opinion, I don't believe that forcing a child to take five to seven exams after
losing a loved one is in any way beneficial to their mental health.
I propose that the exemption criteria is reevaluated to be more considerate to student circumstance.
One way this could be done is by allowing students to appeal the loss of their exemptions to their home campus administration and attendance.
Appeals to the school would be reserved for circumstances that are more serious and would have caused the student to break five absences.
This could include something such as COVID, a surgery, or a family loss.
I believe that this little bit of extra time to review appeals is worth the broad implications that this could have for students going through these difficult circumstances,
on top of already balancing the stress that being a high school student in today's society already entails.
thank you thank you Tomac Bruce act and after that Connor Stewart
good evening board I'm Tomac Rusak a representative for the power club at
Cinco Ranch high school during deliberations between our committees we
notice a very minimal implementation of crosswalks district-wide in every school
at our home campus crossings between heavy traffic areas and roads going into
the school are often left unmarked poorly lit and unemphasized for the crosswalks that are clear
at our main entrance pedestrians are respected and traffic flows much smoother the process of
leaving school is hectic and unorganized leaving confusion for students as to how to leave school
safely and orderly i come here today to offer the simplest and most effective solution more
plentiful and clearer crosswalks a big fact worth highlighting is the effectiveness of crosswalks in
reducing accidents as supported by the federal highway administration and the national highway
traffic safety administration. Research consistently shows that crosswalks
significantly reduce the risk of pedestrian vehicle crossings,
pedestrian vehicle collisions. These designated pathways make students more
visible to drivers resulting in safer road crossings. These crosswalks are
quick and impactful solutions to students' safety. The cost of implementing
crosswalks is in fact quite reasonable when considering the potential
consequences of not having them. According to the FHWA, the price of a
regular stripe crosswalk is just $100 with the more vibrant ladder crosswalk
costing only 300. These costs are a fraction of what we could face in the tragic lives lost
due to accidents. The necessity of implementing crosswalks on school campuses goes beyond
financial considerations. It's about ensuring the safety of our students. Schools should be
sanctuaries for learning and the safety extends to the areas surrounding them. By investing in
crosswalks, we provide students with secure pathways to and from school, reducing the risk
of accidents and instilling confidence in both students and parents. The implementation of
crosswalks is not just a good idea it is an imperative to protect our students
let us prioritize the safety of the district and take the necessary steps to
implement crosswalks our students deserve to to walk to school without
fearing for our lives let us come together as a community create a safer
more secure campus for our students and prioritize their well-being above all
else although there are crosswalks in a lot of schools in the district the exits
are emphasized often only on to one main entrance where there are multiple exits
to leave the school as a walker or biker and as someone who has biked to the
the school for four years. I see a lot of problems going out through back
entrances or ways that are clearly labeled off with you know concrete
pavement but have no crosswalks for the drivers to see so I hope as a board we
can understand that pedestrian safety is something that should be emphasized
heavily.
not just put in halfway thank you thank you Connor Stewart followed by Susie
Matthews
hello everyone my name is Connor Stewart and I'm currently a senior at Cinco
Ranch High School and also a member of the power club I'm here to shed light on
a crucial issue that has long been overlooked in our district the dire need
for improved awareness and resources for mental health.
While KDISD has taken many steps to address this concern,
the current state of mental health support
in our schools remains alarmingly insufficient.
Despite the district's effort
to promote mental health initiatives,
such as the Speak Up campaign,
which aimed to encourage students
to voice their concerns and seek help,
it has still been largely ineffective.
While students need to have an outlet to report bullying,
a large amount of mental health issues
stems from a sea of unresolved challenges.
Some examples of these unresolved challenges
would be eating disorders, loneliness, or any other concerning matters.
Students deserve to have an easier to contact source for help. According to the
United States Office of Population Affairs, many adolescents experience
positive mental health, but an estimated 49.5% of children ages 13 to 19
have had a mental health disorder at some point in their lives. This alarming
statistic reflects on an urgent need for comprehensive and accessible mental
mental health resources within our district.
In my own experience, the stigma surrounding mental health
remains a significant barrier to seeking support.
Many students, including myself, have witnessed friends
and classmates silently battling mental health issues
due to a fear of being stigmatized or misunderstood,
wearing a smiling face rather than seeking help.
This silence perpetuates a cycle of isolation
and exacerbates the challenges
faced by those in need of help.
To address these pressing issues,
KDIC must prioritize the allocation of additional resources to expand mental
health services including hiring more counselors and implementing
comprehensive mental health education programs. By fostering a culture of
openness and understanding we can create a supportive environment where students
feel empowered to prioritize their mental well-being without a fear of
judgment or stigma. In conclusion, KDIC must recognize the urgency for
improving mental health resources and awareness within our schools. The
well-being of our students should be a top priority and investing in
comprehensive mental health support is an essential step toward nurturing a
healthier and more resilient school community thank you for your attention
to this critical matter thank you Susie Matthews and after that Kristen
Grine hello my name is Susie Matthews I'm here tonight with my husband Joe
Matthews our youngest son is a junior at Katy High School and he is our third
percussionist in that roaring band from Tigerland, but our middle son was also a varsity,
Katy High School varsity baseball player, which is the reason I'm here tonight.
We would like to respectfully request that the Katy High School baseball field be named in honor
of Coach Tom McPherson, affectionately called Coach Mack. He retired in 2022 after being the
head baseball coach of Katy High School for 34 years. He was in education for 45 years,
39 of those as a head baseball coach and a teacher of history and health.
He coached football at Katy High School for 32 of those years.
He has been inducted in the Greater Houston Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Honor
and the Texas High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Upon his retirement with 891 wins, Coach Mack was the winningest active 6A head coach in
Texas and ranks number four in the most career wins in Texas high school baseball.
baseball. Under his leadership, the Katy Tigers baseball program became one of the most highly
respected baseball programs in the state of Texas. Coach Mack is the perfect example of
a great coach and leader of young men, training future husbands and fathers, and guiding hundreds
in continuing their baseball careers past high school. During his long career, Coach
Mack always exhibited honesty, integrity, hard work, and passion, and he expected the
the same in return from his players. Our son Caleb, who played for Coach Mack, said he didn't
just coach them to excel in baseball, but to excel in life. He treated baseball as more than a game,
but as a family. He was a role model, mentor, and friend. Coach Mack remembers every player he
coached because he took personal interest in their lives. He still checks on his players who are
playing baseball in college, our son included. He remains friends with many of his former players
and coaches many of whom are now successful coaches of other baseball
programs all baseball coaches take care of their field but coach Mack did much
more than Mo he poured his heart and soul into providing a field and a
winning legacy that players families teachers and administrators were able to
be very proud of in our packet we have included letters of recommendation for
this honor for coach Mack from our principal dr. Rick Hall coaches Gary
Barry Joseph, Wes Hearn, and Will Handlin.
We also have letters of recommendation from parents and former players.
Coach Tom McPherson deserves this namesake,
and we pray the right decision will be made soon to honor the career
and accomplishments of this Katy ISD legend.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Kristen Grine.
And after that, Celeste Gu.
Good afternoon slash evening.
My name is Kristen Grein, and I am here speaking on behalf of our family
about the naming of the Katy High School baseball field.
My father is Tom McPherson, and he was the head baseball coach at Katy High School for 34 years.
He spent his career dedicated to that program, his players, and the game.
For him to be that invested as a head coach, our family sacrificed a lot of time with him.
Family gatherings, birthdays, and holidays were planned around his coaching schedules.
Also because he was an assistant football coach to Katy High School for 32 of those
years.
So he played sports year-round.
Some weeks we only saw him at the games.
I even celebrated my Sweet 16 sweating in the baseball stands at the state playoffs
in a round rock.
Not every girl's dream, but that's the sacrifice that we do.
But our family has never had a grudge or thought twice about that sacrifice because we knew his dedication was making a difference in the lives of so many others.
To this day, while we're out in Katy, people will approach us and tell us about how much, as a coach or a teacher, he made a positive impact on their life.
Former players regularly come back year after year to watch the games and to watch a new group of Tigers come out on the field.
They share their stories about the lessons that they learned from Coach Mack
and how those lessons have continued on into their adulthood
and how they use them every day.
We are proud of the legacy that he has created
and how his influence on the community affected so many.
The family and I believe that his legacy should continue at Katy High School
with the naming of the baseball field in his honor
for all the blood, sweat, tears, love, dedication, commitment,
and sacrifice he had poured into this program on and off the field.
I thank you for your time.
I would like to ask, there was another speaker, Paul Medlin.
He didn't make it in time to sign in because his daughter has a concert across the way,
and he's here, though, and I was wondering if he would be able to speak.
You know, I think we need to, it's very noble, but I think we need to take to the rules,
which is everybody has to sign in.
And so there are a couple of other people who didn't get to sign in and didn't get to speak.
Well, I would like to say that he and other players wanted to be here tonight
and to share with you the lasting effect of the things that they were taught,
not only just, as Susie Matthews said, as a baseball player,
but the lessons that were instilled to them by Coach Mack for in regards to how to deal with life,
that you're not going to win at everything and how to deal with those
losses and how to move on and to be a respectful and an upstanding
contributing member of society and that those are the things that they impart on
their children and thank you so much appreciate it
Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President.
Yes.
Thank you.
I appreciate very much that people took the time to sign up ahead of time.
