Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this regular board meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order. Today is Monday, October 28, 2024, and the time is 5 p.m. Dr. Gorgorski, will you verify that we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to the notice for this meeting?
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In this meeting
- 0:05 to 9:00 1. Call to Order
- 9:00 to 9:48 3. Recognitions
- 9:48 to 34:51 4. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
- 34:51 to 35:22 5. Closed Meeting
- 35:22 to 36:08 6. Reconvene from Closed Meeting – The Board will reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 36:08 to 1:11:29 7.1 ESL/Bilingual – A Journey to Graduation for Emergent Bilingual Students
- 1:11:29 to 2:24:34 7.2 Class 1:1 Initiative Update
- 2:24:34 to 2:52:53 7.3 Katy ISD Strategic Plan Specific Result 2.3 Update
- 2:52:53 to 3:09:48 8.1 Presentation of the District's rating on the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST).
- 3:09:48 to 3:09:57 8.2 Receive public input regarding the District's rating on the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST).
- 3:09:57 to 3:11:40 9. Consent Agenda
- 3:11:40 to 3:14:29 9.2 Consider Board approval of the attendance boundary modification (ABM) for Elementary #47 and Elementary #48 for the 2025-2026 school year.
- 3:14:29 to 3:21:39 9.3 Consider Board approval of the October 2024 budget amendments.
- 3:21:39 to 3:23:11 10.1 Board Committee Updates
- 3:23:11 to 3:23:55 10.2 Recap of Board member requests for information.
- 3:23:55 to 3:24:06 11. Future Meetings
- 3:24:06 to 3:24:43 12. Closed Meeting
- 3:24:43 to 3:26:34 13. Reconvene
Full transcript
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1. Call to Order
Mr. Perez, I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting tonight. And then we're going to go ahead and jump right in with our Pledge of Allegiance. We have a special guest who I'm going to go ahead and invite up to the podium. And that is Isabella Carrillo, fifth grader from Campbell Elementary. See her principals out there, Jamie Shipley and Amy Campbell herself. Parents Irene and Julio Carrillo and her siblings, Annabella and Juliana. Isabella plays soccer. She's participated in house council with Jim's Club at ACE and she also likes to draw and spend time with her family. Favorite subject math. From Mrs. Hartzoff, fifth grade math teacher, Isabella is a hard-working, caring, and outstanding Campbell Cub. Her motivation and determination go above and beyond. She always strives for excellence. And from Mrs. Dunlap, fifth grade ELAR teacher, Isabella is dedicated, outstanding student and friend she is a pleasure to have in class and shines bright in everything she does but before we do those pledges we're gonna also introduce Katie high school choir who's here tonight performing national anthem following the pledges so from Katie high school principal dr. Rick Hall this is our Katie high school choir music director Nicholas Lycos students here with us tonight Addie Owens Zoe guests Mackenzie Simpkins Avery Nass Adrian Adrian Pineda, Hunter Reeves, Griffin Corey, Daniel Zukov. And a quote from our music director, the students before you are actively involved in the choir program, Katy High School, and are members of the Katy Chorale and Vocal Ensemble. Three of the students have also made the Texas All-State Choir. So thank you, Katy ISD Board, for all you do for our students and teachers across the district. We are thankful for your service and opportunities. You provide all students in Katy ISD. So let's go ahead and start with our pledge.
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.
you see by the dawn's early light. What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming, whose broad stripes and bright skies through the perilous fight For the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming, And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave
Good evening, President Perez, board members, and Superintendent Gregorski. My name is Isabella Carrillo. I am a fifth grader at Amy Campbell Elementary. It is a really fun school where you learn and explore new things. I have participated in extracurricular clubs like House Council and GEMS. This has helped me grow in my leadership and engineering skills. ACE is a place that encourages us to be kind. We can earn positive rewards like Purposeful People Awards, words, principal shout outs, and coins to use in the book vending machine. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Mitchell, is really special. She went out of her way to make sure that we understood concepts. More than just memorizing information, she helped us want to truly know more about subjects, like Texas history. I'm pretty sure everyone left her class in fourth grade with Texas history as their favorite subject. I love when teachers created escape rooms to end a unit for us to show our knowledge and everything we had learned. A staff greets each student with a warm and welcoming smile every day throughout the hallways. Campbell is an amazing school because of all the extraordinary people who make it so special.
school board night and meet us in the present and that's a very big honor and we also have this for you to remember a little backpack this is only for about nine students a year so congratulations on that and then would you take a picture with me by that cave come around
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
3. Recognitions
Next up on our agenda, we would like to recognize and introduce to our Board of Trustees the new principal for Fowden Elementary School, Mrs. Catherine Leeper. Catherine, where are you at out there? There you go. Well, welcome. Catherine, did you bring anyone out with you tonight? night Awesome, well, thank you appreciate it
This evening No, I guess we don't
4. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
At this time, the Board of Trustees will give members of the public an opportunity to speak in accordance with KDIC Board Policy BED Local. As defined by Board Policy, speakers who signed up by 2 p.m. on Monday, October 28, 2024, provided their first and last name and signed in 15 minutes prior to 5 p.m. will be allowed to address the Board. Speakers signed up to speak on posted agenda items will be allowed three minutes to speak. speakers I signed up to speak on non-agenda items also will be allowed to speak a lot three minutes to speak this evening if a speaker is not finished speaking at the end of there a lot of time the audio will turn off if speakers wish to share written material with the board please provide ten copies to the secretary for board services before the meeting begins for board members the superintendent the chief communications officer and permanent record. If a speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through proper channels as stated in board policy, the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to seek resolution through the appropriate policy. Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code sections 551.074 and 551.0821, the board will not permit the presentation of personally identifiable information regarding a student and will not discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee 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 grief local grievance channels policies fng local dgba local cke local or gf local our speakers will be called forward in the order they signed up to speak and first with agenda items and our
first speaker is regina johnson welcome hey good evening president perez board of trustees and dr Marker Gorgorski, grousing about people you hate in this room and online because election season is around the corner and some are desperate for a board officer seat and have been for the past three years. Vilifying parents and taxpayers on your social media account. You know, it's never about education or safety, just promoting inappropriate materials, holding on to the notion of control and being manipulated by a few because it's time to pay back their votes. Meanwhile, I sit frustrated because nobody's going to talk about Chromebooks until tonight, so thank you, finally. As we near the end of our second six-week grading period on Thursday, you had about 30 to 40 attendees at each legislative session, which equates to about over 200 of our Katy community resoundingly say they don't like the Chromebooks for one reason or another. Grades three through 12 were represented, so I'm asking you, where's the urgency? You had a room full of students, some from Jordan, tell you the same. You had some teachers that were brave that spoke up. Yet we ignore and focus on sending folks from the district on our dime to Austin to champion a lost cause. You know, been there, done that. And I'm with you on the STAR test, yet STAR does highlight some of the flaws within the entire system. So I'm asking going forward. Chromebooks aren't working. Okay? Okay, connectivity fails our kids every week. We've got quizzes and tests that are compromised. Geometry cannot be done on a computer, and it's not just at Jordan. It's district-wide. I've talked to parents all over the district. You cannot protract, and you cannot compass an angle on a Chromebook. I folded into my own personal budget my trips to OfficeMax to pay for ink and paper that's needed by my students to print their daily work. And the list goes on and on. I mean I've talked to folks getting there like on the third or fourth Chromebook at this point So now at my campus We're asking kids to join an IT club so they can do the district's job with password resets and scrubbing devices before the PSAT and SAT We're giving parents an app to monitor their students browsing of potential porn When you sold this bond initiative to us taxpayers as the best and safest option to block out all of the bad things While we deliver curriculum to our kids I'm calling on you this evening to partner with the whole crew y'all talked to and you've heard from and let's do something Okay, you have an opportunity to learn from best practices. We have amazing staff. They'll tell you what's going on I have a teacher who told me they waste so much time policing browsing That's what a waste. Let's let them get back to teaching. We are seven weeks from semester Okay, we're going to compromise these kids their PSAT and SAT performance We got to do something or y'all can continue to ignore us and finally I don't appreciate y'all's divisive Antics, it's it's time-consuming
Thank you Our next speaker is Tana Weiss And after that we have men park Welcome.
Thank you. Good evening, Dr. Gagorski and board. My name is Tana Weiss, and my letter tonight is brought to you by overworked educators who are probably grading papers at home or still at school, while I stand here sharing their words. This year is hard. We're experiencing changes that are sucking the joy out of teaching. Katie is losing the focus of reaching every student in every desk across the district. I've never been more tired, overwhelmed, and unappreciated as a professional educator. I'm degreed. However, everything I do is questioned and doubted. I have to prove it with data. Some things can't be proven with data. My time, care, and love of the kids cannot be measured on a test or a report. Yes, I'm judged by my results on a screen but a parent email I received is how I would rather be judged appreciated and seen it hurts me deeply that the board and those in leadership will never see what I really do how my time matters to my kids here's an excerpt my son is currently studying in your class every day I ask him how school is and he always says he likes your class so much and especially you being his teacher he always says he appreciates you a lot because you take take good care of him and allow him to progress with the class. You made him love your subject and he completes his homework on time because he really cares about you and the subject. His report had good scores and his sister and I really want to thank you for helping him. I can't do it all in my official hours. That's why we come to work early, work through our 30-minute lunch, stay late, and work on weekends. We just want to teach. That's my job. Teaching isn't first anymore. People in the ESC and board need to spend a real day in our shoes, not just an hour photo op. No judgment, just shadow an elementary, junior high, or high school teacher the whole day across the district. And this is my addition. I think it should be required for every member on this board to spend an entire day shadowing a teacher, a librarian, and an administrator. Education has taken a back seat, and it's time the board sees this firsthand. This was made abundantly clear last week as the Quad tried to micromanage training. You are not educators. You do not know best. Let our teachers teach. Leave your politics at home where they belong.
thank you thank you min park followed by Emmett Dunbar welcome so on October 5th
Saturday afternoon there was an incident at Seven Lakes High School that I think will forever change the lives of the 54 students two staff members and even possibly the two courageous officers that stormed into the school. If you don't know what I'm talking about honestly I wouldn't be surprised. I heard the word hasn't gotten to every one of you. We were thankfully allowed to voice our opinions to Chief Gaw here and he let us speak with him and you guys You guys don't know the effect that this incident had on not just the students and the teachers, but the families involved. If you don't know, there was apparently an, and I won't say active shooter, it was an active threat called into Katy Police, went over to Katy ISD. two officers stormed into Seven Lakes Junior High during a theater practice as if it was an active shooter incident. We have kids today that are still feeling the effects of this, and I don't feel like they're getting the support from the district that they really deserve can you imagine being in a restroom changing all of a sudden you hear there's people with guns coming down the hall next thing you know you're being told to put your hands up in the middle of changing you have another other student who's about to faint those people are really considered their lives to be in danger and we just want to as parents we want to know that the actions were appropriate we've been told that they were we've been told that not not notifying the administration was the appropriate move, that pointing guns and rifles within four feet of students was the appropriate action. If this wasn't an active threat, it sure felt like it. 54 students, two teachers, and two officers sure felt like it. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Emmett Dunbar. Is Emmett Dunbar here? Followed by Andre Walter. Welcome.
Good afternoon. During my last speech at this board, I noticed the American flag and Texas flag right there, surrounded by gold behind you, those two flags. This explains to me why it is impossible for parents to have their issues resolved by this board as that is a foreign flag, those two flags. This practice started during the days of pirates as a way of letting others know they had taken control of our ship. This is why every lawyer must be approved by the BAR, which stands for the British Accredited Registry. That's another story, a longer story. This flag, through its agents, is the reason they took prayers out of schools. This flag is the reason you teach the proven lie of evolution from monkeys that were debunked scientifically a long time ago. You teach this nonsense, and then you wonder why our kids act like animals. The scripture calls the devil the great deceiver because he is very good at deception. The new Babylon is a system, not a specific nation, and this flag is one of the flags of the new Babylon. If you Google, you will find you will notice these gold-draped flags in almost all courts of many nations. Wake up. Do you think it's a coincidence that almost every nation, including the so-called third world nations, use the same Dominion voting system? The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States is part of the central banking system that controls many nations' finances. This bank is also part of the Babylonian system. It is a foreign illegal entity in the United States. When the central bank came into existence, it took control over the creation of money that was supposed to be done for free by the individual states. Once this was done, they had to implement the IRS to pay themselves the interest owed on the money they lent to the United States. As the economy got worse due to the takeover, they removed the dollar from being backed by gold in the 1930s, which would eventually lead to it being worthless. In 1933, 33rd degree Freemason Franklin Roosevelt added the all-seeing eye to the U.S. dollar, transforming it into an occult charm. He also issued Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933, forbidding the holding of gold within the United States. Remove the central bank and you will see a prosperous nation. They make sure every leader of these countries are puppets and switch leaders from Democrats to Republicans to keep the public believing they are selecting their leaders. They use fear of threats overseas and terrorist threats at home to keep us in line. But God is so good and faithful. He is bringing an end to this system.
world thank you thank you Andre Walter followed by Marla Chavez
thank you for your time my name is Andre Walter and I'm a father of a 16 year old student and theater kid at Seven Lakes High School I want to address the event on Saturday October 5th when Katie ISD police officers responded to what they thought was an active threat at Seven Lakes High School I want to address this this event not from a procedural perspective, but the effect on my daughter. From my daughter's perspective, what she recalls is that she was in a room off stage when two unidentified men charged into the Performing Arts Center and shouted, put your hands up. From the audio piped into the dressing rooms, all while not knowing if these words were coming from police or criminals. Her first reaction was to be stunned. And then she considered whether she should come out and follow the direction of these unidentified men or to do what her training taught her and to run hide and fight she ended up not using her training and took the risk to go out with the officers she exited the dressing rooms she and her friends were escorted by an officer with an assault rifle or a weapon at least to the stage where other students were with their hands up and she was terrified now I don't know whether my daughter what my daughter tells me is true or not I don't or her experience in it but it is what she's dealing with now with very little other information provided us her parents about the incident you better believe that this image of events is what we see too and how we imagine the event and it's terrifying upsetting and it just makes you want to cry and then cry again for my daughter she won the empathy award in eighth grade so she She always puts other students first. But what she's going through in the meantime is she currently struggles with feeling lonely. Other kids who weren't there at the school tease them about the event. She feels humiliated that someone thought that she was an active threat. She feels scared, especially when one of those officers return the following week and do security for the school. She's wondering why is he here again? in? Is the threat actually real? And more than anything, why the heck did they put us through that? She's worried and anxious. A teacher put her on edge recently when she asked a fellow student to take out your gum. What she heard was, take out your gun. So she got razzled. And it took a minute to resettle. And she's grasping for companionship and feeling more easily rejected and irritable with her tight-knit theater community. I mean that that community is tight and now everything irritates I Want to summarize and saying I'm happy with that. We have a system that knows how to respond to active threats. I am But our officers will do what the officers and you've all they did not do I'm happy that our principal continues to let us know that if we reach out to her she'll do everything she can to help our kids But what really hurts is the lack of a plan to get us back on track a lack of communicate
cake thank you thank you very much thank you thank you Maria Chavez followed by
Rod Lima good evening dr. Gorski and ladies and gentlemen of the board and good evening everyone outstanding human being that is here tonight my name is marla chavez in 2023 i retired from kd isd after 22 years of giving you service and i loved it and i was not even retired a month and i got rehired as a substitute teacher so i came back to katie the last month of the last school year that i have worked as a substitute teacher every single day since the first day of school. I'm strictly staying with elementary because I'm a past kindergarten and pre-k teacher and that is my where my heart is but I've been at Youngblood, Felden, West Memorial, Memorial Parkway, Cimarron, Bryant. I'm trying to get out to as many schools as I can so I'm here to share with you and if I get emotional it's just because I'm happy and how how I am so thankful to God that he had given me this opportunity to enter the classroom again and to see the phenomenal teachers and staff and aides from the office to the custodial staff, cafeteria, to everyone that I have encountered at all these campuses, their kindness and love that I feel for their position and their students and their schools is outstanding. And that's why when the teacher said that you should come and spend a day with a teacher's class to see what it's like, that's what I'm seeing as a substitute teacher. I walk into a classroom, teachers have their lesson plans laid out. They have their, even their advice. on how to be with their students. Then I have teachers that have invited me to come a day ahead so I could see and meet their students before I go into the classroom and that's what at Youngblood Elementary I was a kindergarten kindergarten teacher for a few days and the kindergarten teacher invited me to come to her class before I started so I could see it. So I got there early in the morning and they were all sitting in their circle listening to announcements after the pledge and then she said boys and girls let's show mrs. Chavez what we do now and they put up on the board a list of seven affirmations that say they say every single day and she looked at me she said mrs. Chavez the boys and girls wrote this and the very first word was use kind words to one another the The next one was, oh, this word I've been hearing a lot, bored.
