After spring break, so welcome everybody.
Katy ISD · Work Study Meeting
Katy ISD Work Study Meeting, March 18, 2024
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In this meeting
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- 0:04 to 0:32 1. Call to Order
- 0:32 to 1:18 2. Pledges of Allegiance
- 1:18 to 11:13 3. Public Comment
- 11:13 to 11:37 4. Closed Meeting
- 11:37 to 12:22 5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 12:22 to 1:06:27 6. Reports
- 1:06:27 to 1:15:47 7.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of the March 2024 budget amendments.
- 1:15:47 to 1:24:49 7.2 Discuss and consider Board Approval of the January 2024 Financial Reports.
- 1:24:49 to 1:27:25 7.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Financial Audit Engagement Letter.
- 1:27:25 to 1:39:15 7.4 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the campus staffing plan for the 2024 - 2025 school year.
- 1:39:15 to 1:43:32 7.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of the renewal of the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Risk Management Fund Casualty Program for Plan Year 2024-2025.
- 1:43:32 to 1:47:36 7.6 Discuss and consider Board approval for track repairs and resurfacing at multiple campuses: Seven Lakes High School, Obra D. Tompkins High School, Morton Ranch Junior High School, West Memorial Junior High School, and WoodCreek Junior High School.
- 1:47:36 to 1:57:31 7.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of a contract for the renovation to Katy Junior High School.
- 1:57:31 to 1:58:29 7.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of a contract for the Katy High School band and orchestra building, Katy High School renovations, Cimarron Elementary School, and Nottingham Country Elementary School renovations.
- 1:58:29 to 1:59:50 7.9 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the proposed changes to Board Policy FMH(LOCAL).
- 1:59:50 to 2:01:26 7.10 Discuss and consider future Board approval of a low attendance waiver as recommended by administration.
- 2:01:26 to 2:03:30 7.11 Discuss and consider three Board Resolutions authorizing participation in the State of Texas Cybersecurity Grant Program in the following areas: Assessment and Evaluation Projects, Mitigation Projects, and Workforce Development Projects.
- 2:03:30 to 2:08:32 7.12 Discuss and consider the naming of Katy High School Baseball field.
- 2:08:32 to 2:13:26 7.13 Discuss and consider donating used, surplus band trailer.
- 2:13:26 to 2:17:40 8. Information Items
- 2:17:40 to 2:17:57 9. Future Meetings
Full transcript
Automated transcript, not human verified. It is a way to find a passage, not a quotation.
1. Call to Order
Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this work-study meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order.
Today is Monday, March 18, 2024, and the time is 5 p.m.
Dr. Gorski, will you verify that we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to notice of this meeting?
Mr. President, I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting tonight.
Thank you. KDISD Police Chief Henry Gaw will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
2. Pledges of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for
which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Honor the Texas flag.
I pledge allegiance to thee Texas one state under God one and indivisible I
don't think we have any scouts in the audience so I won't ask if we have any
scouts in the audience at this time the board trustees will give members of the
3. Public Comment
public an opportunity to speak in accordance with Katie IHT work policy
BED local as defined by board policy speakers who signed up by 2 p.m. on
Monday March 18 2024 provided their first and last name and signed in 15
minutes prior to the start of the meeting will be allowed to address the
board speakers who signed up to speak on posted agenda items will be allowed
three minutes to speak if a speaker is not finished speaking at the end of
their three minutes the audio will turn off if speakers wish to share written
material with the board please provide 10 copies to the secretary of board services before the
meeting begins for board members the superintendent the chief communications officer and the permanent
record if a speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through proper channels
as stated in board policy the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to seek
resolution through the appropriate policy.
Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code Sections 551.074 and 551.0821, the Board will
not permit the presentation of personally identifiable information regarding a student
and will not discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline,
or dismissal of a public officer or employee or to hear a complaint or charge against an
officer or employee. Should a speaker wish to address one of these issues, they must do so
through the appropriate local grievance policies, FNG local, DTBA local, CKE local, or GF local.
Our speakers will be called forward in the order they signed up to speak.
Our first speaker today is Joe Matthews, and after that, Cody Speese.
Welcome. Thank you so much and good evening. My name is Joe Matthews and I am here today with my
wife Susie. We are the very proud parents of three boys who have all attended Katy High School.
Our middle son was a varsity baseball player from 2019 to 2021 which brings me for our reason for
being here tonight. We would like to once again respectfully request that the Katy High School
baseball field be named in honor of Tom McPherson aka coach Mack a few key facts related to his
KDISD career coach Mack was the head baseball coach at Katy high school for 34 years he also
coached football at Katy high school for 32 years prior to his retirement in 22 coach Mack was the
winningest active 6a head baseball coach in Texas with 891 wins he ranks number four for the most
career wins in Texas high school baseball. He has been inducted into the Greater Houston Baseball
Coaches Association Hall of Honor and Texas High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
Under his leadership the Katy Tiger baseball program became one of the most highly respected
baseball programs in the state of Texas. Coach Mack is a perfect example of a great coach and
leader of young men who has guided hundreds in continuing their baseball careers beyond high
high school. Coach Mack has always exhibited honesty, integrity, hard work, and passion,
and he expected the same from his players. Our son Caleb, who played for Coach Mack,
said he didn't just coach them to excel in baseball, but excel in life. He's considered
a role model mentor and a friend. If you've ever had a baseball conversation with Coach Mack,
you know he remembers every player that he's ever coached. Coach Mack put his heart and soul in
providing a baseball facility and building a winning legacy that the players, families,
teachers, and administrators should be very proud of.
In our previously presented packet, we included letters of recommendation from the principal,
Dr. Rick Hall, KDISD coaches, Gary Joseph, Wes Hearn, and Will Hanlon.
We've also provided letters from parents and players.
Coach Tom McPherson deserves this namesake, and we pray the right decision is made soon,
honor the career and accomplishments of this Katy ISD legend.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Curtis Peace, please.
Followed by Paul Medlin.
Good afternoon, I'm Curtis Peace.
I am a former student and athlete of Coach Tom McPherson.
I graduated from Katy High School in the class of 2010 and played for him from 2006 through 2010.
I'm here to advocate on behalf for the naming to be commemorated after him.
Coach Mack has dedicated his life serving this community.
Outside of the 34 years he spent coaching baseball here,
He also spent over 20 years hosting the Katy baseball camp, which helped build the love of baseball and instill the skills for not only students going to Katy High School, but all across the district.
He's always been a very selfless coach.
Everything he did was for his students and players.
You know, he's, you know, it's a thankless job and he never once sought recognition.
So I think that this would be a great way to honor the legacy that he's left behind and his contributions to not only the school, but the community and the program that he built.
He started, you know, he built up the Katy High School baseball program from nothing and is now one of the state's top programs year in and year out.
He's dedicated his life to this community and he's served everybody, former and past,
and he's even helped the students that haven't necessarily...
He's always found a way to help them, whether it's athletic scholarships, academic scholarships,
just finding a way to help those who deserve it.
you know he you know his resume speaks for itself I don't have enough time to go through all of that
but I really do thank you all for seeing me today and taking the consideration the reasons
why the baseball field should be named in commemoration of him thank you or meddling
Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for having me. My name is Paul Medlin. I went to Katy High School, graduated in 97. Mr. Matthews back here crossed off half my list with some of the accolades and things Coach Mack had done.
done. But I just wanted to say being a student athlete, regardless of the accolades and you
know, we were obviously a school that's very prideful of seeing what the football team's
done and when I showed up to Katy High School, there wasn't really much to say about the
baseball team. And when I walked through those doors, you know, I chose to play straight
straight baseball.
And in hindsight looking back now,
who knew 35 years later Coach Mack was still going to be there.
And by the time when I walked in we had never made the playoffs.
We had never made district championship.
And by the time I left we had done that twice
and we had done it back to back.
And here we are 30 years later and the legacy he has built
speaks for itself.
I had no idea I was getting coached by a legend.
You're young and dumb and you're just having fun.
So regardless of how many playoff games or how many wins or how many losses
and all that, the one thing I look at the most because in about seven months
I'm going to have a daughter walk through the threshold of Katy High School.
And she is also a dual sport athlete.
And what I tell her is the same things that Coach taught me.
And that's all that stuff is fun and games.
And what matters first is your grades.
And if you do that and you put it all on the line in the classroom,
the doors are going to open down the road.
And that's one promise Coach made to everybody.
I can think back and I can sit here and name players,
whether it's a Todd Mavis or a Micah McMeans or a Marshall Schroeder
or a Corby Medlin or a Caleb Matthews,
if you wanted to play at the next level, he's going to get you there.
And after it was all said and done, he kept that promise.
He got kids, whether it was on the football field,
whether it was on the baseball field, he got them to the next level.
And the next level that I'm talking about you might think is on a ball field,
but it was in the classroom.
And that was what was most important.
And I'm still to this day on a daily basis implementing those things
with my oldest now coming down to Reese and then to Jackson.
It's classroom first, being involved, doing with everything you got,
and it's all going to work out.
So I'm here to speak on behalf of Coach Mack,
on behalf of the former players, former students,
anybody that he's ever had,
and hopefully the next time I go out to a ball game, if not this year,
starting off 2025, I'm watching Katie play at Tom McPherson Field.
Thank you all.
Thank you. Thank you. This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting. The board will not convene in closed meeting as authorized under section 551.001 of the Texas government code for the following purposes. Texas government code 551.071, 551.074, and 551.129.
4. Closed Meeting
5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
The board will now reconvene in open meeting.
Today is Monday, March 18, 2024, and the time is 620 p.m.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's work-study meeting.
Each board member will receive the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Friday, March 15, 2024.
The board will receive information and recommendations from staff, administration, and the superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting.
Board members will be able to ask questions, receive answers, and should be prepared to take action.
The Board has just reconvened from closed meeting in accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code.
Any action arising from discussions in a closed meeting must be taken in an open meeting.
6. Reports
Our first item of business, 6.1, is the 2020-24-2025 budget update.
and Chris Smith chief financial officer is our presenter all right well good
evening president Perez superintendent Gorgoski and trustees it's our second
up third update here in March for our budget process we went over our debt
last week last month this month we're going to look at the general fund our
our general operating fund, our main fund,
of how the budget's starting to look at.
And I will say we adopt our budget on August 31st.
We are probably the minority now as far as most school districts,
at least in my opinion, most school districts have a July 1 start date.
We do not.
We have an August 31 start date.
There's advantages for either one.
I recommend an August 31 end date, September 1 start date, because the legislature, when they're still meeting, makes it really hard to budget when you don't know.
It's already hard at August 31st.
I can't imagine June 30th year end date.
But most school districts around us, all our neighbors, have a June 30 end date, July 1 start date.
So they're a couple of months ahead of us.
It is March.
We still got six months to work on this budget, and it is a work in progress
the 88 legislature
I'll just summarize you know this last year when the state surplus
Left a lot of money on the table four billion dollars for public education. There's no mechanism. They can deliver that to
Two schools or teachers across the state is tied up along with a very very large state surplus
us. Property tax cuts, y'all remember the $16 billion in tax relief that enabled this board
to lower the tax rate, the maintenance and operations tax rate by 18.5 cents.
That's the $16 billion that the state put towards property tax cuts. 18.5 cents lowered in KISD
and it did not generate $1 to go to any of our classrooms. It was all tax relief. But the
The headlines read $16 billion goes to public education.
It went to tax relief.
Did not go through educators or through school districts,
but it did not provide money for the education process, just tax relief.
School safety, we did get some money when it came to school safety.
We got 20-something cents per student on the school safety allotment
in addition to $15,000 per campus for the mandated security on each campus.
that again that will not funded so that's largely an unfunded mandate but we did get some funding
with that and the state funding formulas again um that didn't change that the surplus kind of goes
back to that surplus they were derelict of their duties in in funding public education and didn't
happen and so nothing changed with the funding formulas moving forward at least not yet
it. So what the current budget would look like from a draft standpoint, I'll start with going
over the assumptions in which you can see highlighted there in yellow on your screen.