I know that getting here in the middle of rush hour in very tight traffic has been a problem in the past,
and we've made exceptions in the past to allow people to speak.
I would be willing to grant that if the board is willing to do that and maybe we could look at the
Timing and see if we could do something
You know what I appreciate it, it's we're not taking a board vote on this
And so there were other couple of other people that didn't make it and didn't weren't able to speak
Because they didn't sign in and so I omitted them at the request of our
our general counsel and so I think we just need to move on as much as we
appreciate what comments you would make I just think we need to be consistent in
how we apply it but we've made exceptions in the past well I'm not
making we've set that precedent no so let's go please thank you
Thank you.
Celeste Gu and after that Shirley Thomas.
Good evening everyone.
My name is Celeste Gu, a Mandarin Chinese GT teacher,
a district advisory committee member for my previous school district and a veteran wife. This month is the National Bullying
Prevention Month, so today I'd like to talk about the significant impact on teaching our children kindness.
According to Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
the modern empirical neuroscience research has validated that one of the four
or constituents of well-being and happiness
as being kind to others and acting on behalf of others.
When you do that, your very circuits in the brain
that can sustain positive emotion are activated
in a way that more than anything else that has been studied.
From a cultural perspective,
Ren Yi Li Zhi Xin is the five virtues
of Chinese traditional culture,
which means benevolence, righteousness,
piety, wisdom, and fidelity, and that serves as a guideline that Chinese people would cultivate
themselves towards. In the Bible, Ephesians 4.32, it reads, be kind and compassionate to one another,
forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. That also teaches us about kindness
and compassion. More to illustrate, Confucius said, means do not do things to others
what you would not have them do to you.
Treat people the way you want to be treated
is the golden rule across cultures and truly universal.
If educators and parents can equip our children
with the right social-emotional skills to communicate,
to have sympathy and empathy,
to be kind to one another, to help each other,
not only our students will benefit from that mentally and physically,
but they would also discover the secret to lifelong happiness.
On that note, I'd like to give a shout out of Ganjing World's global campaign,
Kindness is Cool, where you have the opportunity to win $10,000 cash reward
for making a video about kindness on their platform.
Groups and organizations can also enter to win a $5,000 reward.
Embrace kindness. Teach kindness. And practice kindness.
It makes us feel positive and happy. It also makes us a better person.
We're created by the supreme architect of the universe to feel that and to do that.
Our world needs more truth as well as kindness. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
Our last speaker this evening is Shirley Thomas.
Welcome.
Welcome.
Hey, I'm Shirley Thomas.
I moved here in 1997.
When we moved here we had a sophomore, a sixth grader, and a first grader.
I subbed for many years all over the district, north side of I-10, south side of I-10, old
schools, new schools, brand new schools.
I even subbed at a school that is east of Highway 6, which I had no idea was in the
KISD.
It was quite a shock when I got my assignment that day, but it is.
My children also attended a very old school, a brand new school eventually, and then a new school that was very basic.
No bells, no whistles at all. My question, and I'm obviously talking about the school bond that's coming up, Proposition B first of all,
is when we're talking about doing updates and renovations to some of our existing aging schools, what exactly really does that mean?
I mean I know sometimes we put that out there and is that like are you supposed
to just like accept it like that's just like this blanket thing we're gonna do
this well what is that really what is what's going to be applied to each of
the schools what's going to be you know specifically money why it's going to
this age school or this age school because there is quite a difference
obviously as we know in our district in some of the schools as they are sitting
as we watch some of the newer schools being built and oh my goodness they are
are like college campuses, which a little bit kind of like kind of concerns me that
we don't just have regular schools. Not that they don't have all the good stuff
as far as education, but kind of what we're also been looking at the age of
schools that we're sitting here and that there have all kinds of stuff that kind
of maybe are missing. So a little bit that's kind of my concern thinking what
are we going to be doing exactly. Then when it comes to also whenever we think
think about the aging athletic facilities.
Again, there are some schools that have some very aged
athletic facilities.
There's one that I, being in the different schools
where my kids actually attended or I subbed,
I could see the very big differences in,
and I'm gonna be very specific in naming two of them.
One of them, very, very aged, Tater High School.
The fact that it's even apart from the school
is kind of bizarre to me.
Were we in California when we made that idea to make that?
I'm not sure.
And yet we look at where I spend a lot of time at Cinco Ranch High School.
Very nice.
So there's some things I think that we're talking about.
Aged facilities, what are we going to be doing to them?
Are we really helping them out in a way that's going to make their facility better, nicer, more useful for the students?
And then we look at the road stadium.
And, you know, are there repairs?
What are some of these that are going to be doing?
No, I don't think we need a full structure.
But I do think we need some things.
done you know it is kind of interesting just to watch the differences and not
that we need like a brand new place some of us really love attending there even
more than we do in legacy because the full thank you thank you very much this
concludes the open forum portion of our meeting the board will now convene in
6. Closed Meeting
closed meeting as authorized under section 551 point zero zero one of the
the Texas Government Code for the following purposes. Texas Government Code 551.071, 551.074,
and 551.129. Thank you. The Board will now reconvene and open a meeting. Today is Monday,
7. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
October 30, 2023, and the time is 7.43 p.m. On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to
this evening's regular board meeting each board member received the agenda and documentation for
this meeting on friday october 27 2023 the board will receive information and recommendations from
staff administration and the superintendent on these agenda items in tonight's meeting board
members will be able to ask questions receive answers and should be prepared to take action
The Board has just reconvened from closed meeting.
In accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code, any action arising from discussions
in a closed meeting must be taken in an open meeting.
We're considering 7.1, which is Board approval of a recommendation to send notice of proposed
mid-contract termination of probationary contract employee, West Memorial Elementary teacher
Colleen Kolka for good cause board members are there any questions or
discussion I will not entertain a motion for this item mr. president miss Timmy I
move that the Board of Trustees approves a recommendation to send notice of
proposed mid contract termination of probationary contract employee Westmore
West Memorial Elementary teacher Colleen Kolka for good cause.
Second.
Mr. Redmond has seconded.
It is moved and seconded that the Board of Trustees approve the recommendation to send notice of proposed mid-contract termination of probationary contract employee,
West Memorial Elementary teacher Colleen Kolka for good cause.
We will now proceed to vote.
Board members, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad.
The motion passes 7-0.
The ayes have it and the motion is adopted.
Moving on to the first item of business, presentation of the district's rating on the Financial
8.1 Presentation of the District's rating on the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST).
Integrity Rating System of Texas, otherwise known as FIRST, and the presenters are Jamie
Hines, Executive Director of Finance, and Chris Smith, Chief Financial Officer.
Welcome. Good afternoon, President Perez, Superintendent Gorgorski, and trustees.
Pleased to present the Schools First report tonight. Schools First was adopted by the
1999 legislature. It's a statewide accountability system for finance, and it began with the
2021-2002 fiscal year and so 20 years ago this board heard its first report
the first first report 20 years ago and this is the 21st time that the board
will be hearing this over the years TEA has implemented numerous changes and
continue to do so in fact I was on a phone call about three weeks ago where
they were talking about the ratings that are going to come out this time next
next year are going to be a little different because they're tweaking them.
They tweak them every year.
The purpose of Schools First is to expand the public education accountability system
in Texas to the financial services.
The primary goal is to improve the management of school districts' financial resources
and assure maximum allocation of resources for direct instructional purposes.
purposes.
There are several scoring factors that we're going to go over.
And the indicators are more easily recognized and interpreted by both the public and financial
industry.
Several indicators have a wide scale or a range from zero to ten points.
And we will go over what those points are.
But 90 to 100 points naturally gets you an A. And I'm not going to bother with spending
in time going over the others. The annual financial report, indicator one, I'm going to turn it over
to Mr. Hatton to go over the indicators. Keep in mind, some of the indicators can
sound a little funny when you read them. Each is designed to be answered as a yes.
Indicator one is a simple indicator. Was the annual financial report filed within one month
after the January 8th deadline.
We actually filed it before the deadline
on January 26, 2023.
And just as I should have said this already,
this is based on the audit
that was presented to this board in January.
So in January, this board approved an audit,
and we sent that by the January 28th deadline.
And this time next year,
we're about to begin our audit
for the 22-23 fiscal year. This time next year we'll be going over that data. So this is based
on the audit that this board heard in January of 2023. Indicator two is did the district receive
a clean or unmodified audit opinion on the financial statements as a whole? The American
Institute of CPAs or Certified Public Accountants defines what an unmodified opinion is and our
OUR EXTERNAL INDEPENDENT AUDITOR DETERMINED THAT WE HAD AN UNMODIFIED OPINION.
SO, YES.
INDICATOR THREE SEEKS TO MAKE CERTAIN THAT OUR DISTRICT HAS MADE ALL REQUIRED BOND AND DEBT PAYMENTS ON TIME.
YES.
INDICATOR FOUR IS DID THE SCHOOL DISTRICT MAKE TIMELY PAYMENTS TO TRS, TEXAS WORKFORCE COMMISSION, AND THE IRS,
as well as other governmental agencies, especially in respect to payroll withholdings and contributions,
to make sure that we fulfill any payroll-related obligations required to be paid by the district.
And yes, we did.
Indicator 5 is no longer scored per TEA.
Was the total unrestricted net asset balance in the statement of net position or assets greater than zero?
Although it's not scored anymore, we use the rules as of the last time it was scored, which was two years ago, just to make sure that we're in keeping with where we were at.