It gives respect.
Thank you. To my fellow students. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks.
Oh, I'm sorry. But I want you to tell me.
Thank you. Thank you.
First, substitute.
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You too. Rod Lima. Welcome.
Looking at those flags over here, come and take it, independence, liberty or death, I find it quite interesting that our zero tolerance policy is not a reflection of our beliefs or our belief in Texas. Several incidents, INCIDENTS, I'M SO SORRY, I'M HERE TO VOICE MY CONCERN ABOUT THE SCHOOL SAFETY, ESPECIALLY SCHOOL BATHROOMS, AND THE ZERO DEATH TOLERANCE POLICY THAT CONTRADICTS THE EXCESS PANEL CODE SECTION 931 ON SELF-DEFENSE. SEVERAL INCIDENTS OF VIOLENCE INCLUDE ONE ON BACK JUNIOR HIGH IN 2023 AND PEDAL HIGH IN 2020 SHOWED THAT K-10 IS FAILING TO PROTECT STUDENTS FROM BULLYING. My son was a victim of what I believe to be a premeditated attack in a school bathroom October 15, where he was falsely accused of stealing a vape cartridge and was physically assaulted. On October 15, the incident was recorded by the aggressor's friend, who watched the aggression and spread the video online immediately, clearly showing my son was cornered and forced to defend himself. Yet the school treated this as a fight and punished both students equally, disregarding my son's right to self-defense. What message does this send to students and parents? The bullies are protected while victims are punished for defending themselves? My son was struck over ten times in the head, complaint of blurry vision which is a possible sign of concussion and yet the school did not provide appropriate medical care or differentiate between the victim and the attack of the attacker I had to take my son to an emergency center and what cats can was performed due to the doctors concerning regular eye movement this quick specter my son to turn his back to the aggressor and run while the aggressor was punching him in the head and spine. My son retrieved three times during the video, but the aggressor continued to punch him with the aggressor's friends instigating the background. I have some critical questions for KDISD. What if my son suffers more severe injuries or worse? He'll die that moment. How many hits to the head must a student endure before they're allowed to defend themselves. The school's zero tolerance policies contradicts Texas law, which allows self-defense in the face of an attack. Penalize my son equally with aggressor, disregard the intent behind each action. The incident was not a mutual fight. It was an assault, battery harassment, and cyber-bullying, which is considered a serious behavior according to the study code of conduct. Here's what I asked the board today. Review and amend the zero tolerance policy.
Thank you. Thank you very much. This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting.
5. Closed Meeting
Board will now convene and close the meeting as authorized under section 551.001, the Texas Government Code for the following purposes. Texas government code five five one point zero seven one five five one point zero seven four and five five one point one two nine the board will now reconvene an open meeting today is Monday October 28 2024
6. Reconvene from Closed Meeting – The Board will reconvene from Closed Meeting
and the time is 719 p.m. On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to today's regular board meeting. Each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Friday, October 25, 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 this reconvened from closed meeting in accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code. Any action arising from discussions in the closed meeting must be taken in an open meeting.
7.1 ESL/Bilingual – A Journey to Graduation for Emergent Bilingual Students
Our first item is a Report 7.1, ESL Bilingual, a Journey to Graduation for Emerging Bilingual Students. Our presenter is Rosella Pratt, Director for ESL and Bilingual Programs. Carmen Nguyen, Instructional Officer of Professional Development for Multilingual Learners. Welcome.
Good evening, Board President, Board Members, and Superintendent Grigorski. Tonight, the Office of Other Languages will take you on an emergent bilingual student's journey to graduation. We're excited to share the programs that support 23% of our student population in KDISD, representing over 150 countries and 99 or more different languages. This slide here shows you the district enrollment by ethnicity for this school year. Our largest ethnicity group is Hispanic Latino, comprising 36% of the total student population. Growth of the bilingual and ESL population has increased over the last 10 years. Currently, we're seeing that we will continue to grow for the 2024-2025 school year. The numbers in the chart represent end-of-year numbers. The distribution of emergent bilingual students across KDISD is shown on this map sorted by high school zone. All campuses have emergent bilingual students who are in the process of acquiring English. In KDISD, 62% are Spanish speakers, 5% are Mandarin Chinese speakers, 4% are Arabic speakers, and 3% are Vietnamese speakers. The umbrella slide represents the programs for emergent bilingual students in KDISD. An emergent bilingual student is a student who is in the process of acquiring English and has another language as the primary language. At the federal level, the term English learner is also used to describe an emergent bilingual student. The terms are used interchangeably. In Katy ISD, on the left-hand side, you'll see the bilingual program. IT IS OFFERED IN GRADES PRE-K THROUGH FIVE. AND HERE IN KD, WE IDENTIFY OUR PROGRAM AS THE ONE-WAY DUAL LANGUAGE PROGRAM. THE BILINGUAL ONE-WAY DUAL LANGUAGE PROGRAM IS FOR STUDENTS WHOSE PRIMARY LANGUAGE IS SPANISH WHO MEET QUALIFICATION CRITERIA FOR PROGRAM SERVICES. THESE STUDENTS RECEIVE LITERACY AND ACADEMIC CONTENT INSTRUCTION IN BOTH ENGLISH AND SPANISH TO PROMOTE BY LITERACY. We also offer the ESL programs in grades pre-K to 12, which you'll see on the right side, for students whose primary language is other than English. The ESL program is designed to help students learn English language skills and grade-level content. The ESL content-based model provides instruction for EB students by ESL-certified teachers in all content areas, while the pullout model provides English language arts and reading instruction by ESL certified teacher. The goal of both programs, of course, is to become English proficient and academically successful on grade level content. Carmen will continue on and delve a little deeper into the program models on the following slides.
The bilingual program we offer in KDISD is the one-way dual language model. The chart outlines the language allocation plan for each level and content area. Students are taught in Spanish and English and are offered opportunities to make connections cross-linguages and through the cross-linguistic lessons and bridging opportunities. The cross-linguistic connection lessons focus on identifying the similarities and differences between English and Spanish while the bridging time focuses on transferring content area vocabulary from one language to the other. The KDISD Elementary ESL Content-Based Program is a model that is a language acquisition program that serves emergent bilingual students through English instruction by a teacher appropriately appropriately certified in ESL. The goal of the program is for emergent bilingual students to attain full proficiency in English in order to participate equitably in school. This model targets English language development through academic content instruction for all content areas. In kindergarten, the program is delivered through content-based ESL, which provides daily first-teach instruction by an ESL-certified teacher. In first through fifth grade, we provide different supports for students based on their proficiency levels. On this slide, you will find different supports we offer our students in the ESL program and dual language programs. On the left-hand side, you see that our elementary ESL students receive instruction with the newly adopted HMH materials. The articulation videos in the resource teach students how to form their mouth to create the sounds that may not be present in their primary languages. You will additionally see a teacher-made anchor chart that includes sentence stems and visual supports to enhance understanding and the development of the English language. On the right-hand side, you see that in the dual language classrooms, we also support the foundational knowledge of the English language through the use of sound walls. The resource supports students with the development of both English and Spanish. While both programs have the goal of developing and becoming English proficient, the dual language program also focuses on building Spanish literacy. In the dual language classrooms, our students are guided through cross-linguistic connections that bridge English and Spanish to continue that trajectory of bilingualism. At the secondary level, our newly arrived immigrant students who test as non-English English speakers are placed in the newcomer program for one year. The newcomer program consists of specialized English courses, language development courses, and sheltered content courses that are designed to accelerate their English proficiency while mastering that grade level content. Students who are at their first three years of attending U.S. schools and are at the intermediate proficiency of English are placed in the sheltered program. The Sheltered Program provides specialized English courses and sheltered content courses commensurate to the general education curriculum. Students at the advanced and advanced high level of proficiency are placed in general education courses with an ESL certified English teacher. Students are eligible to receive linguistic accommodations in all the courses as needed. Some of the resources that we offer at our secondary level are also supplemental resources provided to our students throughout all content areas. For beginning emergent bilingual students, we offer Off to Class, Ellie, and MyOnReader, which all provide fundamental English, literacy, and academic English lessons. For intermediate emergent bilingual students, we offer Achieve 3000, which provides lessons and articles recommended and accommodated for emergent bilingual students. For all emergent bilingual students, we offer the visual non-glossary, which provides visual connections to academic vocabulary associated with math, science, and social studies. Every year, our students have the opportunity to exit the bilingual or ESL program, program based on the criteria provided by the state. The criteria to exit students includes meeting that criteria on TELPAS, the state standardized reading assessments, and teacher rubrics as indicated on the chart. At the end of the 23-24 school year, KDISD successfully exited over 4,000 students. Exited students are then monitored for two years to ensure academic success. We also offer supplemental programs that are offered to extend student learning beyond that school instructional hour. Programs included are Extended Day, Katie Summer Academic Term, and Saturday Science for Students. In addition to KSAT, we provide work opportunities to high school students through our paired learning systems, our PALS program. In fact, some of the PALS that we have previously had have been emergent bilingual students themselves. Emergent bilingual students are general education students. Just like all students, emergent bilingual students participate in programs such as special education, education, GT, dual credit, and CTE. Both programs are supported by content-based language instruction. We offer professional development to support educators with implementing research-based instructional practices and strategies to support the attainment of instruction that's commensurate to our students. We also offer a support in the attainment of ESL certification for teachers who are not yet ESL certified.
Another big part of what the Office of Other Languages offers is a focus on parent, family, and community engagement. We know the success of our students is directly related to connecting with our parents, our families, and our community. In Katy ISD, we have parent centers where parents of emergent bilingual students are able to enroll in adult ESL classes where they're able to learn English. We know that students' English proficiency is better supported when parents become involved in the learning process. Our parent center classes also allow parents from various countries to be a part of the Katy community and learn about the educational system in Texas. In addition to the parent centers, the Office of Other Languages hosts other parent, family, and community events throughout the school year. For example, in September we had our, or we hosted an EB Family STEAM Night that focused on science and technology activities where over 500 participants were present. And most recently, our office also hosted a K-Team Fall Conference where parents learned of the many amazing programs that are available in KDISD. And we had over 200 attend that conference. Our parent centers is something that we're very proud of. we have five parent centers locations that are varied in the district with an average daily attendance of 350 parents for day and evening classes the goal of the parent centers is to help all families establish home environments that support learning and positive parenting and our locations are over at Hayes Elementary Hutzel May Creek sundown and Morton Ranch High School where we have our evening program. We have seen the many positive effects of our bilingual and ESL programs through the eyes of our successful students. An interesting fact about valedictorians and salutatorians over the past three years in KDISD is that an average of 40% of our KDISD valedictorians and salutatorians students are or were previously emergent bilingual students. And an average of 25% of our KDISD valedictorians and salutatorians are or were previously immigrant students. We are very proud of our ESL and bilingual programs in KDISD. Our mission to prepare and inspire each student is achieved by providing ESL and bilingual bilingual programs that result in English proficiency, academic success, and readiness for the future. We hope you have enjoyed learning about how we support the diversity in our community, and we thank you, Board President, Board members, and Superintendent Grigorski for being supportive of our bilingual emergent populations. And if there's any questions or comments, we welcome them at this time.
Thank you very much for your presentation. Any questions or comments? Trustees?
Mr. President, I have a question.
Ms. Calhoun?
So I understand the benefits of bilingualism, and when you look at the graphic that you showed about the amount of valedictorians and salutatorians who are emergent bilingual or who were emergent bilingual, I think that speaks for itself. But what I look at is when we have our English speakers, our native English speakers, and maybe this is a question for this board and you can chime in when we know the benefits to mental capacity as it pertains because the children know two languages. There's a distinct advantage to how they process information, how they problem solve, how they they work with other people because you speak more than one language. So how do we bridge that gap for our native English speakers before they get to high school? Because there is a language model that's open in our brain for a certain amount of time to learn a new language. So how are we offering that same stepping-off point and advantage to our native English speakers so that they still have the ability to compete in an ever-evolving world that is almost demanding that you know more than just English. I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate what you've presented here. But I'm thinking of it, how are we flipping that script and making that just as accessible for our English, for our American students who speak English as their first language? Does anybody have any answers or thoughts or can you speak to that?
Well, I know some students do participate in like advanced placement programs. They do have the same opportunities that our students have in the EB world. But again, that is something that is available to all students.
So our students have the ability to take classes in Spanish with a dedicated Spanish teacher who's teaching them as a native English speaker in Spanish as a native English, they have that opportunity as well, our native English speakers?
They can take foreign language courses, but not at the same rate as our students. And remember, our students are given the English supports to learn English. They come with the native language, that second language. So they are just learning academically, they're learning the English language because that's what's expected here in the US.
Right, and I appreciate that and I understand what you're saying, but my question is more pertaining to, again, how are we supporting our native English speakers here to give them those same accessibility? Again, I'm repeating it again because I feel like maybe it's getting lost in communication. how are we giving our students all that opportunity? Because while I understand that a student coming here doesn't speak the native language, and so they're at an automatic disadvantage because they don't speak English, I recognize that. But when I look at these totals of what we're seeing in an emergent bilingual or an immigrant population and where they're scoring on valedictorian and salutatorian, And I think it would be difficult to make the argument that that doesn't give you a distinct advantage. So how are we applying that advantage equitably to our native English speakers?
Mr. President. Ms. Fox. When we moved here to Katy, we came from Venezuela with my husband's job. and my children were very very deep into the Spanish language so they were very close to being bilingual and we came to Katie this is a story that's directly related to miss Collins question we came here and there was nothing offered to elementary children or junior high children until seventh or eighth grade in Spanish and in that length of time we had a first grader in the fourth grade In that length of time, they lost kind of a lot of what they had. And I, too, was very disappointed that there wasn't an opportunity to have Spanish at least a part of every day. Maybe a pullout, maybe an extra special like music and art and all those things. So I was a big proponent of that and was asking our superintendent, Dr. Merrill, at that time, how can that work? And here's the answer. that I was given. Based on the rigor of the curriculum that we deliver on a daily basis, there was not time to add one more thing to a day to add a foreign language in elementary school. So it's just there's so much packed into every day in order to reach the incredible success that KDICD has and so children who come not knowing English have to have English to succeed in in our school system. Children who speak English get to take a second language starting seventh grade eighth grade and going and so my children waited and they took it then and they had a foundation that they were able to build on but I too was like that we had a dual language program for a while it was quite expensive and to continue that became financially a hardship for the district so we phased it out so that's I don't know if that
answers your question so we did offer a dual language program for how long did
we offer that Rosie do you remember how long we offered it it was I would say we started it in kinder first went all the way through I would say seven maybe maybe seven years.