It's barely visible on the big screen, and I apologize for that. But at the top there,
the basic allotment, that $6,160, there's two years of it up there. If we could go back to
to the 18-19 school year, that goes back six years, it would still be $6,160. We've been on
that static revenue now since the 2018-19 school year. I'm sorry, the 2019-20 school year.
Enrollment, you know, again, the budget, the column on the left is the official budget.
That's a static and we'll always refer when we're doing this budget back to the static budget. The budget moves. It's an evolving document.
But the best way to compare apples to apples is to go original budget to where we are now because there's too many moving parts. It would not make sense.
But we're looking at 1,290 student increase.
That's over what we budgeted last year.
We are above, slightly above that enrollment that we budgeted last year.
So that's a good sign that we made that enrollment from last year.
This next year we're not looking at quite a large of increase, or about 1.4%.
That still puts us at pace of being the fastest growing school district over the last five years in the state of Texas.
And I expect when TEA releases those numbers again later this May when it comes to fast-growth school districts that we're going to be on top or the fastest growing when it comes to new enrollment over a five-year period of time.
I'm confident that we'll still be number one, not from a percentage standpoint, but from a new belly button standpoint to the district, we are the fastest growing.
Taxable values, I'm going to point to the T2 value on that.
that. Um, that's what we're, that's what determines our state funding. That $57 billion is a 3%
increase. Um, that's very conservative when it comes to this fund or the general fund.
It's not going to matter. That could be 15%, but the total revenue would be the same for the
district. Uh, it just would be more taxes versus, uh, state funds. Um, um, so if it comes in at 5%
or 6% or even 10%, the bottom line is still going to be the same revenue when it comes to the
general fund. Different with debt service. With debt service, there's no offset. And so the higher
we grow in our values, the better it is for the debt service fund or the less pressure for the
debt service fund. We're opening two new campuses, a junior high and a high school.
There's a lot of fixed costs when you open a junior high and a high school. For example,
principals, band directors, cheerleading sponsors, all the stipends that go with
the extracurricular activities, assistant principals, athletic coordinator on the
campus, those are all fixed costs that if we were not adding a high school we
would be adding students still but we wouldn't be adding all those fixed costs.
So this is a tough year when it comes to adding budgets because we're adding a
a junior high and a high school, and those are, I like to call big rocks in a bucket.
If you're just adding students and no campuses, you're adding sand in that bucket.
But when you add a campus, you're putting a rock in that bucket because of all the fixed costs associated with that unique campus.
So those two new schools.
Teacher growth, look at that compared to last year.
It's half or less than half of what we grew last year at 216.
That includes all the teachers, counselors, librarians, and nurses at those two new schools.
So at those two new schools, anybody involved that's on the teacher salary schedule is already included in the numbers,
and Mr. Schuss will show you those tonight.
That's included in that 216 student increase.
And then the non-teacher growth, that's also associated with those new campuses.
That would be security guards, the custodians, food service workers, maintenance folks that
do the yard, the athletic fields.
All of those kind of costs are also in Mr. Schist's numbers that are going to be with
you tonight, or that you're going to hear from him tonight.
But that's the non-campuses.
It does not have department growth.
That comes later.
If there's department growth added, y'all will approve that.
I think it's in April or May, Mr. Shuss, May.
Y'all will get a chance for the departments.
That new staff is associated with organic growth,
and those two new campuses, that's it at this point.
I'm right now not modeling anything for salary increases.
Last year, the board was able to pass along a 3% salary increase.
And for teachers, the teacher pay schedule and the non-teacher pay schedule,
right now we're not modeling one.
The revenue based on that is about $1,057,000,000.
So it's about a $26 million increase in our revenue,
or about a $28 million increase in our revenue.
That's associated with the new students, period.
There's some things working against us that hurt us on our revenue,
and I'll talk about those here in just a second.
I do want to note that the 23-24, you saw a 3% increase in our taxable values,
but a $3 million decrease in our taxes.
We are going to be amending the budget probably in April and reflect less tax revenue and more state funding.
It'll be a wash.
And I think I mentioned that that was going to be coming back when we adopted the budget because I, with the assumption that the homestead exemption that went to the voters in November would pass.
And it passed.
I didn't budget that way because I don't want to budget with the assumption that it's going to pass.
budgeted under current law. Plus it was very tough for appraisal districts, tax
offices, and school districts across this state to figure out the impact of
the homestead exemption going from forty thousand to a hundred thousand dollars.
That sounds easy, but it is very complicated and it has a lot of people
like Mr. Hines and myself kind of, kind of, we're wigging out because it's been
been very difficult, but we've gotten through the end of February with our tax collections.
Taxes are now delinquent. Most of the taxes are collected. The appraisal districts and mostly
the tax offices are caught up. When we get our February tax report, once we do that, we're going
to make an amendment to the board. Again, it should not change the bottom line. It should be a wash,
but taxes will go down because tax revenues will go down and state funding will go up
proportionately.
Like a teeter-totter.
Because of that homestead
exemption.
State funding
is up because of more students.
State TRS contributions, that's in
blue. You'll see an expenditure
in that same amount here later in the presentation.
That's a wash.
That number is the same number as it was last
year because it's a placeholder at this point. Way too
early to start figuring out what our
state TRS contributions are going to be.
so it's a placeholder, but since it's a wash,
it will not affect the bottom line when that number moves.
And then federal revenue, I want to point out that our SHARs,
our third largest revenue out of the billion-dollar budget,
the third largest line item on there from a revenue standpoint is SHARs.
And we received notice, I guess it was the week we were getting out for Christmas break.
We've appealed it, but we're going to lose $7 million of what money we were counting on.
We earned in the 21-22 school year that we'd been counting on.
We thought there's no speculation here, but since they're changing the rules of the game,
we're going to lose about $7 million, and that's reflected in the revenue moving forward for next year.
Unfortunately, that's a big hit.
Still our third largest revenue.
Maybe interest is now in third.
interest now third and then the SARS would move to a number four since this
change. The revenue, the only way really meaningful way to impact our revenue is
is the state legislature to do something. If the state doesn't do anything we
really cannot affect our revenue or at least materially affect our revenue. We
can do things like change our price of our tickets to our gates, very small
impact, very small impact. You know, you could, we've already maximized our interest earnings.
That's another way to do it is to maximize interest earnings. We've done that. We've
attempted a VATRE, a voter approval tax rollback election, and that was not successful. And the
only other way to increase revenue that would be meaningful is the attendance rates, improve our
attendance and y'all approved an incentive last summer to do so and i think i mentioned this back
in january it's it's so far looking really good that it's gonna uh it's gonna be a successful uh
impact to our revenue and uh again one percent's about 5.5 million dollars uh and i think we're up
just about uh just under one percent so 5.5 million dollars now we're going to give a lot of
that away to our campuses um but they've earned it uh by turning the tide and getting students to
come to school. It's not all about money, it's about instruction, and we really want them to be
here to learn, and yeah, money is a nice byproduct of that when it comes to attendance rates.
So the incentive is going to work, but we're going to have to, this board and this administration
will have to find a way to pay for it, because that incentive, the big part of it would be
delivered beginning on 9-1, so the campuses would have a year to spend it. Does that make sense? We
we don't want to give it to them in the summer,
they won't have time to spend that incentive money.
I've already mentioned the two new campuses.
This is what Mr. Schuss is going to have,
and he's going to be presenting tonight in the staffing plan.
That includes the staff for Nelson Junior High and Freeman High School,
any growth at our other campuses, ancillary positions,
I mentioned those earlier, at the new campuses,
and then special ed, bilingual, and pre-K growth.
Some of that's in this because of the newest campuses,
but some of it still may be coming in May.
That target is just what it is.
It's a target because we are not far enough along
for me to show you what this would look like in 24-25,
but we're doing everything.
the way we have historically done when it comes to putting a budget together.
We've never said let's have 88% go to salary and benefits and
4.8% go to services and utilities.
It just works out that way and it's pretty much like this every year.
So we're not changing everything.
So my guess is that when we adopt the budget in August,
that it'll look very similar to this.
But it's just too early in the process to put in that format.
Matt. Same with this one. Our target is going to be to put as much money as we can in instruction.
67.47% of what we spend is directly into classroom as it should be. And 14% on top of that is,
that's all spent directly on students. So you got a significant amount of money. That's a,
if you look at other districts, that's by far the largest amount that is spent directly on students
because we are an efficient district when it comes to our expenses.
Speaking of that, those numbers are small,
but I'll just cut to the chase and say Katie's on the bottom of that.
That's a graphic illustration of what the administrative cost ratios would look like
or look like for the 21-22 school year.
I have Katie's for the 22-23 school year,
but I don't have any of the other districts.
But from those green districts are surrounding districts to us,
and you see Katie there at the bottom with the lowest administrative cost ratio.
If you doubled our administrative cost ratio, we'd land about in the middle of this list.
So I think that's proof that we're very lean when it comes to those costs.
Historically, and again, this is nothing that Ms. Butterfield or myself
or any of the superintendents or the boards have said,
hey, let's keep these percentages the same all these years.
but you've got a 10-year look back of every function that shows the percentages.
It's hard to see because we grow every year.
You see a big number in instruction increases every year because we grow students,
and when you grow students, you're going to have to grow teachers to teach those students.
But I put this in here, and I put this all over our website to show that when it's all said and done,
the budget practices that the board and the administration has done over these
last 10 years has been pretty consistent and in fact it's not conscience I look
back at it and I go wow it just it works out these are actual expenditures per
student so it's very consistent from function to function it's not a
conscious effort just works out that way
those new positions that mr shush will talk to you tonight uh that are primarily associated
with the new news those new campuses um you're looking at about 14.4 million dollars in
They'll be in the bottom line in this presentation as I move forward.
But there's the teacher pay group.
Again, that's teachers, counselors, librarians, and nurses, or any position that's tied to
our teacher salary schedule.
And then this is a graphic look at that same slide.
So if you're a graphic person, you can see that.
The non-teacher pay group, there's those positions that I spoke to earlier in the assumptions at $6.5 million.
Again, almost half of what that was last year.
That does not include department positions unless it has to do directly with those new campuses that we're opening at this point.
I'm not in a teacher salary schedule, and in this salary schedule, I did not include any salary increases at this point.
those are just blanket at this point so total salaries up about 23 million
dollars even though revenues were up about 26 million salaries are up as well
a graphic look of the non teacher pay group other compensation I'll tell you
what this is this is just a I don't remember the percentage growth but every
one of those numbers is a percentage increase from the year before and that's
all it is at this point in time for example i'll take uh substitute teachers at 20.9 million dollars
we don't know what we're spending this year in substitutes yet i know what we're spending through
the month of february but we're spending it and we'll spend it all the way through may
that number will become real when we take may and we say okay may it ended up being 16.4 million
and the year before that it was 15.1, and we'll do all,
Ms. Barranza will do a whole lot of math to come up with a number that's realistic for that number.
Right now it's just a placeholder. All of those are just a placeholder. I think there's probably some savings
when it's all said and done, and as this comes and matures and becomes real, I think
it will not be 60 million. I think it's going to be a little less than 60 million.
So I think that's a conservative number.
There's a look at how that would look graphically.
And then the numbers for benefits,
the exact same thing I just said on the other compensation.
This is just a gross percentage increase.
And again, I don't remember the exact percent.
I apologize.
Anybody can do the math and come up with it from any one
of those numbers, especially the totals.
and I think we'll have some savings here as well.
I do want to point out a couple of things on this,
like the TRS contribution, that $10.5 million.
Well, let me back, the one above it, the TRS care insurance,
that's KDISD and the taxpayers of KDISD funding
teachers' retirement system care insurance for retirees.
That's not going to KDISD's teachers or the students.
It's going to retirees, which are very important and we need to take care of them.
But that's the state law that requires school districts to contribute, continue to contribute
toward healthcare to the retirees.
Where that grading is on now is the local contribution to TRS and that rate has gone
up.
It was 8%.