And, yes, the district does comply.
Now I'm going to pass it back to Mr. Smith.
All right.
Indicator six.
Was the average change in fund balance over three years less than a 25% decrease?
We didn't have a 25% decrease.
we had a 7% increase over those three years so the answer is yes. Were the
number of days of cash on hand and current investments in the general fund
for school districts sufficient to cover operating expenditures? KDISD had the
answer is yes and KDISD had 134.9 days or 135 days of cash on hand at the end
of the 21-22 fiscal year, and that's the same as the prior year, or 134.4 days.
So this year it was 134.9 days.
Does the district have a sufficient current assets to current liabilities ratio?
And the answer is yes.
We received the full 10 points.
This is one where you get the point structure, and we received the full points on that based
on our ratio score.
Indicator 9, did the district's general fund revenues equal or exceed
expenditures? If not, was the school district's number of days of cash on
hand greater than 60? Well we've already talked that we have 138 days cash on
hand, so did our revenue exceed our expenditures? And since we added to fund
balance, yes. We passed both of those on that on this indicator 9, yes and yes.
Yes.
Indicator 10, this is not being scored to TEA because of the pandemic.
Coming out of the pandemic, they decided last year not to score this
because, folks, budgets changed so much over that time.
And indicator 10 was, did the district average less than 10% variance
when comparing budgeted revenues to actual revenues
over the last three fiscal years?
Had they scored it, we would have received a yes.
We had a 2% 2.2% variance on on that average over the last three years.
And so that's the that's the budget that is adopted based on how it ended.
And ours was a 2% on average.
So we were well within that 10% variance.
And I'm going to pass it back over to Mr.
Hines to break this up a little bit.
OK, indicator 11, the district would not receive all points for this indicator outright.
RIGHT. HOWEVER, IT RECOGNIZES THAT WE'RE A HIGH GROWTH DISTRICT. SO THE QUESTION OF WAS THE
RATIO OF LONG-TERM LIABILITIES TO TOTAL ASSETS FOR THE SCHOOL DISTRICT SUFFICIENT TO SUPPORT
LONG-TERM SOLVENCY? BECAUSE WE'RE A FAST GROWTH DISTRICT WITH GREATER THAN 10% GROWTH IN THE LAST
FIVE YEARS, THE ANSWER IS YES. INDICATOR 12, IS THE DISTRICT'S ASSESS PROPERTY VALUE RATIO
SUFFICIENT TO SUPPORT THE SCHEDULED DEBT PAYMENTS? THIS INDICATOR ASKS ABOUT THE SCHOOL DISTRICT
ABILITY TO MAKE OUR DEBT PAYMENTS.
AND THE DISTRICT RECEIVED EIGHT OUT OF TEN POSSIBLE POINTS FOR THIS ONE.
WE'LL SHOW YOU THE TOTAL SCORE HERE IN JUST A MOMENT SO YOU'LL UNDERSTAND THIS IS THE
ONLY NEGATIVE THAT WE HAD.
AND IT'S NOT A NEGATIVE BECAUSE WE ARE A FAST GROWTH DISTRICT.
IT'S JUST THAT FOR THIS INDICATOR, THEY HAVE NOT YET MADE AN ALLOWANCE FOR STUDENT GROWTH.
AND THAT IS SOMETHING THAT WE CAN TEST, ACTUALLY.
INDICATOR 13.
THIS INDICATOR MEASURES THE PERCENTAGE OF THE BUDGET THAT THE TEXAS SCHOOL DISTRICTS
SPEND ON ADMINISTRATION.
AND I WANT TO SLOW DOWN ON THIS ONE.
THE ACTUAL RANGE THAT YOU CAN GO TO TO STILL RECEIVE THE FULL 10 POINTS, AND THIS IS ONE
THAT IS ON A SLIDING SCALE, BUT THE 10 FULL POINTS JUST HAS TO BE LESS THAN .0855.
KDISD is at 0.0353 with one of, if not the most, lowest administrative cost ratio in the state.
The answer is yes.
Indicator 14, did the school district not have a 15% decline in the students-to-staff ratio over three years?
This is one of those strangely worded ones so that they can get a yes answer.
But if the school district had a decline in students over three years, this indicator
asks if the district decreased the number of the staff.
Well, since we did not decrease in students, we did not decrease in staff, and so the answer
is yes.
Finally, indicator 15 was the district's ADA within the allotted range plus or minus
7% of the district's biennial pupil projections submitted to TEA.
This indicator measures how well the district is able to project our average daily attendance for the coming biennium for payment purposes.
Our projected ADA is compared to the actual, and even with the effects of weather and the pandemic-related events, the district passed this indicator and only had a 1.1% variance.
I'll pass it back to Mr. Smith.
So on that 1.1% variance that Mr. Hines just mentioned on that last indicator,
in December of every other year, of an even year,
we're required to make those projections for the next two years.
So in December of 2022, we made the projection for, well, let me back up and say December of 2020,
we made the projection for the 21-22 school year and the 22-23 school year,
And they're saying that we had to be within 7% on our estimate of our average daily attendance.
And in a fast-growth school district, it's really hard.
But again, as Mr. Hines mentioned, we were within 1%.
So we were quite within the range.
It's all luck, to be honest with you.
Educated guess, I guess, but a lot of luck involved in that,
especially in the reason they did not score that.
that TEA decided not to score that is because we made that estimate in December of 2020
in the height and the peak of the pandemic.
And so they didn't do it.
We lucked into the 1% or educated guests our way to the 1%.
Indicator 16 did the comparison of PEMS data to like information in the annual financial
report have a variance of 3% or less.
less. But this is, we submitted $888 million of expenses and was that within 3% of what was on our act for our annual financial report. We were
0.0000002.
So we were well within, we were $827 off out of $888 million,
and that's because of rounding.
Okay, indicator 16, oh, I just did that one.
Was the annual financial report free of any material weaknesses or internal controls?
And I'm glad to say yes, we did not have any reported material weaknesses or issues with our internal controls.
Was the annual financial report free?
Golly.
Lee. Did the district post required financial information into compliance with, to be in
compliance with government code, Texas education code, Texas administrative code, and other stat,
statutes, laws, and rules on its website? And yes, we complied with all those codes
on our transparency website, and also just basically within the entirety of KDISD website.
website.
And the final indicator, did the school board discuss the district's property value at board
meeting before the budget was adopted?
And you all hear ad nauseum discussions about what our property values are doing.
So that answer is yes.
So what's KDISD's ranking?
We passed all the first five critical indicators.
We received 98 out of 100 points.
And therefore, we had a rating of superior.
That's the highest rating that we could get.
and I'm glad to say that this is the 21st superior rating that we've had. So regardless of what is
out there on the streets, if you look at the financial transparency website and you pay in,
anybody pays attention to that or these types of presentations, according to our auditors and
according to the Texas Education Agency, we are have a superior financial rating and I'm very
very proud of that and appreciate Dr. Gregorski and the board's assistance on that.
You have in your possession a book that looks like this, and in this book it has a copy of
this presentation. It has the actual from TEA, those ratings that Mr. Hines and I just went
through uh all 20 of them are there as well as the previous year's ratings uh is also in your book
uh we have the required disclosures that are required to be in this books this book and that's
any reimbursement that's that's done uh provided to a board member or the superintendent uh during
the fiscal year of 21 22 that's outlined in the book outside compensation or fees received by the
superintendent there were none that is also documented in this book any gifts that is
received by the board that are reported or the superintendent that are received
are none in their report and any business transactions with the superintendent or with
any board member or their business and the answer is there were none so you have a copy of this
and be glad to answer any questions that you may have on our rating this year.
Thank you. Questions?
Mr. Perez?
Champagne?
What I would like to say is congratulations.
21 years of having the highest rating is really a huge accomplishment,
And I appreciate the work that Mr. Hines, Mr. Chris, and the rest of the financial team does.
And, you know, I know this is a little bit of tooting your own horn, but you're required to do it too.
So I'm glad that you're getting the opportunity to do it.
And I also wanted to thank you for this beautiful book that I'm going to be reading tonight to cure my insomnia.
I really appreciate that.
Thank you.
Yeah, and I want to thank you for that, Ms. Champagne, and again, I'll just remind the community and the board that when this started, we had less than 40,000 students.
We're at almost 95,000 students right now, so we've gone over those last 20 years with tremendous growth, and many of these indicators, the growth strains those indicators,
And to be able to pull that off for 21 years, I think, says a lot about fiscal management that we were able to do that along with all that growth.
A lot of school districts don't grow at all.
And may I add, may I also add, you know, COVID, which I know affected everybody, and Harvey, you know, and just the various things, the freeze, that we still, y'all still did that.
So, thank you.
Mr. Perez, may I ask a question?
Mr. Eamon?
Okay, thank you as well for your presentation.
I enjoyed learning about this.
Just hearing you explain it from reading it in our documents.
But can you give me a little more, can you give me more details or give us more details on Indicator 11 and 12 where we referenced the fast growth district?
Can you just give, I think that would be good to educate me and the public on that.
Indicators 11 and 12.
There's a better way to get there than I'm doing and I'm sorry that I'm taking for a while.
All right. Was the ratio of long-term liabilities to long-term assets for the school district sufficient to support long-term solvency? And the answer is yes. And according to Indicator 11, we had a revenue in our debt service fund was $181 million.
million dollars. The total revenues in that debt service fund were 182 million, so taxes were 181.