And then it was phased out? And then what year was that phased out? 2000, we started phasing it out, I believe, in 2016.
2016. 2018, I'm not sure.
Okay. Do we know roughly what the cost of that was, what the cost savings was by cutting that program? I mean, I know we're going back almost 10 years, so I'm not expecting you to know off the top of your head. I could go back
into the files. I could go back into the files, but I mean, that's what it was, exactly what Ms. Fox had said.
I understand the expense of it could be somewhat prohibitive or burdensome, but when you look at the data, I think you have to look at a cost-benefit analysis on that. And again, if we're doing this in the name of equity, then how are we doing that? Because there's an obvious distinct advantage after a certain point. I understand the barrier to entry might be a little high if you're not a native English speaker, but after you clear that hurdle the advantages far outweigh the rest of the disadvantages so I just want to kind of have a cost-benefit analysis of what that looks like to provide that to all of our students whose families would really want to take advantage of that because we've noticed that the emergent bilingual students are actually in general education so these aren't AP AP students, these are, they're just learning at the same, you can be an AP student, but they're learning at the same rate in general ACA classes that our English students are.
Mrs. Calhoun, I might also add the dual language was very exclusive. There was only, we didn't have, we had it at two schools, and you must enter as a kindergartner. You must enter as a kindergartner. then you can go all the way through fifth grade. And the children stayed in two or three years, and then they all dropped off. But we had to keep, for the ones who were still there, we had to keep bilingual teachers available to teach every subject all the way through fifth grade. That's how it became so expensive, because once children could speak both languages, that's all the parents wanted, and they pulled their children out. And so we didn't know how many were going to be there. It was just very expensive and very exclusive. people who wanted in the program it was a lottery and they didn't get in and it caused so much rift in our community that it became unsustainable I
understand that and I can appreciate that but I would still like to see a cost-benefit of what that looks like for return for every child entering just I want to go backwards and just see what it was and have a review of that to look at that i think that that should be something that we should consider when we're looking at what we're offering as a district of innovation as a district of unparalleled learning as a district who's trying to move forward i mean i don't know the numbers off the top of my head but i would say that the demographics of texas are heavily hispanic overwhelmingly hispanic so for our non-spanish Spanish-speaking students who are native to Texas and native to the United States to not be able to speak Spanish, me being one of them, is a major disadvantage. So I think that when we're looking at preparing our students to go into their community, that being Texas and the United States, which has an ever-increasing Hispanic population, I think to overlook the necessity for dual language would be a Serious misstep in trying to prepare our students for what they've got coming next And so to look at the cost and weigh that and see what that looks like and revisit that I think is worth it
Mr.. President make champagne. I think that she brings up a really good point and actually I was campaigning during that time when that was gone away so I know that was in 2018 so what it was explained to me was it was we had it on it was a grant and so we had some kind of grant and when the money of the grant ran out we couldn't afford it anymore also the legacies were automatically let in like if you were a younger sibling you were automatic so it became like almost only you know 20 families or something we're in it and plus some so anyway it would be interesting to see the cost of it because I know it was really expensive and I think it was offered at two schools and then you had to kind of bust them over there or something like that so anyway but I appreciate that because that would be kind of good because I mean I know a lot of people are really interested in that so it would be good to find that out but I just wanted to say also I just wanted to ask something are the are the kids required to pass the Iowa test the reading and language in 12th grade to be able to graduate 11th and 12th to exit to exit right exit out of the program so but is that also a requirement for graduation no no okay so also I want to ask something about the parent centers I didn't know that we had that and I'm so happy that we have that and how often
are those classes offered for the parents daily monday through thursday for the day classes for the evening tuesdays and thursdays all year long uh we start them in september and then the evening classes we start them a little later because those are like the best attended ones you know we have a lot of families that work parents at work so they'll come to the evening classes but we have We have a lot of success, and we've got a lot of our own teachers that teach during those classes.
Is that a thing that they can just jump into? If they come in February, they can just go to one, or do they need to start at the beginning?
They have to register, they have to sign up, and then we assess them like we do the kids to place them to see their level, proficiency level in English, and then they start off as either beginners, because some are very beginner English speakers, and so on and so forth. but we've had a lot of success with our parents and again the benefit in the end is to the children who then get the benefit of the parents learning English
and supporting them how long have we been doing that oh it's been many years
I thank you so much here we started but it's okay many years I didn't know about it so I appreciate you and then one other thing I was going to say about this information I I can research and find out how many of these students were were actual students that we grew from elementary all the way up or if these were students who came in in junior high and high school who wouldn't have gotten the benefit of a bilingual education for example so if we had any of these students who were spanish speakers if they had started in elementary with our bilingual program i can see the benefit that miss calhoun was mentioning but if they came in any time after that like in junior high and high school then those kids wouldn't have had the benefit of learning in a bilingual program, two languages. They just came with a foreign language.
Go ahead, Ms. Crispella.
I also had questions about the parent centers. I had no idea that that was done. I love the idea, but I wanted what this is done during the week and at night, depending on the campus. Let me go back to this slide.
Okay, the four campuses, Hayes, Hutzel, May Creek, and Sundown, we have classrooms at those campuses where we hold the parent center classes during the day. And we even offer babysitting services so that the parents who have children, they can have their kids watched and they can learn English. Okay.
I was just, I guess some of those schools aren't to capacity and we're able to do that? They have the room that they can allocate for that. And how is that staffed?
Struggling we use our title three funds. Okay, our federal funds to pay for these programs And so we staff them with that we have facilitators that run them and then we also have hired nursery workers
Okay, so these are not certified teachers. These are someone we're hiring outside of a
a teacher position? What position is this? Some could be, I think some of them could be retired or teachers that just didn't want to work the full year calendar. We've had some of those in the past, but we staff them at, it depends on the campus and depends on the number of students that they have. They usually have one facilitator and then maybe a couple of nursery workers that work with the
I'm asking just obviously we all know there's a shortage of teachers. So I'm trying to understand. How do we do this? Oh, yeah in our in our schools with and then we have a curriculum that they follow
So that they're able to learn English at a good rate depending on the parents English proficiency level, okay? Really great you mentioned that
For for exiting the criteria is the Iowa test reading in language. Yes, so do do ESL students, bilingual students, still take the STAR as well, correct?
Yes, they do. Let me get back to that slide.
In the 11th and 12th grade.
Yes, and it's only 11th and 12th grade because by the time they get to 11th and 12th grade, they're no longer taking STAR. That's not part of the criteria. We only exit STAR English RLA for 9th grade. We use English 1, and then for 10th grade, English 2. and then after that if the students are tested in 11th and 12th grade the exiting exam would be the Iowa and we just look at the reading of the language
but do they still take the star unit to have an exited they would have already taken it because of the OC okay let me ask you this the sheltered content what What does that encompass? What does that look like?
Okay.
You can say sheltered courses.
Yes, so with the sheltered English courses, the students are still receiving the general education curriculum. So it's just the strategies that are utilized to support the actual instruction. So the teacher that provides that instruction is also ESL certified. So she's also a little bit more equipped to say, say, okay, these students' proficiency levels are at this rate, and this is what they need to help them kind of move to the next proficiency level. So a lot of the instruction that students are receiving, still same general ed curriculum, is just that we have students who are acquiring language and the teacher has that certification that has additional strategies and supports.
Okay. And the Title III Extended Day, is that at, where is that? Where are we doing that?
So we allocate Title III extended aid funds so that the campuses can use them as needed, and it's based on the number of students that each campus has. So if you've got 100 students, you get X amount. If you've got 200, you get double the X amount. And then they choose to teach what they need to teach after school. Usually it's after school for their after school programs.
So it's very tailored to the needs?
Yes. Yes, they're supposed to align to their TEKS and provide instructional supports needed for those students that need the support, the additional support.
And how long does that go during the day?
We started it just recently, again, in October, and then it'll go all the way to whenever they expend their funds.
Is it a couple hours after school?
It depends on the campus. The campus can choose to do two days a week, depending on the number of teachers they're able to get to work after school to work with the students but again it all depends on the number of students they have and then the number of allocated funds with title iii okay thank you are there other
questions mr president miss fox would you go to slide four please the map has the map on it I think it's just important for all of us to just look at that and see that we have emergent bilingual students in these are high school zones as they're drawn out with the colors is just that they're spread every which direction around our campus, I mean around our district. And slide two, please. these. And when we look at this, to see how diverse KDISD is and how successful we continue to be is an anomaly in Texas, right? The more that changes, the majority changes, the more difficult it is to achieve at the level where KDISD is achieving. And throughout the state, will hear how are y'all doing that and Katie tell me what you're doing about this how are you accomplishing and and being incredibly successful edge to edge and as a district to still be so revered and respected for academic success and all of our fine arts success and mr. Redmond didn't you say something about niche report recently right we're number one in the niche reports consistently and yet our demographics are changing we are no longer a vast majority of any one thing we're just a big blend of a lot of wonderful people a lot of wonderful children and families coming here because of the incredible education that's delivered in our classrooms and supported by our staff every day And I just wanted to not pass an opportunity to recognize the great people we have doing great things for kids.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Ms. Teamee.
I just wanted to say thank you because when my dad came to the United States, he did not have anyone helping him speak English. I mean, he came in college, but he did it all on his own. So I could only imagine what it's like to have this kind of support. I'm just curious, are the Title III funds that we get from the state, from the federal government, do those cover most of your expenses and what you guys want to do?
Yes, they cover most of it because our general operating fund got, well, it shrunk significantly this year, of course, as did many other departments' funds. So yes, we do operate with mostly Title III funds for our extra programs that we provide.
Thank you. Anyone else? Thank you very much. Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
7.2 Class 1:1 Initiative Update
Our next item is item 7.2, and that's about the class one-to-one initiative update. And our presenter is John Alanae, Chief Information Officer, and also Dr. Christine Caskey, Chief Academic Officer.
Good evening, President Perez, trustees, and Dr. Grugorski. This presentation will give an overview on the one-to-one initiative. It will focus on the technology side of the one-to-one initiative. My colleague, Dr. Caskey, will cover the instructional and learning side of that initiative. So the class one-to-one initiative, which is also known as the one-to-one Chromebook initiative, is a large and complex strategic project for the district. Early on, the district realized that this is not a one-time device rollout project, rather a long-term phased-in initiative with each phase building on the previous one. So with the first year focused on the rollout process, efficient device management, student access, and feedback for future adjustment. This involved basically collecting thousands of devices from the district, over 70,000 devices that were existing in the district that were collected. and then basically sorting through those devices, screening them, and then distributing or redistributing 74 over 74 devices to students that were three years old or younger devices. devices. Now the remaining devices that were four to five years old, these were also kept, retained as loaners for those students who forgot to bring a device or their charge went out during the class. And anything that basically older than five years was repurposed for parts. So the focus was really on efficient use of resources and making sure that students had a good device that's three years or younger. So why one-to-one? A little history of how we got here. As you can see, one-to-one was neither our first choice nor it was our second choice. In 2017, we maintained a 30% device-to-student ratio as a minimum standard in the classrooms. We supplemented that with bring your own device, which we later learned introduced new challenges. By 21, and a growing demand for more technology integration in the classroom, we increased that ratio to 50%. However, soon after House Bill 3261 was passed by legislation and mandated that all state assessments be fully done online by school year 22-23. That was a tipping point for considering one-to-one. So basically, if a student is going to take all these assessments online, you've got to make sure that the student is very comfortable with using a device for the online assessment. And we couldn't rely on bringing your own device. Why? Because the online testing requires a lot of configuration, a lot of strict specifications. applications. Otherwise, the device will not work. So, why Chromebooks? In 2010, KDISD applications, hundreds of them, were installed on desktops and laptops. We had them all over the place. and basically the device at the time was the processing unit so you needed the horsepower on the device you need the storage on the device and anytime an application changed we had to go and touch thousands of machines to make sure they work properly on the device since then applications were moving to the the cloud. So basically the vendors moved their stuff from this desktop centered to a cloud application running remotely rather than running locally on the device. This shift in applications made the device act as a simple gateway, a a conduit to the cloud rather than the processing unit. Now Chromebooks were excellent conduits. They were good gateways. And they were the right choice by the industry. They connected neatly to the cloud and served a good conduit to it. By 2015, KDISD adapted Chromebooks as the standard student device of choice. And most of all, online testing was a cloud application. And actually, TAA recommended Chromebooks for this online cloud application. Chromebooks were not just an excellent match for the cloud or these applications, but they were less costly, they were lighter weight, and had extended battery life than laptops. There were also very flexible devices because they only needed a browser to work. No configuration is needed, no upgrades, no installations of applications is needed. You simply make sure the browser works and they can connect to the cloud, to these applications. So the one-to-one initiative goes beyond simply a device. It's not just giving student devices and you have one-to-one initiative. That device is just a tool. It does nothing on its own. It needs an effective ecosystem and a strong foundation, foundation, technology foundation to function. Unfortunately for us, we had and will establish foundation in technology. That was tested during COVID. During COVID, in a matter of one week, we actually connected our students and teachers to online learning, while other school districts were just wondering what what to do about this. So, the one-to-one initiative leveraged that foundation. We had to tweak some things. We had to do some improvements on this foundation. We upgraded critical network hardware or speed. We added systems redundancy or resiliency. And we expanded, we doubled our internet bandwidth and also optimize our Wi-Fi access to provide consistent and reliable connectivity. And also one-to-one took advantage of the MyKD cloud which then was well established in our environment with all the instructional and learning resources were available online from anywhere wear any time. We had our own robust cloud environment and also we had a well-established learning management system which our teachers use, Canvas, to deliver instruction and interact with the students. In addition to a robust training environment and support environment that basically provided our our teachers, students, and parents with what they needed in order to utilize the one-to-one resources. So this project is a long-term initiative for KDISD. And to that effect, we did a thorough preparation process to ensure its success. We collaborated with other school districts who've done this. By the way, many school districts did one to one before us, way before us. So we talked to them and we adapted a lot of their best practices with some tweaks to fit our environment. And we had also a team that, that a district-wide team that met weekly, for now it's over a year, we continue to meet every week. So we knew the initiative emphasized from the very beginning continuous improvement as a key factor for success. This is not a one-time shot to implement one-to-one. Year one was dedicated to a successful rollout, get the device, the good device, in the hands of the students, then collect feedback from everybody, all the stakeholders, parents, students, teachers, everybody, and that should serve as a guide for major adjustments for year two. Now, one-to-one requires a lot of support. The device goes home, you gotta support that device at home, on the weekends as well. So we established a live parent help desk with extended hours and a 24-7 help desk ticketing system dedicated for parents and students. We also established a loaner program for students who forget their device at home or encounter issues in the classroom. We also put together an annual retrofit cycle. Our retrofit cycle is a five-year cycle but for one-to-one we adjusted it for the device only for or the Chromebooks to be an annual. We review all these Chromebooks, and any device that's older than five years gets replaced with a new device. And we also provided a camper-proof web filtering from home with a parent app that we just launched for monitoring and controlling internet access outside the school hours. KDISD is committed to maintaining Chromebooks as an effective learning tool. The rollout was was successful, with most students, teachers adapting quickly. However, as with any large-scale project like this one, some adjustments and future considerations are necessary once it went live. Fine-tuning our Wi-Fi was needed at some campuses due to concentrated device device usage in some areas and device density shifts on some campuses. Also, more focus was put on educating students on charging habits. And more focus was also put on monitoring of internet bandwidth during peak class periods. Future considerations to our standards to basically emphasize weight, not just performance performance of the device. So the class one-to-one initiative is a key part of KDISD's long-term strategy to enhance learning and support online testing. It extends beyond a one-time device rollout. The district is committed to gathering feedback from students, teachers, and parents. each school year, ensuring the program evolves year after year. However, with over 96,000 students, 150,000 parents, and 15,000 staff, change must be carefully planned and executed to ensure a smooth transition and prevent any disruptive impact across the district. And with that, I'll be happy to take any questions you may have.