Now it's 8.25%.
quarter percent. Actually, it's at eight and a quarter this year, and it's eight and a quarter
next year, but that's a rate that's been increasing. I want to talk about TRS stat minimum
and TRS-9. We pay above the teacher's salary schedule, and because we pay above the teacher's
salary schedule, we have to pay locally towards the teacher's retirement. You saw the TRS on behalf,
So as long as we're paying below the state salary schedule, the state of Texas pays for that.
It's a wash to the KDISD.
But if we're above the teacher salary schedule, any school district above the teacher salary schedule,
and most school districts in Texas are, especially if they're a large district,
because of competition, you're above the state minimum salary schedule.
So we're kicking in somewhere between $17 and $18 million toward that annually.
Benefits graphically.
So the total sub-poll of payroll budget of $904 million.
There's that wash, that 58.7 was the revenue.
Again, those numbers will move between now and the end of the year,
but it will not affect the bottom line.
Graphically, what that looks like.
Non-payroll cost.
Campus allocations.
That's simply the numbers of students at our campuses times an amount, same amount at every
junior high, same amount at every high school, same amount at every elementary school.
This is what the campuses get to use as their discretionary money to buy classroom supplies
and the things that they need to be successful on their campus period and
that's the amount that the campuses get. Those campus budgets are
done, put to bed, done. Department allocations are not. Quite a lot larger
number, the largest inside of that is utilities because we budget all of those
centrally for all the campuses. The campuses don't have to worry about
budgeting for utilities and things like that and so that that's the largest in
the department allocations and the non allocations are things like the print
shop the terse expenditures any capital I which is very little in this budget or
at least this draft a white fleet addition special projects those are all
in the non allocations and so you can see a very modest increase in that and
that's most of that's because we're opening new campuses and guess what high
high school's gonna use a lot of utilities.
Okay, what that looks like graphically.
Okay, and I apologize, this should not say bottom line.
I meant to change that and I forgot.
Spring break was real for me and my family, but
I did not make that change today like I intended to, but it shouldn't say bottom
bottom line. But what I wanted to show with this slide is that last year's official budget showed
a deficit of $8.1 million. When you adopted it in August, we had a deficit. Our first adopted,
our second adopted deficit in as many years, and it's because of that stagnant revenue.
A lot of work went in to get it down to $8.1 million, but that included the 3% salary increase
that y'all so generously passed to all employees. But we were at $8.1 million deficit.
deficit. Had everything gone on the way we would normally do things in the district and we weren't looking for things because of our static revenue, we would be looking at a expenditures of more expenditures at a billion and 86 million. But because the static revenue, if we did that, everything status quo, we would have going to have a $32 million deficit before salary increases. And so Dr. G put his cabinet to work and we
We came up with some reductions that I believe y'all have a summary of that is the difference there.
But it got us to about the $13 million deficit.
So if you had to pass a budget tonight, it would be a $13 million deficit in anything at this stage.
And that's what we know.
That's opening those two new schools.
That's really some very tight staffing with the exception of those two new schools.
But a $13 million deficit.
That does not give the CFO any heartburn.
Because I know that when in doubt, we're conservative and have been.
And I just would not lose sleep over that now.
That deficit will get larger if you do a salary increase, okay?
One percent salary increase is about $7.3 million.
So if you did a one percent, you're looking at a $20 million deficit.
Still doesn't give me heartburn, okay?
And I'll show you why on the next slide.
So the next slide should say bottom line.
and remember the first budget deficit that y'all adopted in a very long time
was a deficit and I don't remember the amount but we ended up when the audit
was presented to you guys back in December January 26 million dollar add
to fund balance that was appropriate because we added our to our expenditures
because we're a growing district and when your expenditures increase your
fund balance should increase just like in our households if we have 3% and our
our households and our and our for some reason our spouse got it got a job guess
what and our income increased that savings that nest egg should increase
too because if something happens to those two jobs there's more money that
needs to be replaced some more savings needs to be there so but twenty six
million dollars we added to fund balance our official budget was eight point one
million dollars that's not we're gonna end up adding to fund balance this next
year. Not a lot, not 26 million, but we're going to add to fund balances next year.
And because of that is why I'm not real concerned about a 13 million dollar
deficit or if you did a 1% 20 or 27 million dollar deficit. That's what fund
balance is for. We have a healthy fund balance to get us through a time like
we're in. And you've heard me talk about the soup and I know probably I got
colleagues rolling their eyes about the soup because they're tired of hearing me
talk about it but our soup and Katie tastes good everybody moves here as a
destination district to taste our soup and if you do too much things there's
draconian things to the budget or to start going to taste as good as it does
and when the state does do their part to get us out of the bind that all school
districts are in in Texas it's gonna be hard to rebound for many draconian
change that you make and in other words get that soup to taste good again and so
So that's what fund balance is for, and that's what my perspective from a CFO standpoint
is.
That's what you use it for so you don't have to shake up all the good tasting soups we've
had.
This is kind of, you know, the values, I've already talked about the values, and it won't
have much of an effect on our maintenance and operations.
Again, quadruple the value increase and you're just going to lower your state funding.
It's a teeter-totter offset.
It's all dependent on the number of students that we have and the type of students that we have.
Increase in homestead exemption, we're still figuring that out.
Even though that passed in November, we're still figuring it out.
We feel like we're a couple of months away.
I think we're already there and we're going to make that adjustment in April.
but I think it'll be all the way through this year and even to this time next year when until
tax
collection offices County tax offices
Appraisal districts and school districts were comfortable with that increase because it was such a big change
Any value growth that we have could affect our tax rates it will not be 18 and a half cents
In fact, if we get to lower our tax rate another penny
any, that would be an optimistic outlook at this point because the state only
funded
um that for for this year they didn't add more to it because the 16 billion
that they spent lowering it this year still gonna be there for next year
because we're not gonna across the state re increase those tax rates. So they're
gonna still have to pay for that reduction and so it will not be as big
of a decrease.
not near that big a decrease.
Enrollment growth and special populations growth, again, that's all a guess right now.
It's an educated guess, and I think it's conservative at this point, but
only time will tell.
And then the state funding changes that could be out there.
Is the governor gonna call another special session and when?
Would that be effective for the 24, 25 school year if he does or does not?
not at this point, me and the colleagues of mine across the state have just said,
we're just gonna plan for 25 26 and we'll just try to get through this year.
Um, and so I don't know of
I honestly do not know of a specific district that's not gonna have a deficit
next year. I do know that there are districts that do not think they're
gonna have a deficit next year. But I do not know of any specific districts that
are not gonna have a district. Every district that I know is gonna have a
deficit and it's going to be there a lot larger than Katie's and unfortunate for
them fortunate for us it's the good fiscal practices that this board has
done over the years has put us in a position to where the changes that we've
done so far are not draconian now the state doesn't do something this time that
by this time next year then the changes may be draconian maybe and then no more
ESSER. THE NUMBERS THAT YOU SEE HERE, SOME OF IT, THERE'S SOME OF THE ESSER FUNDS
POSITIONS ARE INCLUDED IN THE NEW NUMBERS. THE STAFFING NUMBERS THAT YOU
HAVE IF THEY'RE CAMPUS RELATED. WE'VE GOT A PLACEHOLDER THAT YOU'VE SEEN IN THESE
THESE NUMBERS SO FAR FOR SOME MORE ESSER. ARE ALL THOSE GOING TO SURVIVE? THAT
PROCESS WILL BE BETWEEN NOW AND MAY AND A LOT OF WORK HAS GOT TO BE DONE BY THE
the administration on those. So that's where we are. We're done with March. Um,
I don't know in May or June is probably it's not going to be April, but
probably in May we'll come with a little closer look at this a little less under
construction. Some of it will start to start coming together again. All of
this is very early, very new, very, uh, very much an educated guess. And I
expect a lot of ebbs and flows in these numbers between now and then. But by
By and large, the bottom line, I don't expect to change too much.
It'll get a little bit better on days, and then it'll be something, oh, God, we forgot about that.
We'll have to add that, and it'll get better again.
And then, you know, it's just a lot of work between now and August when we make a recommendation to you.
And that's really all I have.
Glad to answer any questions if you have any.
Thank you.
Questions?
Mr. President.
Ms. Champagne.
I have a few questions and I'd also like to recognize your team that you got the Excellence
Award in Financial Management and you're one of 32 districts and over a thousand districts
in Texas first of all.
So congratulations with that.
And then I think you told me that you're one of three who's done it so many times or something.
I don't know if it's three, but it's one of very few. It's like less than ten that have done it every every time every time
Also, just I just recently noticed that the Texas Association
Business says this Texas was Tasvo you got the award of merit for purchasing operations
So I just want to congratulate you and I love the pictures. I don't know who was taking on that
Yeah, those were nice pictures ray
Those were, they were beautiful.
My mom, who's a photographer lover, says, man, those were really good.
Those were awesome, yes, they are awesome.
Thanks Ray for that.
So here's, this may seem kind of like a silly question, and I don't mean it to,
but if you've ever seen the Field of Dreams, he says in there,
if we build it, they will come.
I'm just wondering if when we, what comes first?
you know are people moving here anyway and or we're building a new school so
people are gonna move here you know is building the new schools is that so in
other words where we've got these two new elementary schools is do you think
that that draws people here are they driven to be here regardless of that oh
I don't think because they just they open full they're already here okay
So they already are here.
They're already here.
And, you know, I think, again, just 20 years ago we were 40,000 students.
We're at 95,000, almost 96,000 students now, more than doubled in 20 years.
So regardless.
Something's drawing them here.
And, again, the term destination district, a lot of these fast growths are considered destination districts,
and people want to come here.
So, all right, so now I have a couple of real questions.
I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HOW THAT FORMULA CHANGES.
THAT'S A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER.
WHEN I SEE THE 8.1 DEFICIT, IF WE WOULD HAVE KEPT THE $7 MILLION, THEN WE BASICALLY WOULDN'T
EVEN HAVE A 1 MILLION DEFICIT.
SO IS THERE A WAY THAT WE CAN SEE HOW THAT'S COMPUTED AND WHY IT CHANGED?
I'M JUST CURIOUS.
Well, sure, you can see how it's computed, but it is very, very complicated with a lot
of moving parts because it's about all the people across this district that are providing
health services are something that's reimbursable by SHARS or by Medicaid.
And so we're keeping up with that as they're doing their regular jobs, they're keeping
keeping up with that and working with the SAR's department under Mr. Graham's rule,
that sounded bad, under his dictatorship, no, under his leadership.
It's a different computation or is it a different?
Let me step in here.
Chris said this is complicated.
I don't believe it is.
I believe this is the state of Texas your your state of Texas has said we are changing the rules
And we are changing the rules not only moving forward. We've changed the rules for in the past as well
We're gonna retroactively make this change and it's gonna cost you about a third of your charge money, so
Luckily a couple of years ago
We made the change to have a third party help us if you guys will remember those of you who are around
We actually increased our charge percentage about $7 million.
And so now with a decrease, if our appeal isn't granted, we're kind of back to that
original number.
But Chris is being – Chris is saying – he's looking granular, saying it's very complicated
what we do at the campus level.
This really is the state made a decision to change the rule, and that impacts not only
us but every other school district in the area.
For example, I think SciFair's impact there, a little bit bigger than us, is $10 million.
dollars but you can see our size comparatively throughout all the other
districts we're disappointed that change because we feel like the federal rules
didn't change and so we've appealed it and we're gonna wait on the state's
decision to tell us whether or not we can recoup any of that seven million so
what what is the rule what rule changed it the rule now this is where we will
get very technical and very granular it has to do with what employees that work
work in the district, what work do they do, and how much of the work that they do can
we then seek reimbursement from the federal government.
So we have a staff member that works in special eds a certain percentage of the time of the
day.
How much of their time can we recruit?
Actually this state rule has said that certain people that we have been charging back to
the federal government are no longer eligible to be charged back to the federal government.
We don't really know why that changed because the federal rules haven't changed.
Again, that's the explanation for our appeal.
It's a $7 million hole.
I think, again, had we not increased it a few years ago, we would be in a much worse spot.
It's an unfortunate ruling.
We kind of expect the state to have our back on that.
So we've asked them for help in appealing it.
And when will we hear about the appeal?