Total was 182.3. Our long-term liabilities were 2.3 billion dollars, and our district's current
year assessed property value for that year, the 21 tax year, was 47.2 billion dollars. So that
came up with a ratio of 4.82, and it would have taken five to get over eight. So we just missed
that I did a search of many districts around here not around here all over the
state and I think most everybody missed did not get the full ten points most
everybody that I looked at I'm sure people did but most people didn't
especially fast growth districts as mr. Hines mentioned when you're fast growth
and you're when you have has to issue bonds to keep up with that growth it
does strain that on that one and the other one was 12 yes sir I just went
went over 12. I'm sorry. Why didn't you punch me in the back? That was 12. All right. Let me back
up and do 11. I'm sorry. 11 was our long-term liabilities of $2.3 billion. Our district's
total assets were $3.2 billion. That ratio was 0.72. Our district's membership grew from
from 77,000 in 2018 to over 88,000 in 2022.
And that was 14% change in growth in students.
And so because of that,
we were able to get the full 10 points.
Again, it recognizes the fact that when you're fast growth,
it's gonna strain some of these indicators.
And I think the fast growth limit on that was just 5%.
and we were well over 10%, 14%.
Okay.
Yes, thank you.
Mr. President, could I ask a quick question?
Ms. Cuzela.
Thank you so much for the report.
Is this an audit done by TEA physically, or is there another audit?
No, our outside audit firm, Whitley Penn, who you'll see in January, does the audit,
and then we submit that data in January.
We're required by the end of January of the 28th to have it submitted to TEA,
both in hard copy through the actual upload of the actual ACFER document as
well as PEMS. The mid-year submission in PEMS requires us to submit all of this
data electronically. That's what they compared to to make sure because you're
submitting it electronically and because there's so many numbers going up they
want it to be accurate and we were extremely accurate in that because what
they don't want is for you to be inaccurate because that's where TEA will
We'll pull all of their comparison data, and they've got areas on their website that
compares, that shows, that outlines all of this financial information for districts,
and you can compare it.
And what you want is it to be accurate, so you're not comparing apples and oranges.
You want to be comparing apples to apples.
And so PEIM sets that standard, and we have to meet that standard, and obviously we did.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, and congratulations, by the way.
It looks like all these ratios you really exceed by far.
You really are way above.
Is there anyone that's like maybe problematic
or that you get most concerned about every year as far as meeting or making?
No, number 12 because we didn't get the full points, but everything else on there.
You know, we hold our breath all the time because we're perfectionists
when it comes to doing things like the estimates, budgeting appropriately and everything.
and believe me when we're putting a budget together we don't want to sand
back because we don't want to get kids on this indicator and it would be you
know that's that's so it won't so districts won't stand back and on the
one for example if you under your seven percent on your enrollment projections
or your average daily attendance projections what they don't want is for
you to go okay we're gonna have ninety seven thousand average daily attendance
and it only be eighty eight thousand well that means they're gonna overpay us
by 30 million dollars over the course of the year and they don't want to give us
an interest-free loan over that and so there are there were districts out
there documenting that they're they're gonna oh we're gonna have more kids than
then then we really think we're gonna have just to get overpaid and then it
goes on the flip side if we underestimate that then they're not
gonna send us enough cash since we are relying on cash from Austin and we don't
we're not a Robin Hood district we also make need to make sure we receive enough
enough cash to make our payrolls and pay our bills.
And obviously, we just want to be as perfect as we can.
And I think 1% is pretty good.
But again, like I said earlier, it's a lot of luck in that.
You know, the most impressive, I think, is being able to project revenues within 2%,
like with all the moving parts.
Yes, sir.
It's pretty amazing.
Yes, sir.
Anybody have anything else?
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
Thank you, Mr. Smith and Mr. Hines, for doing that.
I echo what everybody else has said.
You know, it's, we see this year after year after year, like you said.
I wonder if we could have a graph or a chart or fireworks or stars or something at the end that says 21 times.
21 times we're the best.
21 times we get the highest rating.
Or one time we were 97, one time we were 98, 98, 98, 97,
those have been the numbers since I've sat at this table.
Like you said, 40,000 students to 95,000 students.
The accomplishment of this is so misunderstood,
but like the fireworks that needs to happen,
that what happens by your department
and by the financial management of the district throughout with the superintendents and bill moore's and the chris smith's of the world.
It's just not.
Understood to the level of the excellency that happens and so I would I'm requesting if it's possible. I'm not allowed to give you direction, but.
but Dr. Gorgorski, if we could have a slide
or something that just shows,
over time we see like a graph that does that.
Well, of course it wouldn't be that
because it would be like, here's the top and this is us.
I don't know what that looks like,
but I think that visual might be something
that our community could understand
more than answering yes to a not question.
Those are confusing, right?
So yes, yes, yes, but Mrs. Timmies,
these are hard to understand questions.
So I think something the community could.
Ms. Fox, I appreciate those comments and will say that I think said differently because I thought about those 21 times now.
I think it's taken for granted that we're going to score well.
And if a district doesn't, a lot of districts score well.
I would say the majority of districts score well.
This is a rail to keep you on so you don't get off track because you don't want to get off track.
And I think if we get off track it causes a lot of problems throughout the system and that hurts kids
And that's what we don't want to do and so it's good that we take it for granted because that means it's good that we're
Protecting hopefully the finances so we can do the right things for kids and this district's done that for a long long long long time
But not I don't think taken for granted
We take it for granted because we understand it
But I think the community sees schools or sees a bond election or sees a request for more money for teachers and think you all have too much money anyway. You're wasting it. That's not true. This proves that the financial planning and predictions and constant management, fiscally conservative management of this district is so solid and so planned for and executed so that it's as perfect as it is.
it can be is misunderstood by the community we take it for granted i don't know that it's
understood in a way but i don't know how you make this understandable right it's
it's graduate level stuff thank you anybody else
thank you so much
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN BRYANT LIMA.
The next item is we had on the agenda to receive public input regarding this report, but no
one signed up to give public input on this report.
So the next item of business is 9.1, which is House Bill 3, HB 3, five-year goals and
9.1 House Bill 3 (HB 3) 5-year goals and targets for the district, elementary campuses and high school campuses report.
targets for the district, elementary campuses and high school campuses report.
report and our presenter is Natalie Martinez executive director of school improvement thank you
good evening president Perez school board members dr. Gorski tonight I will share with you an update
on House bill 3 board adopted goals that relate to literacy mathematics and CCM are
Just a little history to bring everybody up to date.
In 2015, Texas set a goal that by 2030, 60% of our Texans age 25 to 34 would have a certificate or a degree.
This is known as 60 by 30.
It was then recommended that two checkpoints be established in the PK through 12 system.
Two checkpoints landed in third grade and with our annual grads.
The state mandated that districts establish a goal in elementary centered around literacy and mathematics.
The measure would be using third grade star at meets and masters.
The state also mandated that districts establish a goal in high school centered around college career readiness for annual grads.
In a bit, we will go over these two pieces just to make sure everyone is up to date on what that language actually means.
The KDISD School Board adopted our House Bill 3 goals on July 27th of 2020.
Plans were created for elementary and high schools and a House Bill 3 performance objective
is included in each campus performance plan at these levels.
Aggregated data as well as student group data were reviewed to adjust goals and targets
and tonight serves as our annual review in a public meeting.
meeting. Our CIPs and DIPs are approved. Well, they will be approved tonight. And once they
are approved, they will be posted on the website. In addition to our annual public meeting,
school board members will also receive an update two times a year. And so before we
get to the actual goals, I want to go over the performance levels with you for STAR.
For STAR, there are four performance levels shown here on the left. To calculate accountability,
ability. TEA uses approaches meets and masters as meeting the standard. For House Bill 3, however,
TEA only uses meets and masters. Notice that an entire group of children who typically count it
as a positive are not counted in the same way for House Bill 3. So the numbers will look very
different than what you are used to seeing. To give you perspective, the House Bill 3 goal is
60% of students will earn meets or higher on the third grade meeting reading and math
statewide to give you perspective 50% of the students have met that standard and
77% which are the numbers that you're used to seeing have met that approaches and above in reading
There are nine indicators and under CCMR for Katy ISD
D. Students are encouraged to meet the indicator that makes sense for their personal goals. There
is no competition between these indicators. Now behind each indicator, there are additional rules,
but this gives you perspective on the variety of ways that students can meet this goal.
House Bill 3, again, has a goal of 60%. Statewide, 65% earned those indicators,
and this was from 2022, since 2023 accountability has not been released yet.
So today we'll review goals and targets.
Goals are the aggregate data and targets are by student groups.
Our five-year goal for reading states the percent of KDISD students who achieve meets
and above on third grade reading star will increase from 59% in 2019 to 68% by July of
2024.
To build perspective, I just want you to remember that the house bill goal is 60% of students
students. State performance showed 50% of students and our KDISD data showed that we
had 65% of students meeting the standard in 2023. While we did not hit our internal KD
goal of 67, our reading scores have surpassed our pre-COVID results and continue to be higher
than the state and higher than the HB3 expectation. The green chart represents multiple student
student groups the state submits the targets to the federal government for approval notice the top
green line the top light green line the federal targets are different for every student group
initially the state submitted the same Target for each student group but the feds denied that
request citing that it was inequitable as you can imagine not all student groups started out at the
the same performance level, so some student groups in that situation had to increase over
30 points, where some student groups were already there.