Thank you so much for those comments. I really appreciate that. I know it's been, we're just early in this process, if you will. Is there anything, any takeaways so far that you care to share based on the early feedback, I guess, over the last two or three months?
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean some of the things that were shared with us by parents and students were the weight of the device. That was mentioned by students often. So our standard in the past, we focused on performance of the device. Now Chromebooks, as I mentioned, they weigh about half as much as a laptop. But yet, I think we are going to invest more to make sure we buy those ultra-thin Chromebooks that still weigh even less than the average Chromebook. We are going to put more emphasis on that. And also, you know, making sure that we watch closely you know when we introduced this massive influx of devices into the classrooms and keep in mind we had a lot of devices in the district before these devices were not equally distributed if you will a lot of them were in libraries and closets and they would use them and get them out into the classroom when the teacher needed it but with this one-to-one these devices now are deployed into classrooms so there were some balancing that we had to do with our Wi-Fi and internet access to make sure that it covers that new density of devices that are distributed among these classrooms. Have you
gotten any feedback as far as like when you have intensive use in one one campus about the slowness, if you will, because of bandwidth limitations perhaps, or just everybody on at the same time, so to speak, during assessments. And then also something that we have heard a lot is, of course, parents in elementary school complaining that with the weight of the device, they're bringing the device every night to charge it, but they don't have any homework, right? They're just bringing it home to charge it. So that's kind of, I guess, something that we've been hearing a lot about. Yeah.
So yes, early on we had, again, because of the shift in device concentrations, so the Wi-Fi had to be rebalanced to make sure it has strong coverage all throughout these classrooms. So we did have initially some campuses, we did have that. that balancing going on with Wi-Fi. And as far as charging, obviously just like your, you know, cell phone, we want our kids to really have the habit of making sure you charge that device. It can last, it lasts longer than a laptop, maybe less than your phone, but it can go up to 12-13 hours of charge which is enough enough for classroom use, but it's a habit of making sure that you charge that device. Now, we have chargers in the classrooms. Also, we have these loaners. So if a kid, we know it's going to happen, you know, come to school and the device is not charged, the teacher is able, we have a reserve of loaners that the teacher can provide to the student to get them going while they're charging their device.
Ms. Kosella. Ms. Thank you, John. So you said you've had some challenges with balancing the bandwidth and the peak times different at different locations in the district is what you said, correct? So once you balance that, are you re-looking at it? Because I'm sure it changes. This is not static. So because there's still our frustrations I'm hearing from parents we heard tonight and about that So how are you addressing that or can we do that more quickly or yeah, how is that part of your process?
Yes, so monitoring our bandwidth and access points is Extremely important for us We have the ability to monitor these access points and see how many people are are connecting to these points? Is there a temporary shift or a long-term shift? Usually the shifts are happening long-term because the students are in the classrooms and we can see, okay, this device, this access point is getting hit constantly with this density of devices. So we end up adjusting that area and adding more access points to split the load and all of that. And that's the stuff we're seeing the first, we're two months into it. And we knew this is going to happen because you have to balance these things based on utilization and usage.
Okay. Do you think we're at a good spot or are we still trying to react and adjust?
I think we're at a very good spot at this point. But we need to constantly monitor this. in case there are but I think the more time we're into it the more steady it's gonna be because we'll see how the behavior of the students is moving and then we will adjust accordingly okay and I have another question perhaps it's for
dr. Caskey about the the how we're evaluating the learning and the usage without paper is that probably her question yes it's her turn
happy do that yes questions mr. Perez champagne yes dr. Alana thank you for
your presentation and I'm glad that you explained why because one of the questions that we get is why especially the younger children have to take it home and they don't have homework is because they have to charge overnight night and it's good to establish a habit and something else that two other things that I hear about is you know the weight of it which I you know so my kids are old enough that they used to have to bring a bunch of textbooks home and we walked you know my kids were walkers so I guess kids have kind of gotten out of the habit of having to take books home for a long time. So I just want to say it's just another stage that we're going through now where they're going to have to carry something. But, you know, the weight of that is not near as heavy as the five textbooks that my son had to bring home when he was 11 years old from junior high in his backpack. And also, I've also heard that some of the parents don't want the extra technology brought home. but I also think that's just especially if they're not doing homework that's just another parenting issue you know just take the phone book charge it in your bedroom or whatever but I think that hope hopefully you know things will be ironed out and eventually this will be a very positive thing I think already you know when I go into schools I ask the principals there from their standpoint and from the teachers standpoint I think most of them really really like it because it's just taken away from all the distractions of the phone and as a parent of kids that were not that long ago in high school and me battling them all the time with their phones but hearing from the teachers that they were required to have their phone to have the canvas and all that this is such a positive change and I really appreciate the effort thank you
Thank you. If I could ask you, and I know this can be a real detailed sort of answer, but maybe like an overview, because you mentioned the safety about the mobile to enhance safety on the Chromebooks so that parents are comfortable. Can you kind of give us like just an overview of that, of what the district does in terms of both the Chromebook and also like the Wi-Fi at the campus as well?
Right. So our devices on our campuses, they go through our filtering system. And if you take that device home, it still has to go through our filtering system. You cannot even tamper with that. You cannot change it. It's integrated into the device. Now we added also this app for parents to have a monitoring ability. They can see actually what their kids are browsing at school and at home. They can also control access outside the school hours which is after four o'clock. They can even disconnect the device from the internet. They can sit hours for internet access. So we use the same filtering technology which is a robust technology. It's just not perfect technology but you know we use every two or three years we actually replace our filtering system because we're constantly looking for the best technology technology around. And it does a great job with filtering content that's not appropriate. But it is a partnership. It is really a partnership with parents, especially now that we provided them with this app. And we're going to continue to enhance this app. This is a new product, very new. In fact, we're part of that pilot with this vendor. But we are sharing with with them our desires of how we want this app to work. And the goal is really to give parents as much control as possible without disrupting the instructional process and learning process in the classrooms so that they can have these decisions to basically disconnect the internet or even at some point blocking content. content. But we are working on that with this vendor.
So just to follow up on that, at home, the parent at home can see the history of the internet, both what the child was accessing both at school as well as at home? Yes, sir. And then they can always disconnect from the internet at home? Yes, sir. Okay. Now, in the school, the filtering, is it Is it blocking certain sites and then also certain sites that aren't appropriate? And then also maybe looking for certain keywords? Is that how it works?
So our filtering system, basically, sort of like the movies, websites have ratings, and it blocks. We tell it which rating to allow. Educational resources is allowed. allowed. Also, they have categories for these ratings or labels. And then we also tell them block this category, allow this category. And it allows us to block keywords. And we have, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of keywords that we block. So it does that on basically any content. Now it is a challenging process because as you know there's constantly new websites, some vendors they don't label, they don't really categorize their websites. So the system has to make best effort. It actually checks the reputation of that website. If it's not categorized or labeled the system has the intelligence to go out and look ask around what are people saying about this website and if it finds out that most of the chatter is about inappropriate stuff it will block it so you know these vendors are constantly looking for new ways especially with social media sites where the content is changing so today you can go on Facebook which we block but you know you have some content is okay but somebody may add inappropriate content tomorrow so they also are dealing with that kind of stuff as well as encrypted content so you know some websites they encrypt the content so they don't want you to see what's in it now these these web filters they they They use other technologies in order to break the encryption or again look for the reputation. What are people talking about related to this site?
That new app that you're talking about, parents had to sign up for that, correct?
Yes, sir.
Okay. Now what about, sorry, like a cell phone on the campus, is there filtering there because Because of the, through the Wi-Fi, if they're using the campus Wi-Fi?
So if they connect to our Wi-Fi through their personal device, it will be filtered. But if they connect through their cell service, it will not be filtered.
Got it. Okay.
Other questions? Mr. President. Go ahead.
Go ahead, Ms. Teany.
Just thank you for, I just will, first of all, what's the name of that app?
The app is a content keeper. Yeah, that's right. Okay.
okay and then i just wanted to say thank you for um acknowledging that parents are have concerns about especially about the weight and looking for a solution already i wish we could fix it today but i do appreciate you um you know looking for a solution so that we can look you know feel acknowledge that parents have concerns and address them thank you Thank you.
Mr. President. Dr. Fox. Dr. Elauni, thank you. A lot of information. So I have a couple of comments and a question. As I've been going on my campus visits, teachers and principals say that the transition is going well on the campuses, and I see them all the time. those so have you considered having charging stations at school in elementary where they don't take it home for for any sort of homework could we leave them there identified with those charging stations like we used to do
those laptops yes ma'am in fact we do have them in the classrooms so where we We have Chromebooks or one-to-one. We have charging devices in the classrooms. We have, I think, about five of those in each classroom, which should be enough for the way they're using it.
Okay. So if keeping it charged is the reason they take it home, if we could do that at school and then it would always be charged, maybe that would help with those itty-bitties trying to carry a two and a half pound.
Absolutely. And we're watching all of this again. This first year is about lessons learned.
And responding to parents' concerns and things.
Yes, because really no matter how much you plan, until it hits the real-life situation, you're not going to know.
Right.
You have to make adjustments.
So I don't know how that happens or if it will happen.
I know you probably have some additional things, but I just ask on that. so where would they store the devices though if they don't take it's a little it's a little docking station yeah what happens to the Chromebook the charging
device is a small device right it's like almost the size of your phone charger a little bigger maybe and you plug in the device to it but you're saying leave
them leave the Chromebook there overnight and leave it charged in the
classroom yeah right and there's like a little docking station that used to be little slots like that i don't know what it looks like for a chromebook but laptops they used to
just stand them up like that and leave them and they're fast chargers usually it doesn't take long to charge the device now they don't leave the device at school now you know one-to-one is basically assigning the device to the student and it goes with the student home this way they're able to do their assignments and do their work and again remember we really want these kids to be comfortable with the device. We want them to be comfortable so that when the online test happens they're not scrambling trying to figure out how to
use the device. Mr. President, on this topic, could I ask? I thought, you know, I agree these little tiny ones taking these laptops back and forth seems not the smartest to be honest and and and before we had the one-to-one we did leave you know they were at the school and the charging stations are there but isn't it now parent liability is that the issue here because the parent is assuming all liability for that Chromebook whether it's a third grader or not so if isn't that is that the why the policy is now that they cannot leave them at school
That's part of it, basically, is to be fully responsible for the device. Now, let me also say that, again, this year is about lesson learned. Next year, that may be a consideration. If we hear enough from our parents saying, hey, don't let the device stay with the student, Or maybe they can, I mean that's subject to further discussions and examination. But part of the reason why we want the device to go with the student is first the student can do assignments, do their work on it. And if the device stays with that student, they're getting more comfortable with that device.
These are students with no homework, is it right? Right, and they're taking it back and forth, back and forth, because that's the rule. And that's what parents signed. I get that, but it seems we could be smarter with that.
And Dr. Alani, I would like to question or ask, like, do we really need to wait until next year to make a change? If this is the feedback we're getting and it's not my decision, I'm just asking maybe for a discussion with whomever the people who make those decisions would be. could there be an allowance for maybe the littlest littles that are, you know, and maybe the parents, I don't know, that's not for me to decide how it's done, but could it be a consideration to leave them there to charge if that's the purpose? And then if I could move on, I want to say the parent portal, it's not a portal, the parent app to monitor, brilliant. I know that was extensive work on your department. and what it's connect it's what content keeper is the app that parents can do they have to ask for it can they just download it they have to write they have
to apply request it and then it's through they can do it through email the help desk yes the help desk and then we have to send their information to the the vendor to basically send them a code to download and use it. Because we need to make sure they're monitoring their own kids, not someone else's kid.
Oh, yes. Good idea. Okay, this is a question that I think is probably also going to go to Dr. Kasky. Is there a time limit on how much time students spend on a device during the day? Is that more a Dr. Kasky question?
Maybe we should just bring her on to continue the discussion.
Okay, I know that I know when I'm there Principals are like they're here for a little while then they go on to something else like they are not constantly at a device all Day long. I just wondered if there was is that kind of up to the campus probably okay? I'll ask that from
About the devices maybe we should bring dr. Caskey okay. I have another question about the device now, okay, and it was brought about
first of all I I do think y'all are very smart, so I know that we have to, you know, learn from what we're doing and all that. But I just want to make the comment that I do have a few third graders on my street where I live, and I babysit them sometimes. And they bring their devices over, and they are using their devices at night. So I can't speak of all of the third graders, but I just know the few that are on my street are using it. They're doing like little games, like educational type games and things like that. And the third graders I talk to are very proud of the fact that they have a device that they get to, you know, use it at night and learn more things. So, you know, that's probably like a mixed feeling about that. So, yeah, I think we have to kind of listen to everybody and get feedback. I don't know if we're doing a survey or what, but I think that would be good information to collect.
We are officially doing surveys and we have several programs that we're launching to get feedback. Feedback is a critical piece of this whole process for us. And also the other important piece is we don't want to really be doing sudden major changes. You're talking about a lot of students, a lot of parents, a lot of teachers. These sudden movements may cause major disruptions, but we do want to methodically, thoughtfully, carefully plan for these changes and launch them as the start of a new school year so everybody is on the same page and they're not confused about which way to go. We got a lot of teachers, a lot of students, and parents relying on this.
I really appreciate the presentation and I think we should go ahead and turn it over to Dr. Christine Caskey, she's the Chief Academic Officer for the academic side of it, if you will, the learning side of it. Thank you, welcome. Okay.
Good evening, President Perez, board members, and Dr. Gorski. As you're aware, this initiative has been a huge endeavor for our district on many fronts, and I want to reiterate that this has truly been a joint effort by all departments within our district. You just heard that from Dr. Alaune from the technology side of it, as he shared with you, but when we talk about the budgetary impacts, the budget issues, when we talk about the insurance that's available for the parents, finances, communication, and I'll talk a little bit more about that survey and working with Dr. Grooms and her team. School leadership is here. They may have a lot of the answers to the questions that you may have for me as well, but I drew the short straw. I get this one, so it's all good. It's all good. But teaching and learning definitely has a huge role in this. So at this time I'm going to give you an update from that instructional lens and what this initiative looks like as we bring it alive in the classroom. So the class one-to-one initiative, it's more than just a technological upgrade right it's a reimagining of how we teach and how our students learn it's about creating that dynamic personalized learning environment to ensure that our students are prepared for when they cross that stage at graduation whether they're going to the military whether they're going to college whether they're entering into the workforce we know that it's constantly changing and we need to keep up with that so that our students are prepared when they leave kdisd the class one-to-one initiative levels the playing field and it ensures that students in grades 3 through 12 have a device at school and at home to access their assignments and their instructional materials it also provides that uniform device and platform for students to access content and district software that's one of the things that we heard as we embarked on this right that students were coming and bringing their own devices they had different ones the teachers were having to juggle it so now the teachers can plan for having that consistent device to deploying their instructional resources to students in a consistent manner allows teachers to leverage technology that enhances learning while students maintain those critical skills developed through both paper pencil and digital assignments and you're going to hear me poppy probably say that on every slide students as ms fox said they're not sitting in front of a computer all day long for eight hours it's definitely a blend in the classroom and you're going to hear me talk about this term blended learning lastly this initiative ensures as dr aloudnay said aloudnay said that our students are prepared to take that cea mandated online star test so district guidance has focused on the blended learning environment so really what we're talking about here is an environment that elevates learning experiences by integrating those traditional teaching methods and the digital digital tools with content-specific pedagogy and instructional best practices from our teachers. It focuses on the mastery of our district-wide curriculum while leveraging these many, many, many digital resources that are available to our students that are vetted through our content experts to make sure that they are appropriate for our students. Instructionally, teachers and students are going to be using a variety of learning tools within the classroom, and they're going to be using multiple formats. For example, in a math classroom, you may see students utilizing online graphing paper. They could have traditional graphing paper. They could have online calculators. They could have traditional calculators, interactive problem solving, mathematical applications that we put into our curriculum, building their concepts and understandings. But paper is still an option for showing their work, for taking their assessments, and for solving their problems. So now we're going to take a peek into one of our third grade classrooms.