They haven't given us a timeline.
I mean, is there it could be a year or two or something like that. It could be ten days. It could be a year
Yeah, they haven't given us a firm
All right
As I understand it over 700 districts made a appeal Wow not all school districts have a charge program because if they're a small
rural rest, Texas district there may not be
They may not they may not file for charge money or maybe so little that they wouldn't be worth their time
but
but 700 districts is what I heard.
Other questions?
One more, and then I'll be done.
The attendance incentive, so what I like to see is,
is there a way we could, schools could share?
I don't know if they already are doing that.
Share with each other the different ideas that they do,
like this A school is doing this and this worked,
and B school did that and it didn't work, so don't try that,
and C school did something else.
and they could share their ideas and then also let us know what the ideas are
as I understand it there are there are lots of sharing going on with their
ideas with amongst the campuses okay okay that's all I have and it's exciting
to see I know that mr. Hines mr. Edwards and mr. Crider presented at the
the TASBO conference a couple of weeks ago. It was in downtown Houston. They
presented this attendance incentive and I tell you of all the sessions I went to
this was the most popular session because districts know that's
the only other way they have to affect their revenue in a meaningful way and so
they're desperate to figure out a way to do it and again 1% for us is five
million dollars that it's a big impact our bottom line and so people are
interested in it thank you I wanted to ask you mr. Smith the the number you're
given three columns your one is the projected budget the original one 24 25
the other one is with reductions I assume that the other numbers that
you've shown with regard to payroll non payroll etc that's with the reduction
Yes, sir.
That's after all those.
Yes, sir.
Every number that you saw tonight is reflected in this far right column now.
Okay.
Had everything been normal and the state used that $4 billion the way they normally would
have, we'd probably be looking at the middle column right now.
But there'd be more revenue and we wouldn't be in this position.
But yes, every number you saw lays up to the one column on the right.
Okay.
Looking back at the at the deficits if you will I think as I recall because you
did we had a 26 million dollar surplus yes sir for the 22-23 year yes sir and
as I recall that year started at as I recall we approved a 12 million dollar
deficit so the deficit of 12 million became a 26 million positive yes sir and
And now we're, for this year, 24, we're projecting a deficit of 8.1 million.
And for next year, a deficit of 13.
So my question on that is, as we move through the budget process and
over the next couple of months, especially as we're looking at the possibly even
larger deficit, especially if you consider any salary increase, etc.
Could we get an estimate?
Would you be in a position to give us an estimate like the 2024 8.1 million deficit is really
going to be zero or 10 positive or something better as we head into budgeting for the following
year so that we can see that our general fund balance is going to be, is going to have the
benefit of that.
It's still early, but I am confident that when we, when this audit is done of the 23-24
school year, we will not have a deficit.
we will end up having a surplus. It will not be as large as the $26 million.
That had a couple of anomalies in it. That $26 million had two property value audits in there from two prior years,
and that generated a big chunk. We're working on one right now, a property value audit,
that could potentially offset that deficit that we're currently in.
But I don't know yet until we're done with that process.
And I could speculate that, but that wouldn't be fair to the board or the public for me
to just make everything look great, because if it doesn't happen and I don't get that
property value audit, I've got to come to you all and say, I've got to reduce revenue
by $10 million.
But my property value audit didn't yield any fruit.
What do you mean, Chris?
So I don't budget for that.
It's always good to add it, but I always like to try to be as clear as I can to the board
and the public.
I'm not budgeting for it, but I know they're out there.
An example of what we're looking at now, Mr. Hines and I had a conversation a couple of
weeks ago, right before spring break.
We're looking at that property value out of now, Mr. President.
One of the things we might do is hold it.
Hold it, and if it was going to generate $10 million in the 23-24 school year, if we hold
it and file it in September, well maybe we can claim that money and add that to the budget
it for next year is revenue. Um, and that's some of the things that your
administration is considering to try to make it seem a little bit more
palatable for for y'all to because adopting a budget, I don't like it
either, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get sick over it because I know
those things are out there since we know that 7.4 million is a 1% salary
increase to the extent that we can improve on the deficit to cover for
example as an example to cover the potential salary increases and that
that's what I'm looking for yes sir so that we don't start the year so much in
the hole yes sir and again again as we move towards that audit it is summer and
I'll be having those conversations with dr. G and say you want to put it in our
fund balance now or do we want to put it since we'll know the amount and we can
budget for that in the 24-25 school year and make that whatever deficit we have look a little bit better.
Again, that's something that management will do as we get closer to that.
And, again, get it now.
You're going to earn interest on that.
If you wait because we want to make the deficit feel a little bit better, you're going to lose interest on that, whatever the amount is.
I don't know if it's $8 million.
I don't know if it's $12 million.
I don't know.
I'll tell you those audits that generally yielded about I'm gonna say about nine million dollars on average when we go back and do them
Thank you
Anything else
Again, this is a report
We're approving about any other questions. Mr. President Fox
So when you talk about
Doing it now and taking the interest on nine million dollars. How much money would that be?
to take it now or make it look better for next time?
Well, again, if we finish that audit process,
and let's just say for Grinz it generated $10 million,
we won't know that.
We have to finish the paperwork with our county appraisal districts.
We send that information to the comptroller's office.
They may take three months to work it.
They may take three weeks to work it.
They may take a year to work it.
That's another reason I don't budget for it,
because I've seen it take a year.
when they finish their part they'll certify the numbers mr. dr. Gorg or ski
will have to sign off on those then they once he signs off on it goes to the text
Education Agency when they have the money they'll send it to us so as an
example last year they had they had plenty of money because of property
value increases they didn't spend near the budget that they thought they were
going to spend because the taxpayers were paying it's the state didn't have
have to pay it, one of the reasons for the big surplus.
But that audit we did last summer,
when it was approved in July, we got the cash in September.
I've seen it to where the audit's approved in July,
sent to TEA, and we don't get the cash till the following
September because the agency didn't have any money.
They'd already run out of budget,
and they pushed it to the next year.
And that's what they ask for when
they do their appropriations.
They know how many audits went unfunded, and they need extra money for those.
And they have to get it because that's state funding formula laws.
And, again, what generates those dollars on those audits is property taxable assessed value changes every day,
especially in a growing district like this.
And we lose.
We lose, we lose, we lose.
We do refunds, but we budgeted for that amount before we had any losses.
And then we go back and we file and basically file the paperwork again.
Now the state says, okay, well, you didn't collect it in taxes,
so now we owe it to you in state funds.
happens every year, most every year, not every year, most every year,
and it generates some pretty good bucks.
But the loss of taxes is kind of baked into our cake, our budget cake.
We know we're going to lose them.
That's already taken into effect.
And so when we do a property audit, it really just adds to our revenue.
It's a good thing.
Thank you.
I have a couple more, if I may.
Okay.
Okay, so when you started off and said ways to get more money is like fees and gate sales,
which doesn't yield very much money, I appreciate very much that our district doesn't increase that
because that keeps families from being able to go and see our children perform.
And so that is not an area that I could support increasing at all.
I mean, it's already expensive to take a family to a football game or a play,
but I'm glad that we have opportunities for that.
went on slide 19 you talked about we have to pay more toward TRS because we
pay more than the state minimum salary schedule do you know what the state
minimum schedule is for teachers it's like 30 it's like 38,000 is the starting
or 40 I'm not sure miss Fox because we're so far away from that to compete
compete. Do any, are there teachers who get paid the minimum or do they keep it low so that we have to kind of? No, there are teachers in this state that are, that are, there are school districts in this state that pay at that minimum salary schedule. So when the state mandates a salary increase, they effectively change that state minimum salary schedule and increase it. And so if the school districts are on that, they change it because the state changes the schedule. We're
above that on every step. And so because of that, for example, if we start a teacher at $60,000
and the state, let's just say it's $40,000, the state will pay the TRS stat minimum up to $40,000
and we have to pay the difference between $40,000 and $60,000. That's that $18 million that I showed
you is incrementally the difference of what we are above on every step above the teacher salary
schedule, the state minimum teacher salary schedule. And when you talked about the TRS
care insurance where we are paying more of the insurance for the retirees what is that was that
the 10 million dollar number do you remember you you had several of them on that slide i was just
it's a big number yeah i had a retiree ask me about that and i was just gonna enter that let's
see it's number 19 on my line so that 10.5 TRS local TRS care insurance that
six point one is what we contribute to what all school districts are required
to participate towards TRS retiree insurance all school districts
participate in that and the local contribution is for our current employees the trs uh local
contributions the 10.5 yeah give me a second my mind is i'm i'm in a rut
that's okay it was the 6.1 million i was looking yeah the the trs local contribution is uh
it's just another requirement that we're required to pay into i'm sorry
No, I get it because then there's the TRS statutory minimum to a TRS 9
It's all just and all those rates have been increasing
You're not going to increase in the 24 25 year, but the 23 24 they went from 8% to 8 1⁄4
So on top of a stagnant
Revenues at six thousand one hundred sixty dollars. We had to pay more for those
Towards those those
Contributions than we had in the past because and so did our employees right our employees have to pay
8.25% of their paycheck goes towards their TRS, and that went from 8% to 8.25%.
So it's our money as an employee of the district, but it's less that we're getting to take home because it's going to fund TRS.
And then the district pays a portion now, and then when they retire, the district still pays a portion of all of that.
Okay.
Mr. President, congratulations.
Mr. President.
Like Mrs. Champagne.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
I'm finished now.
Thank you.
Okay.
I just had a quick question.
When you were talking about filing the audit, so I'm wondering would you have to wait probably
until the end of the school year to file that for the property tax audit?
Or when, I don't know, is there a time period you have to wait to file?
I'm just thinking since the state has the money, it probably would be in our best interest
to file it as soon as possible because they have the money right now.
Whereas if we wait, we take a chance of them not having the money.
And then I like the idea of since interest rates are high,
of us earning interest for all those months.
Yeah, that's the tradeback right there is the interest that we could earn.
Well, that could help offset another percentage of raises.
$10 million, 5%, 5.25.
order is about $525,000 a year that we could earn an interest. Yeah, it's significant. Okay,
so when are you considering filing that? Well, we are working on that now. Mr. Hines and I have
lunch with our buddy who's doing that, Mr. Pawanka, on our behalf. He's working with us
three appraisal districts now. I have not spoken with him today, but since he generally kicks off
this process for KDISD in March because he's working collecting taxes and that
wave that they get that's due by the end of February that's done and so he starts
working on that in March. We'll know a number I'm gonna guess by the middle of
April and and then we'll have the talks of what we think that can generate and
and should we file it or hold it?
Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
7.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of the March 2024 budget amendments.
We'll move on now to 7.1,
which is to discuss and consider board approval of the March 2024 budget amendments.
The presenter is Esperanza Rios, Director of Budget and Treasury.
Welcome.
Good evening, Board President Perez, Board of Trustees, and Dr. Gagorski.
Tonight we bring a budget amendment in the amount of $169,085 for the Career and Technical Student Organization competitions.
All other budget amendments are direct functional offsets.
These functional offsets include but are not limited to staff development travel, membership dues, print shop expenses, and instructional supplies.
The approval of these amendments will result in a decrease of $169,085 to the general operating fund balance.
We are also presenting a budget amendment for the food service fund, which is a direct offset related to the equipment refurbishment of the West Memorial Elementary Kitchen.
This will have no impact to the food service fund balance.
Any questions?
Any other questions?
Let me ask you this.
169,000 for travel for students seems like kind of a big number.
Do you have any background on that?
So this includes, do you want to go ahead?
You can start it if you want.
I can finish.
Okay.
Okay.
We've always worked real hard to do the right thing for kids,
and last year we put some money aside to pay for these CTE competitions,
which was adequate for last year.
As I understand it, we have done really well in those competitions.
We have more participants, and they're moving on to the next level.
at a pace much greater than the budget that we currently have was built around.
That's the long and short of it is kids are being successful, they're moving on,
they're at a much greater rate than they did a year ago,
and we missed the budget because of that.
Christine, does that sum it up?
Yep, that's perfect.
Thank you, Chris.