Because of this, the state considered baseline data for each student group and determined
more attainable goals.
KDISD exceeds the federal targets each year and continues to strive for more.
In 2023, oops, sorry, 2023, there we go, was a unique year, so I want to give you perspective on that as well.
The 2023 identified student groups were special ed and economically disadvantaged.
We are still above the federal targets but did not meet the internal KDISD targets.
targets. The other side of that story is that 2023 was the first year for STAR 2.0, which included
the new interactive item types and was given mostly online. There is much debate about comparing 2022
to 2023 results, but I want to be very transparent with our data and show you both sides of that
story. For 2024, the identified groups are Asian and Special Ed. These two will be monitored with
with all data points to ensure they continue to stay above the federal standard.
Our five-year goal for math says the percent of KDISD students who achieve meets and above
on third grade math star will increase from 60% in 2019 to 67% in 2024.
To build perspective again, remember the House Bill 3 goal is 60%.
State performance was at 43%, and here are our numbers for KDISD showing 56% in 2023.
While we did not hit our internal target, our internal KD goal of 65%, we are still above the state and continue to strive to reach that House Bill 3 goal.
Our 2024 goal will remain the same at 67%.
Math is very different than reading in that the content is stacked and has prerequisite skills for students to be successful.
This disruption during COVID affected students nationwide, and we definitely see that as well when we look at our numbers.
The green chart again represents multiple student groups.
The top line shows the federal targets, similar to the chart before.
For 2023, our identified groups were Asian and economically disadvantaged.
While we did not meet those internal KD targets, we are still above the federal targets.
This year, the identified groups will continue to be Asian and economically disadvantaged.
Again, that red line indicates the difference in assessment from 2022 to 2023.
Reading and math remained relatively consistent from 2022 to 2023,
three and we contribute that success to our teachers who maintain quality instruction
and individualized instruction and also prepared our students for the more rigorous online format
moving on to ccmr our goal states that kdsd annual grads who earn ccmr credit will increase from 74
percent in 2019 to 81 percent by 2024. Again, for perspective, House Bill 3 goal is 60 percent.
Statewide was at 76 percent, and KDISD was at 77 percent. While we didn't hit our internal goal of
79 percent, we are still above House Bill 3 goal and the state outcome, and we will keep our 2024
goal at 81 percent. Green chart is very similar to what we've described before, so you'll then
then you'll see again what our 2023 targets were
and what our 2024 targets will be for this coming school year.
For CCMR, we did see an increase in the number of IBCs,
or industry-based certifications,
and we also saw an increase in participation on AP exams.
At this time, I'll take any questions.
Mr. President.
Ms. Teamee.
Who decides the targets for CCMR and the third grade literacy and math?
The targets on the bottom in the green?
We do.
There's some programming behind that.
But basically when you, are you saying decide the targets or decide the student groups?
Student groups.
Okay.
The student groups we look at three different ways.
Our first choice is any student group that is below the federal target.
We aim there first.
the student groups that are the lowest are always going to be our first choice
because we got to break those kids up and I talk with my hand so if you just
watch me if this is the federal target once we choose the bottom let's say a
school doesn't have any on the bottom then we're gonna choose this section
right here is between zero and nine because they're still close to that
target we want to make sure that we're still safe once everybody is above like
ten or higher then we just look at the percent of students who are meeting that
standard and we take the lowest percentage in order to close that
achievement gap for the kids at the top. It's in three parts but it's all
programmed. Mr. President? Ms. Champagne? Thank you for your presentation. I know
there's many of the, much of this we can't do anything about like those
student group populations and how there's different expectations of them
and I know I say this every year I know you can't do anything about it I don't
understand it the first time I learned about that actually was dr. black I'm
gonna call him out I was at a cat meeting it and for J to them and he's
one he showed me the chart I'm like what there's different expectations for
different groups and I just don't like that but whatever and but on to what we
we maybe can control is when I look at these results from the percentage of the students
at particular elementary schools that are at the meets and above and you know what the
goal is for that particular school and then where they are and so many of them well I
shouldn't say this many of them are very good but there's a few of them that seem like it's
It's a huge, you know, 20-point spread, you know, between now and the end of 2024.
So I am just curious, could you just tell us in general what is being done at those particular schools where they're, you know, supposed to be at 60%, but they're at 40% right now?
You know, what?
Because that just seems like a big mountain to climb.
Okay.
So a couple things.
things, those, the goals were decided back in 2020, which makes things really difficult.
We also did not have the authority to change those goals regardless of what happened. The
only time we changed it is if a campus met that, then we could go ahead and increase
it. So sometimes you will see that bigger gap. I will say campuses have multiple accountability
systems that they're held accountable for. They have the federal system, the state system,
system, results driven accountability system, and a House Bill 3 system.
So they are juggling a lot.
When it becomes the student groups, I'll tell you that every time we run our campus CBA
data or district data, those demographics are published as well.
So we know exactly how to track those students.
We rely a lot on our individualized instruction during small group to ensure students are
being pulled.
But at the teacher level, they are pulling by student need, not by student population.
Right?
So it's really on the side of looking at the data to ensure that that data is moving the
way we expected it to.
But at the teacher level, we still expect them to pull by student need.
Okay.
So I really appreciate hearing that because it's kind of scary to see a goal that says
these certain kids should perform better than these other certain kids.
Because, you know, we all want all kids to have the ability to go all the way.
And so I don't want, I don't like that limitation written on the piece of paper.
And I'm sure most teachers do not like that limitation either.
So I appreciate you saying that.
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
Thank you for your presentation.
I always learn a lot from you.
Can you help us understand who sets the TEA requirements and who sets the HB3?
Because HB3 leaves out a whole category of TEA.
Talk to us about how that happens.
Unfortunately, TEA is involved in all of them.
And federal is different than state, which is different than House Bill 3, which is different than RDA.
So it is a juggling act when we look at all of these accountability systems.
But I'll say that we help our campuses prioritize.
When you look at those systems, the federal, the state, and the results-driven all have
sanctions attached to them.
We watch them very closely.
HB3 is an in-house piece.
We don't report our data out to the state.
So while we watch it, it just depends on where the schools are, right?
If the schools are rocking it with the federal system, they're rocking it with the state
system, they're rocking it with our results-driven accountability system, then we come back to
this one.
So there's multiple ways that we track data and they are all important because they slice the data in different ways.
And so we do have to look at all of them and balance it, but sometimes one would have more priority than the other.
But yes, TA is involved in all of those.
May I follow up?
Please.
So help me if I make sure I'm understanding this correctly.
Your team knows every student, every classroom, every teacher, every campus on where needs are.
And when you see needs, like maybe what Mrs. Champagne described as maybe a gap, more than what we saw here, what do you do?
Do you send a team to help?
How do you help?
I know you help because we see the improvements.
So we do have schools that we work with pretty closely, and we work with our assistant superintendents pretty closely.
There are teams that go out that consist of people on my team, CNI, and assistant supers.
We go out collectively to work with schools on a regular basis, either campus walks with debriefs and briefs or on Zooms.
When we meet with the campuses, it's not just the principal, but it's the administrators.
It's in class, I'm sorry, the ICs and the instructional coordinators as well.
Some also bring their counselors in.
So it is a really nice group effort to talk about the data, to talk about their plans.
We really dive into the adult behavior behind all of these numbers to really figure out
what we can do to give different professional learning or different monitoring or different
support to really lift up what's happening in the classroom.
room what observation and correct me if i'm wrong on this if you disagree with my observation
it seems like in looking at some of the data behind this that the schools that are
say on you know grade lower if you will generally compared to the say schools that are grading
higher and I know I'm using the term grading loosely that the within that
within those schools the subgroup there's a greater disparity in the
subgroups in the it's called lower performing if I can say that and then
when you get to the higher performing schools there's less of a disparity
between the subgroups notice in other words all the subgroups perform better
better, but in lower performing schools there's a greater disparity.
Would you agree with that, just generally?
I know it's not perfect, but...
Generally, I could say yes.
And so it tends to be an issue of the school and the location and a lot of factors that
go into it.
And so obviously that some places we require greater resources, a different mindset if you will, about how to attack and how to bring everybody up in those schools with the lower scores.
I would agree to that, yes.
And that's what we do?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes, so if you look at this, if you, I think next month we will be presenting to you pieces of our support system.
And when you look at the schools that we work with, yes, definitely require a different level of support.
Do you have SWAT teams? Do you have SWAT teams you send out?
No.
But those schools work really hard at just making sure that everything is in line.
And so the systems at the schools we work with are spot on and it just takes a lot of effort to raise the kids up.
That's good to hear.
I mean, it's good to hear that you're devoting that.
Mr. Perez, may I please add something to what you were saying?
So I've visited a lot of schools over the last nearly six years and there was one school I taught JA at several times that year.
and I mean I just really I didn't really understand this that much until I got on
the board and had the privilege of getting to go visit some of these
schools and I'll just say from what I witnessed those teachers are and the
administrators are the hardest working people I've ever seen I'm looking at
mr. Smith no but honestly there's so many hard-working people that just love
children and are really and I and I know that you know this also mr. Perez I'm
not trying to say that you don't but I just wanted to personally say that I've
witnessed it and I love I love seeing and I know it's a challenge and I you
know you know everyone wants to know how to figure that out you know and I know
that we're all trying to do our part at that so I just appreciate all the hard
hard work honestly from these teachers.