Okay, get ready on the next available page. Now look at this multiplication problem. If I put 8 times 2, in this case because it's multiplication, you have to give me, oh I see somebody using the number line over here. I like that. All right guys, you ready? Let's make that connection. Open up your Chromebooks now, go to DreamBox, and I want you to compare what you did, your notebook.
Okay, so there you got a glimpse into one of our very own third grade classrooms. Oops, I'm gonna play it for you again. They're cute. Okay, so now as we move into the instructional delivery, again that blended model. So in that video you saw he said, great you're using a number line. Let's take out your devices. We're gonna get on DreamBox. You've probably heard me or Natalie talk about DreamBox. That's one of the mathematics programs that we use at the elementary level. You saw students taking notes in their notebooks. So it's a a combination of all of these tools. But when we talk about instructional delivery, teachers are required to teach the same TEKS. So the curriculum has not changed, and they have to follow our district plans. All right? So that's the non-negotiable there. But teachers do have flexibility when it comes to determining how they're going to deliver that instruction in the classroom to meet the specific needs of the boys and girls in their classrooms. That is going going to be different from class to class on the how. So the what doesn't change, but the how can change. And you're going to see different levels of this blended learning environment. So Ms. Fox, I can't say that in third grade math, you're going to be on the device for two hours a day or 30 minutes a day. It's dependent upon many, many different factors. So it's just going to look different, just like when you go in any classroom. The content's the same, but the way that teachers go about that delivery is a little different. It is the expectation that teachers who teach the the same grade level and the same content area are still planning together, they're collaborating together, but teachers are making those professional judgments based on the unique needs of the learners in their classroom and their desired outcomes of the different lessons using the blended learning environment. So in the blended learning environment, students have access to both paper and pencil work as well as the digital content. District guidance has supported students engaging with technology as a learning tool that supplements traditional instructional methodologies. Teachers also house their teaching lessons and their resources in Canvas opposed to printing them out. So this should not prohibit a student, however, from utilizing paper when necessary. Students should be able to ask their teachers if they need paper, or if we have students with special needs accommodations, then they should be able to get those paper accommodations from their teachers, or any student should be able to ask their teacher for paper. So we've not asked anybody district-wide to go home and print packets and packets. So, online assessments have been a current reality for a number of years as a direct result of the state making the transition to the STAR testing into the online environment. So, the Class 1-1 initiative supplements and supports our online testing environment. In fact, it has helped to alleviate the shortage of devices and the transport and the sharing sharing of devices between classrooms and campuses for students to complete these assessments. So in the past, it was a huge organizational task, if you will, to make sure that our students had the devices to take the assessments. So often we had to shuffle them among classrooms. I can remember back in the day where we even had to shuffle calculators from one campus to another campus to make sure that the students had the tools that they needed to take their online assessments. Is it on the right one? Okay. Oh, so professional support, how we've supported our teachers. So over the summer, teachers were engaged in multiple professional development sessions to ensure the success of the launch of the class one-to-one initiative. The instructional technology team developed and trained not only on the basics of Chromebooks, but also how to plan for and deliver instruction in a blended model. The curriculum and instruction staff also embedded those best practices for utilizing utilizing those Chromebooks and for teaching the content with the use of the Chromebooks into their training sessions over the past summer. So teacher teams in collaboration with our campus administrators will continue to plan and monitor that utilization of the Chromebooks as Dr. Lalne said. We're into, I think, week 11, going into week 12 of school, so we're still pretty early into this initiative. And I'll talk a little bit more about getting that feedback as well. So additionally, we partnered with Eric Schoeninger, who is an expert in educational leadership, innovation, and the use of technology to transform classrooms. He actually lives in Sy Fair, so he's not too far away. So he's definitely partnered with us and really as a thought partner and working with our principals and how they go about leading this type of blended learning on their campuses. This is a snapshot of our district plan to support the campus instructional leadership with the class one-to-one initiative. This plan kicked off in August with a keynote. We had actually a virtual keynote by Eric Schoeninger that all the district staff watched right after Dr. G gave his welcome back message back in August. And as you can see here on this slide, there are . Thank you. four phases which has been developed to provide that systematic training and that support. We've also identified several lab site campuses where Eric visits regularly to watch our teachers and our students in action and then provides feedback. So those sites will then become sites where other teachers and other principals can go and they can observe that instruction in the classroom to really learn what those best practices are and see what that looks like in the implementation phase. In fact, he was here last week, I believe he was also here today, and this is a post that he posted last week that he shared on his social media about the great work that's going on at McIlwain Elementary School. I also wanted to touch on keyboarding supports, because sometimes we hear that come up, especially with the learning circles that we recently had when we meet with our parents. So as we continue implementation, ensuring that students are adept with their technology technology skills is also of critical importance. So TEA recently revised the technology application TEKS, which are being implemented this school year in grades K through 8. So these technology standards have been embedded into our district curriculum, and we've also purchased a resource with our IMA funds called Learning.com, which is an instructional resource to support students with all of the technology app skills, but keyboarding is a section within this program as well. So again, as you can see, this is a huge undertaking. It's a transformational shift in our learning environments for our students and our teachers and our principals. And as a district, we're committed to that success of our students and we're gonna continue to monitor that. So we've been working with Dr. Grooms and her team and what we've landed on is a survey for our parents, our students and our teachers that will be launched at the end of the fall semester. and then again at the end of the spring semester. So that information will help to guide kind of our next steps and our decisions and where we need to really focus our summer professional learning. That's our large time for planning teachers and our supports for our campuses. I'm also here to respond to any questions. Sure.
Thank you very much. Questions?
Sure.
Mr. President, questions? I just wanted to relay this. And then I have a question about the paper and blended learning. I understood from a special needs parent of a child, an elementary child who is severely autistic, a lot of medical problems, had no interest in having a Chromebook assigned to her child. It just will never be used. He'll never log in. But that it was mandated that he had to have one. So she wasn't too happy about being liable for something that her students, doesn't even apply to him. Can we be smarter about that? And all these students who are never going to log into a Chromebook?
I mean, Dr. Coffey's out sick this evening, but she would probably tell you that that's an ARD committee decision. And so those decisions remained at the campus level based on student needs.
Okay. It just seems like we could have been smarter ahead of time with that. But, okay. The paper and the blended learning. I realize what you said is that there was no requirement that Everything had to be exclusively online, but that's not what I'm hearing in practicality from parents across different schools and campuses That that there is a lot of exclusive online math delivery So Relaying that and hope that comes through in the feedback that they give you to to back this up because that's not what I hear that there's particularly with high level math geometry pure pre-calculus stats etc it's exclusively online which doesn't make sense to me i was curious the gentleman who came i forgot his name you said uh kenny scheninger excuse me eric scheninger yes did he relay the fact that that math online high level math secondary math is a best practice to have online exclusively No. Okay, so I just am trying to figure out where this is coming from. On campus visits, different high schools, principals were unaware that there are math classes that are exclusively online. They had no idea that that was happening in September. So I just hope that we can – there are students who are very frustrated and parents who are very frustrated. And I'm hoping we can react more quickly to this. And maybe it's a communication problem. I don't know what it is. I'm trying to figure that out Dr. Cass our
President I just have a request for mrs. Kuzela I Appreciate very much your questions But I wonder if you could choose words that don't say be smarter because it implies not being smart Maybe could we make a different evaluation or something, but you you've done that a few times So could we be smarter in place that these incredible? professionals aren't
So sorry, I apologize if that was offensive to anyone in here Working more efficiently with feedback more quickly is what I'm saying
We champagne did you have something?
Yes, I'm looking forward to the you getting the survey results and I appreciate how much work this has had to be. But I am curious about a couple of things. Are headphones at all required or needed for any of these lessons? Because let me just back up with why I'm saying this. Because I know just how, when I used to volunteer in the library and I would see kids come in and they would use the computers that were in the library. Sometimes they would have headphones. So I didn't know if.
I think it depends on the program. So we do hear with the mirror that the students are using their earbuds.
buds they had to provide them with their selves I think so there are some some
campuses provided them they're relatively you know that are in the
library so I don't know okay that's one thing and then the other thing is for the special education children I understand what Miss Cosella was saying and sometimes that's hard but is there anything with the Chromebooks that is is is good for children who may have vision impaired. There's deaf children. And I guess that one and a half.
There's adaptability with the machines. Right, that's what I was trying to say. So sometimes there's like text to speech where the Chromebook can actually read back. We can make the font larger for some of our students who may have visual impairments as well. So there are also different programs that we use with our special needs populations.
That's what I wanted to say. Yeah. Mr. President.
Ms. Cheney.
Okay, so I have a question for you. So I'm hearing from parents, first of all, that they understand that technology is the way we're going, and they get that. But they just want there to be some sort of consistency. So, like, you're having high schoolers and junior highers that some teachers do all online math and some teachers don't. and so they feel like they don't they want it you know especially when you get into like ap courses they feel like that's not consistent um because you know some i mean if it were me i probably would do better in one that wasn't solely online so i i guess i'm just i want it to be fair and i think that i think y'all would want that too is there any idea on how to fix that or address that or has that come to your attention?
So I think the fair part is, like I said, the constant is the curriculum and not the TEKS, right? So every student has to have access and they have to have instruction in the TEKS. That's what the policy says. There's flexibility when we look at the blended classroom. And just like now, I mean, you could go into multiple different classrooms, and teachers are going to use different resources. That's why we want them to plan together, right, to plan those lessons together as much as possible. But your delivery is going to be different. It depends upon the expertise. It's the art of teaching, to be honest. And you were a teacher. When you have teachers that were, that we've had some of our own internal conversations, and on our team, we have a staff member on our team whose son is relatively new to teaching, maybe second or third year. And he was explaining that it just comes natural to him to put his lessons online and to have the students online. But he works next to a veteran teacher who doesn't have a lot of experience in the technology. And so they work together to kind of bridge those gaps. And those things are gonna, they should be conversations during that collaborative planning time. But I don't know that you're ever gonna have it where every single classroom is the same. Because teachers are coming with different experience levels.
Right, and I see it from a teacher's perspective too. However, what I do, and what you're saying is a blended classroom, But what these parents are saying is it's not blended. It's
100% on a laptop if I could go ahead and jump in there and offer a little bit just so you can hear directly from Superintendent on this I can assure the board this that nobody at the district on this rollout when we did Chromebooks one-to-one Nobody is communicating down to principals or teachers in the training to go with math 100% Chromebook. You've heard Dr. Caskey's presentation talk about the blended. If the board is aware of places this is happening, the board is aware of classroom specific or a campus, if you would share those things with me and tell me where it's happening, I can address it. Not saying it's not happening, I'm just not aware of that happening anywhere where we have implemented a program that is 100% math on the Chromebook. But with that, I will go ahead and talk to Mrs. Hack, who's over there somewhere, and our assistant superintendents directly. Tomorrow they have a meeting with principals that was on the schedule. I am going to ask them to once again reiterate what the board is communicating tonight Directly with our principals and I'm going to ask those principals to go back directly in a staff meeting and communicate Exactly what we are communicating here to the board that there is No expectation nor should teachers be doing math 100% on a Chromebook But with that, what Dr. Caskey is explaining is teachers are the instructional experts in the classroom, and we do expect them to design lessons that meet the TEKS and make sure all students are getting what they need. And if people are not getting that, if the board could please bring that to my attention, where it's happening and what campus, what teachers, where it is, I will make sure it gets addressed with the assistant supes down to the principals.
Thank you. Absolutely. In fact, Dr. Caskey's presentation tonight, along with Dr. Lonne, and then the one we're fixing to do will be shared with principals tomorrow. We have our leadership meeting followed by our principal breakout to make sure that they have all this information that we discussed tonight so that they can, in turn, take it back to their campuses, use that for talking points with their staff and their faculty so we can continue as we do this year one implementation calibrate align as much as possible as well as get the feedback to start planning for a year or two and we know that there's going to be slight bumps here and there we've got to go back and take a look at it and calibrate and the principals are right on board working with us on it this has been a huge initiative it's been a little over a year since we started meeting every Monday morning a year ago September and And I will say there's a lot of people in this room that have been a part of those Monday morning meetings. I appreciate all of you. I will tell you this. Since the implementation in August and September, what we do on the Monday mornings on the agenda is any type of feedback that's come up from anywhere. Even from social media, it may come through our library coordinators because the librarians who are big ones checking these out, we get their feedback. We get the feedback from the principals, from their teachers, and every week we talk about it where we can make slight adjustments here and there as we continue this implementation. So the feedback is very critical. We do take it seriously. We do try to turn around and work with the campuses so that we can continue to align and calibrate.
We appreciate that very much, and I think we're getting like two, like there's two ranges of feedback. One is the secondary, more like some of the things that you're talking about, or secondary feedback. And then it's also in the elementary level, where a lot of parents just feel like there needs to be more of a moderation. You know, moderation is the key. In other words, if some of these kids are just really young, like in third grade, they'll really be thrown into the, so it needs to be more of a, they'd like to see more of a gradual and moderate approach, if you will. And one of the things that we came up with in our advocacy legislative committee was like to push for start testing to start later online, like say at least fifth grade as opposed to on third grade. That would be very helpful in terms of I think having a more gradual approach to getting the kids kind of used to the technology and working with the computer and all that as opposed to, in other words, moderation and as opposed to jumping right into it. Okay.
I think a lot of what you just discussed will kind of lead into where are we headed next with all the things that we have and then the topic on strategic design 2.3, the personalized learning experiences where we can really get into those types of things.
I think Ms. Thieme wanted to say something before we move on.
Can I just ask a couple more questions? So on tests, so I have heard from like some students that maybe the connectability isn't there during a test. So are there are teachers supposed to always have paper tests available in case there's a connective villain of the Connectability of the internet isn't there or what's that? What's that look like? You know what?
I would have to research that for you what that really looks like I I sit here and I think just recently we just did the PSAT test at all the high school Campuses and the campuses had a window to select so I wouldn't say that every single campus was all online at the same time. But however, I do know some campuses, they elected to do both grade levels at the same time. Some elected to do it a different day, and we were able to support that completely. Had the PSAT, had we had Wi-Fi issues, and we did one day with two different campuses, and then we had to reschedule. There wouldn't have been a paper test, but for a campus assessment, if it was scheduled to be online and there were Wi-Fi issues, I would like to think that there was a backup plan. We can certainly make a note of that and we'll follow up on that tomorrow.
Can I ask a question?
Ms. Covley?
