Good evening. 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, November 13, 2023
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In this meeting
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- 0:01 to 10:29 1. Call to Order
- 10:29 to 11:53 3. Recognitions
- 11:53 to 39:00 4. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
- 39:00 to 39:21 5. Closed Meeting
- 39:21 to 40:09 6. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 40:09 to 1:35:48 7.1 Katy Independent School District 2023 Demographic Update
- 1:35:48 to 1:38:20 8. Consent
- 1:38:20 to 1:54:59 9.1 Board Committee.
- 1:54:59 to 1:55:23 9.2 Recap of Board member requests for information.
- 1:55:23 to 1:55:57 10. Future Meetings
Full transcript
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1. Call to Order
Today is Monday, November 13, and the time is 5 p.m.
Dr. Grigorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to the notice of the meeting?
Mr. Perez, I do confirm we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting this evening.
And now for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Yes, I'm going to invite up a special guest.
I see him sitting in the front row there.
Mark Jahl.
Mark, why don't you come on up to the podium there.
I'm going to go ahead and introduce you.
Mark is a fifth grader at Alexander Elementary.
Principal over there is Dr. Charmaine Hoban.
I see her out there.
And parents are there as well, Bo Jahl and Grace Zong.
It looks like he's got two sisters with him there,
Gabriella and Audrey.
Audrey. Mark's special interests, lacrosse, piano, and basketball. Favorite subjects, math and writing.
And a few quotes from his teachers and principal over there at Alexander. Mark's an incredible
student. He is compassionate, considerate, and incredibly enthusiastic about learning. His joy
spreads to all those around him. He is a natural leader. And from Miss Stacy Rissinger, I had Mark
Mark in first grade class and he is always kind and thoughtful leader.
He took time to ask how I was doing and still continued to do that over the years.
He loves to play basketball and is always looking out for and supporting others on his team and in life.
Excited to see the places he will go.
And from Mr. Rob Tehan, fifth grade teacher.
Mark is the type of student all teachers love teaching.
He is genuinely excited to learn and truly interested in improving.
He is responsible for his own learning and asks insightful questions.
I cannot wait to see what big things he is capable of,
and I'm proud to be afforded the opportunity to help him on his journey.
From Mr. Mike Schueter, Beckendorf staff member and lacrosse coach.
Mark is one of the most amazing kids I've been blessed to be around.
He is the leader on the lacrosse team.
He plays all sports, piano, debate, as well as others, and he's a super smart kid.
The most well-rounded kid I have ever known.
And from his principal, Dr. Charmaine Hoban, Mark is an exceptional young man.
I've known Mark since he was in kindergarten, and he has always been wiser than his years.
His calm and confident presence has earned him a reputation of being known as a kind, intelligent, hardworking, and capable leader among peers, teachers, and teammates.
So before we have Mark lead us in our pledge to allegiance and Texas flags, I'm going to also introduce and bring up a few folks over to my left side over there.
there Ava McCulloch she 12th grader Ava come on up Anna cena sick 12th grade and Oscar Thomas 11th
grade and from their Tompkins High School music director Steven Bond Ava Anna and Oscar are
members of the Tompkins Wind Symphony which is the varsity concert Ensemble within the oths band
in addition all three students recently competed at the UIL State marching band contest on October
October 30th, 2023. I am proud of their growth and pursuit of excellence in both their academics
and musical endeavors. So we're going to start with the pledge and then we're going to roll
right into the playing of our national anthem. So Mark, are you ready?
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.
Now for the Texas flag.
honor the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the Texas one state under God one
in the universe
© BF-WATCH TV 2021
© BF-WATCH TV 2021
make are you ready yes it's all yours
good evening superintendent Gagorski board members and president Perez my
name is Mark Zhao and I am so glad to see you all today I will be telling you
about my time at Roosevelt Alexander Elementary I have made many memories
he's here at Ray and I am so glad to be in such a brilliant school. Once I get to
middle school I will miss lots of really kind teachers and how well they've taught
me. I will also miss the warm greetings when I arrive at school and
the kind goodbyes when I leave. I've also had lots of fun being a volunteer to
help out during field day and I enjoyed our exciting field trips to the OLC, Houston Arboretum
and other many cool places. I also enjoyed the fun run and there's a new name for it every year
where we run a mile around our neighborhood for a fundraising purpose. I'm also really happy to
be in Mr. Tehan's class because he is my first male teacher in elementary school.
All of my RAE teachers have been great teachers and have enhanced my learning.
Also, choir, challenge, and math and science team have been great experiences for me so far at RAE.
Roosevelt Alexander Elementary makes it a really fun place to learn and makes everyone feel like
they are important thank you for listening once again my name is mark joe and have a great evening
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
3. Recognitions
Thank you.
Our brand new junior high will open up next year.
We're calling it Junior High 18 right now until we get a name on it,
but it'll open in August of 2024.
And over to my left over here is Kara Morgan,
and she is currently principal at Bethke Elementary,
but she's going to open up the junior high for us.
So welcome, Kara, and thank you for doing that for us.
And Kara, I see you brought some folks out with you.
if you would like to introduce those folks.
We'd love to see who you brought out.
All right.
Awesome.
Well, thank you very much for coming out,
and I'm going to put an open challenge back out to Sawyer over there
to take him on in Dodgeball, or not Dodgeball, Foursquare again,
just like I did last year.
but he's got I'm gonna take him on again I'm gonna give him a chance he's ready
for it awesome all right well good to see you all thank you for coming out
thank you very much thank you 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
4. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
the public an opportunity to speak in accordance with Katie I see board policy
BED local as defined by board policy speakers who signed up by 2 p.m. on
Monday November 13 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 on posted agenda items will be allowed three
minutes to speak speakers that signed up to speak on non agenda items will be
allowed three minutes to speak if a speaker is not finished speaking at the
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,
the Chief Communications Officer, and permanent record.
If a speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through proper channels,
as stated in board policy, the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to seek
resolution through the appropriate policy.
Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code 551.074 and 551.0821, the Board will not permit the presentation of personally identifiable information regarding a student and will not discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee or to hear a complaint or charge against an officer or an 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 that they signed up.
and so the first the first person who signed up for an agenda item is Dean Nelson
and after that on a non agenda item will be Shelly Keating welcome howdy my name is Dean Nelson and
And I was in first grade in 1962.
Miss Pattison was my first grade teacher.
We did not have air conditioning.
We could come to school barefooted.
We had fire drills, and we had nuclear bomb drills.
In junior high, we were really nervous
because we heard that the school was gonna close down
the black school and move those kids in with us,
so we were nervous about going to school
with kids that were black.
They showed up, we showed up, and guess what?
We all got along great.
We were just kids. We were friends. We're still friends, and it was a great place to be. In high school,
if you drove a pickup truck, you had a gun rack in your back of your window.
You had your rifles and your shotguns in the back in your pickup, and you didn't lock your doors.
In fact, when you got out, you dropped your keys on the floorboard. That was Katy back then.
Everybody worked for farmers. They farmed. They sold stuff to farmers.
farmers, they worked at the gas plant or they worked for the school district.
And I counted a while ago, there was over 20 facilities in the school district that y'all have named after
families and after these teachers and principals. And I could talk all day
about a lot of those guys. Mr. Smaltz was a bus driver. He was an art teacher. He kicked the Advocate boys off
the bus one day because they were acting up. Out in the middle of Katy, they kicked him off.
And y'all have chosen or you will vote to
to name the new high school after the Freeman family,
and I know everybody, the Farmer families and Katie, are thrilled.
It is the right thing to do, and we really appreciate it.
And to kind of tie things together and give you a little history,
I was given to this by my great-granddaddy when I was a kid.
His name was Boss Freeman.
That's all I ever knew was Boss Freeman.
His name was really named was W.E. Freeman.
I didn't know that until a couple of days ago.
I looked it up
But we used to go over to his house and Katie and it was fun when I was he died in 61
So I was about five but we could climb up and down his steer stairway
I never been in the house that had stairs before so we go over there and play all the time and
The real reason I'm here tonight though is to ask
Permission I know you can't give a permission but to put it out there
That I would like to put up a historical marker for the Nelson family on that land because you don't we all
some of you don't know that was my grandpa's land at 160 acres of that
facility out there and I think it's important that people could understand
what went on and we can make a historical marker about them the Nelson
family and the farmers in general there's a bunch of trees out there left
oak trees that was the chicken place where the chickens were and that's where
we would put it and not people could come and read it I would just tell me
who to work with and we'll get it done it'd be something I'll be proud of and
And finally, I recommend that the Freeman High School mascot
be the farmers.
You've got Vikings, you've got the Raiders, you've got pirates,
you've got all these others, but you don't have any farmers
anywhere.
So let's thank the Freeman Farmers.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Nelson.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Shelly Keating, and after that, Richard Shulak.
Shulak.
I'm a little shorter.
Good evening, Dr. Grigorski, President Perez, school board members.
Thank you for allowing me to speak.
My name is Shelly Keating.
I am the current president of the KDISD Council of PTAs.
PTA is a member-based organization that advocates for every child.
I'm happy to report that we've achieved 27,449 members to date.
We have a goal of 33,000 this year,
so we're well on our way. Special thanks to Dr. Gagorski, Leslie Hack, and Janet
Ties for joining all of our PTAs and for all of you that have joined some of our
PTAs and if you haven't we ask that you try to find a PTA that means something
to you and and join and and that is your voice and being an advocate for all
those students. We now have 69 PTAs in the district I'm very happy to report
that all are working hard to achieve good standing while most have already
done so we're still working on a few we've had we have countless programs
within PTA that are addressing hot topics facing today's youth like mental
health bullying vaping all of which are our district is addressing head-on as I
interact with other school districts across the state via monthly webinars or
or general networking avenues, I'm
constantly reminded how fortunate we
are to live in the KDIC community.
It is a true community that cares about all students.
We had a monthly webinar at the beginning of this month
that Texas PTA asked us to highlight
successes and challenges.