Mr. President?
Any idea how many kids that covers?
I can get the number of kids.
kids we do have there are nine distinct CTSS owes and that's across all of our
high schools so there are students participate at different levels so we
have district level competitions we have regional competitions we have area and
then we have state so we have four different levels that we're looking at
and within each one of those CTOs they have different competitions so for
example an FFA may have three events in the fall that may be at the district
district, region, and area, and then another three in the spring. So every one of those
student organizations is very distinct, and they have different rules for qualifying.
So as Mr. Smith said, not only do we have more students who are participating, we have more
students who are qualifying. So because last year, actually this year, I think was our first year
putting that line item in the budget, we're going to go back and take a closer look at each of those
qualifying criteria and set some limits because to be very honest some are
some are little lacks and some are more rigid so right now based on the criteria
mr. Smith is exactly right we've had an increase in number of students
participating and an increase in number of students are qualified and we have
sometimes it's maybe the same kid that's going to multiple if they're in multi if
they are in multiple organizations so we have ffa fbla i'm going to draw a blank like i say
there are nine of them right so we have quite a few different student organizations so it is
possible this student could be in more than one okay mr president i have a question about that
real quick um so when when um i had a kid in band and on her competition years you know our fees
fees were really a lot higher because we paid for part of the transportation as far as I
knew. That's why our fee was higher every other year because every other year was a
competition year. Also, I had a daughter that was in some kind of international, or she
was in some kind of, anyway, it was some kind of business organization and they went to
a competition. They had to pay for their own travel expense. So, I guess I just, you know,
I'm good with the kids getting their things and getting to go places and all that.
So just from my own personal experience, it seems like maybe we didn't pay all of it,
but I know we paid some of that.
Is this what's happening now still?
You're talking about band.
We have booster clubs for band that are probably a little bit more robust than for CTE.
But we've really been working over the past few years to bring more consistency to athletics,
to fine arts, and to CTE.
So you're right, they had different kind of rules and regulations.
As Leslie and I worked together, we found that we were supporting some organizations more so than others.
And so we've been really trying to work over the past few years to bring some consistency to that
and some alignment with those programs and how we're supporting our students who qualify for these competitions
and do great things to support KDIC.
I think you're asking really, do the kids pay for any of the transportation?
Depends on the event.
So in some there and some they are and some they some they don't it. It honestly it depends on the budget
This time we're way over budget right? We realize that sometimes it depends on where the event is
Sometimes we provide the transportation. Sometimes it's a day trip if it's in San Antonio if it's
An organization and they're gonna compete over the weekend. They may spend the night there
So there are a lot of different variables with these competitions. So sometimes yes, they do
They do raise those funds and even in CTE our students do raise funds in their CTE programs as well to help offset some of those travel expenses.
It's not a blank check and we realize that.
Mr. President, may I ask a question?
Go ahead.
Is this extra cost for May for this?
I mean, we're going to be done with this?
These are coming in the spring, yes ma'am.
Okay.
Okay, and so this increase should should really I'm going to make a statement reflective of their success because the students should have already been selected to be in these competitions.
That is kind of extra students. That is correct. Would that be reflective of those students are included in the 169000? Yes.
Right, it's a big number. So are there sorry Mr president? Okay. So are there some sort of.
I don't know, standards or rules you're following, you know, to say, you know, we're going to pay this percentage of band and this percentage of some CTEs, this percentage of something else.
Or I don't know.
I don't know how y'all figure it all out.
Right.
Yeah.
So there are standards and there are guidelines that we utilize for those, as I explained before.
with the CTSSOs, there are nine of them,
and within them there are different competitions
and different levels,
and they all have different guidelines
and rules and regulations,
depending upon where their competition is.
I mean, that's a big one.
We had a conversation about a Galveston trip, right?
So the kids go and come back,
and we decided that it was in their best interest
to let them stay overnight for that particular competition
because the timing of the competition,
That's another thing that we have to take into consideration.
Are they competing early in the morning?
Is the competition going to go late into the evening?
The availability of charter buses has been extremely difficult over the past couple of
years.
So that's another variable in there as well.
COMMISSIONER WRIGHT- Mr. President?
MR.
Fox?
COMMISSIONER WRIGHT- May I ask a couple of questions?
Would you please define those acronyms, your CTSSO, LQP?
I don't know.
COMMISSIONER WRIGHT- You're going to catch me off guard.
I think Esperanza had it.
It's Career and Technology Student.
It's Career and Technical Student Organization is the CTSO.
CTSO.
I put an extra S there.
Thank you for that because I wasn't familiar with that.
And so this is primarily CTE courses.
So when we're hearing about groups every four years when you're in a fine arts,
if you stay four years, you get to go on a big trip.
That is not what we're talking about.
and those trips are primarily student funded the band raises funds through the
year and parents contribute you know their portion for for that kind of trip
is that correct absolutely correct districts not funding absolutely correct
mrs. champagne asked my other questions okay thank you any any other questions
Thank you so much.
7.2 Discuss and consider Board Approval of the January 2024 Financial Reports.
And 7.2, the next item is approval of January 2024 financial reports.
The presenter is Jamie Hines, Executive Director of Finance.
Good evening, President Perez, members of the board, Superintendent Gorski.
you have before you in item 7.2, our financial reports for March.
Included is our, a copy of our financial statements, our construction report, and our tax report through the month of January, as well as our check register summary for the month of January.
Included with our financial statements is an analysis of our expenditures and our revenue by function, and a more in-depth analysis of our expenditures by both function and object.
A COUPLE OF THINGS I WANT TO BRING TO YOUR ATTENTION.
THIS IS THROUGH FIVE MONTHS OF OUR FISCAL YEAR, THE FIRST FIVE MONTHS.
SO THAT WOULD BE ABOUT 41.6% IS THE PERCENTAGE YOU WANT TO COMPARE THOSE NUMBERS ON THE RIGHT
TO.
GOING INTO A LITTLE BIT MORE DETAIL, BRIEFLY FUNCTION 34, IF YOU'RE ON PAGE 2 LOOKING AT
THE FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS, YOU MAY NOTICE, AND I'M JUST GOING TO HIT THE ONES THAT AREN'T
REALLY CLOSE TO THAT 41.6 NUMBER.
seems high at about 47 percent. Looking at that, it is normal for transportation to actually spend
more up front because most of their budget is used within the first nine months of the
fiscal year during the school year, which makes sense. But going a little deeper, it's much higher
than it was last year, or a little higher than it was last year. We're keeping an eye on that, but
that's actually due to our 6,300 supplies and materials, and that's just, it's a function of
the fact that fuel is costing us a lot more this year so if if we need to we'll uh we'll come back
and let you know how that's going as we go through the year another one is food services and that's
function 35 and it's actually down compared to last year as a part of the budget that that really
is a timing issue it's not that they're spending a lot less this year it's really the fact that
they have capital projects that they have budgeted and they haven't started drawing on those so
So they're working through those.
And as those draws start coming against that function 35, then we'll see that number coming up.
But they are spending on level with historical years.
The past two months, I've brought the tax situation and that our actual collections were behind prior years.
And the reason for that was because of the election and us having to implement the new homestead exemption.
I'd say us, really the counties.
And so they got everything out later, so people paid later.
We were hoping by January we would see that catch up, and we have.
We're actually, at the end of January, we're ahead on collections of where we were last year by about a percentage point.
So that's looking good.
That's all I've got in terms of analysis, but I'd be glad to answer any questions.
That's, I'm sorry.
When we see a percentage that's way high, like 67%, we can assume, can we assume that,
okay, it's front end loaded in the fiscal year and it's going to level out.
For example, purchasing contractor services in 41 and supplies of materials in 53, that
that those are all going to level out because they're front-end loaded.
They're not going to stay like that.
That's correct.
And a lot of times, a lot of that with the ones that you're mentioning,
that's software is one that will front-end load
because most of the contracts on software will do at the beginning of the year.
So regardless of the function, if you look at that,
you're going to see that we're spending more up front.
We go ahead and those are year-long contracts,
and then at the beginning of the next year we'll do that again.
So that's a normal thing.
And one thing you can see in there is encumbrances.
The money may not have been spent, but we are encumbering the money.
In other words, somebody wants to go buy something out of their budget,
and let's just say it's $10,000.
We encumber that so they can't go spend the $10,000 somewhere else.
And so you're seeing encumbrances in that too that may not be actual cash spent.
It's encumbrances, and that's a budgetary control measure.
Any questions?
Mr. President.
Ms. Grisella.
Jamie, for different objects, 21, 23, 32, 33, the supply of materials is less than 20%.
Would that potentially be a savings, or is that actually going to be fully spent?
That's probably because depending on the department, the function, when they're going to spend those supplies and materials,
materials. It depends on the how they handle their operations. What we really focus on is when we look at those functions overall budget and that's that's kind of what I do when we need to drill into one that's not kind of in line with with overall spending from a historical perspective. That's when I kind of bring that to your attention. So if if they were doing something different than they had done last year, that's when I really want to kind of bring that up to you all and drill down into it. So there's nothing different with like supplies and materials
for instructional leadership.
I would expect that's pretty straightforward,
and it's only 18.5% right now.
Well, I would say that if we look at instructional leadership
from the overall perspective,
it's actually closer to its budgeted amount
in overall spending within that function.
Got it. Yes.
So it's closer to that 41 than it was last year.
So I didn't I couldn't drill down into exactly what's been spent within that function, but I would say that I'm just eager to see cost savings.
And if that would be one, we could realize that seems to be consistent across a lot of the functions.
Be great to know. OK, I would. We are we are looking at reductions everywhere we can.
As a matter of fact, one thing that's that makes that difficult is Mr.
Hines or Esperanza or anybody in our office doesn't know.
It's the budget managers.
OK, so the budget manager may have a plan to spend that money.
They just haven't done it yet or, you know, it's availability and that kind of stuff.
And so if they want something, they don't really need it until this summer.
Then why order it in September?
And so, but if we, but right now it may be under spending or appear to be under spending, but they're going to spend, it's in their budget.
You know, sometimes they don't, sometimes they do, but it's really hard to predict because there's so many, there's hundreds of decision makers in that process that manage their budgets.
And we don't say you got to stop spending because we just screwed up somebody's plan if we just said you got to stop spending tomorrow.
Whoops.
it got caught flat-footed and that's that's not worth worth that okay it just supplies and
materials seems like a very basic item and for us to be halfway through the budget and only less
than 20% expended to me means oh maybe we didn't need that and there'll be a savings and I see that
a there will be a savings there didn't make no bones about that there will be a savings that's
That's a trend.
But remember, those campuses, especially the campuses, have to start,
because how I started that budget presentation,
they have to start their school year in August under the budget that they currently have
because their new budget won't take effect until September 1.
So they've got to be ready to plan and get their stuff ready to open their campus in August for school
under this budget.
Does that make sense?
So they're saving some of it.
Backloading it for the beginning of this. Yes, they're saving it so they can have money available
So they can order things this summer for the next school year
Okay, that makes the most sense to me. I'd love to see cost savings up
You will mr. President. Thank you. May I please?
Make a statement I remember
along those lines
oftentimes elementary schools won't have their carnivals until the end of March or beginning of April and
it's because the money that they are gonna make they're gonna give like when
I was at Exley we had a curriculum support fund and we would try to fund it
and then give it the teach to the teachers in April and that was really
for next year so that so that curriculum support was really for next year that's
why the carnival was so late in the year and then just an example of that thank
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hines.
7.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Financial Audit Engagement Letter.
7.3, I think Mr. Smith is the financial audit engagement letter, 7.3.
Obviously, every year we're required by education code to have an annual audit.
it. Y'all were presented that in February. Is your mic on? It's supposed to be. It's green. It is? Okay.
Y'all were presented our financial audit in January. We are making a recommendation to
engage with Whitley Penn again. If engaged, they'll start in this summer with everything
that they said a couple of months ago that they do with going over our controls and our individual
interviews with budget managers throughout the district.
They'll start looking at compliance with purchasing and all of those things.