All schools have different challenges,
just like our kids do.
And so we do try to just individualize for our campuses
the way that we expect them to do for our children.
They all have challenges, and all of our teachers
and administrators are working nonstop.
Yeah, super hard.
I had a question on the categories.
And last week we had a report, or I guess
it was we're going to approve it this week, about the emerging
bilingual so so it's are the bilingual students are they broken down by their
by their subgroups or are they belong they're under the left category and I
might need help on that category my friends yes they're they're under the
left category got it okay all right thanks mr. president mr. Redmond miss
Martinez did I catch you're gonna come back next month and share like kind of
of pull back the curtain so that everybody gets a chance to see what what happens when you process
through these numbers yes sir i think that'll kind of be like what miss fox is talking about
on the finance side we get to see that and work with you and know that if we really were to really
dial down on a number you're probably going to be 99 accurate your entire team will be
but i'm excited to see that next month so we can all understand that when that number hits there
when y'all go do it what happens and that y'all are on top of those things so thank you for
for reminding me about that.
I'll put that in my notes.
Thank you.
Anything else?
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Our next item, 9.2, is the Strategic Design 1.3
9.2 Strategic Design 1.3 Elementary Literacy Update
Elementary Literacy Update.
And our presenter is Dr. Sine Bell,
Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning.
Welcome.
Good evening President Perez, Board Members, Dr. Grgorski. I'm here for this month's literacy update.
I'm going to kind of share some of the highlights that we've had going on the past couple weeks,
and then also kind of highlight how spelling instruction is delivered in KDISD.
I'd like to start with this so that we can stay focused on the areas that we're focusing on for the quarter.
We are in quarter two and we're focusing on the delivery of instruction during the structured literacy block.
For primary grades, which are grades K through 2, we're focusing on the explicit and systematic approach to teaching foundational skills with an emphasis on accuracy and student practice in and out of context.
In grades three through five, we are focusing on how often students are reentering the text
to answer intentionally sequenced, rigorous questions.
Moving the learning from the Texas Reading Academies to actual practice in our classrooms
is a primary goal of the literacy implementation.
To help us with this lift, we've partnered with Texas Reads, which is an organization
dedicated to improving student reading outcomes by helping administrators,
instructional coaches, and teachers overcome the challenge of implementing
structured literacy. Their goal is to increase the number of children reading
on grade level by aligning instruction with the science of reading. The pictures
on this slide are from the first session that we had with Texas Reads about a
month ago with our instructional coaches. In these pictures you'll see IC's
practicing how to use a sound wall to teach students you also see a Texas
Reeds consultant modeling how to use sound boxes to demonstrate the process
students would use to encode or spell words the phonemes spell the words into
the phonemes into words and another consultant is modeling the unvoiced
phoneme wh and how that articulation of that sound should be modeled for
students during each session Texas reads utilizes the HMH resources to deliver
the training to ICS these sessions were designed to support our instructional
coaches as they work with teachers to ensure we are using the most effective
methods for teaching children how to read this slide is an example of
spelling teaks from TEA I believe these are first-grade teaks for this
particular slide it's important to note that encoding which is spelling and decoding which
is reading are reciprocal skills decoding is internalized when tactile and kinesthetic
opportunities are provided in the next four slides i will highlight these spelling teaks in action
for spelling instruction to be effective students need to be reading
writing examining and talking about words from a variety of perspectives
In the classroom, teachers lead students through various spelling activities.
Students develop word structure knowledge through phonological awareness, print concepts, phonics, and morphology.
To instruct students in spelling, teachers support students by working with phonemes and graphemes that represent certain sounds.
Teachers use spelling patterns to help students encode words.
words.
In the first picture, the student is practicing using Elkonin boxes, which is also known as
sound boxes, to build phonological awareness skills by segmenting words into individual
sounds or phonemes.
This student is isolating phonemes within her name, Shelby.
In picture two, the teacher is working with a small group on the graphemes K and CK and
and the rules for using each of these in spelling.
This is an example of how teachers use anchor charts to assist students in learning.
The students are using letter tiles, which is an example of how students use manipulatives in spelling.
HMH identifies a variety of spelling practices in structured literacy.
Students manipulate graphings in activities such as word building, word chaining,
and multi sensory practice activities teachers also use dictation whole and
small group practice games and activities to engage students in spelling
instruction teachers have a variety of spelling resources such as graphing
letter cards word building routines word chain routines and smart board slides to
use for spelling instruction and practice the first picture is of a
student using an anchor chart to remember the floss spelling rule which
which reminds students to double certain consonants at the end of words with one syllable and
a short vowel sound.
The second picture is of a student building words with magnetic letters, which highlight
vowels and consonants to practice spelling identified in high frequency words.
In the next step, the student practices spelling the words on the dry erase board provided.
it. Sound walls, which are in grades K through 3, are organized by sounds. Students learn how to make
the sound orally and how to spell the sound using the sound wall as a resource.
Morphology walls in grades 3 through 5 teach students that words are built by combining
meaningful word parts. They learn common prefixes, suffixes, roots, and base words.
The picture on the top left is an example of a sound wall from a first grade classroom.
students use sound walls to learn about the 44 phonemes of the English language
and identify the graphemes that represent each phoneme.
The bottom left picture is an example of a morphology wall in fourth grade.
Teachers use morphology walls to introduce the small meaning units of language to students,
which includes roots, prefixes, and suffixes.
Knowing morphology is useful for explaining phonics patterns and spelling rules,
as well as discovering the meaning of unfamiliar words and demonstrating how words are linked together in
The final picture the student is using a sound wall to assist him in spelling words that he would likely use in his personal writing
The assessment of student spelling is done within the context of students writing where teachers can observe the students
application of the skills and patterns taught
This approach helps students understand how words fit into written communication and reinforces the importance of proper spelling in writing.
In the first picture, you'll see a student applying his knowledge of spelling to write a response to what he has read.
And in the second picture, you'll see that a student is using spelling patterns in daily writing to practice composing drafts.
I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have at this time.
Thank you very much.
Any comments or questions?
Questions especially.
Mr. President, I have a question.
Ms. Cuzela?
So about spelling assessment, that last slide, are they actually assessed ever?
Where are they being assessed in this example?
So when teachers read their writing, they assess their writing for spelling,
depending on what spelling patterns they're speaking of or they've taught.
So when you read a student's piece of writing,
they're looking to ensure that they're spelling those words correctly,
that they are able to apply the spelling rules into their writing.
Is that graded?
Yes.
So a graded assessment of spelling in their writing that they've used.
So it's probably one of the things that's assessed,
along with the content of what they're writing.
Okay.
Okay. So like on the root, I'm sorry. Is that the only way spelling is assessed, graded?
Just in their personal writing? So many of the activities that I mentioned,
teachers work with students in small group instruction, whole group instruction.
If you're asking if it's a spelling test that's in a grade book, a spelling test over these words,
there are many ways that students are assessed on their spelling. But the spelling test,
test weekly spelling test I think that maybe you may be referencing there are many ways that
students would be assessed teachers have the option of using some of the spelling activities
that they work with students on but an assessment doesn't always mean tests sure can I have a follow
up I'm so sorry to what you're saying so what I what I hear you saying is there isn't a spelling
test but there is like on a writing assignment spelling would be part of that rubric grade
Yes, teachers are assessing spelling in a writing assignment.
So it's a small, it's assessed, but it's assessed on a very small scale.
It's not assessed as a full-fledged spelling test.
However, I will say teachers give a lot of different activities to students.
So they could give a whole group dictation of words and have students write on their whiteboards and they hold them up.
And teachers can quickly see that they are assessing whether students are understanding or applying the rules.
they can also pull them in their small group so they're also assessing there so it's assessed
in different ways but ultimately you want to see students practicing their skills in the writing
and i did i know missini at the last meeting you were interested in what dr woodruff had to say
about spelling and so she's not here obviously but i did have her submit to me um her thoughts
about spelling and in terms of how it's taught and if you would like i can read that yeah sure thank
Thank you.
There is no research that supports what we think of as traditional spelling instruction and assessment,
giving students a list of 20 to 25 words, often somewhat randomly chosen to memorize by copying over and over, and then taking a test on Friday.
Instead, what research does support is using both print to speech and
speech to print instructional methods for explicitly teaching English's spelling system,
system, phonological system, and morphology system.
Print to speech means explicitly teaching and having students practice looking at print
and mapping sounds onto print to read words.
Speech to print means explicitly teaching and having students practice hearing spoken
words and mapping print onto sounds to spell words.
As for spelling assessment, we can give spelling screening inventories three to four times
a year to gauge student mastery of these different spelling patterns.
We can use that data to differentiate instruction and intervention in teacher-led small groups.
We can administer occasional informal assessments to gauge student progress in applying spelling patterns that we've taught.
And we can use students' writing to assess their ability to generalize the application of these spelling patterns to authentic writing tasks.
So oftentimes people would think spelling is a technical skill, and it's not.
It's the understanding words and patterns, understanding the morphology behind words.
So if you've ever watched the script spelling bee, those students don't memorize the list
of all the words.
There's no way you could memorize all the words that they would be asking a script spelling
bee.
But what they do know, if you notice they ask, can I have it, the root word, the word
of origin, they know word study, they know graphemes, phonemes.
They know all of those pieces to understanding the patterns of words, which is how students begin, that's how they learn to spell.