All these people were showing up and saying,
I got my school board superintendent
superintendent to join all of our PTAs and I was like y'all I got our superintendent our deputy
superintendent our director of partners in education and education foundation to join all of
ours so thank you for making me look like a shining star and um I don't think you hear it loud enough
or often enough um because I feel like people tend to only complain but that's not what I'm
here to do today i'm here on behalf of texas pta katie council ptas and personally the keating
family to say a heartfelt thank you for all that you do for our students in our community
you are a gift and we are blessed to be a part of that thank you thank you so much thank you
Richard Chuliak and after that Jarrett Burton.
Hello, I'm Roger Chuliak of the Power Club at CRHS.
The Children's Internet Protection Act or CIPA was enacted to address concerns about children's access to obscene or harmful content over the Internet.
To receive E-rate funding, schools must adhere to CIP guidelines which includes
restricted access to pictures that are obscene, pornographic in nature, and are
harmful to minors. Schools must monitor internet access and provide education on
safe internet practices. Finally, schools must implement policy regarding safe
access to electronic messaging and restriction on certain materials. I will
talk on how the internet restriction policy at KSC contradicts the mission
statement of our district, use guidelines for technology, and how does not filter
electronic messaging with and restrictions in accordance to CIPA. As
defined by the student guidelines, the use for learning management systems,
blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other digital tools are considered an extension of the
classroom. There are many examples of banned educational material that are
related to the classroom, such as the Renewable Energy Institute, which is
which is partnered with organizations such as the UN,
and contains informative material on fossil fuels
and renewable energy sources.
Students were also unable to watch the Jefferson Lecture,
which is the highest award bestowed
by the federal government and the humanities.
These are amazing resources
that students should have access to
that are directly encouraged by the school.
Quote, KDIC provides unparalleled learning experiences
designed to prepare and inspire each student
to live an honorable, fulfilling life
and to create the future. Unfortunately, we do not receive this. The internet
restrictions at KSD far exceed the guidelines proposed by the CIPA and
reach into harmful territories. We understand that unregulated internet
access in schools is not only unrealistic but detrimental to learning
environment we so dearly hope to cultivate. Fortunately, KSD already
has measures in place allowing students and teachers to present certain
online materials for review. Unfortunately, Topdesk, which is used for
review is widely unknown among students and teachers, but KDSE does not seem to take many
submissions into consideration.
As parents, I would hope you understand the severity of not encouraging and allowing students
who are passionate about education to learn.
We hope that you understand that taking measures to fix this issue are as simple as following
CAPA guidelines and teaching students about adept internet practices and using top desk
as intended.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Jared Burton followed by Nicole Lavrak.
Good afternoon esteemed board members. I'm Jared Burton, a junior at Tompkins High School and vice president of the Sexuality and Gender Alliance Club.
up two months ago i stood at this podium before this board speaking alongside and for hundreds
of my peers against this policy and possible safety concerns for the safety of students if
this policy were to pass that being the gender policy i watched the heartfelt testimonies of
parents students and educators alike i watched a student list the names of their trans friends who
had died and they couldn't even fit them all on one hand no child should ever be put in a position
like that and if these horrors unfolded before this policy even passed then I'm
afraid of what's to come. As for the Houston landing it was revealed that as
of November 1st 2023 KDISD's gender fluidity policy had seen 19 parents being
notified of their child's possible trans identity. 19 notifications in this policy
has only been implemented for just over two months. While we do not know the
circumstances of each of these individual incidents it is clear that
there is some form of overstepping from administration when enforcing this
policy. The policy states that district staff will notify parents if their child
requests he or she be identified as transgender, change his or her name, or
use different pronouns at school. Not one queer student in this district has said
or has had the luxury of not hearing about this heinous policy. That is why I
find it hard to believe today that there are 19 instances in which a student came
to staff requesting a different name or pronouns knowing full well of this
policy and its ramifications and while I know some staff are hesitant to enforce
this policy from a place of concern for their students I also know that other
staff members carry such hatred in their heart that they will make it their
mission to enforce this policy on as much as they can on as many students as
they can mr. Perez I believe it was you who said that quote withholding that
information that information being a student's gender identity from the
parent that is a great burden on staff however what this policy has done is put
put educators in a position where they feel like they have to choose between their job
and the safety of their students.
And for the educators who staunchly support this policy, you have given them a tool to
put trans students in mental, emotional, and physical danger.
I often find myself wondering what it will take to open your eyes to the harm this policy
could and likely already has brought.
In the best case scenario, it will take time.
And in the worst case, it will take a student's life.
I hope it will never come to that but with this policy in place. I know that is not ruled out
I hope I never have to set foot in this room under these circumstances again
And I hope that you will all consider the weight that your decisions have put on the mental health of students and staff in the
District but until this policy is gone. This will continue and I will keep coming back. Thank you
Thank you
Nicole lab rack and after that Jason as an R
Good evening everyone.
My name is Nicole Laprak and I'm currently a senior at Cinco Ranch High School and a
delegate for Power Club.
I'm speaking to you today to discuss the current KDIC policy on non-curricular clubs and propose
a plan regarding this that I think will be beneficial to the school board, campuses and
students.
A non-curricular club is one that generally is student created, student led, overseen
by a faculty member and does not directly relate to the body of courses offered by the school
the current fnab policy regarding these clubs is detailed by the school board and contains valid
rules on what accessibility they do or don't have policy is accordance with the equal access act
which is a federal law passed in 1984 that ensures public schools provide equal access to
extracurricular student clubs however it's come to my attention that this equal access guaranteed by
federal law is not as present as it should be cinco ranch high school has its own policy for
for non-curricular clubs which, while in accordance with the KDISD school board policy, contains
extra restrictions such as having to hold meetings either a half hour before or after
regular school hours and not allowing guests or outside speakers to speak at meetings.
Non-curricular clubs at Cinco Ranch High School are also not allowed to reserve school spaces
outside of school hours such as the cafeteria or library.
None of these regulations are stated in the original KDISD policy.
Other schools in the district such as Jordan High School include different restrictions
such as not allowing non-curricular clubs to advertise on the PA system.
It seems as though different schools have different additional regulations or none at all.
Some of these restrictions are even enforced among some clubs but not others.
For instance, K-9 Comfort and Rising Cougars, two non-curricular clubs at Cinco Ranch High School,
were able to reserve the cafeteria and library for meetings.
Last year, Chess Club was able to hold tournaments in the cafeteria,
but were told they could not this year according to the school policy.
The Equal Access Act provides that if a school receives federal aid and has a limited open forum,
forum, they must give non-curricular clubs equal access to meeting spaces and school
publications.
The only exceptions that can be made are if the club interferes with the orderly conduct
of educational activities within the school.
The extra regulations put onto non-curricular clubs do not seem like equal access to me.
If another campus provides more opportunity to their non-curricular clubs or if another
club at my very own campus is given more allowance than the other, that is clearly a violation
of the intent of the federal act.
I propose that along with the policy already detailed by KDISD, an extra directive discussing
how schools cannot deny equal access to non-curricular clubs outside of the school board policy
is added and it's ensured that every campus is aware of this additional rule.
This would ensure that the simple and valid rules regulating non-curricular clubs in accordance
with the Equal Access Act are the only ones being enforced and that each campus is providing
the same restrictions.
Clubs and their materials can still be approved by each school but cannot be denied equal
access to the school's facilities as per the district policy.
This is a simple solution that I hope you would consider.
Thank you all for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Jason Aznar and after that, Ann Russey.
Good evening.
My name is Jason Aznar and I'm once again here to speak about the silent crisis that
is undoing the work of this board and its amazing efforts in order to work towards staff
retention within KDISD.
The silent crisis is the ever-rising price of district-provided health care, which has outpaced the pay increases provided by this board as health insurance rates in KDISD rise in cost for our employees every one to two years.
It is often the first thing mentioned to me by your constituents, who tell me that a major reason for many of our former amazing staff leaving our district has been health insurance costs.
When we take a look in comparison to other districts that have similar circumstances,
such as Cypress ISD or Alief ISD, it's quite obvious to see why staff leave KDISD in the
pockets of districts.
For example, let's talk about Cypher ISD, which offers baseline free benefits in a more
robust system that...
enables their employees to be more selective about the services they want or going to ALIEF
ISD which I've mentioned beforehand, a previous board meeting which has basic life and AAD
and D insurance for free and has also a staff payment assistance program that KDSD to my
knowledge does not currently have.
I say this all to get a point across that many of our constituents have a problem with
this and we would like to see a solution.
Now this is a very complex issue.
It's not an issue that can be solved overnight.
night it's not an issue we'd expect to be immediately solved. But what many of your
constituents are asking for is a policy task force group or an acknowledgment of
this issue in order to create a positive public dialogue about this problem
within KDISD. I think the first step to addressing it is to create dialogue
around it and empower the people in either administrative positions or
within the board or a policy group in order to start working on this progress.
So some things that could be feasible that could be done realistically is
giving the district more negotiation power when it comes to insurance prices
or giving staff more resources when it comes to baseline benefits that other
districts provide that we just don't. Additionally with the concerns as to how
we're going to pay for this or subsidize it in some way as we all know within 20
by 2030 Jordan Ranch area and the other northern areas of KDISD will become far
more developed and will bring in more tax income. So with that in mind I mean
you know the constituents asked that the board keep that in mind as they plan for
for policy down the line when it comes to relations to health insurance.
With that being said, thank you for listening, and let's get back to educating.
Thank you very much.
Ann Russey, and after that, John Everland.
Welcome.
Hi.
Good evening.
My name is Ann Russey.
You may or may not be aware that on Friday, the district added the following titles to the list of books that are now entirely inaccessible to all KDISD students through their public school library.
Be Amazing, A History of Pride, What Are Your Words, A Book About Pronouns, and It Feels Good to Be Yourself.