And they come back after about two weeks in the summer,
they'll come back in October to work on the financial statements with us
and do all our auditing of our revenue and expenditures,
making sure we're coding things appropriately, et cetera.
And so we have to renew that annually.
and then our recommendation is to engage with Whitley Pinn for the 23-24
financial audit that will start in June. Any questions? Yeah it's a two year I'm
sorry thank you Mr. Rines it's two years and so it would be for the 24-23-24 audit
and the 24-25 audit. But this is for one audit we're approving the 95,000?
95,000 is for one audit, and that is an increase of $2,760, which is probably organic growth.
Again, you may have heard me mention or may remember me mentioning we put that report, that 184-page report together in-house.
Whitley-Penn does that for a lot of districts.
Not many districts do that to the level, and because of that, we have very good pricing.
There could be districts that are near our size that have that are paying more than that for their annual audit
But ours is less because of the amount of work that we do preparing a report
No, I agree. I think ninety five thousand is a good deal and it missed because you do a lot of the work. Yes, sir
Yes, sir. Thank you
7.4 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the campus staffing plan for the 2024 - 2025 school year.
We're on to
7.4
Board.
Brian Schuss, Chief Human Resources Officer,
to discuss and consider future Board approval of the Campus
Staffing Plan for the 2024-2025 school year.
Welcome.
Good evening, President Perez, members of the board,
Dr. Kagorski, here tonight as we are every year in March
to present the Campus Staffing Plan for the next school year.
And so that's for 2024-25 next year.
Got Dr. Hill with me this evening
to help with any questions or throw something at me if I make a mistake.
So jumping right into it, tonight is a very high level overview of campus staffing. You do have
more detailed information in your agenda packets. You have a campus support summary,
you have a campus personnel summary, and that's more detailed information than what is in the
presentation tonight. We're going to talk about the process, how we got here, and then talk about
the total additions recommended for for next school year so just a review of the process
we start with enrollment projections in january we finalize those into january and then as soon
as those are finalized we have a team in hr and position control that they use our campus
staffing standards and create campus staffing reports for each and every campus once those
are created we meet with our school leadership team to discuss the campuses that that they
oversee and address any concerns or listen to any concerns and if there if
some of those we can address we look at at that time they follow that up with
meeting with campus principals and getting getting even further feedback
and bringing that to our attention or we work with campus principals directly on
on any additional concerns with their with their staffing reports we also meet
with departments that have campus based personnel so for example one would be
like fine arts so any any department that has campus-based personnel we meet with them
on their staffing as well leading up to tonight and next monday which would be board approval
and final release and leading up to our teacher job fair at the end of march as well our teacher
job fair is actually this saturday so so we're excited about that and hope for hope to have a
successful uh successful job fair um so staffing projections for this year um projected enrollment
enrollment 96,637. The enrollment in January that were used for our projections, and this
is by our business intelligence group and they come to help us with these numbers, was
95,505. So you can see just a little over 1,100 students.
for certainly the history since I've been here in history in KDISD, that is a low growth year
as far as enrollment. And so we would, of course, expect that to correlate with a low addition year
with staffing requests. And I think you'll see that this evening. Our campus staffing is formula
driven, you know, based on our staffing standards. We have staffing standards for elementary, junior
High and High School and we review those annually. It's pretty rare that those are changed much,
if any, but this year we did adjust the secondary staffing standard when it came to class size
ratios and we increased those by half a student. So, for example, if the class size ratio at
a campus is 24 to 1, we adjusted that to 24 and a half to 1. What that did at the secondary
level that actually reduced our additions by about 50 teachers so that's
that's a pretty I'm sorry I mean 50 I'm sorry so so 50 teachers at the secondary
level so you know that's significant and it is a budget savings for the district
but also we still feel working with our school leadership team that we are still
obviously going to be able to provide the the great service that we do to our
children at those campuses even by increasing that half a student.
So the staffing summary.
Elementary additional staff this year, 62 additional staff members.
Secondary additional staff, 220.
That seems like a big number, but remember, we're opening Nelson Junior High and Freeman
High School and you can see at the bottom.
So of that 220, 207 of those are associated with the new campuses.
So when you look at it that way, you can see that it does translate to a lower addition
year than we've seen in the past.
We're just opening up to new campuses.
We have to staff those campuses.
The campus staff total, which includes growth units, and that is listed in your campus staffing
summary, we're requesting 50 of those, and I believe Mr. Smith has that in the budget
as we sit today.
And then your campus support staff summary of 60 additional units.
What those are?
Those are our food service folks for the new campuses, our custodians and maintenance for the new campuses.
Also, we have some LSSPs, DAGs on that list as well.
There's 60 of those units for a total of 392 compared to 622 last year.
So Mr. Smith spoke about the same thing in his presentation.
It just presented a little differently.
differently. But that is the total total number of additions requested for for 2425 and we'll take any questions.
Questions Mr. Mr. President Jamie. How did you all decide on half increasing this? I'm just concerned. Yeah, no, no, it's a great question. So actually, this was a discussion between Dr. Gorski and I, Mrs. Hack, our school leadership team.
Initially we looked at increasing it by a whole student, but because this is a low growth year,
that was going to cause some concern where we had some campuses that maybe were already,
because of low enrollment growth, losing teachers, but then that was really going to
escalate that. And so visiting with Dr. Gorski, Mrs. Hack, our school leadership team, we said,
well, hey, well, let's look at a half and let's see if that works. And that was much more manageable.
Okay, and then one other question. When you look at the additional staff for 23-24 versus 24-25,
so from what I understand, there's more staffing that is required on an elementary campus. Is that
correct? It can be, yes. Okay, because did we, and I guess 23-24, we opened two elementaries,
and then in 24-25, we're opening two secondaries. Yes, ma'am. And then one of those secondaries is
only going to be two grade levels right right so that would be why there's a discrepancy
so the discrepancy between the two is so different would you say that well i i think actually the the
reason why it's so different is because the we are adding only about 1100 students this year versus
i think it was 1800 to 2000 last year okay that's true and we did look at the two elementary campuses
and you're correct um uh they they were a little more but i think is and i apologize i don't have
have it with me, but I can get it to you. But out of the 207 that we're adding next year, I believe
those two elementaries were about 215, 220. So not that much of a difference. So, and actually,
and Dr. Hill, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but if you look at it, and not with the growth or the
additional campus support staff, but you just look at the elementary additional staff and the
secondary additional staff, this year, if we pull out those new campuses, adding very little, I
I think, you know, 80 or so.
But last year, I think it was 279 when you pulled those two new campuses out, just looking apples to apples.
So I think that also shows that a much lower addition requested this year than last year.
Mr. President.
Questions?
Mr. President.
Thank you for the presentation.
When you talk about going 24 to 1 to 24.5 to 1, do you have an estimated dollar amount of savings, that is?
50 teachers you're looking for somewhere on you know three million dollars maybe
nine dollars and is the number the same at every campus or are there some
campuses maybe more challenging maybe our title campuses is that number
differentiated we do have some campuses that are 23 one and so they went to 23
a.m. okay and we aren't approving this tonight because it goes to the consent
and agenda for next week's action how can our
our teacher fairs this saturday before we vote how
are principals able to hire people that day before they go to sci fair or
somewhere else how can our principals hire the best
people if we don't have a staffing plan approved
so we've actually uh that's been a change for the past couple of years and
you are correct it doesn't doesn't get approved until
until Monday. We used to have our job fair mid-April and we found out that a
lot of other districts were actually moving up their job fairs ahead of ours
and so there was requests, well I mean from us, but also from our principals,
hey let's let's move this thing up a little bit. In the past couple of years
it has fallen on that Saturday before board approval. So you know the campuses
know that but of course they you know they still know the positions that
they're gonna need based on what we presented today. So we allow them to go
through that process let folks know hey you're you're my selection but they also know we we
can't fully you know offer a contract or finish that hiring process until it is board approved
until tuesday okay but they do know what openings they have and they can just kind of take those
they they have their staffing sheets and it's better to have it early than to wait until absolutely
absolutely absolutely i mean the next weekend after that's easter weekend so that wouldn't be
be a good time okay thanks mr. president I just want to make make a comment here
about the 392 that takes into effect sorry the 50 teachers that were not
higher you know that we've I hate to use the word cut but you know in other words
if we wouldn't have gone to 24.5 that number would have been 50 oh yes ma'am
so so some of that difference is the 50 teachers by going to 24.5 absolutely so
So that would have been more like 442 or something like that.
Yeah, it would have been 50 more.
So it wouldn't have been as much of a difference.
I just wanted to point that out.
So we have the total of 332, as I noticed, 392 as far as additional staff,
of which 220 is Freeman and Nelson, right?
Well, about 207, Freeman and Nelson.
220 is the total at all secondary.
Okay.
So of that 220, 207 are the new campuses.
So could we get a breakdown of the difference?
I know we have a spreadsheet, but the difference between the 332 and the 220, like where that's
going.
Sure.
Yes.
I mean, and you've got the campus personnel summary in your agenda, but I mean, I can
go through that and try to...
Yeah, just like where it's going.
332 plus 220 and the difference, where they're coming from.
Yeah, because understand there's a lot of movement too.
So, you know, you've got campuses that are losing enrollment that are actually being reduced in staff,
and you've got campuses that are gaining, right?
So there's a lot of movement going on.
Okay.
Getting back to the .5, it's not like 50 less teachers.
It's just 50 less teachers that were not hired.
Absolutely, yeah.
It's not 50 less teachers.
It's just 50 less that we're adding.
Right, because we're running a deficit, and this is 50 fewer.
Absolutely.
Okay.
any other questions mr president how many growth units have you included uh 50 50. okay as we
continue to grow okay thank you any other questions thank you
7.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of the renewal of the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Risk Management Fund Casualty Program for Plan Year 2024-2025.
and now we're moving on to 7.5 uh lance nelman director of risk management about the
the TASB Risk Management Fund Casualty Program for plan year 2024-2025.
Good evening, Dr. Gagorski, Board President Perez, Board of Trustees.
In March 2023, Katy and Pensacola District Board of Trustees approved the renewal premium, quote,
for the casualty coverage with TASB Risk Management Fund for a 12-month period.
The renewal premium provides auto liability, general liability, cyber security, police liability, and school board legal liability coverage for the district at a renewal cost of $485,728.
The Risk Management Department seeks to renew this program, which provides casualty coverage for the district.
district. Because the district continues to grow, adding more assets and employees, the
renewal premium is offered is higher than the expiring term. The increased premium is
the result of increased exposures related to organic growth, inflation, and increased
reinsurance rates. This program provides commercial auto liability coverage for vehicles owned
and operated and or lease by the district. Additionally, the program
provides general liability coverage for actions against the district resulting
from its day-to-day operations. Next, cyber liability protection is also
offered in this policy. Lastly, the program extends school board legal
liability coverage for claims related to administrative issues. Enhancements to
the existing coverage include violent acts coverage for expenses resulting
resulting from mass incidents at district locations.
The program has been reviewed for adequacy of coverage, availability of service and costs.
Authority is granted to purchase this coverage via CRB legal.
Thank you. Questions?
Mr. President, could I ask a question?
Ms. Grisela.
Thank you. Is there anything to compare this to? Any other offer vendor, if you will, other than just TASB?
TASB, I think, offers the best service for us because they do understand school district
business.
Typically, you will see in the other markets it will be higher.
We have a great working relationship with TASB in terms of claims handling efficiency.
I would also add that we, over the years, have been able to reduce our costs by handling
first party claims like when a bus hits a nice mailbox or a stop sign or something of that
nature. We handle those here internally to help reduce our cost and TASB allows us to do that. So
not allowing those claims to hit our loss organically over time has saved us a lot of money.
Okay. So we've never, have we ever not used TASB for this?
Yes, we have. We have used, not used TASB. It's been
eight or nine years and in the market was extremely very cooperative with us
with TASB and offering that they provided us thank you in terms of the
liability insurance we have over this some sort of other layers like umbrella
coverage on top of the three million no because we have statutory limits that
are applied to us by law.
Really?
Yes.
Yeah, that's great.
A school board as well?
There is a school board legal liability.
We have coverage for those events.
Above $3 million?
No.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Thank you very much.
All right.
7.6 Discuss and consider Board approval for track repairs and resurfacing at multiple campuses: Seven Lakes High School, Obra D. Tompkins High School, Morton Ranch Junior High School, West Memorial Junior High School, and WoodCreek Junior High School.
We have Nathan Fuchs, Executive Director of Maintenance and Operations, to discuss and
consider board approval for track repairs and resurfacing at several campuses.
Welcome.
Good evening, President Perez, Board Members, and Dr. Gorski.
Tonight I have one item for your consideration.
Athletic track systems at Seven Lakes High School, Tompkins High School,
Morton Ranch Junior High, West Memorial Junior High, and Wood Creek Junior High
have met their life expectancy and need repairs.
Each campus will receive our district standard for track surface
and will be done over the summer break.
The four projects are part of the 2021 Bond Prop D Replacement Program.
would Creek Junior High would be covered with available Prop D project savings.
The total not to exceed project cost for all five campuses is two million three
hundred thirty two thousand three hundred eighty nine dollars and ninety
cents. Essentially what we're doing we're going into these particular campuses
we're looking at areas that have structural failures. We go down we look
at the subgrade look at the base material we look to the concrete curbs
you're repairing only areas that have structurally failed. Once we make those
repairs and then go back we put an overlay over the existing system and it
brings it back to a new campus our new track and we will get a seven-year
warranty as you're putting in a new track surface so that being said I'll
answer any questions you question is this is this is this mostly a safety
issue for the athletes it is and in your Wood Creek we didn't have it on the
schedule but we were like we're going to move it up if you look at the radius of
of that curb at Wood Creek Junior High.
That concrete curb has settled probably six inches.
So you have your two lanes of running surface
and a foot from that radius,
there's a six inch drop.
So you could easily twist an ankle
or have significant safety issues.
And that's 100% of what we're looking at.
What about cracks?
Cracks as well.
Some cracks are opening up half inch to an inch.
We try to control the subgrade movement,
if you will, with irrigation systems around the edge
to bring moisture and keep that movement to a minimal.
But you still have settlement and they move,
just like your slab at your house
or your driveway at your house.
You have that movement.
So we definitely look at it from a safety standpoint.
So are we funding Wood Creek from savings?
Project savings and Proposition D only, yes, sir.
We can't cross.
From 2021?
That's correct.
Questions?
Mr. President.
there is a significant difference in one of these schools is it a smaller track is it just less
damaged but what makes that one so much significant so the junior high tracks are
smaller junior high tracks are two lane high school tracks are eight lane um in in working
with um this contractor we brought the design team and the contractor out ahead of time and
walked all this all the tracks looked at the structural failures and that's how we based
That's what the prices are based on, what damages where.
If you look at some of the campuses, even though they're junior highs, are more or less,
so there was more structural failure and the dollar's a representative of that.
Are you repairing them or replacing them?
We repair them.
We repair the subgrade and then we do an overlay on top of the repaired subgrade.
When I'm thinking about Wood Creek Junior High, it was significantly overcrowded for
for years before we built the next junior high,
like 1,600, 1,800 students, as I remember.
So could that have been that it just got so much more use?
That's a very good point, Mrs. Fox.
Because it was years of being open.
Keep in mind, the junior high tracks
are used by our community.
They're open on the weekends and after hours.
So they get a lot of community usage at the junior high level.
That was my next question.
Junior high tracks are open to the public,
and high school ones are not.
Because they're fenced in.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
7.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of a contract for the renovation to Katy Junior High School.
The next batter up is Lisa Kastman.
She's the Executive Director of Facilities Planning and Construction.
Item 7.7, the contract for the renovation of Katy Junior High.
Good evening, President Perez, Trustees, and Dr. Gagorski.
Two items this evening.
The first is the contractor for Katy Junior High renovations in addition.
We took five proposals on February 20th, and Anzal O'Brien ranked out first.
Mr. President, are you done?
Yes.
Okay, very brief.
May I ask a question, Mr. President?
Go ahead, Ms. O'Bella.
So when I look at these rankings, I look by cost, not looks like they're presented alphabetically.
I don't know if it's too much trouble to next time when these are presented to present in order of cost.
OK, we can definitely. I mean, that's the way I analyze it.
It would be nice and helpful. So Ansel Bryant was chosen, but they ranked fourth in the percent fee.
interesting to me and whereas S&P ranked first as far as the percent fee ranking.
What is GC? Could you help me? I'm sorry.
That's general conditions. That's for their staff, the job trailer, all the incidentals that go along with it.
Okay, okay. So, you know, by choosing this Anzal O'Brien and not perhaps the cheapest option, it looks like we could have saved $110,000 by going with a cheaper builder.
So I know there was a little verbiage on why we really like Anzal O'Brien versus S&P. Can you help justify that?
Yeah, oh definitely.
Yeah, so it's a construction manager risk process.
And there's different divisions, 30% for cost, 30% for reputation,
30% for how it meets our needs, and then 10% with the district.
So it's all formula driven.
We get references in, we look at their team.
Have they worked on a renovation?
Have they not?
How recent?
The quality of work performed, and that we get from our references.
Reputation of the contractor, are they a team player?
have they been on schedule at another project at another district are they
responsive to warranty work so it all puts it so it's not just the cost but
it's the project as a whole and with these renovations I mean those can get
really tricky so we want to make sure we have the right the right people in place
sure I just S&P is only second in that 30 30 30 ranking and they're the cheapest
So I'm just curious why we wouldn't have considered them and saved some money.
Well, we looked at them, and once again, we looked at the references and all the scoring that goes into those factors.
Okay.
So with that matrix.
But they rank second in those references.
So I have a problem with that.
I like to save.
And if we could save with someone who's got a reputation as number two, let's go for that.
But I don't know if it's more complicated than that.
Like I said, it's just part of the whole equation.
and that's just percentage based on final construction cost and that will
that you know we have a budget but they'll work through that to the design
process and that's part of what goes into the equation have they been
successful on other renovation projects and helping us save money through the
design process I I know the same thing actually where the number two player is
is like one point behind it made him second even though we're rating them
higher actually in the other project like on performance in other words that
they got in the rating on that project over here they would have been first
you know I'm saying and like so we did give up like 110 thousand dollars based
on a difference of like one one percent one there's a ranking of one so I know
I know there's a system, but it just seems like when you have the,
somebody that got 30%, 30 got 100% credit for the price,
but yet they're only, they just fail to come in first by a more subjective criteria.
Correct.
And it seems like we're, you know, like we're giving up money.
It's less than a point.
I know, and we, you know, our process, our formula is, that's why it's very subjective.
We show them because S&P has reached out already.
I'll review the scores.
And two different projects, it's usually two different types of references.
And some of the references don't respond.
So that kind of negates some of their points as well.
And then when you don't get responses on any of these contractors,
it makes you wonder, well, why didn't someone give me a reference on that?
So what you just said, is that reflected here in this chart?
Yes.
Well, again, it's only less than a point difference.
It was very tight and we reviewed all our numbers to make sure that we had everything ranked the right way.
These are different people that are doing the ranking as well, aren't they?
Correct. It's our staff, it's the architect, and it's the references they provide in their proposal.
Between these two projects or different people that are doing the ranking?
So they're not apples to apples.
I'd just love to save money.
No, I and we do too and then well what will help help us though is like Ansel Bryant Stewart builders
I mean they've helped us save money in other projects and you'll see some of that and forthcoming when I bring some other items
We're leaving savings on the table right now
Mr. President part of that too
Seeing this happen all the time. Just just because we're paying that construction manager at risk a percentage higher
some of the things that aren't being taken into account are the relationships the subs have with
the construction manager at risk and so this is what we're paying the construction manager at risk
but that's not the entire job cost either and so while we may pay leadership a little bit more to
complete the job on time on budget and in a way that past relationships have come through
those are the things that i think at the end of the day if we paid a hundred thousand dollars
more for construction manager at risk that we know has produced a quality product and they are able
to manage the job in a way that is uh on point uh we most likely would end up in overall savings for
the entire project while it may just be on this one portion of the job uh we don't that's the
gamble point taken but s p we do have a good relationship with correct but like once again
it's subjective and it's like we love you we'd love to have you work for us but we got to put
all these factors into consideration.
Can I please say something?
Ms. Champagne?
So they have, I don't know what the past relationship HIP means, but.
Work they've done with us before.
The district so.
Oh, okay, you're just, okay, not hyphenated.
All right.
So, you know, that, so Anacent does have a higher rating at that.
And what I'd like to say about that is sometimes there's indirect costs that can't be shown here.
For example, that the project will be done on time, you know, is a very, very valuable thing that, you know,
we know that the project will be done on time that the
Junior high will only have that much time, you know
Taken out of sorts with the children and the staff and everything and whereas sometimes
Even like my personal stuff, you know
I've had a contractor who I made a save money with but it took ten times longer to get it done
And so those things are valuable even though you can't really put a dollar amount on that
But I think you can put value of it on, you know, to continue to provide our children with the great education and less amount of time disturbed environment.
So that's great.
Mr. President.
Ms. Teamee.
Did I understand you correctly when you said that the architect helps determine, helps choose who we use?
Well, they give us a scoring.
They give a reference.
And we combine everything together.
So we have our scores the architects the references and an average is taken of all of those because they also have worked with these
Contractors on other projects in other districts and have a different viewpoint
Okay, so but I'm just wondering is that the most?
Wise discerning use of taxpayer dollars to have an architect that doesn't have any accountability to our district making that a decision on our
dollars that we're spending
Well, they do have accountability because they have to make sure the project is performed the way they designed it and it gets done on time.
That if we don't have a good set of plans and specs, that could delay the contractor and it would not necessarily be the contractor's fault, it would be the architect's fault.
So they do have skin in the game on this.
Okay.
So what are the consequences if they don't have plans that are easily understandable and on time and all of that?
What is the consequence to them?
So we're paying the contractor for change orders for work that was not designed, you know incomplete design
So those are the theoretical consequences sure so are there any consequences to the architect though?
Yeah, cuz we will back charge the architects if it was something was an emissions, okay? Okay? Thanks. Mr.. President
This box one quick question. Who is this and P out of field upon TKC?
Okay anything else
Thank you. Thanks so much. We have another one. I guess we're presenting both of them.
7.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of a contract for the Katy High School band and orchestra building, Katy High School renovations, Cimarron Elementary School, and Nottingham Country Elementary School renovations.
So the second item is for the Katy High School project, the band orchestra hall and some renovations to Cimarron and Nottingham Country.
And we've received seven proposals for that, and Stewart Builders is the ones that ranked, once again, first on that.
I guess same comments.
Okay.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you so much. I have a question. The architect, the architect that we use, that's VLK, right? For Katy High School, it's going to be VLK. Okay. And so for all of this, is it the same architect? Yeah. No. Katy Junior High is IBI Arcadis. Okay. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, no problem.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
you next we go on to 7.9 and it's the sherry ashburn is director of student affairs she's
7.9 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the proposed changes to Board Policy FMH(LOCAL).
our presenter and to discuss and consider future board approval the proposed changes to board
policy fmh local welcome thank you um thank you president perez dr gregorski members of the board
last month you had 1 000 pages of policy updates but tonight is only one um you might have remembered
that last May you approved a temporary waiver
of provisions within board policy FMH.
And that was due to the final performance levels
not being provided in a timely manner from TEA
for our students to participate
in the graduation commencement ceremonies.
So what we're recommending tonight
is your consideration for discussion
and approval next week is to modify our policy
to basically account for that waiver
so that we won't have to come to you every year as we anticipate that those final performance levels will not
Arrive on time and you'll notice that there was one minor change at the bottom about the minimum days of advance notice
for board members that want to I guess participate in that diploma presentation to align with those board policy operating
Procedures that you've previously approved so this time if you have any questions
Any questions?
COMMISSIONER MAYEHISTER- No questions.
COMMISSIONER MAYEHISTER- No questions on that one.