I had a couple of them. You covered one on kind of like what the response is going to be now that we see these issues, but Dr. Grogorski, we're communicating that to our superintendents or to our assistant superintendents. They're going to take that to the principals. That's what I heard, correct? We are taking this feedback directly to them tomorrow, having them implement that. The next question I have is on the IT utilizing students to help handle help desk demands. Do we know how many students have volunteered, because this is a voluntary program, is my understanding, how many students have said, yes, I want to participate in this, and what's the benefit there? Like are they, what are we doing with that? Is this just, we have so many help desk tickets coming in that we are arming our, I don't know, our students to come in and help field that?
Yeah. So we monitor our tickets on daily basis. I actually get a report every day and I report it to cabinet on a weekly basis. and right now the percentage of issues related to Chromebooks is in fact I just shared it today this morning with cabinet point four percent of the total tickets are Chromebooks related we started the school year with point seven percent and two weeks ago was point five percent and this Monday was point four I think we're getting to a steady state situation there with, and we know we break it down by issues, what type of issues. So the short answer is we're not really having issues supporting the parents or the students with the Chromebooks. But are you using students to do that? No, we're not using students at this point. we thought maybe at some point we could consider that but since really the number of issues the tickets we're getting are showing a drop in the issues we do hire students for other purposes but unless we see a need for that okay
and then back to I just wanted to reiterate kind of my thought towards the the charging stations in the classroom. I completely agree with what's been said here. I don't really understand why our youngest learners would be saddled with that Chromebook when they're not doing homework, necessary homework on their laptops, when they're going back and forth to home. I understand the need to have them be aware of how to use the laptop, but I don't see for a third grader how that's necessary. Again, I get it. You're trying to implement practices and you want them to understand to do that, but just alleviating that concern for our families and for our students, both financially for the financial liability that we're putting them under for a device when it's just kept at school should help to alleviate some of that as well as just a health concern or our little kids. I get that books may weigh more, but since we're not utilizing books in the physical really anymore anyway, just helping to alleviate that burden, literal burden on the back of the kids, I would really like to see that. And I'm hoping that this response to all of this, as we see these concerns crop up, I know what you've said about we don't want to move too quickly because it's kind of like moving the Titanic, and I can appreciate that, but being able to have a quick kind of response to where we see these problems cropping up as we're coming into the end of the semester, I would hope that we would be able to at least problem solve some of these in a quicker sense rather than waiting towards the end of the year. I don't know what the feasibility of that is, but I have faith in you.
It's feedback that's important to us. And it's definitely, we're gonna seriously look into it.
Mr. President, one more question. Sorry, I have another question. Can I just finish real quick? Just one more question. So I understand Dr. Caskey said if a student needed paper, then they can ask for that. And that, thank you for that. However, I did not teach when we had one-to-one, obviously. But when I taught I had a code and when I reached my maximum I had no more Copies that I could make so I'm just saying and I know that was a mile back But I'm just saying how do we y'all I sometimes there's a discrepancy between you know We up here say if you want paper you have paper, but then the campuses say we don't have the money
So let me go ahead and address that as well Well, I've heard that a couple of times about paper and budgets. Well, we made some changes to our print shop and how that operates in a cost-effective manner. The campus principal budgets have not been reduced. And campus principals can have all the paper that their budget wants to purchase. And I'm not aware of an issue of campuses not having a budget or not having paper. I've heard this come up a couple of times from trustees about campuses and paper. But once again, we will address that again tomorrow with principals. But please remember this, our campus principals, all 77 of them, they have the autonomy to run their budget the way they see fit. And if teachers are concerned about paper, I would really appreciate those teachers not coming directly to the board with a complaint about paper, but to go to their campus principal and discuss those issues at the campus well to be fair dr. Ruski I don't have
any specific school that I've heard this from I'm just saying I just from I'm just speaking from my experience that's all so I don't know of any school that this is happening at right now I'm just saying sometimes there's a disconnect from the admin building to the campus what just from my past experience we
Mr. President. And then we should move on to... I wanted to ask another question. Okay.
I still had another question to ask.
Okay, well, I was going to ask one, too, but go ahead. Go ahead, Doug.
Okay. I just wanted to say that I'm not sure what the questions will be on the survey, but I'm hoping that we really do consider the question of, you know, asking the parents of the elementary-age children specifically Specifically how they feel about their child bringing home the Chromebook and getting a fair representation of every you know Everyone and not just the people that we might be hearing from you know from our emails and things like that Because we don't really know what everybody feels like on that so it might be Something different than what what we what we think because maybe those are the only people that are reaching out to us is the ones that Are unhappy there's a whole bunch of other people that love it. You know we just don't know yet and
Dr. Grooms has a plan, and she's in the meetings with us, and each of our departments that participate in these planning meetings, and she's working with us to garner questions, whether it's from the school leadership view, the teaching and learning, technology, even finance, the insurance, the student insurance, to get feedback on that. And then, of course, we're capturing the notes from the feedback tonight and from other additional meetings that we have, and so that's what will lend itself into her and her team building out those survey questions.
I just had one last question, I promise. Have we, Ms. Dr. Kasky, I guess, are there any conclusions from assessments or testing so far in terms of results, test scores?
Right.
Whether it be secondary or elementary in terms of how the kids are doing?
Interesting question. So a couple of weeks ago, we just had our district debrief with our district assessments where we looked at our checkpoints and our modules. We looked at our literacy assessments, our math assessments, and I can't get, some are up and some are down. Like a fourth grade math may be up and a third grade might be down, so I can't find a consistent pattern right now in the data.
Okay. What about in secondary? Anything there?
Across the board. I asked Natalie today.
Okay.
It's up and down.
All right. All right. Thank you. Sure. So why don't we, if it's okay with everybody, we'll go ahead and, Leslie Hack's been waiting there and chomping at the bit so let's move ahead to 7.3 which is KDISD
7.3 Katy ISD Strategic Plan Specific Result 2.3 Update
strategic plan specific result 2.3 update thank you yes yes sir and good
evening yes excited to share this information and it is all still relatively new some of it is in production right now especially when we get to the elementary and what we're calling our academic innovation but also Also this was a big initiative, the one-to-one, and with it the implementation of the blended learning and now that students have their own device and access to the classrooms and the removal of cell phones from the classroom. That's been a positive of this too and I think the administrators and everybody would agree. But with that, in our year two planning for next school year, yes, based on feedback that we're receiving on the one-to-one, Dr. Rogorski charged us to look even bigger. And we circle back to our strategic design 2.3 personalized learning experiences. We have a lot of things in KDISD, a lot of resources, a lot of supports, a lot of software, a lot of different things, but how can we wrap our arms around all of it and build out a strategic design plan to really really build out student personal learning experiences and those unparalleled learning opportunities that we talk so much about. So I think we're on the cusp of moving forward with this and this is going to be great discussion with our principals tomorrow. Strategic plan specific result 2.3, identify and communicate personalized learning pathways for all students, including the unparalleled learning opportunities. And it is supported by the framework of the Texas Higher Education Strategic Plan that's It's been in place since 2015 with a goal of hitting certain milestones by 2030 and that link has been provided for you if you would like to review that information. What does it look like? We started talking today, we have the unparalleled learning opportunities. We are a district of innovation. We are looking at the district of innovation for other ideas and creative ways that we can build out these opportunities and personalized learning experiences. We have an instructional calendar. It's pretty traditional. Is there some other things we can do with the calendar to be creative to help support the initiatives going forward? We have the class one-to-one, Canvas learning management system for elementary and secondary students. We have School Links, which we are getting ready to start building that out in preparation for course selection this spring. We have Miller Career, very innovative campus, and Raines. What is going on at those two campuses that we can in turn leverage and offer out to our comprehensive campuses without having to actually travel to that? So that's been essentially increasing seats to what these two campuses are offering. We offer dual credit. We've probably more than doubled. I don't know where you went there, Dr. Caskey. It seems like we're bringing on more and more dual credit courses every year. We have a robust AP program. And then our KSAT, our summer academic term, just continues to grow elementary and secondary with what we're offering. I'm very proud of our original credit that is offered in the summer. The KVS course is built out through our instructional technology department. department. I believe almost 7,000 original credit courses were completed over the summer. That's amazing and it was all virtual. So that tells you we're doing these things. Now what does it look like moving forward? So secondary innovation planning and again this is just a high level overview with Dr. Graborski as he directs us to do some share outs as we bring things on for the 25-26 school year, 26-27 and thereafter. When to work on what this kind of looks like? This is the innovation planning overview for secondary and the three components we talked about is where can we build in flexibility, learning modes, course offerings and pathways, readiness kind of aligns with that 60 by 30, the marketable skills that our students are receiving the transferable experiences the citizenship involved with that opportunities accelerated graduation parent and student choices so just a couple things under the flexibility umbrella some of the things that we're going to be talking about is the different types of learning modes we're already doing this we're offering courses in person we're offering virtual courses instructional day we're offering virtual courses outside the instructional day generally virtual virtual courses during the instructional day in the fall and spring semester, most of the time it's offered because it's a hard to fill vacancy or perhaps we took a resignation and we have that course available virtually, we're able to stand it up quickly, like within a day and those students don't miss out on instruction. It's not preferable, however, what we're learning is that with the number of students that are availing themselves of virtual courses outside the instructional day, fall and spring, they they can take up to two courses during the fall and spring semester and of course in the summer more and more of our students are experienced with virtual courses in in certain content areas prefer those types of courses so what does that look like moving forward and how we're offering those courses and when we're offering. We're moving towards a comprehensive course selection program. Right now if you were to go into School Links in the spring and so you would select your courses for the following fall and spring semester. We want to be more comprehensive than that. We want to make sure that those summer school opportunities, all those courses are available for course selection when the students are in there this spring selecting their courses. So as they build out their four-year plan via School Links. They're picking their summer semester courses, their fall semester courses, and their spring semester courses. And we're really getting those high school kids even more aligned if they were going to pursue post-high school pursuits in college. I take courses in the summer. I take courses in the fall. I take courses in the spring. And how does that end up achieving my end goal? Readiness. Enhance college career and military readiness. We talk We talk about this all the time, it's very important, however, are we being intentional, which I think we are, in community college, junior college eligible, or the kids upon graduation? Are they eligible to go to community college, junior college? Are they eligible for a four-year college or university? Are they career and technical school eligible? Have they earned a certification or completed a program of study? Are they workforce ready? And it goes back to those earned industry-based certifications. Have they completed a specialized program that we offer at RAINS, which right now we have the CDL program, and then this year we brought on the real estate program. Very excited about both of those. And then student apprenticeship aligned with current pathways. A lot of our students are completing these programs of studies in certain areas, and they're just highly interested in it. Well, we have that opportunity for them, but we're going to build that being more intentional, whether it's via the KDISD student work program, that they are perhaps doing paid apprenticeships with KDISD, or securing outside partners to industry partners in which we can help them secure apprenticeships with those outside partners. So that's one of the lenses that we're looking through and focuses moving forward. Or are they military eligible? Making sure if they do say, I want to go to a military university or I want to go straight into the military, that we are making sure that we're intentionally supporting their efforts there as well. Which I think if you remember graduation last spring, you could tell we had more probably headed in that direction than ever. It seems like it's increasing each year and that's always a very special time to see the kids do that. The third component is opportunity. opportunity, offer course options in different learning modes, virtual, instructional day, non-instructional day, in-person, increased teacher instructional modes of delivery. We have a large number of teachers that are highly qualified to teach not only in-person, but virtual. They're teaching outside the instructional day to our students, they're teaching summer school, but what would it be like for teachers to have those types of flexible schedules during the instructional day. Perhaps a teacher or a high school teacher has three classes that they teach in person and then perhaps two classes that are virtual. And I don't know, I don't even know how many teachers, Darlene isn't here, she has the whole roster of teachers, but it is growing, especially with the numbers from summer school. Increased student personalized course options, let them personalize their instructional day schedule. How How can we bend that traditional seven-period day schedule to really fit their pathways, the experiences they want, and the things they want to pursue? Expand high school credit options in junior high. Broaden summer programming options. Review local graduation requirements. Are we requiring graduation requirements that perhaps are over and above what the state does? us, do we need to continue with that or do we need to look at possibly giving students increased flexibility in their ability to select more courses that are more tailored to what they want to take. So we want to really apply a lens to that. And review the traditional instructional calendar to support these opportunities and this increased flexibility. So switching gears, elementary academic innovation is kind of a little bit different focused. We started, we were actually in year one of the pilot. Before I get to a little bit about the pilot, why academic innovation eligibility? We started really looking at how we support our elementary schools. And the first thing we really looked at is historical information. And prior to COVID, we had four campuses that met what we call CEP criteria. Ed knows what this means. Community eligibility provisions. What that means is prior to COVID, the 2019-2020 school year, the state of Texas will notify school districts how many of your campuses, based on what they've determined, are eligible for free meals per the state, breakfast and lunch. Well, before COVID, we had four campuses that met that criteria, which means a minimum of 40% of the students attending that campus were receiving some sort of state benefit. So Texas is saying, hey, there might be a need here. And so we said, okay, so COVID, then COVID happens. And for two years, all kids ate free because as a result of that COVID year and the year after. When we came out of those two years post-COVID, the 22-23 school year, we jumped from four to 23 campuses that were now CEP eligible. It would have been extremely challenging to take these 23 campuses backwards to the requirement where families had to fill out that free and reduced meal application. So the 23 went CEP. the following year it increased to 28 and then for this year it increased to 33 so that right there kind of tells you we really need to be intentional on historical data with the campuses and then perhaps how the demographics are changing and that we are intentional on how we're supporting those campuses because here at this elementary level that is critical so that when by the time they reach secondary that there any type of gaps academic behavior learning whatever the case may be that those gaps are being closed because we were shining a spotlight on it so what was we kind of then we just started looking at what other academic eligibility should we be evaluating we look at the student academic performance for that particular campus we look at their CEP eligibility we look at their at-risk percentage how many of the students what percentage of the students have at-risk indicators, what's the economically disadvantage? And so we look at that three to five year and if there's a trajectory there that that's increasing. Student mobility. It's just a fact that some of our campuses are based upon one particular campus, there's a number of apartment complexes there, there's three hotels. details, we need to look at that and make sure that that mobility, that in and out, that we're able to meet that need and support the students there. And then of course we look at the special education, because special education does, as we've talked about, require teachers over and above to do some things, ARDS, things like that, so we want to make sure that we're looking at that load as well. Then we have, we are in year one of the implementation of what we call our academic innovative model. Dr. Gagorski had charged us with looking at what we could do as a team, school leadership and teaching and learning. And so over the summer, together we sat down with him and we said this is what we are proposing and it's a pilot. pilot and as we go through the semester and through the school year we have checkpoints along the way between Dr. Caskey's team, school leadership team, and then in fact just this morning gave an update to cabinet where we are with our mid-semester progress with the cohort one pilot. So we do have a certain number of campuses in the cohort one for this school year, so they're in year one of the academic innovative model. What does that entail? It is, they are in a professional collaborative with targeted support. It's coming from Dr. Martinez and her team. Dr. Coffey is a part of it. Dr. Bell in teaching and learning, together with the assistant superintendents, the elementary, where they're all working, meeting, planning together, and then of course ensuring the expectations are implemented at these campuses and then of course the data is being tracked as well for improvement and then they will provide an executive leadership coach that is working with them with the collaborative we've started to implement a differentiated staffing plan based on the needs that we just identified that perhaps they need some additional positions to support support student behavior, just administrators to support maybe the extra demands with the number of meetings, paperwork, things like that. And then we also are starting to build out year two because it's going to be a proposed three to five year build of the model for innovation and support. And as we go through this, cohort one will move into year two next year. we'll build that year for the model and then we're working on identifying perhaps some other campuses that may be ready to go into academic innovation for year two. And so it's new, it's a process, it's another way, big team and a lot of work. I think y'all are enjoying it and getting out there and I think you get some positive results from your identified campuses.
So, yeah.
Thank you. And happy to answer any questions.
Thank you very much. When you were saying 2024-2025 year one implementation, cohort one professional learning, is that only for elementary?
Yes. The academic innovation model is for elementary. That is where we saw some student performance needs there, specific to a few of our elementary schools. And so we thought, well, you know what, this is where we really need to, like, circle the wagons, take a look at it, and how we can start supporting differentiating somewhat.
I really like the increased teacher instructional modes and what that could do in terms of helping teachers.
I think so too. I think lots of times when we have our discussions, Dr. Rogorski and Dr. Caskey and the team, we just start talking about when you increase the things that students have access to or the program students have access to, whether it's flexibility or innovations, that you can take your teachers right along with you. They can have those experiences too, because they're the ones that are working with the students, whether they're coaches, directors, classroom teachers, whatever it is that we all come together to build, innovate. We look at it at length, but like, how does this benefit teachers? How could it increase their incentive to want to continue to teach because it's changing and it's dynamic?
Mr. President?
Ms. Champagne.
Thank you. So first of all, I have a few questions. I don't know if you want me to go through them or just do it later as we go on. But I want to start out with, first of all, I love your enthusiasm because I have talked to you some about some of your, you know, the trips that kids are going on and all this. And I mean, you're just kind of like the best cheerleader, you know, person to have heading up this. So I really appreciate your.
I was only a cheerleader one year and I wasn't very good.
Well, you're being a great cheerleader right now. I really appreciate that. And it really comes across, you know, your excitement and all that. One question I have is my, I have a daughter that was, when she was in eighth grade is when the endorsements happened. happened and we saw it back then as a very negative thing that we were having to get like these little eighth graders because like my daughter would say I have to choose what I want to do when I grow up when I'm only 13 you know and I said I know doesn't that terrible maybe I should be on school board and change things no but I'm just saying I'm just wondering are we still doing endorsements in eighth grade we are I don't seem really strict a program of
so you know the flexibility is there okay I think what we said is when I remember it was 2014 they said okay we're gonna do endorsements but districts and high school campuses didn't have the courses built out or the pathways built built out and so it was kind of like, you know, it was new and like, you got to pick your, I think some were like, you got to pick your major. It's just like in college, how do you pick your major when you really don't have year two, year three, and year four courses built out. Now, it's so robust, the pathways, and I think too, when students are able to take the practical or the year one, year two courses, if they're not interested in that particular path, you you can go a different route. But there's so much more courses to choose from.
OK, so because it used to be really, seemed really strict. And because we even went, and all the counselors were there. And we went to this big parent orientation thing. And they said, you have to pick. And we got, you know, it was kind of intimidating. But so along with that, this is what I wanted to say, is that I know it's cool and everything, that there's all these opportunities for these high school kids to pick their route and where they want to go. but is it is sometimes along with that sometimes there's a lot of pressure that goes to you know maybe a 15 or 16 year old you know you got to pick your thing and all that but I just want to be reassured that these kids do have some leniency to where this year they thought they wanted to be a vet tech but next year they decided they don't want to do that and they can switch and then they're gonna be okay for graduation credit is actually what I'm getting
their personalized learning path.
But they can change their mind and still have the credits.
They can still elect not to do a particular...
Excuse me, Mrs. Hack, I can't hear you.
Oh, I'm sorry. They can still elect not to do a particular pathway. Most of them do because they find their interests and they find the courses, because now there's multiple courses that they can self-select to take to complete that pathway, so they tend to find which strand of that pathway they want. but even if they don't they can still graduate and what we call the four by
four I mean but what I mean is listen and they didn't start out with four by four I mean because even like kids in college will change their major so so even younger kids you know probably even more so than that would want to change their idea of what they want to be but I just want to know they can change okay
so let me jump in on that just for one second all of what you're talking about Ms. Champagne is courtesy of the state of Texas. The endorsements, the pathways, everything, and it does get a little rigid at times. There is some flexibility, but I want to remind the board as part of our discussions that we had and part of our legislative priorities, when you see that one in there that talks about some more flexibility when it comes to CTE, we're going to be advocating to the state to get a little more flexibility with exactly what you're talking about. It would be nice to be able to move a kid a little bit more within that there's some flexibility
But that more would be better. We're doing better on those pathways because there's more Courses available within the pathway and that's come on in the last few years where before it was this is the year one course This is the year two course. This is the year three course the year four course now You take you maybe your year one your interest level course year two there might be two three four different courses you can take and then your three you can do this two period practical or maybe this one period practical it's a lot there's a lot more flexibility could there be more
absolutely okay okay so I'm sorry can I go on cuz and then I'll be done okay somebody else has them all right well I don't mind giving someone else a turn
and then everybody have a question mr president ms ak i just want to share uh i'm super excited that uh dr gorski you and the team have uh moved forward with this uh strategic planning goal every time i leave um raines academy i think one of one of the silver linings of covid there's so many horrible things that happen uh but one of the silver linings i think there was kind of that glass jar in a lot of things was broken of restraints that we had but every time I leave rains I think I mean how could we apply some of the principles in the way we're teaching and the opportunities that we're giving to kids whether it's timing or delivery and to think that we could take that to all of our campuses and offer even we already offer so much but to be able to offer that so super Super excited to see that. I know one of the big challenges will be that we don't just keep adding onto people's plates. So I would love to see how can we do it in a way that maybe provides some relief in other areas. Maybe there are flexible schedules for teachers. That they can maybe, you have a sliding staffing model or kids at the same time, those that have to work but maybe wanna stay at a comprehensive campus. you know like the ideas of how these how all these things can go together I mean could like Katie I see can continue to lead an education in our state but to be able to provide those opportunities for our kids and teachers like that that's what Katie I see is built for and so good job everybody thank you mr.
president okay miss Fox go ahead I know my repeated, repeated, repeated talk about more academics and school board meetings. This was the dream this night with all the things. And I know that's added a whole lot to you all, but I have, if there were pictures around me, it would be all the emojis. It would be clapping hands and touchdown and hearts and happy faces of all the exciting things that are happening for students and so I know you weren't a cheerleader I know you're a softball player but y'all hit it out the park thank you it
was a team effort but we also I got to say when you have a superintendent that
encourages it and turns you loose then I mean this is why I joined the school board was to make a difference for boys and girls and their learning opportunities and like I said if we could do 96,000 IEP s because you meet the student where they are and the way they're bent and you give them the success, the pathway to success, the people who believe in them, and opportunities where they're like, I love that. And this is more and more going that direction, and I'm like Lance.
Okay.
Mr. President. Go ahead, Ms. Champagne. I'm sorry, did you have something, Ms. Champagne? Okay. I just want to finish up by saying, first of all, I'm going to just reiterate one more time. I'm happy to know it's not as stressful as it used to be because my youngest daughter graduated two years after that. And back then it was a little bit stringent. And so now I'm happy about that. But also that whole that 60 by 30 thing, I remember that when it started. And I guess it's an initiative. And I think it's like 25 to 34 year olds. And what it is is 60 percent of them are going to have some kind of certification by 2030 and all that. but you don't need to know the answer to this I know that's developed by TEA and all that but I just wonder how they're tracking that by the way but but that's just one thing but I do have one specific question I remember I was on the CAT team over at Taylor and I was with Mr. Moore and he showed us that you know in the course catalog and I'm probably gonna get this wrong but there was all a whole bunch of courses that were offered but not all of them are gonna be taught because okay let me see if i get this right it has to be so many kids would want that class so you're not going to teach a i don't know a basket weaving class if there's only two kids who want it i'm
gonna let mr morgan answer that question because he and i just worked with the associate principals to make sure kids have access to all courses if even if it doesn't make at their campus
this. Yeah. So yes, now we have the instructional ID courses so we don't have to necessarily kill a course if we call it because we have enough kids around the district that can do it. So we can put them all in a virtual course during the instructional day so that we can capture those kids who want to take those courses and we don't have to kill them at the campus.
Okay, another good thing from the COVID years, huh? So we can take all that. So good, because I know there's a whole bunch of classes that a lot of them didn't make.
It kind of goes back to that, just trying to leverage all the things that we're doing and making it accessible at all campuses. And we did pilot, like Mr. Redman said, we did pilot quite a few things at Reigns with the intent on how we can launch it district-wide with the comprehensives.
Okay. Thank you very much. It's outstanding. Very exciting. Really exciting. Thank you.
8.1 Presentation of the District's rating on the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST).
Now we move on to item eight, which is the presentation of the district's rating on the financial integrity rating system of Texas first. And our presenter is Chris Smith, chief financial officer. Also, it looks like Kayla Smith, executive director of finance, and Jamie Hines, assistant superintendent of finance. Welcome.
Welcome. Thank you. You've been in the on-day circle for quite a while. It's past my bedtime. But I'll be quick on the introduction here. 25 years ago, it's hard to believe it's been 25 years ago, the state adopted the school's first, first stands for Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas, and began in the 2001-2002 fiscal year. So 21 years ago, or 22 years ago, the first report was performed in this boardroom, and this is the 22nd time we've done that report. TEA changes the accountability ratings as necessary. In fact, I know for sure that there are going to be changes that are going to be made, that when we do this presentation this time next year, there will be some tweaks to it. it. Also, what you're going to be hearing about tonight is the financial results from the 22-23 school year. So we're done with that over a year now, but you heard the audit in January of this year, January of 2024. School districts then take that information, give it to the Texas Education Agency. Texas Education Agency studies it, puts it in this format, and then in the latter part of the summer early fall they give the results of of those crunched numbers in the form of schools first the purpose of schools first is to expand the accountability accountability to finances in in the state throughout school districts in the state it's a goal is to improve its our resources as districts make sure we're managing our money appropriately throughout the state and to assure that the maximum resources are intended for instructional purposes And I want to turn it over to Mr. Jamie Hines. He's going to take on these next few slides. And OK.
Scoring is handled through many indicators, 21 to be specific. The indicators, some are going to be recognizable, some are more recognizable by the public and the finance industry. industry. Several of them have a sliding scale and so they'll have a high, medium or low based on a numeric value between zero and ten and we'll kind of talk about that as we go through these indicators. The determination of each district's first score is based on a letter grade that is then based on a numeric grade with a being the highest or superior grade and I'm not even going to really even talk about the rest of them the first indicator again there's 21 of them so we'll go quickly through these but it's the simplest and essentially the the question is was your annual financial report filed on time or the January 28th deadline and yes it was filed on January 25th, 2024, shortly after we presented to you all. As I go through these, this is indicator number two. Are you all seeing what I'm seeing?
Sorry about that. This is indicator number two. Again, there are 21. The first five of these indicators, actually, if you fail any of these first five, they're critical indicators, and you will fail the entire first accountability rating. So as I go through these, just keep that in mind. But the second question is, did the district receive a clean or an unmodified audit opinion on the financial statements as a whole? This was determined by our external independent auditors. and yes we received an unmodified opinion on our financial report indicator number having problems with the buttons tonight and I apologize indicator number three this indicator confirms that the district has made all required bond or debt payments and yes the Katie ISD did indicator number four confirms that the district fulfilled its obligation to governmental agencies such as TRS Texas Workforce Commission and the IRS for payroll withholdings and contributions and yes KDISD did fulfill this indicator indicator number five this was implemented several years ago but for the past five years this one's actually been has not been scored by the state this year they've put it back into to being one of the indicators that we're scored against. As we go through this, you'll notice that some of the indicators are not scored every year. It's important to notice that we actually go ahead and calculate those from our own perspective just so that we can make sure that we're keeping up with even the indicators that sometimes go dormant over time because of things that happen like COVID or like storms around the state that can actually cause schools to have issues, so they'll turn off the indicator. Well, we keep up with those every year. Indicator 5 has been re-implemented with a few adjustments that are due to GASB, governmental accounting standards regarding pension liabilities. and yes the the district does have a statement of net position indicator number six measures the percentage change in fund balance to see whether or not the fund balance is declining too quickly it says is the average fund balance change over three years less than a 25% decrease we had a 7% increase So we don't have to worry about that. So yes, Katie ISD passed that indicator And INDICATOR NUMBER SEVEN, THIS MEASURES HOW LONG IN DAYS AFTER THE END OF THE FISCAL YEAR THE DISTRICT COULD HAVE DISPERSED FUNDS FOR ITS OPERATING EXPENDITURES WITHOUT RECEIVING ANY NEW REVENUES. AS LONG AS THE DISTRICT EXCEEDS 90 DAYS OF CASH ON HAND, ESSENTIALLY THE DISTRICT WILL RECEIVE THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF POINTS, WHICH IS 10. WE HAVE OVER 128 DAYS WORTH OF CASH ON HAND, SO WE RECEIVED THE HIGHEST NUMBER, AND YES, we passed this indicator and now i'm going to hand it over to mrs smith
so indicator 8 is asking if the school district had sufficient short-term assets at the end of the fiscal year to pay off its short-term liabilities and the answer for this one was yes the district did have sufficient assets indicator 9 simply asked did you spend more than you earned and the district will automatically pass this indicator if they had at least 60 days of cash on hand and as mr heinz pointed out in indicator 7 the district had about 128 days of cash on hand so we passed this indicator as well indicator 7 is not being scored by tea this year but like mr heinz said we go ahead and do the calculations to see if we would pass had it been been scored. This one is measuring if the district forecast projected revenue by comparing budgeted revenues submitted through PEMS in October of the fiscal year to actual revenues submitted after the close of the fiscal year. And yes, we would have passed this. We only had a 2.18% variance over the last three fiscal years. Indicator 11 is asking if our ratio of long-term liabilities to total assets for the district were sufficient to support long-term solvency and the district would not have received all of the points based on this alone but thankfully this indicator rec is recognized by TEA for growth fast growth school districts and it takes an allowance of your student population and how fast you're growing so we received full credit by this for this indicator by exceeding 10% growth in students in the past five years. And our growth over the past five years was actually 16%. And we are the fastest growing school district by number over the past five years. Indicator 12 asks about the school district's ability to make debt payments. And the district received points for this. And this one does not have an allowance for student growth. growth, but we did receive points for this and pass it. Indicator 13 measures the percentage of the district's budget that is spent on administration. Although districts our size are allowed administrative cost ratios of up to 8.55%, as you may know, Katie's is a lot lower than that. It's one of the lowest in the state at 3.83%, and that means that we're able to put more money into the classroom where it belongs. Indicator 14 is meant to track if a declining enrollment school district is also decreasing their staff proportionately. Since KDISD increases in student population each year, we pass this indicator. Indicator 15 is another indicator that's not currently being scored by TEA, but it's looking looking at if the district was able to project average daily attendance for the coming biennium for payment purposes. And the projected ADA is compared to actual and even with the effects of weather and all of the pandemic related events that we've had in the past, the district passed this indicator with a 1.7% variance.
I'm going to jump in here because it's timely. We got a letter from TEA just last week about these projections are due for the next two next biennium in the middle of December so what we're gonna have to do financial services and technology the the the geo folks the the mappers are going to get together and look at our growth and try to estimate our student counts for the 25 26 and the 26 27 school years and we have to do that so the legislative budget board when they are looking at legislation this just January they can say how much they know what the student council look like and they can say how much a bill costs or doesn't cost they want that to be accurate so they don't shortchange the children of the state by everybody's sandbagging and given their real high numbers and then there's not it's too expensive we can't afford it or not giving good enough numbers and and and and it being and and then it being more expensive than they thought it would be and so that they brought that down to an indicator so we have to get that crystal ball out two years in advance and we have to be within seven percent and that that goes back to a whole statewide wide thing.
So indicator 16 measures the quality of data reported to PEMS and in your ACFER and it makes sure that the two are aligned. The total difference between what we reported to PEMS and what was stated in our ACFER was all of a couple of hundred dollars on $950 million in expenditures and that's just a product of rounding whenever we submit it to PEMS so we pass this indicator. Indicator 17 asks if the district's independent external auditors found any material weaknesses and internal controls, which they have not. Indicator 18 measures whether the district is complying with laws, rules, and regulations related to expenditures of grants, funds, contracts, and other state and federal funds, and we pass this indicator as well. Indicator 19 measures whether the district is complying with legal requirements related to financial transparency by posting all of our required information and the district fully complies with this. And I'm going to pass it over to Mr. Hines.
Okay, and indicator number 20 confirms whether the school board had the opportunity to discuss and consider the finances of the district as they relate to property value and funding changes. As you all know, Mr. Smith presented on and discussed state funding and property values many times leading up to the budget adoption with this board. So, yes, we passed this indicator. And the one we've been looking for, indicator number 21, is a new indicator for this year and ensures that the district hasn't asked TEA for an adjusted repayment schedule in consecutive years for overpayment of foundation school program funds due to financial hardship. The answer to this is no, but that means that yes, the district passes this. And just so you know, in our history, we have never had to do that. So this brings us to what is KDISD's rating? KDISD for 22 years in a row has passed all critical indicators, received 96 of 100 points, and had it if they had an a-plus would have gotten an a-plus but it got a superior rating and an a and it's the highest the highest rating given by the state for first so now I'll pass it on to mr. Smith okay as part of this
presentation you all have a package we're required to do this and by the way notice of this meeting was posted in the paper twice by law by the law that requires this and in your package after the presentation of the slides that you just saw it actually has a printout of the ratings and that we just went over right off the TEA website anybody can find that on the TEA website and it has them for the prior year as well so somebody can look at this and look at it from the prior and that's on the TEA's website and our school districts website this presentation and this information is on the on both websites it does have the required disclosures that you have and so everyone that was on the board in the 22-23 school year has a breakdown here and it shows the any reimbursements or expenses associated with board members and the superintendent on this page and then outside compensation or fees received by the superintendent superintendent. There were none had there been he would be just required to disclose that to the public gifts. None of you reported any gifts again people on the board in the old in all or a portion of the 2223 school year had they received gifts they would be required to disclose that there were none and then any business transactions that a board member or the superintendent that they own the business and they did transactions with the school district. They would be required to disclose that. that and there were none so that is the package that you have again we push this put this information on the website and that's that's our our update on schools
first thank you very much and congratulations on the the rating and superior and so on thank you so much that was as typical historical and we
8.2 Receive public input regarding the District's rating on the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST).
didn't have any public input regarding the the first rating even though people could give input thank you very much we'll now move on to the focus that
9. Consent Agenda
agenda option a consent agenda shall include items that were discussed and considered at the previous work-study meeting work-study board meeting as well as items of a recurring nature the board shall be furnished with background material for each item because that agenda items shall be grouped together under one action item all items shall be acted upon by one vote without separate discussion unless a board member requests that an item be withdrawn for individual consideration this per be illegal and be local are there any items that board members would like to remove from the consent agenda mr. president
it. Miss Timmy. May I pull 9.2?
Okay, 9.2. Mr. President, I would like to pull 9.3. And 9.3.
Okay. Do I get anything else? Do I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda agenda except for 9.2 and 9.3.
Mr. President, I move that the Board of Trustees approves the consent agenda for items 9.1 through 9.12 except for items 9.2 and 9.3, which have been removed from the consent agenda.
Second.
We'll go ahead and vote now by pressing the keypad. So the consent agenda of the 9.2 and 9.3 has passed.
9.2 Consider Board approval of the attendance boundary modification (ABM) for Elementary #47 and Elementary #48 for the 2025-2026 school year.
And so now we will turn our attention to 9.2, and that is to consider board approval of the attendance boundary modification, ABM, for elementary 47 and elementary 48 for the 2025-2026 school year. Ms. Kimme, did you have any questions?
Oh, no, I just want to pull it because I did speak with multiple residents of the lake house community and I, I, they, I felt like they made some legitimate requests and concerns. So I just wanted to pull it so we could vote on it individually.
Okay. Anything else? Anybody else have anything else on 9.2?
Mr. President, I would like to know. I don't know the feedback actually that she got because I mean I can imagine what it was, but do you want to state it so that we can all know?
Well, I mean it was the people that came and spoke and then I had private conversations with them over the phone and then I also saw the door-to-door signature list that they sent us. Thank you.
Anything else? Okay, in that case, we'll go ahead and vote on item 9. Any other, no other comments on it?
Mr. President, I move to approve the attendance boundary modification ABM for elementary 47 and elementary 48 for the 25-26 school year as presented.
Do I hear a second? Second. Okay, we'll vote. Push your keypad. So it passes 6-1. And I just want to mention that the lake house issue, it was, to me, very compelling. It made a very good case. However, I think what I think is important is that the Robertson overcrowding and the overcrowding situation that would exist in Robertson in the future without this would be just huge in terms of the effect on Robertson and also the proximity of Lake House to Elementary 48 was another big one. And the fact that zoning 8B to Robertson, again, would only bring just a few students to Robertson and really not aggravate the overcrowding at Robertson. So to me, these are important factors.
9.3 Consider Board approval of the October 2024 budget amendments.
So now we have gone to 9.3, and that is to consider Board approval of the October 2024 budget amendments. And Ms. Gazella, did you have any questions?
Yes. I wanted to seek more information on Amendment 27. Last Monday we were only presented with the information on this amendment here that we see, which was pretty generic. Eric received further information from Dr. Grigorski on a little bit about who this is. This is a government contract, contracted firm to help the district with a governmental affairs strategy, drafting amendments. I'm reading off of the amendment here to help with relevant legislation, legislative sessions, meeting making appointments with our legislators establishing a legislative website presence so and advancing legislative priorities of the district related to student learning in the district so I I felt compelled to understand exactly who this person was and their background so with that said I I wanted to know, is this an extended contract that was signed? Is this a one-time payment? Is this something that's going to be new and continuous?
So the board received an update that I sent them on what we would call our strategy. It was quite a bit more extensive. It was two pages beyond what we have in the board amendment. That's just a snippet in a budget amendment. but the actual plan was much more robust. Once again the board sets legislative priorities that are important to the board and this would be some outside assistance to help us navigate that process. Probably one of the most important things this individual would be doing because I don't have a team of individuals who can do this and I can't do it alone either and I can't ask Dr. Grooms and her team to be extended any further but we expect this individual to to track all the bills for us. Any bill that comes out that's related to our legislative priorities, we wanna know about that bill. We wanna watch that bill, we wanna see if it meets our needs, and we wanna talk to elected officials about that bill if it's something we support or it's something we don't support tied to the board's legislative priorities. So that's the main mission there. We think this person can also help us make some connections with elected officials, maybe folks we don't know very well compared to the ones that are in our area that we know extensively well because sometimes bills will come from all over the state that aren't from our representatives but we want to engage with those folks as well if it furthers the legislative priorities of kdisd so it is a short-term contract it's during the legislative process time we would engage with the person as soon as the money is allocated by the board or we won't engage with the person if the money is not allocated that's the board's choice if they They don't think that's of good value to spend those dollars for the legislative priorities. We don't have to do that. But the person would engage immediately, probably starting in November, and would commence when the legislative session is over, and that would be the end of that term.
Okay. So the payment of this $36,000 is a one-time?
Dr. Grooms, refresh my memory. It's a monthly payment that equates to $36,000? That is correct. Okay. So we're billed monthly for that? Yes. Yeah, for the services.
So in total, this is the cost?
Correct.
For all monthly payments. Okay. And isn't this something also that we've used TASB in the past? Have they serviced us in this way? Watching bills? Yes or no? How have we fulfilled this need in the past?
Yeah, generally with ourselves or me doing the work or Dr. Grooms. Yes, TASB does track bills and we'll send you information about bills, but just so the board understands, each legislative session there will be 5, 6, 7,000 bills, a lot of education bills. So yeah, we can watch them and we can try to find the ones related to our priorities or we could be a bit more strategic and have somebody doing that work for us.
Okay. So is this, this is something new you're trying or was there a more detailed reason why
we're doing this this year versus prior years? No, this is something new. We have not engaged previously, um, to advocate for our priorities, but I will tell you this, our priorities this year that we've adopted are very similar to some of our priorities last year when we focused on school finances teacher retention star accountability and I would say as hard as we pushed last year with the legislature I don't think we were very fruitful we didn't get any school funding we didn't get a whole lot of help with star accountability you saw what they did the legislature with the stuff on teacher recruitment and retention they did an entire committee but then didn't fund any of it so yeah this is I would I would consider a strategy above and beyond what we've tried in the past because we want to advocate even more vigorously for these things for which the board believes in okay and i'm assuming going forward
if this were to be approved that you'd be working closely this person would be working closely with our legislative advocacy committee that the board already has correct i don't want to speak for the
committee because i don't know their intention but i will offer if the committee wants to engage with this individual and work with them have meetings with the person that's fine by me i don't i don't have any opposition to any of that i just haven't heard from anyone on the committee of how they
would like to do that okay okay thank you very much thank you do i hear anything else can i just make a comment towards that we did um send an email out that we did want to miss gusela this is an answer to your question we did an email out that we did want to sit down with this individual to get a better understanding of who he is and what his intent is and how he understands our priorities on a face-to-face basis so that we can figure that out. So that will be forthcoming.
Thank you. So I hear a motion on 9.3. Mr. President? To approve October 2024 budget amendments. Mr. Redman?
I move that the board approves of the October 2024 budget amendments.
Do I hear a second?
Second.
Ms. Gazzella, second. If we vote, push the keypad. Let's have a no. And the item passes, 9.3 passes.
10.1 Board Committee Updates
And we now move on to our information items. uh board committee updates i think um everyone's received um i believe minutes from those committees um i think we had a we've we've had a meeting on the academic performance committee a couple weeks ago we also met the advocacy committee met as well and so the finance Finance Committee meet right before the work study meeting. And I think you have some minutes on those as well.
Mr. President, I know you're not going to let me be on another committee, but I feel obliged by the people that have voted for me to be on this board again to please let me be on another committee so that there can be fair representation from the committees by all board members.
Okay. I mean, you are on the finance committee, you're on the safety and security committee.
Yes, and you're on six committees, and everybody else is on about four.
No, I don't think that's right.
I think that is.
No, you're not.
You're on the teacher recruitment. You're on finance.
I'm not meeting right now.
Okay, well, you're on about three or four committees. Yes, you are. I have them all written down.
Do we have any recap of Board Member requests for information?
10.2 Recap of Board member requests for information.
I did not capture any. Do I have that correct?
The only thing I captured was Trustee Calhoun wanted an update to the costs on the previous dual language program that we had offered a few years ago.
Thanks for touching that.
Thank you, Dr. Worski. We received the board, the request for, we have the, those are the requests for information. We have a, did we capture anything else, Madam Secretary?
No, Mr. President.
Okay, we will have a work-study meeting on the November 18, 2024, and because of the holidays,
11. Future Meetings
then we will have a regular board meeting on December 9, 2024.
12. Closed Meeting
The Board will now convene and close meeting as authorized under section 551.001 of the Texas Government Code for the following purposes. Texas Government Code 551.0821 and 551.074. Therefore it is necessary for everyone to please clear the room as the Board will convene and close meeting in this room. Thank you.
13. Reconvene
you the board will now reconvene an open meeting today is Monday October 28 2024 and the time is 1040 p.m. the board heard a level 3 FNG grievance 23-05 9 pursuant to Katie and if in a school district policy FNG legal and FNG local regarding parent student grievances in closed meeting in accordance with chapter 5 5 1 of the text government code any action regarding this matter must be taken in open meeting do I have a motion on the level 3 FNG grievance do i have a motion on the level three fng grievance
um mr president i i move that we i'm sorry i can't find the language
I move that the Board of Trustees deny the level 3 FNG grievance in FNG 23-059, thereby upholding the decision of the level 1 and level 2 hearing officer. Second.
Do I have a second?
I'll second.
We have a motion and we have a second. Please vote by pressing the keyboard. The motion passes by a vote of 7-0. There being no further business before the Board, this meeting is adjourned. The time is 1042 p.m. Thank you.
Official documents
About the underlying data (6 notes)
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Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 9.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Katy ISD 2024-2025 Legislative Priorities.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 002 · AGENDA 9.2
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the attendance boundary modification (ABM) for the 2025-2026 school year.
6 Yes · 1 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | No |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 003 · AGENDA 9.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the District's October 2024 budget amendments.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 004 · AGENDA 9.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves of the Emergent Bilingual (EB) Enrollment and the 2024-2025 Bilingual Education
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 005 · AGENDA 9.5
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees awards a contract to VLK Architects, Inc. for design services necessary for the security fencing project at multiple campuses.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 006 · AGENDA 9.6
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves Amendment One to the Stewart Builders, LLC. contract related to the comprehensive renovations at Bear Creek Elementary School for the Guaranteed Maximum Price of $2,300,000.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 007 · AGENDA 9.7
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves Amendment One to the Stewart Builders, LLC. contract related to the comprehensive renovations at Katy High School band hall addition and vocational hall renovations for the Guaranteed Maximum Price of $500,000.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 008 · AGENDA 9.8
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Job Order Contract (JOC) for re-roof and building envelopes at Taylor High School and Beckendorff Junior High School to Stewart Builders, LLC, utilizing TIPS No. 24010402 in the amount of $17,991,936 with a total project cost not to exceed $19,213,205.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 009 · AGENDA 9.9
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the contract for life safety systems at the following campuses: Taylor High School, Seven Lakes High School, Katy High School, West Memorial Elementary, Rylander Elementary, Kilpatrick Elementary, Schmaltz Elementary, Griffin Elementary, and the Support Services Complex to LECS, LTD utilizing Choice Partners No. 23/039MR-04 in the amount of $6,083,455 with a total project cost not to exceed $6,744,275. The project cost overages are being funded from existing project savings in the 2023 bond authorization.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 010 · AGENDA 9.10
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the contracts for the chiller replacement and optimization of the central plant at Cinco Ranch High School to Hunton Services LLC, utilizing Choice Partners No. 22/049MF-11 in the amount of $4,596,089 and S&S HVAC Equipment, LLC, utilizing TIPS No. 22010602-2320 in the amount of $2,212,236 with a total project cost not to exceed $7,058,125.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 011 · AGENDA 9.11
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the contract for the replacement of the Building Management Control System (BMCS) at Cinco Ranch High School to Unify Energy Solutions, LLC, utilizing TIPS No. 22010602 in the amount of $3,445,450 and Cinco Ranch Junior High School in the amount of $1,034,600 with a total project cost not to exceed $4,946,900.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 012 · AGENDA 9.12
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approve of the minutes of the September Board meetings.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |
MOTION 013 · AGENDA 13.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees denies the Level Three FNG grievance in FNG 23-059, thereby upholding the decision of the Level One and Level Two hearing officer.
7 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| amy-thieme | Yes |
| dawn-champagne | Yes |
| lance-redmon | Yes |
| mary-ellen-cuzela | Yes |
| morgan-calhoun | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
| victor-perez | Yes |