And they can spell more words that way because you're not going to know how to spell every single word.
But if you know the English language and if you know graphemes and phonemes and the rules and morphology, then you're going to be a stronger speller.
I agree with you and I liked seeing in the slides the the
Spelling rules and the teachers are really the HMH curriculum. I guess is giving them the the rules and the
Lessons to do that so I love that and that that I didn't have that that's awesome
But what I'm wondering is do we have anything in place for like what dr. Woodruff?
Suggested like the quarterly checking on this well
I just I'm just thinking of it from a pair my children are grown and in college or graduated
But as a parent, I think I would want my child to still know how to spell quite proficiently
I know we have you know spell check, but I mean, I don't I don't use spell check and
Regularly, so do we have something like that in place to?
Help those parents that maybe are concerned about the spelling that we could put in is that an easy ask or
or do we already have that?
So what I will tell you is that the structured literacy
resource that our teachers are using,
it lays all these pieces out for them
in terms of how to teach spelling
and the different lessons.
The spelling inventories, we do have them
as part of our HMH curriculum.
Dr. Woodruff was here about two Fridays ago working
with our instructional coaches, and we spent a lot of time,
of course, talking about spelling instruction,
the foundational skills.
skills. You can't talk about reading without talking about spelling. And so in our resource,
we do have spelling inventories and teachers are free to use those. However, we are not
where we need to be in terms of let's roll those out because it's not a traditional children
pull out a piece of paper and spell these words. There's a lot of training that goes
into really how to use those spelling inventories to inform instruction. So that's kind of like
a next layer what students are receiving the teaks are being taught students are demonstrating
mastery of those teaks and teachers are pulling small groups for those students who are not
you know showing progress but we will be getting into some of the spelling inventories after we do
some extensive training on how to utilize that dr wardruff will help us with that work it's not as
simple as just providing that there's a lot of data interpretation and you need
to know what to do with that spelling inventory in terms of assigning or set
giving it is easier than it is for teachers to know what to do with that
data when they receive it so we're not at that particular point yet but what we
have in our classrooms is solid instruction and our students can receive
any supports that they need in small group from their teacher so I appreciate
that because our teachers I think have done a lot to implement this new
curriculum so I I definitely want to come applaud them for that and thank
them for that but also when do you see and understand maybe we can't do that
piece today but when do you see maybe in the future that we could so in speaking
with dr. Wardruff and she will probably be the one that will come to do that
training for us you know the main thing is that the resource has what we need to
to meet the TEKS and to meet our students where they are
and to provide them the support.
Even for students that may need a little bit more support
than what happens during the whole group lesson,
teachers have those resources that they can use
when they're pulling students in small group.
So we don't have a gap there.
It's just a matter of let's implement what we have right now.
Let's get really good at that.
That is on the list of the next step in this work
is how do we begin to start using spelling inventories?
We do a lot of our training over the summer.
We do a lot of our training through our instructional coaches.
But I'm really trying to be cognizant of what the system can handle.
And, you know, as you guys have mentioned, if you've seen it in action,
our teachers are doing an amazing job of implementing this resource.
We want to provide them the time to do that.
And then we'll talk about phase two as we think about what do we need to delve into a little bit more with our resource.
source. So you don't you don't have a do you have an estimate on maybe when you don't anticipate this school year. Okay, but I anticipate us be beginning to look at what this could look like for next school year. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. Mr. President. Thank you. Mr. Revin. Dr. Bella. One of the things I heard in your presentation. Texas reads. Yes. Is that a new a new partner or we have we used them before? We have not.
I visited with them, I want to say April of last year.
And so I shared with you my journey through the reading academies.
It was a lot of information.
And what I realized is that our instructional coaches were going to need a little bit more support
in really understanding how to coach our teachers through making what we learned in the reading academies a reality.
And so what Texas Reads does, they take that and they really break it down to practical application of what happens in the classroom.
And so they are kind of coaching the coaches.
And it stops with our coaches right now.
We're not expecting them to go and, like, go deliver this training again.
That would be just another thing.
But it's building their toolbox as they're helping to coach the teachers with not just this new resource, but really this new way of teaching.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Anything else?
I just want to piggyback.
He's still my question.
But I had an additional one.
What's the timeline with Texas Reads?
So they've started, we started our first session September.
So we will, they come monthly, face-to-face.
They've been face-to-face and virtual when we pull our instructional coaches.
So they'll be with us for this year is what we have the current contract for.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Anybody have anything else?
I do, Mr. President.
Just thoughts.
Thank you.
Could you go back to that slide or one of the ones with the sound wall?
Right.
So I, in my campus visits, I've seen a lot of this.
But this week, I was able to really witness full instruction of kind of what that looked like.
And the sound wall of how the mouths form, what your mouth looks like when you're saying the letter and those kinds of things.
and the students were just all in on that and the sounding out like the one
that had quilt you know and they were doing whiteboards all of it gave me
chills to see that phonetic instruction and it was so solid and the students
were right there getting it and I went from kinder all the way through fifth
grade hearing about literacy it was very encouraging to see that and how it's all
working so my questions are what is the biggest challenge that teachers are
having right now or the program or the biggest challenge for HMH where where's
your biggest challenge I think the biggest challenge is just the timing
It's a new structure.
It's very structured.
And some of the things that we're hearing is just the timing of the block, the pacing
is very different.
There's a lot to get done in a set amount of time.
So just really getting accustomed to the literacy schedule, the literacy block, and all the
components that have to happen during that time is probably the biggest challenge right
now.
Do they have enough time? It's just getting into the cadence of it?
Yeah, I think it's getting into the cadence.
It's also, when you have a new resource, it's getting familiar with that resource in terms of going straight to the teak
and not maybe thinking about, well, I need to build them up to get ready to jump into the teak.
but I think that's just part of learning the resource.
The resource that we had previously,
teachers were accustomed to that.
They were accustomed to a balanced literacy approach,
and this is different.
So it's a new resource,
and it's also highly structured as well.
So it's a transition.
Okay.
So to follow up on Ms. Timmy's question,
if we aren't giving like a spelling test,
and we weren't before,
but how do we know maybe when a child needs to be assessed or has a dyslexia,
how do we know, how do teachers identify that?
Is that through the writing that they see?
Help me.
So we, in the beginning of the year, we give a couple of assessments as a screener
to try to screen our students to identify any students who may have dyslexia.
But even through, Ms. Martinez talked about small group instruction.
That's our king in KDISD.
Our teachers are phenomenal at pulling their small groups.
They know their kids.
They know their data.
Their writing, so you're going to be able to tell more often in their writing over time
as opposed to memorizing words and how to spell them.
So through assessing authentic pieces of writing and student work,
they have the data that they need to determine if students need more support one final question mr
president ms fox do you believe that because of the phonetics so embedded into this curriculum that
does that help with i don't know how to say this um because the sounding of words and the
and the rules that you did with the toss and the, you know, when there's a short vowel,
it's two consonants at the end, the VCEs.
Will that maybe minimize some of our dyslexia diagnoses?
So interestingly enough, we were out at a campus last week as a campus team doing some classroom walks,
and a member of our dyslexia team said the things that the teachers were doing
were the things that they they learn to do with their students when they're
providing dyslexia intervention so to answer your question I think so of
course you know some of those things that maybe students didn't see before
they're getting experience and exposure to and I'm very hopeful that that's
going to be the result one of the results one of many of the results
Anyone else?
Can I ask one more question?
Ms. Tamey?
One more question.
I'm so sorry.
So the Texas REEDs, was that a cost that we included in the implementation of our new
you
literacy no so we we often use different vendors for professional development
services training that we provide so this was not a part of the cost this is
it kind of in accordance to when we identify a need in the district by
looking at our data and determining where more training is needed where
teachers need support we have a professional learning plan that kind of
helps us determine like what we need to focus on so this was separate and apart
from the literacy implementation it was just kind of being forward thinking
knowing that we were going to need to have some additional support and really
looking for a provider that could do that just as we do with all of our other
professional learning services well thank you for doing that for our
teachers but also do you see do you foresee us in the years to come
continuing with Texas reads I mean I think it's certainly anytime we have a
great partner in our we definitely continue to work with them our
Our instructional coaches have provided favorable feedback to what they're receiving from Texas
Reads.
It's been very beneficial and helpful.
In fact, immediately after they do a session, Texas Reads say, let me see the evaluation
data and it's overwhelmingly positive what our instructional coaches are receiving.
And so, you know, as we continue to go throughout the year, just as we do with all professional
learning services that we that we look into we evaluate and if it's meeting our
need then we'll definitely consider an additional time with them thank you mr.
president thank you sorry Miss Cuzela so it was an anticipated need and a
budgeted cost Texas reads or is this an unanticipated no it wasn't unanticipated
no we budgeted for this yes thank you yes anything else thank you so much dr.
bell appreciate it thank you okay we're now moving on to the consent agenda a
10. Consent agenda
consent agenda shall include items that were discussed and considered at the
previous work-study board meeting which was last week as well as items of a
recurring nature the board shall be furnished with background material for
each item consent agenda items shall be grouped together under one action item
All items shall be acted upon by one vote without separate discussion unless a board member requests that an item be withdrawn for individual consideration, and this is per legal and local.
Are there any items in the consent agenda that board members would like to remove from the consent agenda?
Mr. President.
I don't have a question, but I'd like to move that the Board of Trustees approves the consent agenda for items 10.1 through 10.10.