7.10 Discuss and consider future Board approval of a low attendance waiver as recommended by administration.
We'll move on to 7.10, discuss and consider future board approval of a low attendance
waiver as recommended by administration.
COMMISSIONER MAYEHISTER- Thank you.
again. TEA allows us to apply for a waiver whenever we have campuses that for health,
safety reasons, or inclement weather have an attendance average for that day that is 10 points
lower than the previous year's average. And this will help us with our ADA funding. It puts money
back into our pockets. And there were three campuses, I believe, that are impacted by this.
So the waiver was presented to the KD Improvement Council, as we do with all waivers,
there were no comments of objection.
So with your approval at next week's board meeting,
we'll be able to present that to TEA.
Any questions on that?
Mr. President?
Ms. Fox?
Ms. Ashwin, the attendance has to be down 10 percentage points
from their average daily attendance.
10% lower than last year's average.
Thank you.
Anything else?
Would there be any reason why you wouldn't do this?
No.
Mr. President, and this is for one day?
Yes.
So this is actually for the day.
So they just eliminate that day from the average?
For the campuses that were impacted.
So we had the Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
We had the freeze day.
And then this would be for that Wednesday after.
There were still some campuses that had low attendance from families who were probably still battling the impact of the freeze.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
7.11 Discuss and consider three Board Resolutions authorizing participation in the State of Texas Cybersecurity Grant Program in the following areas: Assessment and Evaluation Projects, Mitigation Projects, and Workforce Development Projects.
Thank you very much.
Nakia Coy, Executive Director of Federal Funds and External Funding, discussing and considering three Board resolutions authorizing certain grants related to cybersecurity.
Good evening, President Perez, Board members, and Dr. Grigorski.
I'm here to request approval for three proposed resolutions required by the State of Texas Cybersecurity Grant Program.
program. Our applications are pending and these are competitive grants, but we are requesting
approximately $2 million in grant funds across three different grant applications, which
also require a 10% match. The grant objectives include assessment and evaluation projects,
mitigation projects, and workforce development projects. The district will be able to assess
areas for improvement based on continuous testing, evaluation, and structured assessments,
implement security protections and ensure personnel are appropriately trained in cybersecurity.
These resolutions include a commitment to provide all applicable matching funds,
designate an authorized official, and the assurance that in the event of loss or misuse of grant funds,
the governing body will return those funds.
Questions?
Mr. President?
Ms. Cotella?
Is this so the district it cost for this?
Application for this grant is a two hundred thousand right approximately. It's a little more, but was that already budgeted
We've already approved that expenditure or is this new or what?
next for next school year
But then also it's my understanding that a lot of these projects are things that we would need to do anyway
and so we're looking for avenues to kind of
help with those costs. So it would become part of the budget for next school year.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else?
Mr. President, this workforce development project, does this
directly benefit students? Is this a student? No.
No. It would be training for staff on cybersecurity efforts.
Thank you.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
And we move on now to 712, which is discussing and considering the naming of Katy High School
7.12 Discuss and consider the naming of Katy High School Baseball field.
baseball field.
As you all may recall, last month we approved a new modification to CW Local, which kind
of streamlined the Board being able to name a portion of a facility.
And what's being considered is Tom McPherson Field.
Obviously his background as we know, as we've heard, and as we've read is very impressive.
Impressive background, impressive testimonies, and all kinds of letters of great recommendation
about how Coach Mack has affected many young men throughout his career in a very positive
way.
And at this time, we have two Katy High School grads here on the board.
So maybe Ms. Calhoun or Mr. Redmond would like to make some comments.
I was really excited to be able to do this after we passed the policy update.
After reading through Coach Mack's very extensive packet,
it was impressive to say the least not just with his almost 900 career wins as
everybody heard that is incredible in and of itself but the thing that was
echoed again and again throughout all the recommendations and testimonials
from co-coaches to prior players that still are talking about him is the way that he guided and
grew up young boys to become men. And I was so impacted to see that again and again and again,
that it was moving.
And, of course, when we look at this, and I told his family this,
and I told those that were here, that they did the hard work for us
by putting all of that packet together.
It makes it very easy for us to say, yes, our job is easy in this
because of what they put together.
and he did the hard work over the 34 years that he served this district and the way he grew up
our young men to be leaders to be men that we see now and i can only hope and pray that my own boys
have coaches and men like that to grow and to learn from that they are surrounded by and that
we have more men that he did that to that are able to impact our our generations to come in the way
that his legacy will live on and so i'm happy to partner with uh mr redmond to do this it's
exciting to have another katie grad and for this to be the first deal that we do this with so i'm
beyond happy and excited to do this mr president mr redmond i think mr matthews feeson
And Medlin said almost everything we needed to say.
I think the small memories of getting yelled at on the football field by Coach Mack.
He coached offense.
I was on defense.
We usually destroyed the offense.
It's not important, but it needed to be said on the record, in the minutes.
But just we have so many great people in KDISD.
and what I like about this change of the policies,
we have the ability to recognize those people.
If we could do it for everybody, it would be amazing.
But when we get the opportunity to recognize someone like Coach Mack,
I think we should.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Okay, we will vote on that next week along with everything else.
But thank you so much for your comments.
Mr. President, I think there was a question about when we name campuses,
is we have a specific day that is the public forum to hear about that but my
understanding is that because this is a portion of a school and is that the
board's discretion that the public forum if anyone has anything to say about him
would be during the regular public forum next Monday our open forum yes so if
anyone would like to speak about coach Mac next Monday at 5 o'clock would be
be the time to sign up for that and you have to sign up by 2 p.m. on that day
online if you'd like to come and speak about coach Mac to everyone and pay your
respects and if you don't it'll be on our agenda and it will be on our agenda
for action next Monday thank you thank you 7.13 Justin Graham general counsel
7.13 Discuss and consider donating used, surplus band trailer.
Discuss and consider donating a used surplus band trailer.
Hey trustees, Dr. Krakowski, President Perez.
Pretty straightforward item here.
We have a band trailer that was originally purchased by the Booster Club and
then given to Seven Lakes High School in October of 2010.
I actually found the old resolution for that.
We have since gone and purchased trailers for all of the high schools.
So this is sort of a surplus trailer that we are not using.
The Booster Club has requested that we go ahead and donate it back to them as a real property.
And personal property resides within your jurisdiction as a Board of Trustees.
I felt it appropriate for you to take action because motor vehicle accidents is the one area,
is one of the few areas where we have, which may pierce our liability, our governmental immunity.
community. So that being said, I think it's important that we take action to donate it
to actually provide the title back to the Booster Club. I also want to note that once
the trailer is back in the Booster Club's possession, the district will not move the
trailer, will not use its vehicles to move the trailer, will not use its staff or independent
contracts to move the trailer. So that will be solely dependent upon the Booster Club.
I'd be happy to take any questions you may have.
Mr. President? Ms. Champagne? Okay, so I have a few little questions about that.
Is that going to be written down in a contract or something about, you know,
we're not going to move it, we're not going to staff it, we're not going to, all the
things you just said? Well, we don't, we won't have a contract. I mean, we will
have a board resolution next week to give it to them. We will be, I will make
sure that our risk management team is very clear with the Booster Club about
we're not going to move it because I know that that's going to be the request
that we're going to have.
A, the dad that's driving tonight can't do it.
Can one of your employees move it?
Once we've made this transaction, our liability insurance is not going to allow
us to do so.
So my concern is because I've had things like this before, years from now,
10 years from now, when maybe you won't be here anymore.
I don't know, but maybe you won't remember.
I don't know.
Are my memories going?
I'm getting fired?
Which one?
You know what I mean.
You might be gone or, I mean, 10 years from now, you know, how are they going to know that we did this?
I mean, is there going to be something in their file?
Again, we're not going to enter in a contract because they're not giving us any consideration here.
It will be a resolution from the board with specific written instructions followed up from our risk management department.
All right.
I just think that somebody along the way is going to forget about that.
Well, I mean, a written resolution with the board.
written directives from our risk management department. I don't know.
It'll be in the minutes. Okay so right now so KDISD has the title to it? Yes.
All right. Mr. President. I was thinking, sorry Ms. Fox, I was thinking not so much that
way but more that a parent down the road or a child has expectations or thinks
that KDIC is in charge or controls the trailer
and is therefore responsible for whatever happens,
if anything happens with the trailer,
because they think that KDIC's umbrella, if you will,
is responsible for it.
Yeah, again, future perceptions of those kids,
it'd be hard for us to have that discussion today
other than we're gonna make it very clear
with the Booster Club about ownership of the trailer.
Mr. President.
So you said that the district bought trailers for everyone?
Did they buy Seven Lakes a new trailer?
Yes.
Okay.
So we do have one trailer that is from KDISD.
If they have a second one and they want to do something with this, that's not us.
They're not going to have a trailer.
They have one from us.
They have a big semi-trailer with Seven Lakes Band all over the side of it.
That the district drives and takes it?
Yes, ma'am.
Every one of our high schools has the same.
Got it.
Thank you.
Mr. President, where is the trailer right now that we're going to be giving the title back to the booster?
It's parked at the high school.
It's parked at the high school because we still have the title to it.
Okay.
Okay, so you're just saying we're not going to move it from that position.
That's right.
We're not transporting that trailer anywhere using district staff.
Do they know that before?
okay they know that before we transfer the title okay anything else thank you
very much we move on to information items the donation donated items this
8. Information Items
was provided to the board I just had one quick question one of the donated things
is a donation to pay for Ron Clark Academy for 10 teachers,
and it's the PTA that donated that.
Is Ron Clark Academy paid for always by PTAs,
or is it sometimes paid by schools?
It is sometimes paid by schools.
I'm sorry?
It varies.
PTAs will do a donation,
and working with the principal to send a group of staff members
or principals will plan with their budget to send teams.
Sometimes under school budget, sometimes under PTA.
Right.
Okay.
All right.
Anything else on the information items that was given to the board?
Any information requests?
Mr. President, so I'm not sure if you still wanted
or we still wanted the number of kids covered under the $169,000
dollars for the transportation fee no we don't need that okay no what I what I
and the breakdown of the staff you break down the additional staff it's not the
two schools and that and I think that's all we had help me again so I can get
the correct information the breakdown of the staff what exactly was that break
down of the staff so there was like 220 that's for the two schools new new
new schools to 20 something like that and then there's like 300 issues 392 well 60 is we know
is the support and then so it's 330 roughly 332 is it gross number so the difference between those
two like how that breaks out i think the slide and i don't have the slide in front of me brian
i don't know if you want to pop it back on the screen but the slide the numbers added up exactly
to what that cost is it was elementary positions secondary positions growth
positions which you mentioned what I believe said was 50 50 I don't think I
had the number 50 on the slide I don't think you had the 50 but you mentioned
it and that equals the number I guess I was looking for like two of this for
for this, et cetera, that kind of breakdown.
Yeah, he wants a breakdown of the 50.
There would be no breakdown of the 50.
They're just generally 50 growth units to be spent as the district needs.
Elementary, if you need that broken down,
but I don't know how to break that down for you
because we just allot those to the campus,
then they determine whether that's this position or that position
when they move people around.
So, okay, so there's 332 less 220 for Freeman and Nelson. That's 112. Actually, it's, you have a breakdown of the 112. It's 207 for Freeman and Nelson. The 220 is the entire addition for secondary.
So down at the bottom of the slide, it shows those 207 for Freeman and Nelson.
But I mean, I can…
You can tell us it's five of this and ten of that and so on, can't you?
Sure.
I mean, and that is also in the campus summary, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're
looking for.
Just…
Because in the campus summary, so that, I mean, that does break down like, you know,
how many regular teachers or paras or CTE or I mean it breaks all that down
and see if we're having a spreadsheet. You're talking about in here? Yes sir.
But I mean I'll get whatever you need. Just email me whatever you
know what I'm talking about. Sure. Okay. If you guys know what you're talking
about because I'm confused but that's okay. If you guys understand what the
the request is. Okay. Without further ado, there will be a regular board meeting on Monday, March 25,
9. Future Meetings
2024, and there being no further business before the board, this meeting is adjourned.
The time is 8.26 p.m. Thank you.
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