These books are illustrated children's books written for young elementary age
audiences that portray LGBTQIA plus people in a positive affirming and
inclusive way. They celebrate individuality and normalize the
experiences, identities, and pronouns used by transgender, non-binary, and otherwise
gender diverse people. These books contain no pornography, no sex, no
No profanity, no abuse, no drugs, no alcohol, no full frontal explicit nudity.
These books were banned by Katy ISD under the authority of this board because of the ideas they contain.
Full stop.
Since Friday, I have replayed in my memory all of the times I have heard Ms. Kozella, Mr. Perez, Ms. Calhoun
repeatedly state that you have nothing against LGBT students, that you value
their existence in this school community. Some of you have even stated you believe
LGBT students should see themselves reflected in the books they read, just
not in the ones you have fought relentlessly to ban. These three most
recent banned books represent what some of us have been trying to tell you for
years. Your words, your actions, and your policies are undeniably targeting and
discriminately affecting LGBT students and families. At least 19 students have
been forcefully outed to their parents without their consent since you adopted
your cruel and discriminatory gender policy. The Trevor Project, the most
widely known LGBT suicide prevention hotline, is still blocked on elementary
school campus internet. Approximately half of the books banned in this school
year alone are books that center or celebrate queer identities and themes. So here's an
opportunity for your actions to more closely match your words. You gave yourselves the power to veto
decisions made about books that two or more board members disagree with. Here's a chance to use that
power. You say you stand with LGBT students and not against them. I'm asking you to prove it.
Thank you. John Eberlin. John Eberlin. And then our last speaker will be Shirley Thomas.
Good evening. I'm here to give a great big shout out to Chris Smith and his financial team
for the work that they prepared to educate the bond committee this year. As a member of the
bond committee, I personally observed a huge amount of work that they went through to try
to explain the capital needs of the district, how we go about paying for all this excellence,
and even tried to explain our reluctant partner in the state of Texas and how they may or
may not be participating in all the efforts that we need.
So I'm really very proud of the effort that we put through in preparing the package, and
And I want to thank the board for their unanimous approval to pass that package on to the voters.
And personally, I'm very satisfied with the results of the vote.
It goes about proving that the work that the district puts in to produce that committee
and to prepare the bond properly to be presented pays off in the end.
And I just want to say there's a lot of work going into paying for this excellence
and very happy with the results.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Shirley Thomas, please.
Hi, I'm Shirley Thomas.
And first of all, I'd like to know if I could have this extra time that he didn't use.
I'm just kidding.
I have a concern, an issue, and it has to do with the meeting that did take place here
a couple of months ago.
go. My big concern is whenever I arrived here, I had no idea what the agenda was.
I that's kind of usually how I roll with that. I like to attend the meetings. I've
started coming more often and really it's because I think we need to be here
as the public in this district to know what's going on in here at the school
board meetings. So I arrived and I was told right away that the main room was
full and I was like what? Are you okay? So I thought they were gonna turn me away
way and they said there's an overflow room that you can go to and I was like okay that's that's
cool I'll go down there so I went down there and I found I was like I wonder what could be being
talked about tonight that has has this large attendance and so I found a table at the front
of the room and by the big screen and of course immediately I because of listening to what was
you know people that were speaking I found out very quickly what the agenda what was being talked
about for that evening. Here's my issue. As I was sitting in the overflow room and
as different people would come down here and talk, which I feel like on both sides
everybody should get to have their say, and as people were coming back into the
overflow room there was much clapping, cheering, etc. as that person was being
back into the room. So those of us that were still listening and watching the
the next speaker on the podium, it was very difficult to hear them.
And so I sat there and I kept thinking, okay, I mean, and the interesting thing about that
was most of the people that were still speaking were all in agreement with most of the people
in the room.
But yet they were completely blocking them out by, and I was sitting there, I even asked
one table, I said, could you guys maybe talk, not talk, maybe talk quieter.
at first they kind of said okay and then they told me very very adamantly I'm an
adult I'll talk if I want to and I don't I don't need to be quiet for you I was
like okay um I noticed in the in the main room I heard decorum called for a
couple of times because you could watch and hear it on the big screen as we were
down there and it just kind of concerned me that here we had an overflow room
where they were supposed to be also all of us that were in there listening and
And there was a security person in there, and there were some other adults in there.
But not one time did anyone say, ask, or bring decorum into any type of situation down there.
And it just was kind of a thing that just kind of continued and continued.
And it just was so interesting to me.
And I would hope and think that the next time we have to have possibly an overflow room, that it would be handled differently.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting.
5. Closed Meeting
The Board will now convene in closed meeting as authorized under Section 551.001 of the Texas Government Code for the following purposes.
Texas Government Code 551.071 and 551.129.
Thank you again.
Good evening again.
6. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
The Board will now reconvene in open meeting.
meeting. Today is Monday, November 13, 2023. The time is 619 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, November 10, 2023. The board will receive
information and recommendations from staff, administration, and the superintendent on these
agenda items at tonight's meeting board members will be able to ask questions receive answers
and should be prepared to take action the board has 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 the first item of business is a report on the kd independent
7.1 Katy Independent School District 2023 Demographic Update
school district 2023 demographic update and our presenter is Chris Poole,
population and survey analyst, PASA and also Ted Berling.
Thank you sir. Yes sir, good evening President Perez, board members, Dr. Gagorski.
Chris Poole and Angela Fritz are here with population survey analysts. They
will present the demographic update to you tonight and if you have any
questions at the end we'll all be happy to answer those questions for you so
So I'll turn it over to Chris Poole.
Okay, good evening, President Perez and board members.
Superintendent Gregorski, I'm back because I missed you guys.
It's been a little while, right?
Tonight, of course, we're not talking about zoning.
We are talking about the demographic update.
It's something that we've been doing annually for the district since the mid-1990s.
And by coming in and refreshing the data, we can account for changes
and we can be sure that the data that the district is using to make decisions
is the best data available.
And so, of course, it's a very lengthy, thick report that we have, and we've revamped a little bit of that, hoping that we've made it a little bit more readable for anybody that is used to our older reports.
But we're going to try to just hit the high points here tonight.
So I know we do have several new board members, and I wanted to just briefly touch on the process that we use.
We have to collect background data.
We have to understand what's going on in your district and also what's going on around your district.
Why would somebody move to Katy when they could move across the district boundary to
someplace else?
So we have to understand the entire region.
We get census data, we get birth data, we get all of these sorts of pieces as our base
level beginning point.
We study housing and economic data because you guys know what the housing looks like
in this area.
And so that has to be, of course, a major component of everything that we do.
We also study the past and current student population.
When it comes down to it, most of your students are here already.
And so the district geocodes those students.
They pop up like little dots everywhere.
And then we share that data.
And then we also go in and do things like look at do you have any neighborhoods where
you're gaining kindergarteners but you're losing high school students?
And so those would be areas that may be regenerating with younger heads of household moving in.
So we look at trends that are occurring like that.
We generate the projections.
And those projections are a low, a moderate, and a high growth.
There are district-wide projections, but then we also boil them down to land use zones or planning units, little pieces of the puzzle here.
And then we put those into your current attendant zones, and that's how we go about long-range planning.
So we'll go ahead and jump in first with some of the demographic trends, some of the historical data, some of the data that's around the district.
And this is the PEMS data for the entire Houston area.
And it's a five-year change from 2017 to the fall of 22.
And, of course, the fall of 23 data was just turned in, and we won't be able to get that for the entire state
or for the entire region until sometime in about March or April.
So this is the most recent data available.
And it's mainly just what's interesting to me is the colors.
As the dark colors there ring, the major metro area there in the center.
KDISD over those five years gained 15,145 students.
Lamar came in just below that at 10,300.
And really, most everything outside the Houston area is growing.
The east side is still growing, but they're just not growing to the orders of magnitude that the west side is there in the dark maroon colors.
This slide shows a little bit of the growth per year.
And so for the last two years, the fall of 21 and the fall of 22, the district gained over 4,000 students.
And so we had projected actually for this fall for about 2,300.
And what came in was 2,100.
And to be honest, I was pretty nervous about that projection of 2,380 after the district had gained about 4,000 students in the last couple of years.
But it's sort of that post-pandemic now.
We're coming back, returning back to more normal student growth.
and so the district the PEMS number you think gained around 2,112 students so
perhaps one of the hardest groups of students or the hardest cohort to
project is of course kindergarten students because we haven't seen the
whites of their eyes yet so one of the things that we do is we can go get birth
data by zip code of the birth mother and we take that birth data move it five
five years forward and we compare that to kindergarten enrollment.
We do have to do some estimating that data, you know, zip codes aren't determinants
with the boundaries of the school district itself.
So there is some estimation going on there.
But what you can see in using this technique is we saw a very similar sort of trajectory
upward, and it's leveling out a little bit, but still showing some growth.
And actually five years from now, the birth data is showing another uptick, and we're
actually seeing that for several of the districts that we've worked for since that data was
was available, we're seeing a bit of an uptick there five years out.
But this helps us understand the kindergarten enrollment.
Now, the kindergarten enrollment this particular year was small.
You had 5,766 students in the fall of 22, and for the fall of 23, you had 5,688 kiddos.
And so we actually projected 5,900.
And so that's a lot of that overage that I mentioned.
We were about 200 students or so high, and a whole lot of it was there at kindergarten.
We have several, you know, things that were possibilities there.
Homeschool kids, for example, if we never, if they homeschool from kindergarten and we never see them, then we don't have any way to track them in any sorts of data.
Also, it's a real possibility with the mortgage rates right now that it's pricing some people out with those little tiny kids that would otherwise hope to move into KDISD but are unable to do so at an 8% mortgage rate.
So there's several things going on, and that actually we've worked for several clients in the fall.
We have to wait until the data comes in and gets stabilized before we can start completing these reports for clients.
But we're seeing a similar phenomenon for several of our districts with really low kindergarten enrollments.
So we'll move on and talk about the data that we generate and use from your past and current student population.
One thing that's really important for us to understand is the yield of students per home that is occupied.
And everybody normally assumes it's two kids per house, and it is in a lot of families,
but they're not all enrolled in the school district at one point in time.
Like I have one high schooler left at home, and so I'm about to be, she's graduating,
and I'm about to count as zero even though I have two kids.
So district-wide, that number is a .71 right now,
but it ranges everywhere from a zero to a 1.71 right now.
And so if any of you were around when we talked about ratios before,
you can probably guess that that 1.71 is in Cross Creek Ranch.
It's where all of the really, really large ratios have been here in the last several years.
But on the other end of the spectrum, you have a zero in some cases.
That single-family ratio has been a little higher in the past.
It's been as high as up until about 0.8 or so,
but it has dropped a little bit over time to that .71.
And for multifamily units, the .35.
Now, when we project a new home, we don't just give it a .71.
We give it a ratio based on what we think based on other comparable sorts of single-family homes.
We do not just apply a .71, but just as a talking point,
we can average it out and sort of understand what that looks like there in the district.
This next slide has a lot of data on a lot of interesting things
that I think are worth a little bit of time studying.
You know, when charter schools started,
we thought it was going to be maybe a little flash in the pan,
a little bit of an annoyance, but at this point in time,
it's really become something major that we have to study,
and the data is not readily available.
We have to dig around and make phone calls and talk to charter schools
and download data from TEA and do some estimates,
and it's a very difficult thing to try to understand
how many students in the district are enrolling in charter schools
schools, because of course, if a charter school opens and pulls kids out of the district,
that affects your enrollment number overall.
So the map that you've got here shows new private and charter schools, and it also shows
charter schools in blue, and it shows private schools in red.
And so you've got more private schools in the district, inside the boundaries of the
district, but you're enrolling more students to charters than to privates, because the
charters are larger than the private school enrollment there.
Over time, like in 2015, the district had about 1,500 students that were enrolling from KDISD and leaving for a charter.
And in 2023, that number was up to almost 3,300.
It was 3,272 is our best estimate.
Now, a couple of those are growing, a couple of those charters.
And so just based on what we know now, we would expect that number in about five years to be over 4,000 students that would be in charter schools.
schools and we have to continue to monitor where those new charters are coming in. They
file paperwork every year with the state, but a lot of times the paperwork is very nebulous.
They'll say we're going to open a school somewhere in the northwestern portion of the Houston
area and so that doesn't allow us to pinpoint it until they start buying land or talking
to a MUD or something like that. So we're constantly on the lookout for additional charter
schools because when they drop into a district, the bulk of the student population will come
from a relatively close area around that site because we assume most of the district most of
the schools do not provide transportation and so that's why they pull kids there so if a charter
school drops in the middle of the district it has much more of a impact than if it's outside
on here there are a couple of charter schools highlighted in yellow in the south
outside of kdisd south of 1093 and then to the north we've got one in the ellison area
It is open, but the SAFARE portion of development isn't near it yet, and so it's pulling kids from KDISD.
It is adding grades along the way.
And then the other yellow dot at the top is actually a private school that's moving from further east in SAFARE, their changing location.
And so that was highlighting the privates and the charters there for you.
And so right now I'm going to hand this over to Angela Fritz to talk about housing and economy,
and then I'll come back to wrap up a little bit about projections.
Good evening.
I'm going to take just a minute to talk about some of the context we use
when we project the housing projections.
Excuse me for my voice this evening.
So basically right now we are on what we're calling kind of the flip side
of the pandemic housing boom.
So the interest rate increases that the Fed has instigated over the last year,
year and a half, have had their desired effect,
and they've really softened and dampened the housing market overall,
significantly slowing sales, as we know, at the national and state level,
and also helping to stave off increasing prices.
If we look at the difference in a 3% mortgage rate and an 8% mortgage rate,
we understand that buyers now are more comfortable and are beginning to accept
that mortgages are really leveling off and may be higher for a longer period of time,
so that's moving them back into the new housing market.
But conversely, we also understand that people who may be looking to change houses or trade up or perhaps their children have graduated from school and they might be looking to relocate are hesitant to list houses that they may have purchased at a lower interest rate.
So these are having kind of push-pull effects on the housing market overall.
The American Community Survey median home value for KDISD in 2021 was about $285,000.
If you kind of adjust that for appreciation over the last couple years, and we look at the difference between a mortgage, what a mortgage would cost you at $300,000 at 3% versus $350,000 at 8%, you can see that that cost, and this is principal and interest only payments, nearly doubles.
So that can help explain some of those decisions that are going into that.
So builders, new home builders especially, have figured out how to incentivize and how to get potential homebuyers back into the market to fill those homes.
But we're not seeing existing homes being resold at rates we've seen previously.
Multiple listing service data for KDISD actually shows a decrease of nearly 18% from 2022 to 2023 in the resale of existing homes from the year prior.
and that amounts to about 1,300 homes.
So Chris touched on it a little bit,
but when we talk about regeneration in existing neighborhoods,
this potentially in the longer term can have a little bit more of an effect
if you don't have younger families coming into existing neighborhoods to purchase homes.
So we're going to go ahead and move into the upcoming projection period,
but before we do that, I want to give just a quick snapshot of this previous school year.
So we do know that housing starts are returning to pre-pandemic levels, and generally in KDIC, they're actually quite similar to what they were in September 2020, or about 3,000 annual starts as of September 2023.
We estimate that single-family new housing occupancies for last school year were right at 2,900, and this was actually significantly higher than we had projected for new housing.
So we had adjusted down, not knowing what the interest rate effect might be on the market.
So over the previous year, kind of your largest influencers in terms of new occupancies were Sunterra, which added just over 700, followed by Ellison with just over 375, Windward, Aurora, Jasmine Heights, and Cane Island.
So those were the largest occupancies added in the last year.
Looking forward 10 years in your planning period, you have those numbers in front of you,
rejecting just over 46,000 single-family occupancies.
Remember, these are housing units.
These are not students from new housing.
These are simply the housing occupancies.
Roughly 25,000 of those are single-family with about 1,000 built to rent.
We'll talk about that here at the end of the presentation a little bit.
And just over 18,500 are multifamily projections with a few manufactured housing projections as well.
So you do have, I believe, a handout in front of you that will show you the location of these five kind of largest developments we're looking at in the next 10 years.
These probably will not be a surprise to you, and they're all in the northwestern quadrant of the district.
We're looking at Sunterra adding nearly or just over 3,600 units in the planning period for a total in KDISD of just over 4,600 housing occupancies when they're built out.
Ellison, we're projecting to add nearly 3,200 in the 10-year period, and we're also projecting them to be built out also.
Anniston by Lenars just across FM 529 from Windward, which is completing its build-out right now.
they're projected to add just under 2 000 or about 1940 units over the next 10 years
site work has started there pretty extensively and we are projecting initial occupancies
potentially in this school year starting in anniston johnson development company this is one
that in previous studies has been kind of kind of an unknown but has been announced since our
last full study for the district so johnson is in a partnership to develop the just over
1100 acres of the former hillcourt energy property and that will become a master plan community
expected to have about 2500 single-family homes and we're projecting occupancies there potentially
as early as 24 25. so that adds a little more assuredness in this northwestern quadrant
for some tracks before that were a little more unknown in terms of what they might turn into over
the the long term the last one is bridgeland bridgeland is in the very far north of the
district and the kdisd section is expected to be kind of the final piece of the bridgeland
development a significant amount of the land in kdisd will be used for drainage and detention
however there are still nearly 1800 single-family occupancies projected
in the bridgeland section and we're projecting those to begin potentially as early as 25 26
depending on what the remainder of their build out looks like
this next slide may be a little different than those of you that have been on the board
previously are used to seeing that this looks at the single-family occupancies by land use zone
over the 10-year planning period and it really highlights the darker the red the more intense
the single-family occupancies and you can see it really highlights the fact that the northwestern
quadrant of the district is really where the remaining land to be developed is and that's
where the single family occupancies are really being concentrated over this 10-year planning
period next let's talk just briefly about multi-family and it's important to note that
multi-family remains in high demand in the houston area in general
it's a mind of its own in the houston area in general but specifically in the western suburbs
And the Katie sub market is one of the high growth areas, actually, along with Richmond Rosenberg that's helped in Cypress and Waller that are helping to drive Houston's kind of prominence in the multifamily market right now.
And the Katie sub market has the largest pipeline again, along with Richmond Rosenberg of apartment units kind of under construction currently in the Houston market overall.
overall. So for your next 10 year projection period, we are projecting over 18,500 multifamily
occupancies. There are currently 17 non-age restricted complexes that are either leasing up
or under construction. And you can see those on this slide to the left. We'll have a map here in
a minute also. These are 40% of your total projected new housing occupancies, but they do
not constitute 40% of your total projected students from new housing. And that's important to remember.
member. So because of the student ratio that Chris mentioned earlier, they actually, the multifamily
occupancies comprise less than 17% of your students from new housing. So just keep that in
mind that there's not a one-to-one equivalent of that proportion. So overall, our multifamily
occupancies range from just under 2,300 in year one to peak about 2,600 in year two. So there are
are a lot of units under construction that started over the last couple of years that are building
out and will be leasing up and then those taper down a little bit over the remainder of the
projections period this gives you a brief overview of where those multi-family developments are
located in the district this is the projections for the full 10-year period but your colors are
based on kind of the timing of the impact so your darker red are your units that are leasing up
up right now they're starting to occupy your kind of middle pink color for lack of a better term
is your units that are under construction so you're going to see the impact of these complexes
first your blue is your planned unit so that's units that we
understand might be in the construction queue in the next coming years they typically fall more mid planning period and
Then you're kind of beige color is what we call a probable future and it's simply
Land in areas where there is other multifamily development or in areas where the land use lends itself and we project that there will be
Continued development as the district continues to build out
So these are your housing projections by year of occupancy
Your single family projections, they're projected to peak right now about mid-projection period in year six.
As we talked about earlier, some of the larger developments that are currently large influencers are projected to build out towards the end of the projection period.
And they are being replaced by some coming in, but you do see the projections start to taper off towards the end.
And the kind of hash color in your first four years is the breakout of the build-to-rent, single-family build-to-rent that we know of right now.
There's about 1,000 occupancies we're projecting currently.
Those are the highest in year one, and those taper out towards year four.
We project these a little bit differently than we do multifamily.
They're a little bit harder to understand in the future because a lot of it is market-driven where they might be.
So you see a little bit of a bulge in the early part of the single-family projections.
There's two main types of build-to-rent.
There's basically kind of standalone developments, and then oftentimes you'll see just a section of an existing multi-plant community or another neighborhood that will start to develop as a build-to-rent, and some of that is occurring as well.
well. So in total, in 2031, we do, I'm sorry, in 2021, for each study, when you get your full
report, we do kind of a development density analysis, and we look at the amount of the land
geographically that's left that's able to be developed. And in 2021, we estimated that KDISD
had about 30 square miles that remained available to develop. And in this year's study, 2023,
23 that number has reduced to about 25 square miles so you can see that you're continuing
as these land as this land is starting to to come into master plan communities and other types of
developments to have less and less developable developable land available in the district
and i'll hand it back to chris okay so i'll wrap up here with just a little bit about the student
projections because that's really well with here everything that we've talked about culminates in
and the student projections as a whole.
I mentioned that we do a low, a moderate, and a high-growth scenario,
and we do them for 10 years.
We know, of course, that we would expect the first five years
to be much more reliable than the last five years,
but we need to know where we think we're going to head
since we're looking at two.
If you need a new high school, it's two years to construct,
and you have to design, and you have to pass a bond,
and you have to buy land, and all of these things.
And so we look at the long term,
but we also really more heavily concentrate on the short term.
This does spell a little bit out about what the assumptions are in all three of these situations.
I mentioned charter schools earlier, and so, of course, the low growth assumes that we would have two or three larger charters opening,
whereas the high growth would assume that we have basically no additional large charters occurring in the next 10 years.
The low growth would assume that birth rates sort of normalize.
The high growth would assume that birth rates really sort of kick into high gear.
Mortgage rates, unemployment rates, all of those things are factored in there.
But you can see that under the moderate growth scenario,
10 years out, we could be looking at 109,000 students.
We are not expecting the district to be built out in 10 years.
We would expect it to be building out, but not quite there yet in those 10 years.
And so when we go on to the next slide,
we can see how that just looks on a bit of a graph.
The 2028 numbers, for example,
those that we concentrate a little bit more heavily on,
The moderate growth scenario would show 102,664, with the low growth being just over 100,000
and the high growth being almost 107,000.
They're sort of midpoint in the projection series.
So at the end of the day, what we're actually here to talk about is how that affects each of your schools.
We've started at this really broad level, and we're turning it down to how that impacts
and what the numbers are for each one of the schools that you've got.
And so one thing I did want to touch on just briefly, though, is a good reminder.
I feel like a couple of our districts we've stumbled on here presenting the data a little bit
is that they don't seem to understand the difference between the resident students and the enrolled students.
And so most of the time, the numbers that you see on the map are going to be our projected geocoded students.
That is where they live.
Because when we're talking about moving kids around and, you know, drawing attendance zones and making plans,
We've got to understand how many kids are there right now, but especially at the elementary
level, that may not be where they are attending school because there are bilingual programs
and all of these other programs.
There are transfers at all different levels, but they're very heavily concentrated at the
elementary level.
And so we start with a geocoded, but we know that programs and things change over time.
Programs may change in February or something like that.
And so that's based on the decisions that the district makes along the way.
And so our base level data that was geocoded students, but that doesn't always correspond with the enrolled students.
So do just keep those couple of things in mind.
And, of course, you can see here very plainly how that is very different.
What this data shows is it shows for each school out next to it, it shows a dash and it shows the capacity.
And then below that, it shows the enrollment for the fall.
and then it shows our projected geocoded students for 24 and for 28 and so you
can see that made Creek for example is enrolling 835 students but we're
projecting 1145 geocoded for the fall of 24 these yellow stars show where the
bilingual programs are and so some of those bilingual programs are
self-contained but then others take in students from other schools and so made
Creek is losing quite a few students there from the geocoded so you have to
to look at all those little parts of the puzzle there to really understand what's going on.
On a map like this, I think sometimes it's best to look at the trend between 24 and 28. Are you
going up? Are you going down? And by how much? And that will help you understand generally what's
going on within the confines of the attendance zone itself. But then you have to realize that
there are all these programs and things that do impact those changes.
In the southeastern quadrant of the district, again, we've got three of the schools there,
there, Fielder and Williams and Memorial Parkway, that have those bilingual programs.
Also here, you can see that Patterson's a little heavy, but we've got the possibility
of adding some classrooms there, thanks to the bond.
We have things that may look a little odd to you, like West Memorial, 1,200 students
projected geocoded, same sort of thing.
They transfer their bilingual program out, and it's a sizable number of students, and
they transfer it out elsewhere, and I think they are up for an addition there, thanks
to the bond also.
Some of these areas are declining a little bit.
We're projecting a little bit of decline,
and that's mainly due to the smaller cohorts
that we're seeing in some of these areas.
In other words, you have fewer third-grade students
than you have fifth-grade students,
and as those age forward, a lot of times
you may see a little bit of decline.
In the southwestern portion of the district,
it's very similar here.
We've got Rylander and Jenks and Campbell and Wilson.
Jenks is the only school in this sector of the district
that has a different capacity.
It does have the bilingual program there, and because of that, it was bumped up a little bit in capacity.
Again, there's a little bit of an opportunity for decline in this portion of the district,
and we've talked about that in other rezonings and things that we've done.
But like in Campbell, for example, geocoded today, you've got 250 fifth-grade students,
and you've got 179 first-grade students.
And so that's as we have to watch those.
Now, they're not going to age forward exactly.
There are people that are going to be moving in and out, and sometimes people will come
in at later stages of life because the area is very popular.
But we can't ignore the fact that there's that sort of difference between first and
fifth grade.
And then in the northwestern portion of the district, for everybody that's been around
long enough to have, when it was just Bethke or just Bethke and Leonard and McIlwain, we
finally think the density of students there is strong enough right around that zone, right
right around the schools themselves, that we're hoping that those get a little relief there and that they stay relatively stable.
But we do, of course, then have Robertson and Fulton and Youngblood.
Youngblood's zone is actually all of the rest of the northern portion of the district there, and you can see really big, big numbers.
Robertson's number is a little bit higher this year.
It's got Sentara in it.
Sentara occupied more homes than we were expecting.
but thankfully the bond is set there so that we can open another school there to
relieve Robertson in the very near term. So at the junior high and the high
school level the trends are very much the same of course that's where all of
the building and things are going. Junior high 18 and Haskett there in the north
we've got issues there ultimately but of course we'll be able to open another
facility or two in the in the near term there to relieve both of those schools.
We are seeing pressure at Adams.
We've talked about that before,
that Cross Creek Ranch and those very high ratios,
but they have a very similar situation
to what I was just talking about at Campbell.
Of course, Campbell fits inside Adams,
so of course they do.
But for the sixth grade, for example, at Adams,
you've got 655 students there right now.
And just to look at their second grade,
you've got 545 students there.
So just between those couple of classes,
you've got 110 students swing.
And so this number is a little bit higher
by about 50 maybe for Adams, maybe 60 than it was in the time past.
But it's like that's the one section of land that's left in the southwest in KDISD,
and they're putting kids in there as densely as possible.
But we are hoping that that wave does go ahead and come down there for Adams.
Then at the high school level, it's very similar, similar sort of thing.
We are seeing actually the smaller numbers there really in a lot of the southwestern portion of the district.
Cinco Ranch, though, we have more students, I'm sorry, we have fewer students overall geocoded in Cinco Ranch's zone now than there were five years ago.
But people are moving in basically at the high school level because Cinco Ranch must be a very popular place to be.
And so they are not diving off nearly as quickly as they could have been if you're looking only at those students, those younger cohorts.
So we'll continue to watch Jordan and Tompkins and Seven Lakes for the similar sorts of things.
It's hard to get at that data until they're truly finished building out, because if you
have changes in cohort sizes, you don't really know if it's from new kids coming into new
homes or if it's from people coming into existing homes because the area is popular.
One thing that is important to note is that in Katy and in High School 10, we're looking
at the possibility of 3,700 students in five years.
I mentioned earlier we're not expecting the district to be built out in 10 years, and
so we're certainly not projecting the district to be built out in five years.
And so both of those schools are expected to be very, very large again, or getting very large in about five years' time.
So what's left?
We've got, just as a summation, elementaries will need immediate relief in Robertson.
But the district, I think, is quite well situated, has a site in Robertson, has most of the rest of the sites for the next handful of schools that have to be built.
We'll need about four additional elementaries in the northwest area there in the next four or five years.
At the junior high level, we're going to need about 1.5 by 2028, so one plus pressure and then ultimately a second one there.
Again, the district is pretty well situated with all of that.
And then at the high school level, like I mentioned, 3,700 students there in the fall of 28, and so we'll need to be doing something for those two schools too.
So do you all have any questions?
Questions?
Mr. President?
Ms. Champagne.
MS.
Thank you, Ms. Poole.
I just want to say I really like the relationship between you and the district and the services
that you've provided because, you know, it's been instrumental to a lot of our development
and all that, you know, especially the recent passing of the bond.
MS.
The bond.
MS.
Thank you.
So, but I have a couple of questions for you.
Oh, and I also wanted to say to the Nelsons and the Freemans.
I'm sure they're kind of freaked out about, you know, because I was talking to the elder, Mr. Nelson, and he was talking about how different everything is.
And this is a good kind of roadmap to see how much we've changed since you were involved in this school board.
I'm ready to not be calling it High School 10.
I almost said for him.
I was just waiting just a little bit.
So one question I have for you is the projections that you've given,
is that based on the new schools that we're going to have,
you know, the 2028 projections in particular, you know,
or is that based on pre-knowing that the bomb is going to pass?
That is based on the numbers of homes we're expecting to be occupied
based on the work that we've done in the last six or so months.
We start the project again every summer, and we try to start over basically from zero.
We start over with knowledge, but we try not to start over with a lot of assumptions.
So we go back and revisit as many developers as possible and understand how many did you
put on the ground this year?
Are you adding three builders to this development?
What is going on today?
Because we want to take where we are today and continue to move forward.
Did you take into account that the fact that now that we're going to get the new schools,
schools? Did you, you know, with the elementary schools, are you taking into account the new
division of the students? We have, we project by, basically by land use zone. So it's by
a little sector of the district. And so when I showed projections, say at Robertson, I,
you know, I have not peeled off and drawn an attendance zone or anything like that for
the new school yet, but everybody that we're expecting to be occupying homes in Robertson
are accounted for in the present Robertson.
I see.
Okay, and then also I appreciate the fact that y'all are trying to find out
how many students are enrolled in the charter schools and the private schools
and the efforts that that must take.
But what could we do, or do you know, maybe this isn't even your thing,
but to entice those families to come in on into our public schools?
If I knew that, I could make a lot of money consulting for school districts because I
hear that same question and I have heard that same question now for about three or four
or five years.
The first time I heard it was for a district down here.
The first time I heard the word marketing to the kids that have left, have chosen to
leave.
So, I don't really know what, you know, there are people out there that are trying to make
an attempt at that, but that's not my question to answer, I don't think.
I think it is important for us to understand what the trends are and where the new ones
are coming in because of course immediately that impacts you guys.
Okay, that's all I have.
Thank you.
I have a, I want to go ahead and jump in and ask a couple questions.
Now with the bond that was approved, which we, that provides for three elementaries,
one junior high, and also as I recall land for two elementaries, land for one junior
high want land for an additional high school so i'm just looking at for example the difference
in there is low moderate and high in terms of the growth so beyond for example let's say take
the moderate so beyond the medium beyond the 2024 bond in those schools have you quantified just
okay beyond the 2024 bond in order to fulfill the needs of the moderate we need x another high
school we need x junior highs we need x elementaries has that been quantified we haven't
yet what we do is is we will sit down in in december january probably time frame and provide
sort of a rollout of how we would expect these zones to shake out and we always use the moderate
growth scenario we have the low and high and one time out of 50 maybe we're asked to run something
in the low if something bizarre happens then we'll run the low but most of the time we're using the
moderate. And so we'll take that data by lane use zone. That's why we have it by a little
tiny piece. And we'll start looking at, if you build a school here, it may take this section
off. Now, drawing attendance zones, we call them catchment areas. It's purely a planning tool.
But if it takes this one off, then that allows us to look at opening a school here. What if we
change this a little bit? Would it allow us to push that next school off by another year?
And so that's what we'll be doing, is we'll be looking at how many of these have you got? What
What might those configurations have to be?
How far do you think you're going to get?
There's a ton of calculus, of course, that goes into this.
How much will you allow the other ones to be over a little bit?
Because it's not just a matter of you know you will build a school
exactly when you're one student over.
That's not what will happen.
You'll allow some of these to be over a little bit
so that you're then utilizing the school well
when you open the new school to start with.
And so we have a breakdown sort of like that.
I think a lot of that sort of information was probably used
in the planning for the bond in the past.
But then we'll go back and completely readdress it, starting with the current attendance zones that were just approved.
That will be our base.
And then we'll go in with the new data and look first, you know, first, second, third,
and try to lay it out and work with the district to see what the next steps will be.
So with the moderate growth, we're not at, we haven't built out the district?
No, not in 10 years.
That's not what we're expecting.
Okay.
But do you have any idea of, I mean, just as far as number of schools in a moderate scenario?
No, I haven't done math like that.
Are you talking about like to 2010?
Okay.
I know it would be another high school.
It would probably be another handful of junior highs and a relatively large number of elementary
schools to get to that point, but I don't have a number like that in my pocket.
It will depend on how we roll them out over time.
Which scenario should we be hoping for?
We always say to work with a moderate growth scenario because even when a district, say,
comes in kind of at the low growth scenario, every time we come in and do a study, we try
try to reset everything so that we're looking at whatever situation is on the ground today
and then we generate a low, a moderate, and a high from that, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. Okay, so somebody has questions? Any?
President, a couple. Thank you for your presentation. It's always super interesting.
My questions are kind of all over the place. So when you talk about charter schools and
and more families choosing charter schools,
1500 at one point, 3300 at this point.
I can understand the various reasons
why families would choose charter schools,
but we didn't talk about private schools.
I'm wondering if you have any perspective
throughout the state, you work throughout the state,
about private schools, should the vouchers pass
because charter schools are publicly funded, correct?
Correct. They don't need a voucher. But private schools, I didn't, I saw so many private schools
that you had little circles for private schools. What is, what is, what are some of those examples
and what do you think will happen if the vouchers pass? So I was asked this question earlier and
I've been asked that question actually since at least your bond group, I think I got a very
similar question to that. The private schools are smaller, you know, I mentioned that part,
and we contact as many private schools as we can. They don't always talk to us. The charter schools
don't talk to us we're sort of working for the enemy you know but what we have to do is try to
get an estimate from whomever we're talking to about uh how what proportion of their students
would come from kdisd so the the private school information that we have is an estimate at best
we contact them again every year and see and try to adjust my kit might too have gone to private
school and so when it comes down to vouchers every time we have looked at the voucher thing and
and really tried to clear, to get geared up,
it changes markedly.
And so we're sort of waiting, really,
on more of a finalized sort of a bill
before we can see how we think
this is actually going to impact the district.
We have one of our people that has done a little bit of work
and has started taking a look at some data
in the Florida area.
I don't think that he's really gotten
to any sort of conclusion,
because, again, we're sort of waiting
on more of a finalized bill.
My own experience is that
if students were suddenly handed a $10,000 check,
that a lot of private schools are already running on a very shoestring budget
and that they would have to gear up and build facilities.
And then in some cases, the land that they're on is very tiny to start with,
so they would have to split into new facilities, buy another piece of land.
There's going to be time here that's going to be involved.
And I think you're also still going to be dealing with the situation
that most of the private schools, being so much smaller,
are not going to offer German 4 and something or other specialized coding,
and they're not going to be breeding grounds for Division I athletes and all of these sorts of things.
And so, especially at the high school level, you will still have students coming back from private schools
to attend KDISD schools with everything that those large high schools offer.
We have not accounted for vouchers here in this situation.
I would guess not because it hasn't been decided yet.
I really appreciate your projections every time you're low, moderate, and high
when you're looking 10 years into the future and you talk about interest rates
and job markets and all the myriad of things that are going to happen and then
something comes in like a like a virus or like a blood or like a and we have
been projections low and then through the roof and then have been low so I
appreciate those and understand that your very great success rate of
predictions is closest when we're closest you know within a year or within two years but i appreciate
those 10-year kind of thoughts so when you i'm going to request information if i may dr gregorski
i don't know if i have to ask you for this but that multi-family with the circles on it that map
is there any way to see that like with a high school zone drawn around it because you create
something like that would it be okay to have that i just i was trying to go like a wonder what
what schools are going to have multifamily,
which can really make a difference
while it's just .32 or whatever the number is.
Students per unit, it's multiple units in one small...
It is, but normally new ones actually are much lower than that
because they're more expensive.
They're pricier for the rent prices to start with.
So, yes, but we can provide that.
That's just a curiosity for me.
and that's all I had. Thank you so much.
Any other questions? I have a question.
Ms. Calhoun? Could you tell me the difference between, because I know
right now what's come out of committee,
the difference between a voucher and an ESA program?
I cannot. I know the vouchers for private school would be more like the
check as opposed to the savings account. I don't know how they're going to define all of that.
My understanding is that the vouchers were something that came about in the early 90s
that was selected specifically for private schools,
whereas the ESA program is an educational savings account
that monies that will be given to use for just that education.
It's not actually going into the hands of the taxpayers
payers that will be allocated by the comptroller to the organization that the family chooses.
So it's not relegated just to private school institutions.
If a family chooses to go to a school outside of the district, such as a charter school,
then that money would then be allocated to that charter school.
school. So do these numbers reflect that or are we reflecting that and accounting for
that? We're not reflecting any of that yet because it keeps getting hung up. You know,
the first time we were asked about this was several years ago. And so no, at this point
we are, we've taken the attack to not include that until we begin to understand what that
might look like. What we have included is charter schools that we know have filed amendments
or that we know are existing and going to add grade groups or grade levels.
And we have included an estimate based on sort of the average number of charter school students
that the district has, or students that the district has lost to charters over the last several years.
We have included that generally through the next 10 years after the stuff we know about for sure.
We've included a loss for charters that way,
but we have not tried to go in and estimate anything that may come out of Austin.
Okay.
Okay. And I think some of the questions that came out that we presented to you as far as like what we can do to recapture those students, I don't think that necessarily that's a question that you would be able to answer, right?
I think that's something that this board is in charge of answering and figuring out how we recapture those students
Instilling that trust with those families that have chosen to go outside of this district to recapture them to come back
for whatever reason and
That would be how we would recapture that money and those students to try to provide them with the best education possible
But I did want to make a clarifying point because I know there's a lot of talk of
voucher, but it's not a voucher.
It's actually a savings account.
So a voucher is entitled to a private school entity.
Again, the account is not.
That is open enrollment for anyone who chooses to opt into that program per the House bill
that's out right now.
That could change.
So I just wanted to double check and make sure.
But that's okay now.
Thank you.
We've taken all of that off the table.
Okay.
I do appreciate your presentation, though.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Mr. President, just because it was brought up, I just would like to chime in that there are multiple reasons why families choose charter schools,
and it's not always because of lack of trust in KDSD specifically.
Specifically, there are lots of reasons why they choose smaller class sizes, smaller schools, no STAAR Test, you know, closer to home.
They want lots of reasons that are not related to lack of trust in KDSD.
That's just my view.
Okay.
Well, we're not deciding the voucher thing here in the board.
We're just listening to some enrollment projections.
This is kind of a question for Mr. Smith, I guess.
In terms of the, kind of off surprising you with the question, but I guess, or Mr. Poole
actually, in terms of the financial impact, you know, we have the low, the moderate, and
then the high.
and obviously you know we're growing really fast and it really is a challenge
for the district to really keep up with the growth particularly if the high one
materializes and it seems to me like the the property values in the growth areas
you know the houses are smaller the acreage is smaller in terms of the
the property value contribution towards servicing the debt, building more schools, et cetera.
I'm just wondering in terms of the moderate and the high and the low,
I would imagine that the high scenario, I mean, it has its positives and negatives,
but it's really a challenge under the high scenario to really accommodate the growth of the district.
I'll say this.
We've historically do our long-range projections
off the moderate growth.
Again, these numbers are updated every year,
so we're pretty close to the target when we're a year out.
It's those four and five, six years out that we don't know,
but we long-range plan on the moderate growth.
And then we take the moderate growth this year
and our geo...
What's it called? Geo...
Geo-coded kids are looked at, and then we also have students that are employees of staff of the district that bring their children here.
And so they don't have access to that data.
We do.
But we start from the moderate growth scenario.
And, again, we're really, when it comes to the real budget, are only budgeting one year out.
And so we get a closer look every year when we look at those far-out projections.
And we don't nail it every time.
Sometimes we're a little high, sometimes we're a little low,
but most of the time when in doubt,
we'll be more conservative in our projections
because we don't want to over-budget our revenue.
overbuild if the if the high growth does not materialize and becomes a lower
There's not not over build the anticipation of the growth
We in my in my time and in my 20 years here. We've never come close to overbuilt. We're always chasing because
Because we kind of let them come then we build it and that's why we had portable buildings and everything
So in a way and this again not to get into the voucher thing
I mean, the charter schools kind of relieves a little bit of pressure during that time where we are, when we're building schools, the growth is coming, we're building schools, but it helps to not have all the schools be, some of the schools be in excess of where the capacity is.
It does relieve that pressure to KDISD, but I want to be clear that those charter schools are being built with taxpayer dollars as well.
They're not going for elections and they're not issuing bonds.
They're coming from the state of Texas.
Right, but I'm just looking at KDISD.
Yeah, well.
Mr. Perez, if I may, the high school 11 is a pretty good example of not overbuilding.
There was a lot of talk internally about high school 11 when we were planning for the 2023 bond.
And I want this board and the community to know that we were really focused on asking the community to support what we needed immediately.
Could we have put high school 11 in the 2023 bond?
Yes, we could have.
But that's a $230, $240 million project that we thought we might not need by 2028.
And that's a big ask.
And so when we do that kind of stuff, we do that kind of planning and really pay attention to that
I think we're gonna be okay in in terms of the years and and how we spread it out
But but we don't want to just throw a project in there to throw a project in there and then something turns out funky
And then we don't need it. That's a that's a big problem for us. So we didn't want to do that
I hope that gives you an example. I wasn't getting into the bond either. I was just okay. Yes, sir
the the growth and the the
the challenges that it poses for the district in terms of keeping up as far as building and
and staffing up and everything that goes with it mr president mr president oh can i say
mr veerling i think this might be for you um can you tell me can you tell us what we
should be looking at down the road looking at these projections like when when will we
When do you foresee? I know it's a it's a best guess, right? Or an educated guess. But when will you see that we would need to make some some more decisions on more schools than what we already have through the 2023 bond?
Probably in the next two years. We won't have an attendance boundary modification this next summer, but then we will the summer after to open those two elementaries.
So at that point, we'll start looking at what we need in the future.
You know, again, these are projections, and like Chris said, the closer you get to reality, the easier it is to kind of predict.
But you don't want to get too tight because then you'll get an elementary with 2,000 kids.
So you have to be careful about that, balance it all out.
So I'd say over the next two years, we'll be looking at numbers closely to see what kind of pans out.
Yeah, and I appreciate that because I grew up here and I've seen what's happened to Spring Branch.
That's alarming.
Yes, ma'am.
And I don't want that to happen here.
No, we talk about that a lot, actually.
We do.
Chris and I do.
Dr. Gorski and I, we talk about it at Cabinet.
We want to build to make sure we have room for kids, but we don't want to build so quickly that we're then looking back going,
we've only got 200 kids for that school.
What are we going to do?
Right.
Because they're suffering right now.
Yes, ma'am.
It's been a struggle.
If you drive through Spring Branch, and I've been around a long time, too.
1977, we moved out here.
There was nothing out here.
But Spring Branch had all kinds of schools.
And there's places now in Spring Branch where there's office buildings where a junior high used to be or whatever.
So, you know, you don't want to do that.
We've been lucky, and, you know, our neighborhoods have regenerated and that sort of thing.
But you've got to be careful when you're building in the great white north.
So are you thinking, like, fall of 2025 is when we would need to be?
I think we're always looking, but I'm comfortable with that.
I am, given the fact that we've got some schools in the pipeline with this bond that was just passed,
knowing that we'll get some help there.
And then, you know, we just, we always, we're always looking.
We really are.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Any other questions?
Mr. President?
Ms. Champagne?
I just wanted to add, first of all, I think I saw some presentation from PASA or another group
early 2000s and I heard a prediction 2032 is going to be built out so I'm just saying that
that was a pretty good prediction you know 30 years in advance and I don't think we're
far off that so I really I really have a lot of confidence in the predictions I also wanted to
add that I remember since I've been on the board Campbell Elementary there's a past board member
in here he probably remember this too wasn't planned in any any bond and it just came about
you know we had to start building it and then right like that campbell elementary got to 1400
kids so that was a really that's a really kind of a good example of us trying to to play catch up
sometimes with schools i just wanted to mention that thank you anything else
thank you very much thanks for your presentation appreciate it
8. Consent
Okay, we'll now go into our full consent agenda.
A consented agenda shall include items that were discussed and considered at the previous work-study board meeting,
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 action items will be acted upon by one vote without separate discussion
unless a board member requests that an item be withdrawn for individual
consideration this is per be illegal and be local are there any items that board
members would like to remove from the consent agenda mr. president I'm it
will entertain a motion for the consent agenda mr. president I move that the
Board of Trustees approves the consent agenda for items 8.1 through 8.12.
Second.
It is moved and seconded that the Board of Trustees approves the consent agenda for items 8.1 through 8.12.
We will now proceed to vote.
Board members, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad.
The consent agenda passes by a vote of 7 to 0.
Mr. President.
This means that we've also approved naming High School 10 Freeman High School.
So congratulations to the Freeman family.
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
Point of personal privilege, please.
In the audience tonight, we have a former Texas representative, Bill Caligari, and his lovely wife, Ann.
And I just wanted to recognize them.
sitting in front of them is sweet Annie Caligari I'm so sorry I forgot your
married name she is the daughter mom is a Freeman so Bill Caligari son married
Annie mom is that right yes and so she's part of the Freeman family and she works
for Mike Schofield and has given us tours of the Capitol and it's always
very responsive when we call about education things it's so nice to see you
and the Freemans and the Nelsons in the in the room tonight you are history you
are the foundation that we built to KDSV on and we're grateful for every one of
you thank you very much we now move on to the 9.1 information items and the
9.1 Board Committee.
presenter is Victor Perez board president and the report that I'm making
right now is about what we're calling a teacher retention committee. Goal number
five of our strategic plan is to attract and support high quality staff members
to optimize their impact on student learning and create a culture of staff
retention. With this in mind the board is creating a short-term special purpose
committee to focus on teacher job satisfaction and teacher retention. Our
Our board has a goal of spending more time discussing student outcomes with the assistance of the Academic Performance Committee.
The teacher part is, of course, a huge part of the overall formula on student outcomes.
The committee will explore ideas and support and assist KDISD administration in fulfilling this critical strategic goal.
As we know, the teacher shortage is statewide and nationwide, not just at KDISD.
And, of course, we know the district is growing, so we need more and more teachers.
Part of the committee's focus will be to learn about specific steps the district is currently
pursuing to mitigate the shortage and to coordinate periodic reports by the district to the board
on this important topic.
I have asked Mrs. Teamey as a former teacher to lead this effort along with Mrs. Cuzela,
a former experienced substitute teacher.
It is expected this temporary committee will complete its work in about 90 to 120 days
or so.
I also want to add beyond that, beyond this new special purpose temporary committee, I
want to mention that this past week the policy committee consisting of Ms. Cozzella, Ms.
Calhoun and myself met with Dr. Gorgorski and Ms. Hack to get an update on the rollout
of FA, which is the Student Welfare Parental Authority and Gender Fluidity Matters, and
and also EFA and EFP library materials.
We appreciate their time and work that has gone
and goes on in implementing these policies.
With regard to FA, as you all may know,
the district established a student welfare coordinator.
I'm just gonna kind of summarize the process
that they implemented that we discussed
with Dr. Rogorski and Ms. Hack.
They established a student welfare coordinator
at each campus, which is not a new position,
but an administrative person already on the campus,
like an assistant principal, not a teacher.
If a student publicly identifies him or herself
as transgender or is asked to be referred to by a name
or pronoun that is different than their biological sex,
the student welfare coordinator is notified
and then the student is advised in advance
that the parents will need to be notified
to make sure the student is aware in advance.
The student welfare coordinator communicates with the parents.
They are notified by phone and invited to meet in person, not in email.
The meeting may include other campus personnel who know the student.
From what we understand, these conferences have been productive and collaborative between the school, the parents, and the student, thus far without issue.
As it has been implemented, this process implemented by the district takes the burden and any pressure off the teachers.
And it should be emphasized the process is only put into motion when a student has already taken a step on their own to identify as transgender or is requesting to change their name or pronoun.
Only then are the parents notified.
On EFB, in other words the library materials, the district has put on its website an improved
tool for the community to enable the community to review pending library purchases.
Additionally, the district has taken steps to streamline its internal district review
of its library collection.
We appreciate Mrs. Hack and Dr. Bogorski and everyone involved for the expeditions and
professional matter these policies have been implemented so i just want to make that report
that committee report for everyone any questions mr president miss fox um
while i appreciate the uh talk to teachers about retention and why they're leaving those kinds of
things i'm wondering because it's directly related to academics why the academic committee members
were not the ones to chair that committee?
Well, there's two different things.
One is reviewing academic performance,
academic performance in terms of what are the key variables
that we need to be looking at as a board on a regular basis.
And the other one is focusing strictly on teachers,
on retaining teachers, and on keeping teachers
and adding and attracting teachers.
So it's two separate topics.
Even though, obviously, teachers have a great impact
on academic outcome.
One is to focus, academic outcome is to focus on
what should the board be looking at
in terms of as we evaluate and focus on
how is your district doing,
how are the different schools doing,
and what should we be focused on?
Because we get a lot of information, a lot of data,
and we need to focus on the, really the key metrics
that we need to focus on in evaluating
how we're doing academically.
And so that's totally different
than a focused effort on teachers.
So when you chose the trustees to be in charge of that committee, I'm wondering why you would choose members who are very new, who their roles and knowledge and experience in KDISD is not deep.
we have board members here on the board who have been here two decades and have
deep involvement in the community in classrooms on campuses I substituted for
six years I was at every campus that existed in the district before I came to
the school board so you're on the academic performance committee okay I'm
I'm sorry go ahead if you and and the people that are on this committee are
are either a former teacher or a former substitute teacher,
and they've been in the classroom teaching.
And that's why they were selected to focus on that committee.
Right.
And the two trustees you chose have put bold policy,
bold changes into policy without any input from teachers or stakeholders,
even when asked.
They have the trust from our teachers
teachers and possibly community is not as strong as it could be because of strong decisions
made quickly without input from them.
So now when we call them and say we'd like input from you, I don't believe that the trust
is there for them to be vulnerable and open when board members have put an undue pressure
on teachers outside their school day outside their instructional day outside their instructional jobs
by some of the changes big bold changes that we've made since since may okay thanks for your opinion
mr perez um i also agree with miss fox although i have not been a professional teacher
i have been in the classrooms um a lot during the last 20 years more more recently maybe than some
other of the trustees that have been chosen. I've taught over 50 JA classes. I know a lot
of teachers throughout the district, not just since I've been on the board, but I have a
fairly good relationship with many teachers, and I understand you have the right to choose
who you'd like to choose, but I did trust the district enough to put my kids into the
schools and i dealt i i you know worked with the teachers actively at all this at the schools not
just my kids personal teachers but the teachers throughout the the school building and um
i do i do i do agree with miss fox that the trust um you know
i know a few of us asked could we have input from teachers before we implement or change those
policies and and the a lot of the school board members did not want to do that so
now they didn't want the input then but now they're gonna want the input now and
I feel like the trust has been been hurt and hopefully you know y'all can the
other board members can rebuild the trust but I just want to wish you good
good luck with that and if you need help I'm here too and I would hope so a lot
lot of teachers actually reach out to me on a daily basis and we need to have people we need
to build that trust back with the board and the teachers and um but we already had a few of us
including you know mr redmond also who have a lot of good relationships with the i'm sure i'm sure
you do i'm sure mr redmond does absolutely nobody's saying that they don't or that miss fox doesn't
But you didn't ask anybody.
You know, you made the decision by yourself.
And, you know, I'd never heard of this before, and I would have loved to have heard about it.
Well, I notified you, and you never called me to ask any questions?
Mr. Perez, with all due respect, I called you last week.
You didn't return my call.
I notified you about this over the weekend.
You never picked up the phone or anything.
thing. I just went through the process as laid out where it's not a burden on teachers.
You voted against the policy of FA, so now you're still continuing to harbor an issue with that.
You voted against it and now I don't think there's a lack of trust. I think that we will receive
input from teachers. We will sit down with the administration to get their input on what they're
doing to retain teachers and work collaboratively with the administration i don't think it's a big
issue well i hope you're correct because um that's not what what i'm hearing but that this has
nothing to do with that policy it has in general to do with several different changes that have
been made since um may and not just that one policy but in general i think it's important
to get the community input.
Absolutely.
Before we drastically change a policy.
The policy has been rolled out.
It's been successfully rolled out.
I commend the administration for doing so.
It's going smoothly.
They've done a great job on the campuses of setting up
the student welfare administrator.
They're having conferences with the parents,
with the student, et cetera.
I think it's going very well.
and it's taken a burden off the teachers in the way it's been implemented.
I'm sorry, but how do we really know that?
Because we're not, you know, you may not be getting all the input from teachers directly.
The input I'm getting is from the administration.
Right, but you're not hearing from teachers directly about this.
Mr. Perez.
Maybe you are, but.
Okay, so just to reassure you, I've talked with a lot of people that are still teaching,
and I know several of us spoke with a lot of teachers when we were campaigning.
And I have heard back from quite a few teachers that they are very thankful for the gender policy
because now they're free to teach.
So I understand there's two perspectives, there's two sides.
We have to just go with the majority, and the overwhelming majority is behind that policy,
so much so that there are several numerous districts that have contacted us and asked to copy our policy.
In fact, state legislatures, Texas state legislators, have encouraged their school district boards to follow the policy that we voted in.
So this is not just something, if it were not written well and it were not being implemented well, no one would be asking for our policy to copy it.
Well, again, I just want to reiterate, if I may, I'm not talking specifically about that one policy.
What policy are you talking about?
I'm talking about getting community input.
To what?
To that policy, the book policy, the holding of the 93,000.
The book policy past 7-0.
Right.
Which policy is it that you wanted to implement?
I'm not directly talking about policies only.
I'm talking about, in general, that night when the people came to speak,
and Mr. Redmond had suggested putting that off a month so we could get to the 7-0 vote,
so that we could come to a consensus and show unity to our constituents and to our people,
that it would have been a matter of building trust.
It could have been the same exact policy.
We're not going to relitigate the policy.
The policy has been approved.
We just discussed how it was implemented.
It's being implemented very well at the campuses and by the administration.
Mr. Perez.
I wish you luck then on that.
Thank you.
I do.
I look forward to what's going to come out of this committee.
I think it's going to be a great collaboration effort between our
Committee and
The teachers I think that this is going to be really good
And I look forward to that as well as acknowledging that the largest stakeholder which is our parents in this district
overwhelmingly voice their
desire
for this so I am
I am encouraged that the new board is continuing to be responsive to our stakeholders and to our community as they voted in this last May with three new board members.
And I know that this board will continue to work in collaboration with one another to further the best interest of our students as well as their welfare and the families that call this district home.
So thank you so much for your leadership, and I look forward to it.
Thank you.
Any other comments or questions?
I'm not talking about policy specifically.
I'm talking about the involvement, the hands and feet on the ground connections and relationships that some of us have built with campuses, teachers, community, everyone.
And to have that overlooked and quite honestly, the experience and wisdom and relationships feels disrespectful, in my opinion.
And it would be very easy to find out this overwhelming majority by doing a survey.
We have a K-12 Insights, which would do a survey for us to see what the view is of this board, what the view is of the policies we've enacted.
If we want to really put it to rest on overwhelming majority because of an election of less than 2% of our constituents, I mean, we can find all of that out and put all of the claims to rest, if mine are wrong or whosoever.
I feel disrespected by the amount of time that I have spent in this community and at this board.
And time and time again, I am disrespected because we disagree.
When, in fact, I'm...
Did you want to be on this committee, the teacher retention committee?
Yes, I do.
Well, you're on the academic performance committee.
It's a very important committee.
Academic outcomes...
Everyone here is on a committee, Mr. Perez.
Academic outcomes is what we need to focus on in this board.
Everyone in here is on a committee, so two people are on another committee.
Well, there's only seven of us.
I understand that.
Well, thank you for your opinion.
Do we have any other?
9.2 Recap of Board member requests for information.
So we're off to 9.2, recap of board member request for information.
I think there was some.
Mr. Perez, Mrs. Fox had asked something about the multifamily with the map with the high schools from PASA.
And I apologize if I missed anybody else, but that's the one I captured.
Okay.
Any other requests?
10. Future Meetings
Okay.
The news is that we don't have a meeting next Monday.
And Thanksgiving is coming up, so happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
one. Well, Mr. Perez, I will tell you we have a canvassing of the vote next Monday at 1 p.m.
So we technically do have a meeting, but that's... Okay. All right. Okay. So we have a work-study
meeting Monday, December 4th, and then we have a regular board meeting on December 11th.
It will be a regular meeting, and then everybody have a happy Thanksgiving.
Official documents
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 8.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the name of High School #10 as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
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 8.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's November 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 8.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board approves the District's investment policies and strategies.
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 8.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's September 2023 financial statements.
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 8.8
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approve the contract for the purchase of Time and Attendance software with TimeClock Plus (TCP) utilizing Purchasing Cooperative OMNIA Contract No. 14-10.
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 8.9
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approve the course additions.
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 8.10
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to Salas O’Brien, LLC for the cafeteria kitchen component replacements at King Elementary, Schmalz Elementary, Williams Elementary, Katy Junior High, Mayde Creek High School 9th Grade Center, Taylor High School, and Taylor High School 9th Grade Center.
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 8.11
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards Sunterra Property Owner's Association, Inc. an access easement for a perimeter wall maintenance along the western edge of the Elementary School #48 site in Sunterra Section 32.
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 8.12
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the minutes for the October 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 |