Second.
I have a second.
I second.
Okay, it is moved and seconded that the Board of Trustees approves the consent agenda for items 10.1 through 10.10.
We will not proceed to vote.
Board members please record your vote on the screen via your keypad. The consent
agenda is approved by a vote of 7 to 0. The ayes have it. Thank you. We will now
move on to the information items which is item 11 and what we have for item 11
11.1 Board Committee updates
This meeting is some board committee updates.
For example, I think we've talked before about the fact that we set up three standing
board committees.
One is the finance committee, the other one is the policy committee, and the other one
is the academic performance committee.
These are board committees.
and the finance committee is made up of Miss Teamee and Miss Champagne, myself,
and what we do is the finance committee we meet monthly, usually shortly before
the work-study meeting, and Mr. Smith and his staff are gracious, spend time with
us, and we basically go through in more detail, if you will, a lot of
the financial reports that are presented in the board meetings.
And so we get time to spend kind of drilling down a little bit
and asking for additional information
and going through the information with them.
So we appreciate that very much, and we do it on a monthly basis.
We're going to have a meeting next week, I believe.
And that's the Finance Committee.
That's a regular activity that we have,
working with Mr. Smith and his staff and also Dr. Gorgorski.
The second committee that we have is the academic performance committee, which is just launched recently.
And the members there are Mr. Redman, Ms. Fox, and myself.
And I'll ask Mr. Redman if he can make some comments on that committee.
Sure.
Board, we met twice this month, on the 3rd and again on the 25th.
And in response to the team building and our discussion about spending more time on academics in our board meetings,
and met with administration to look and see how can we get that information to see what they're looking at, right?
Because there's a lot of things.
One of the things we learned was a lot of the reports we get, I was always under the impression that they were mandated by the state.
But there's board members from years past that have requested some of those.
and they've just been spending so much time creating these reports that I
Don't know and so what we're trying to figure out is what's that information? We absolutely have to have what's the information?
They're looking at so that we can all be on the same page
like what are those those markers and identifiers to know what what actions are taking and so
One of the things we asked about is that next month?
This Martinez and her team are going to present like we talked about earlier
present when they look at the data what happens and so we can have a better
understanding on the academic side about when they say this that means that all
these other things have already happened or about to happen so we'll keep all
updated on that thank you miss we also have the policy committee which is miss
Calhoun miss gazelle on myself and I've asked this gazelle atom update us on the
the policy committee. Thank you, Mr. President. So as part of the status check on the board's
policy committee, I just want to share a few facts on how we work, then provide our status.
So we meet, we don't have regularly scheduled meetings, just FYI. We meet on an ad hoc basis
to review policies that need updates or create policy if needed. So from time to time, we do
meet with dr gregorski and his staff a district legal counsel and our board council legal counsel
to ask for input on everything that we do and for their contribution to the final product of what we
produce as the policy committee so if a policy or a change to a policy is passed by the majority of
this board the policies then handed off to dr gregorski and his staff for implementation just
Just to be clear, so I want to reiterate that the board writes policy, the district under Dr Gorski's direction implements. There's a misunderstanding of that.
Out in the public, we were active over the summer and the last couple of months, reviewing and updating the instructional resource and library book policies, if a and if B.
along with the gender fluidity policy, which, for your information, is now categorized under FA.
It was FFJ, but it's been changed to FA, just FYI.
All policies can be found on the district's website by doing a very simple Internet search of KDISD board policy.
They're very accessible to the public, so you can read them for yourself straight from the source
instead of perhaps seeking information from other sources that many times are inaccurate.
So just go straight to the source. We have a meeting scheduled in November with Dr.
Gagorski and staff to get an update on the rollout and implementation of both the book and the gender fluidity policies.
That's it.
Thank you. Thanks a lot. The next item is... May I ask a clarifying question from the report?
Mrs. Cuzela, pardon me, when you said there's a misunderstanding of
something in the community implementing the policy,
I'm sorry, I'm confused.
Sure.
There's just, I get different questions about perhaps how the district's handling things or what the board does or does not do with a policy change.
So my recommendation, if anyone's ever, you know, they can always ask the board directly the question about the policy or the change.
Or just read the policy themselves, which is right online in black and white.
Okay.
Okay, but they think the board implements the policy to the staff when, in fact, we give it to the superintendent?
Correct.
Yeah, many times some people misunderstand that we actually implement the policy.
Right.
We don't operate the district.
We write the policy to operate, to hand off to Dr. Grogorski.
Right.
And if a change to the policy needs to happen, that happens through us.
Yes.
Right.
Got it.
That's correct.
Modification.
Thank you.
Mr. President, may I please ask another question of Ms. Kozela?
please um so um you say that you have used our own in-house counsel and the other attorney that
we've hired and so how often do you use the other one that we've hired uh for our we've met with
them numerous times maybe i don't see him in a while because we're not actively working on policy
but maybe three to four times we met with them.
Yeah, met or phone calls.
So we get charged for all those times, right?
So I just, I mean, I don't know what he charges or anything,
but so we use him rather than Mr. Graham or both?
We used both.
Okay.
It's a very efficient process and very productive.
Mr. President?
Do we have cost on what we've spent on the outside council to write policy?
I do not have cost.
I don't.
Dr. Gorgorski.
I don't have that number in front of me if the board wants it.
I can provide it to you.
Would that be all right?
Yeah, I'd like to see the cost.
I bet he does a great job, but I wonder kind of what the charges are.
He's with an outside.
Okay, great.
Thanks.
i will add most school districts have their own board legal counsel in the state it's not uncommon
anything else
11.2 Recap of Board member requests for information.
item 11.2 is a recap of board member request for information i don't think we had any
request for information or did we yeah we had one from mrs fox she wanted
a slide with the graphic from finance for the community about I think about
the successes the first report like a summarized slide that was an idea
suggestion with it no I asked for a slide be a slide or a chart or something
visual that would give a reflection of the financial stability and consistent
delivery from KDSD that would be easier for community to understand I thought I
heard you requested a fireworks show and and with fireworks yes and she also now
has requested the our board attorneys cost I haven't seen that okay anything
else so our future meetings we have a meeting because of Thanksgiving we have
12. Future Meetings
a meeting next Monday and the work-study meeting on November 6 and then the
regular board meeting will be November 13 and that will be our regular board
meeting the board will now convene in closed meeting as authorized under
13. Closed Meeting
section 551 point zero zero one of the Texas government code for the following
For following purposes, Texas government code 551.071, 551.129, and 551.074.
So since we're going to be meeting right here, if everyone would please clear the room.
Thank you very much for your attendance.
The board will now reconvene in open meeting.
14. Reconvene
Today is Monday, October 30, 2023, and the time is 941 p.m.
The Board heard a Level 3 DGBA Grievance 24-003 pursuant to the Katy Independent School District
Policy DGBA Legal, DGBA Local regarding employee grievances in closed meeting.
In accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code, any action regarding this
matter must be taken in open meeting.
Do I have a motion on the level 3 DGBA grievance?
I move that the Board of Trustees denies the level 3 DGBA grievance in DGBA 24003.
Therefore, upholding the decision of the level 1 and level 2 hearing officer.
Second.
It is moved and seconded that the Board of Trustees denies the level 3 DGBA grievance
in DGBA 24003, thereby upholding the decision of the Level 1 and Level 2 hearing officer.
We will now proceed to vote.
Board members, please record your vote on the screen.
Justice, if I may, I know the motion was to deny the Level 3 grievance and uphold Level 1 and Level 2.
Because we expedited this straight to Level 3 to the Board,
there is no Level 1 and Level 2 decision on which to uphold.
So simply denying it the motion to deny is sufficient.
So, just to be clear, it is moved in the second that the board trustees denies the level 3 grievance.
In 24, 003.
Period we will now proceed to vote board members will please record your vote on the screen via your keypad.
motion passes 7 to 0 therefore being no further business before the board this
This meeting is adjourned.
The time is 9.43 PM.
Thank you.
Official documents
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 7.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves of a recommendation to send notice of proposed termination of probationary contract employee, West Memorial Elementary teacher, Colleen Colca, for good cause.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 002 · AGENDA 10.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's October 2023 budget amendments.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 003 · AGENDA 10.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approve the District's August 2023 check register.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 004 · AGENDA 10.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the attendance boundary modification (ABM) for the 2024-2025 school year.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 005 · AGENDA 10.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees grants approval for the Superintendent to sign and submit the 2023-2024 Bilingual Education Exception/ESL Waiver Application.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 006 · AGENDA 10.5
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District Performance Objectives.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 007 · AGENDA 10.6
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Campus Performance Objectives.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 008 · AGENDA 10.7
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves of the observation of non-business days under the Texas Public Information Act.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 009 · AGENDA 10.8
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the contract for the purchase of routing software for the Transportation Department to Education Logistics, Inc. (Edulog).
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 010 · AGENDA 10.9
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the award for the contract for the chiller replacement and optimization of the central plants at Morton Ranch High School, Seven Lakes High School, and Mayde Creek High School to Hunton Services (utilizing the Choice Partners contract number 22/049 MF-11) in the amount of $4,764,621 and approves the total project cost not to exceed $5,203,321.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 011 · AGENDA 10.10
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the minutes for the September Board meetings.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 012 · AGENDA 14.1
PassedIt is moved and seconded that the Board of Trustees denies the Level Three DGBA grievance in DGBA 24-003.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |