Good afternoon. Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this work-study meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order.
Katy ISD · Work Study Meeting
Katy ISD Work Study Meeting, November 18, 2024
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In this meeting
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- 0:01 to 0:31 1. Call to Order
- 0:31 to 1:15 2. Pledges of Allegiance
- 1:15 to 5:31 3. Public Comment
- 5:31 to 5:52 4. Closed Meeting
- 5:52 to 6:43 5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 6:43 to 55:10 6. Reports
- 55:10 to 1:02:55 7.1 Discuss and consider future Board approval of naming Elementary #47 as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
- 1:02:55 to 1:10:32 7.2 Discuss and consider future Board approval of naming Elementary #48 as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
- 1:10:32 to 1:12:45 7.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the November 2024 budget amendments.
- 1:12:45 to 1:16:40 7.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the annual review of investment policies and strategies.
- 1:16:40 to 1:21:36 7.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of the September 2024 Financial Reports.
- 1:21:36 to 1:27:12 7.6 Discuss and consider Board adoption of a Resolution to cast Katy Independent School District's votes for the Fort Bend Central Appraisal District Board of Directors.
- 1:27:12 to 1:51:12 7.7 Discuss and consider Board adoption of a Resolution to cast Katy Independent School District's votes for the Harris Central Appraisal District Board of Directors.
- 1:51:12 to 1:55:51 7.8 Discuss and consider Board Approval of Stop Loss Insurance Coverage for Health Plan Year 2025.
- 1:55:51 to 2:06:28 7.9 Discuss and consider Board approval of the annual course additions.
- 2:06:28 to 2:33:46 7.10 Discuss and consider Board approval of a contract to the build out of the Merchants Way building.
- 2:33:46 to 2:35:28 7.11 Discuss and consider Board approval to award a contract for design services necessary for the construction of Elementary School #49.
- 2:35:28 to 2:38:39 7.12 Discuss and consider Board approval of Amendment Two to the Stewart Builders, LLC. contract related to the additions and renovations at Cinco Ranch High School.
- 2:38:39 to 2:57:04 7.13 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the recommendation to authorize the superintendent or their designee to execute an electricity supply contract on behalf of Katy Independent School District.
- 2:57:04 to 2:59:05 8. Information Items
- 2:59:05 to 2:59:26 9. Future Meetings
Full transcript
Automated transcript, not human verified. It is a way to find a passage, not a quotation.
1. Call to Order
Today is November 18, 2024, and the time is 5.01 p.m.
Dr. Gorski, 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?
Mr. President, I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting tonight.
SECRETARY TILLERSON Thank you.
2. Pledges of Allegiance
KDISD Police Chief Henry Gall will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
HENRY GALL, KDISD Police Chief Henry Gall, U.S. State 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.
Thank you.
Do we have any scouts in the audience?
3. Public Comment
at this time the board of trustees will give members of the public an opportunity to speak
in accordance with Katie ISD board policy BED local as defined by board policy speakers who
signed up by 2 p.m. on Monday November 18 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 who signed up to speak
on posted agenda items be allowed three minutes to speak if a speaker is not finished speaking
at the end of three minutes the audio will turn off if speakers wish to share written material
with the board please provide 10 copies to the secretary for board services before the meeting
begins for board members the superintendent the chief communications officer and permanent record
if a speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through proper channels as stated
in board policy the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to
seek resolution through the appropriate policy finally pursuant to Texas
government code sections five five one point zero seven four and five five one
point zero eight two one the board will not permit the presentation of
personally identifiable information regarding a student and will not discuss
the appointment employment evaluation reassignment duties discipline or
dismissal of a public officer or employee or hear a complaint or charge
against an officer or employee should I wish a speaker wish to address one of
these issues they must do so through the appropriate local grievance policies FNG
local DGB a local CKE local or GF local our speakers will be called in the order
they were assigned up to speak and that's very easy tonight because we only
have one speaker and that is Angela Smith welcome good evening members of
the school board I stand before you today to ask for your commitment to
fully fund the construction of the Katie plus building a space that will provide
essential services and support for our special needs students transitioning
transitioning into adulthood. The statistics are clear and compelling. In 2023, the unemployment rate for individuals with disabilities was 7.2%, nearly double the 3.5% for those without disabilities. For adults with intellectual disabilities, ID, the situation is even more dire. Only 44% of working age adults with ID are part of the labor force compared to 83% of their non-disabled peers. The unemployment rate for individuals with ID is more than twice as high as those for without disabilities, with
with 21% of adults with ID unemployed versus less than 8% for others.
These numbers illustrate a massive gap between the students with disabilities
and their peers when it comes to successful transition into the workforce.
The KD Plus program aims to close that gap by providing these students
with targeted training, job skills, and life skills support
that they so desperately need to achieve their post-secondary goals.
A fully funded, dedicated KD Plus building will be instrumental in this effort, giving
students a space designed for their specific needs, something that goes beyond what a traditional
high school environment can offer.
Currently, students in KD ISD with disabilities are served until age 22, but they are excluded
from many of the enriching experiences that their peers enjoy, such as homecoming, pep
rallies, and clubs.
By establishing a separate, fully equipped facility like KD Plus, we can provide these
young adults the specialized instruction they need without highlighting the disparities between them
and their peers on a high school campus fully funding the kd plus building will enable us to
offer a program that not only prepares our students for life after school but also gives
them a sense of dignity purpose and independence we have the opportunity to make a lasting impact
on the lives of these students helping them break down barriers and build a future where they can
thrive as active employed members of our community let's give them the tools and the environment they
need to succeed thank you thank you very much this concludes the open forum portion of our meeting
4. 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 551.071 551.076 and 551.129
5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
Good evening. The Board will now reconvene in open meeting. Today is Monday, November 18, 2024, and the time is 6.24 p.m.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's work-study meeting.
Each Board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Friday, November 15, 2024.
On January 24, the Board will receive information and recommendations from staff, administration,
and superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting.
Board members will be able to ask questions, receive answers, and should be prepared to
take action.
The Board has just reconvened from closed meeting.
In accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code, any action arising from discussions
in the closed meeting must be taken in an open meeting.
6. Reports
The first item, 6.1, is a report.
The presenter is Chris Poole, Population and Survey Analyst, PASA.
Welcome.
And Ted Verling as well.
No, sir.
My good evening, Mr. President, Board, Dr. Gagorski.
My job tonight is just to introduce Chris Poole and Angela Fritz.
They're with our friends at Population and Survey Analyst.
You're most familiar with them because they were just here doing the attendance boundary modification tonight.
They'll bring to you a demographic study.
They do a gigantic study of the community and helps us plan for all kinds of things,
school enrollment, bond planning, and things like that.
So I'll turn it over to Chris and Angela, and they will take you through it.
Okay.
Good evening, President Perez, board members, and Superintendent Krakorski.
Like Ted said, we're here to present the annual update.
We've been preparing and revising this data for the district since the mid-'90s.
and this is our big study we have turned over copies of this report electronic copies and
large maps and everything to the district today and i'm sure that'll be shared with you guys but
we're going to try to just hit the highlights here some of this information is going to be
super familiar to you all it'll be a refresher and so i'm hoping that you'll find it interesting
just a little bit of an update or a little bit of a discussion on how we do this process
It's very similar. We've been revising it now for, you know, the last 20 odd years.
We start, of course, with collecting background data. We have to build our GIS map.
We're constantly updating that GIS map. We're downloading parcels. We're downloading future roadways
and floodways and all of these sorts of things to build that very robust map
so that we understand the likelihood of development on any parcel. We have to study the
economy and housing, of course, because most of your new kiddos that are going to come
are going to come from new homes.
And so we have to understand the economics behind that also.
We study your past and current student population.
The district geocodes the students every, actually it used to be every night.
I need to find out if that's still the case.
But we get that data from the district, and then we can compare it to older data sets.
You know, we've got dozens and dozens of data sets at this point that we can compare to
to because we have to look at not only the new areas, but we have to look at the older areas.
An awful lot of your district is built out, and so we've got to understand what's going on in
those portions of the district. We generate projections, of course, that are district-wide
under several scenarios of growth, and then we take that data and we put it into your current
attendance zones so that we can understand where the pressure points are going to be,
and we can look at the next steps that will need to be taken.
So we'll start with just a little bit about demographic trends.
This is a five-year look at the PEIMS information here, fall of 2018 to fall of 23.
This is the most recent PEIMS information.
We won't be able to get the information that was most recently turned in until about April.
But what this shows is that KDISD, over that five-year timeframe,
gained the most students in the entire region there that we're showing.
Lamar CISD is nipping at your heels.
and I went back and looked last year, and Katie, at that point, had gained 15,000, and Lamar a little over 10,000.
And so that gap between Katie and Lamar is narrowing just a bit as Katie ISD begins to go ahead and build out.
But presently, that was an 18.6% increase over five years and almost 15,000 students.
That's enormous growth, and it's been going on for quite a while, as you can see from this bar graph here.
You know very well that the district continued to gain students even during COVID, which is a real anomaly.
I've said that several times.
There were not very many districts that did that.
But you can see just these last couple of years that growth rate maybe is flattening just a little bit,
if you look real carefully at those bar graphs from the last couple of years here.
And so we'll talk a little bit about that here on some of these next slides.
Then one thing that I've shown before is a look at kindergarten and the birth data.
because the kindergarten is very difficult to get at because you don't know how many three-year-olds
are behind each one of those closed doors in every home that's in the district.
And so we can get at the birth data that's by zip code of the birth mother.
And we take that, and it's not perfect, the zip codes are not.
We manipulate that data some using some population points.
But then we can take that and compare it to your kindergarten enrollment,
move the births five years forward, compare it to your kindergarten enrollment,
and then we can look forward a little bit.
And so you can see relatively flat, maybe a little uptick there at the end of that data that you're seeing there.
For all districts, we would assume, all districts that are growing,
we would assume that there would be a differential between the kindergarten enrollment and that birth number
because people move in with a two-year-old, of course.
But as the new home construction slows, those numbers, those lines really seem to get closer together normally.
They'll kind of reach one and then at some point in time that birth number will actually
begin to exceed the kindergarten enrollment because of the other opportunities and other
places that students go for kindergarten.
So we'll be watching that over time.
But that helps us understand maybe a little bit about where we're headed with births.
So we'll move on to look a little bit at your current students here.
But the first thing I want to just touch on for everybody, I'm sure that everybody is
familiar with this, we divide the district into what we call land use zones.
Now, these were actually in place when we began working with the district in the late
90s.
When we divide them up ourselves, we call them planning units, but here they were land
use zones.
We've subdivided those over time, but they are little puzzle pieces, and that's our organizational
scheme for the data.
Now, all of the land use zones, they're divided based on major roadways, on subdivisions and
apartment complexes, your current attendance zones, on things that we hope make sense for
people along the way now we can go ahead and split those sometimes and we do sometimes
but this is our organizational scheme and everything in the report is organized down
to that land use zone level i mentioned geocoding that we have geocoded that the district geocodes
the students and we have that data now for quite some time i find actually i find this map quite
interesting for you all it's not always for all of our clients but what this shows is the 2021 22
22 students, and then the current students, 24, 25.
And so anywhere you see yellow, that is a student at an address that is brand new.
And it's very, very clustered in this sort of the Sentara and the Ellison, if you're
familiar with where those areas are.
It's very heavily located right there.
Just a few little dots and other little locations there.
And so heavily clustered there in the Northwest, which shouldn't be a surprise, I don't think.
And then one thing that a lot of our clients, I think, when they come to us that they don't
understand is they have to really pay attention to what's going on in your current student
population with the sizes of your cohorts.
And so what this shows, it's just your enrollment, but it's color coded based on from K through
12 except for ninth grade because ninth grade always has a bulge in it.
And it's color coded for every single year such that the smallest cohorts are in light
blue and the largest are in that maroon and so what you see is you have had a
bulge of students just a sort of random bulge of students that started in first
second third grade there in 2015 and has worked its way through the system is
working its way through the system presently they're in sort of middle
school in high school so if we shut the doors to the district and said nobody
else can move in for the next four or five years and you just let those kids
move in move through the system you're going to gain in some high school
students for a little while just as those larger classes move up and you'll then ultimately as they
age through you'll lose some high school students as those smaller cohorts work through the system
and of course you know we're building homes and there are a lot of other things that go into this
but this is something that people i think often kind of forget to look for where those bulges
are in your current current student population and then one thing that's very important that we do is
is we take those geocoded students and we measure a ratio of students per home
because everybody assumes that there are a couple of kids in every house,
but they're just not all enrolled in the school district at one point in time.
So I've seen this ratio for KDB as high as about .8.
I think we measured it at .79 once before, or a couple of times.
We measured it maybe at .81 and crossed that .8.
It has dropped off a little bit over time,
but that .7 is only an average and we barely ever use it
because we have it figured down to all of the subdivisions.
It's in a very dense table that's in the report.
And so anytime we make a projection for a new home,
we have to project the location, we have to project the timing,
and we have to project the ratio also.
And we vary the ratios based on what exactly we think the product is
and type of home.
And so the average may be a .7, but you've got, well,
we look at data in subdivisions that have more than 20 homes occupied.
We feel like that's where we start to get a decent number.
And if we look at that, you've got five subdivisions that are above 1.4.
And those are Tamron Lakes.
You've got Ventana Lakes, a couple in Cross Creek, and one section of Cinco Ranch Northwest.
1.4 students per house, which, of course, is very, very high compared to that 0.7.
On the other end of the spectrum, you've got some that are at 0 and 0.01 and 0.03.
And most of those are RV parks or they're 55 plus.
plus, one of your 55 plus actually has .01 students in it, but that's the other end of
the spectrum, and so then we vary those ratios across all of our projections.
Then we also have to really look at alternative educational opportunities.
This is such a hot button for everybody.
All of our clients are facing this at this point in time.
Charter schools, of course, come in, and if they drop into the middle of the district,
they will pull students, a lot of students, from the district directly because so many
Many come from right around where that school is located.
We study the amendments.
We study absolutely everything we can get our hands on from the state.
But the amendments a lot of times are very loose.
It'll say, well, we're planning to open a school somewhere in the northwest portion of Houston.
And so as it is, we do not know of any new ones that we are expecting to come in inside of KDISD anytime soon.
But that can change, and they can come in very, very rapidly if they come into a building that's already existing.
We do know one school down in the Fort Bend area, it will pull a handful of students from you guys just because that's how that works.
We've measured all of that and know about how many are coming from there.
We also have some up in the Ellison area that I think are adding grades.
And so over five years, we're projecting about 500 or so, 520 additional students leaving for charters.
But that's not from any additional schools, save that one that's down there in the southern portion outside of Katy ISD.
We also do try to contact private schools. We contact them all. They don't
always talk to us and they don't always have good data. It doesn't matter that
much to them where their students are coming from, but we do try to contact
them, get some sort of an understanding there. We are expecting a little bit of
an increase, about 125 students additionally into private school.
Some of them have a little bit of space there. Virtual academies, we're attending
other ISDs and this is the breakdown as best we have been able to estimate it
for students that are choosing to attend elsewhere besides KDISD.
And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Angela for a minute,
and then I'll be back to talk about the student enrollment.
Good evening.
I'm going to talk briefly about the economy and housing,
some of the context that we use for our housing projections.
And as we get started, I just want you to keep in mind
any numbers you see on these following slides until Chris comes back on,
we're talking about projected new occupancies, not students.
So just keep that in mind as we talk about these numbers.
So we know the last three to four years have been marked with really volatile interest rates and mortgage rates.
Those items are starting to stabilize.
We see 30-year mortgage on average hovering now kind of around 7%.
The Fed has decreased the rate now twice since September,
but they are kind of indicating that they may hold steady into the coming year.
So we don't see a big variation potentially in mortgage rates heading into this next year as context all that being said Houston
And West Houston the Katy area still have a very strong regional economy strong job growth
moderate to low
unemployment and net in migration for sure in the Houston region and Katy specifically which helps to continue to drive demand and offset some
of those
Things that we see having a little bit different impact in other districts
Although the mortgage rates have stabilized, it's important to keep in mind that prices have or homes still cost considerably more than they did kind of pre-pandemic for a couple different reasons.
And that can have varying effects on the student populations that you see in those homes.
So this map is just meant to give you an idea geographically of what we are calling some of the most impactful single family developments over the 10-year projection period.
period. The developments you see in dark red are developments that are currently developing and
occupying, while the ones in light red are ones that are planned for probable future developments.
There really are not any surprises here. You currently have Ellison, Sunterra,
Katie Lakes, and Katie Quartz are currently occupying as we are here this evening. Very soon,
Anniston, if they have not already started occupying, will begin to occupy homes,
and then we'll see Grange come online the new Johnson Development Corporation development labeled as a
This school year more than likely as well
Some of the larger ones that are planned within the ten years
Include Bridgeland Jasmine Heights South and wisteria and then we have a couple couple probable future developments on here too that may have
larger impact later in the planning period
period.
So this just gives you a little more detail on our five largest projections over the 10-year
planning period.
You see Grange, the Johnson Development project we just talked about, they are projected to
add almost 2,400 units over the next 10 years with first occupancy starting this school
year potentially.
We see Anniston coming online with nearly 2,300 or just over 2,300 projected occupancies with build-out projected by year seven of the planning period.
Ellison adding another 2,300 projected single-family occupancies.
Sunterra is right there with it.
Sunterra, we estimate, occupied nearly 1,600 or just over 1,600 single-family homes over this last school year.
So this 2300 that's projected here is the remainder of their projected occupancies in Katy ISD.
And we're projecting build out for them by early projection period or about year three of the projection period.
And then you have Bridgeland or the last section of Bridgeland, which will be in northern Katy ISD,
which we're projecting to start coming online and occupying during the planning period as well.
So these are kind of the five large single family neighborhoods to keep your eyes on as we move forward.
These next series of maps are heat maps.
The geographies you see shaded here are the actual land use zones, whereas in the previous
slides they were the actual outlines of the developments.
But this is just meant to show you how the different housing projections for single family
are aggregated and concentrated across the 10-year planning period.
Again, no surprises here.
We see year one.
We see years one through four, some of the development picking up in the northwest with
the developments we just talked about years one through seven and years one through ten as that
growth really starts to become concentrated in the remaining tracks that are available for development
we're going to talk briefly about multi-family and rental projections and chris mentioned earlier
before i move on from the single family slides in your full report you have a detailed development
overview map and also a projected housing occupancy spreadsheet and that gives you detail
for the housing projections not just at the land use zone level but actually at
the by development level so we actually break it down even lower you could see a
great amount of detail land use by land use in that section also so for
multifamily and rental projections there are currently 22 different rental
projects which also include build to rent or single-family rental that are
actively leasing up in Katy ISD and we're gonna talk about in a couple
slides here about kind of this anomaly of this bulge of multifamily and rental that you're
really seeing last year, this year, and next year in your projected occupancies. But for context,
there's 22, 17 multifamily, five build-to-rent. We are projecting nearly 18,000 new multifamily
occupancies over the 10-year planning period. About 800 build-to-rent occupancies, those tend
to be concentrated in years one through three because that's when we know about them. They're
hard to project further out these uh combined represent just over 40 percent of your total new
projected housing but they only represent about 20 percent of your projected students from new housing
and that's because those student ratios chris talked about earlier those are your current
averages for the district but when we project we project forward with what we know about the new
developments and your average for the projected multi-family that's leasing up is closer to 0.17
It does vary greatly between developments, but it's certainly less than the 0.39 you see there.
So that's important to keep in mind.
So across these units, there is approximately 2,700 multifamily and a little over 400 builder rent that's actively leasing up across those 22 we talked about.
And the vast majority of those occupancies we're actually projecting for this next coming school year.
This map is just intended to give you a graphic representation of where these complexes and rental developments lie across the district.
Unsurprisingly, they're along some of your major corridors, 99, I-10, Highway 6.
And your build-to-rent sections often you'll find also as basically sections in your existing neighborhood.
So there's three build-to-rent sections that you'll see up in Sunterra in the far northwest,
and there's one down in the remaining section of Tamron as well that's building out.
So your dark red developments here are everything that's actively leasing up,
and then your light red here is anything that is under construction with more than 300 units.
So overall, I mentioned we would talk about the bulge,
and you see this in your 24-25 housing projections on this slide.
That is really due to the rest of kind of that bulge or the anomaly of multifamily that is coming online and leasing up this past year and then this coming year as well.
And also your bill to rent occupancies that are coming online.
Your single family also is for year one at about 2,500.
And then the occupancies for the larger developments outside of Sentara, I mentioned they occupied nearly 1,600 last year based on our estimates.
really need a little bit of time for that inertia to build back up those lots to come back online
and those developments outside of centera to gain a little more traction you see your
single family starting to increase back in peak kind of mid-projection period also
so just a quick summary uh the housing projections projected new housing occupancies is roughly 60
single family including some build to rent or single family rental product
up and 40% multifamily for a total of just over 44,000 over the next 10-year period.
I'll hand it back to Chris to talk about how that affects projected enrollment.
Okay, thanks, Angela.
So we are going to move on to the student projections, first to look district-wide and
then to drill down at the attendance zone level.
I do want to mention a little bit of a couple of the different factors that go into all
of this. We've hit on several of these. There are an awful lot of different things that go into the
projections when we're working on them. Birth rates, I mentioned that already. We talked about
incoming kindergarten class size a little bit. They're not exactly always the same thing. You
would think that they are, but that's not always the same thing. The kindergarten class size has
been quite low for the last couple of years. Seems to be a bit of a trend. We're seeing that also in
some other sort of similar districts to you all throughout the state. That is important because
because right now the kindergarten class is actually smaller than the 2019-20 school year kindergarten class.
But the district has gained 12,000 or 13,000 students since then,
and yet the kindergarten class is a little bit smaller.
And so that's very important because when you graduate out,
one of those classes that's in that large bulge that I showed you,
and yet you replace it with a smaller kindergarten class,
then that automatically takes some numbers off the top,
even though you're building homes like crazy,
Then you have to account for that loss there in your cohort sizes for those current cohorts.
Regeneration we have to try to see are any of the older subdivisions in the district
regenerating.
We're really not seeing a lot of that.
Here in a minute we'll actually talk about sort of the opposite of some of them aging.
Cohort size, we've mentioned that and talked about that.
Alternative educational opportunities, if you guys have new private schools drop in
or new charter schools that we don't know about, of course that will automatically affect
the enrollment. The aging of the current students, you'll get a random fifth grade class that's large
for whatever reason. We have to account for that. And then, of course, the new housing construction
that everybody sees and thinks about most often is accounting for the majority of the growth,
and it may be adding 2,000 students per year, but right now it's being offset a little bit by that
differential between kindergarten and 12th grade. So here are three scenarios of growth.
They are a little flatter maybe that we've seen in sort of the recent years because of those younger grades.
When we did our projections for this current year, some of those younger grades are lower than we had expected them to be.
And so we're looking at about 101,000 students by the middle of the projection period, maybe 103,000 by the end if that's how things work out.
in 21-22 for the May 22 graduating class compared to the fall 22 incoming
kindergarten class that differential was about 500 students and for this current
year for the graduating 24 and your incoming kindergarten in the fall of 24
that differential was about 1100 students and so that's it that's a
difference here and that has caused us to flatten these projections out a
little bit so do you keep that in mind senter is occupying sixteen hundred
homes in a year or something, but we do have this other countervailing factor working in there too.
And then just a little bit of a reminder, I think you all are seasoned at this point in
seeing this data, but a bit of a reminder that we project for resident student population,
we project where we think those kids are going to live. That doesn't always mean that's where
they're going to school, especially at the elementary level. There are so many programs
and reasons that kiddos move around. So we start with the geocoded kids, the resident students,
We have to lay that transfer number on top so that we can get closer to that enrolled
number.
But we do know that that program can be moved at any point in time.
And so that's why we start with those geocoded or resident students.
And then I mentioned the land use zones earlier, our organizational scheme.
This is just sort of a reminder that in those land use zones, we have projected for each
individual land use zone a projected number of students by grade group for each year of
the 10 years of the projection period.
And so as soon as we do that, we join them all together to your current attendance zones.
We compare to capacity and figure out where there's a need for new schools.
And then we can start breaking them apart to make those plans for new schools.
And then the remaining slides here just show a little bit of a zoom in for the elementaries.
Then of course at the junior high and the high school level, the entire district.
This is just sort of a look at the projections.
We're looking here at the Northeast Quadrant.
You've seen maps similar to this before.
everywhere that there is a yellow star is a bilingual program.
It doesn't always mean that there's a large number of students transferring in.
Some of these programs only contain their students.
And so in this sector of the district, like Stevens,
nets a loss out of one student right now.
Schmalz nets out five students.
And so those numbers aren't, you know, big numbers.
But yet, Maid Creek Elementary is losing presently 305 students out.
And so when you look at this number,
what you see for Maid Creek is you see an 868 capacity number.
then you see an enrollment number there, and then you see a larger number for 2025,
because that 25 number is your geocoded or resident students.
And we know we're going to have to take 305 students off the top
before we're really looking at your actual enrollment.
And so there's several different pieces that you have to really think about here.
The takeaway point when I'm looking at something like this
and just starting to sort of understand the data is I look at 25 and 29
and say, are we growing or are we declining?
And by about how much?
And so the takeaway really from that is the schools that are along the Grand Parkway are the ones that you're seeing a little bit of growth in.
And if you go back and look at the hotspots map that Angela showed a little earlier, there's little spots of infill stuff going on right down the parkway there.
But the southeast quadrant of the district, those numbers of moving around, the numbers are quite a bit smaller.
I think Williams is the one that's the largest.
It nets in about 165 students.
students. We are showing here the additions at Patison and at West Memorial, and if we take
those into account, then really from a facility standpoint, most of these projections by the time
you account for your transfers are really looking pretty good. Everybody's, you know, we're not
looking at a need for additional space or anything like that in the southeastern quadrant of the
district. Then in the southwest, we've got several bilingual programs here. Jenks is a very quite
quite large one. It's netting in 368 students right now. And so you can see the enrollment is
1353. And then in the fall of 25, those resident students that we're projecting is 905. So you've
got to add that number on top to really understand and to begin to compare to capacity. And Jenks
has that larger capacity there. A lot of these schools, I think we've probably crested the top
on the enrollments there. And for a lot of them, it's probably going to be welcome relief.
But when you look at, say, Randolph, for example, there are 125 resident first grade students and 231 fifth grade students.
And so as those move through, and I've got several that are like that, Schaefer's 132 compared to 197.
Several of those in that area are seeing numbers like that.
And so we've mentioned before, especially at the secondary level, those smaller grade levels will work through eventually.
And so we're expecting a bit of a drop off a little bit there.
now it is counter got a countervailing effect that people always can't can't always move into
that area when they have itty tinies and so it's not that you'll only move those students forward
you will pick up some students along the way but nonetheless the trend in that area should
be downward some and give some of these these schools in this area a little bit of breathing room
and then finally there in the northwestern portion of the district we do have several
bilingual programs that are around here and of course we're looking at elementaries 47 48 young
blood robertson all of these showing if you look at that 29 number 2200 students at youngblood i
don't think that's a surprise to anybody we know we're going to have to be coming back and revisiting
that one thing i do want to mention because it may be confusing for example for robertson the
enrollment that we show is 1510 because that's today's enrollment or a month ago's enrollment
enrollment, but the 25 and 29 projections are based on the new zones. And so that's why you
see that differential there because it's, we're projecting forward using the new zone. So I
didn't want to anybody to be confused in that, in that way at the junior high level and the high
school level, they're going to be really similar to all of those things that I just mentioned.
There are areas in the Northwest that we're expecting to see a lot of growth,
some flattening in the Southern portion of the district here. These are color-coded by the gain
or loss that's expected.
And so we can see we're looking at, you know, Katie by 29 at, I'm sorry, I can't see this.
So Katie is 1,500 students.
And so we've got a capacity there.
I'm on the wrong page.
It's my problem.
So we're looking at Katie at 1,500 students.
So it would be about 300 students over capacity.
And Haskett would be about 500 students over capacity.
And Nelson, 1,000 students over capacity by the fall of 29.
And so for the junior high level, we're really going to have to be moving there.
There's going to be some need there, certainly by the middle of that projection period, to handle some of the growth there.
And then at the high school level, the map I was trying to look at here, similar sorts of numbers.
Like I mentioned, all of those smaller classes will ultimately age forward, and then all of that building is going to come on in the northwest.
west and so then we're looking at building in in the the northwest causing larger numbers in freeman
and in pato and in katie and just by the middle of the projection period katie could be about
1100 students over capacity and freeman 1300 and payto a little bit over capacity so again needs
there in the relatively short term if we're looking at by the fall of 2029 it takes a while
to build a high school and just a summary page here there are a handful of schools at the
elementary level that we're looking at expecting by the time we account for transfers for them to
be a little bit over capacity another handful that we're looking at to be a bit over capacity
at 125 percent or greater at the secondary level i think all of those names are going to be ones
that you would expect wood creek is is right in there sort of with them at the junior high level
but primarily in the northwestern portion of the district and then a few other little pockets of
of pressure at the elementary level.
And so with that, I'm going to open it up to questions.
Questions, trustees?
Mr. President?
Ms. Champagne?
Yes, I have a few.
First of all, I really always enjoy this,
and as a demographer with as much experience as you have,
one question I have, and this really, I guess,
isn't really relevant to any kind of decision we make in the future but I'm
just curious what do you think is the reasoning behind the shift from last
century everyone felt the need you know the goal is to own your own home to now
that's not that doesn't see I have kids in the in the 20s on in their 20s also
so I kind of an experience in this with them also but what do you think the
the changes, the shift of that has been,
and then what kind of challenges does that provide to you
as trying to predict numbers?
Well, they're going to have to live somewhere,
and so I think that's one of the reasons that we're seeing
this rise of the build-to-rent homes.
In some of these areas,
they're neighborhoods that are built-to-rent.
That means they're built to be rented,
and so they can still come in and have grass and a dog
if they want that sort of a thing and yet they don't have to stay tied down.
They decide to move to France or something like that, it's not a problem.
They end their lease and they go. I think a lot of it is financial and I think if
we can see some turn in education or some different type of housing product
that that may drive them back in the other direction but right now yeah I
think that's exactly what we're seeing a lot of these younger teens and 20s and
and even into the early 30s, eventually they normally seem to go ahead and settle down.
We've kind of felt that and heard that sort of stuff with the ages that are now 35,
and they are still going ahead now in buying homes.
They're getting married a little later, they're having kids a little later,
and all of those sorts of things.
It was a delay.
And so we may end up seeing that with the 20-somethings.
But for us, it doesn't matter if they own it or if they buy it.
It's just a matter of what those ratios end up being when they're actually occupied.
All right.
And then I have another follow-up, if that's okay, Mr. President.
So the kindergarten rates are going down, and I've been noticing that, too.
When my kids were little and they were going into kindergarten, we used to do almost, I would almost, I didn't think of it this way then, but I almost think of it this way then, like a selling of kindergarten.
We'd have kindergarten roundups in April, and all the parents would be so excited about it.
and you know my kids are going to Mother's Day out or whatever we get the little flyers and
and everybody be so excited and I think that that has ended now and it's been a while since you know
I've heard of that ever happening again but those those things are so exciting for parents I don't
know if that could be some sort of like almost like a sales pitch and you go to those things
in April that doesn't commit you to enrolling your child in fact I had a I have a child that's born
on September 1st. I didn't enroll her until August, but I still was, you know, excited about
kindergarten, and then everybody, all the PTAs out there, and they do all the, show you all the fun
things that you're going to have at that elementary school, and they really sold the elementary school
to us. We still had options, too. I, kindergarten is not even mandatory, and so parents of kindergarten
nurse have lots of options, and I just would think that we, we could go back to doing some of that,
selling of our own ISD? I'm hearing the word marketing from an awful lot of our
clients. We've done studies for Dallas ISD now three or three of them I guess
every five years and they have lost a lot of students to charters and they've
had a housing shift and several things different things going on. I have heard
through the grapevine that they gained students this year and they went out and
did a big marketing push and there are so many other opportunities for parents
to enroll their students, that marketing is becoming a big thing.
However, what is actually also going on here primarily is the age of the housing.
And some of the areas are so desirable that people do not want to leave.
And so ultimately they age out.
And so that means that those ratios drop from, you know, one point whatever down to .6 or .7.
Now I've done some looking here and compared it to some of our other clients,
and the ratios here seem to be holding better than in another client that I can think of in particular.
That one, they were, say, 0.8.
They had some that were over 1, and a lot of their areas have dropped to, like, 0.4 students per home,
and these are homes that were built in the late 90s, and they're still at 0.4 and 0.5.
You guys seem to be holding that ratio better,
but there are portions of the district that I can look at and say these people may not leave.
They may want to stay for a while and that number may drop off.
Areas that have 55 and over sorts of condos or something like that
where somebody whose kids are out of the house or tired of mowing the grass,
they can move to someplace down the street
and they can still go to the same grocery store and gym and church and that sort of thing.
They will see a turnover faster because there's more desirable areas and reasons
and places to go to let that home turn over.
But if you don't have that in place, then a lot of times people, if the home is great
and the area is great and the area was a master plan community, they want to stay.
All right.
Can I just, just real quick, I just want to follow up.
I know that this isn't your thing, but I was, I am interested in the fact that you said
that you saw that the marketing works in some places.
And I would also think just because we have fewer kids because of what you said, you know,
the aging homes and all that even more reason to you know buy for those kids through um
i guess the marketing of of our our own schools and i i guess this is more of a dr gregorski issue
than of your issue but i would just think that the elementary schools could re redo that and we we
said that and have that back and try to encourage our parents to bring the kids to that particular
you know to our elementary schools thank you I had a couple things first of all
take offense at the 55 and over anyway when you have when you have 40% of the
new housing coming from multifamily and then also 20% of the growth and
projected students so does that make the make it more difficult because it seems
seems like that population would be more mobile. Like they're not going to rent to stay. They're
necessarily going to move around the district, buy a home, maybe another multifamily and so on.
How do you, but do you assume it's all going to be static? It boils down to us. It boils down to
sort of a substitution effect. If it's occupied, you know, even though we may lose some, a third
grader in this particular unit, we may pick up a third or fourth grader in the one adjacent.
And so, because we're counting them at the complex level, of course.
And so we have to sort of assume that that's going to be the case.
It's probably a harder thing for you all to manage as you have student mobility in and
out.
To us, it boils down to occupancies and ratios and what those trends are over time.
Okay.
Do we have much of an influx of like any,
or any like federal subsidized housing
on these multifamily or built-to-rent,
anything like that?
So in the housing report,
you'll see detail on some of them
in the public comment section,
and that's just if when we're researching,
we see that they potentially have,
some of them are essential housing programs,
which means a portion of the units
are reserved for, I believe it's described as housing geared towards police, fire, potentially
young teachers, so people maybe that are coming in at a level where their income wouldn't necessarily
support a full market rate. There are a few of those. We do also check the Texas Department of
TDHCA for their 4% and 9% programs when we do the housing projections to see if there's anything
planned and we'll note that and take that into account when we're looking at
the student ratios but what really drives those student ratios is less that
function and more the function of the number of bedrooms and the complexes
which is what we see overall so overall with your new housing multifamily units
that are being built they tend to be class a which is a higher rent class and
they tend to have less larger number of bedroom units so they may have ones to
twos and threes or studios ones and twos, but they have more studios and ones which are geared
geared towards young professionals. It would be harder for a family to move into that type of
unit and therefore consequently less students. So did you say some developments have a earmarked
a certain portion of their plans for that? Yes, yes. And that you see that across the region.
There's different state and federal programs that allow them to do that.
Okay. It just sounds like we're, just an overall comment, we're needing more schools up north
and maybe we take some of the ones in the south and the schools in the south and move them up
north. Is that maybe the plan Ted? Mr. Braley? Yes it's the kind of stuff that keeps myself and Dr.
G up at night and we talk about that all the time. I think that I think what they describe though is
interesting because you've got this huge amount of growth in the Northwest and
then you see the the South maybe the Southwest kind of maybe not regenerating
as fast so I think I think at some point yes sir I think there is some room to to
have some some real discussions about the tenants boundary modifications not
necessarily throughout the district but in some in some big areas because I
But I think it would be foolish, if I may, just, I think it would be foolish to just
build a bunch of schools and not look at things like that and use your facilities as wisely
as you should.
CHAIRMAN BRYANT L. Thank you.
Questions?
MS.
I have a question.
CHAIRMAN BRYANT L. All right.
Ms. Calhoun?
MS.
I'm looking at the percentage increase over the five years.
It's back on slide four.
I know that we're first in the region for total student growth, but as far as percentage increase over five years, we're not even close.
Right.
If I'm reading that correctly.
Now, obviously, some of these schools have quite a bit of ways before they catch up to, you know, 94, 95,000 kids.
Does that take into account?
I mean, should we take that into account when we're looking at our growth rates and we're looking at how we expand?
We're looking at Cleveland ISD, and they're growing at 81% over the last five years.
They're number one, or even going to Lamar Consolidated, which you correctly ascertained that they're nipping at our heels, you know, at 33%.
Do we know what the driver of that is?
Is that something that we take into account or something that we kind of dig into in terms of what do you guys look at that?
For the percent overall?
For the percent, right.
Right, so why are we seeing such a large percent elsewhere rather than here?
Because of the sheer size of Katy ISD and the number of students that you've got now,
you know, a 10% increase annually for, well, we started working for Frisco ISD in 1999
when they had about 35 or 3,800 students, and we're gaining 30% per year.
Right.
And so for a district that was staffed up for 3,800 kids,
one in three being new every year was a massive challenge.
And yet, it's 1,000 kids or something, 1,200 kids a year for them.
And so you guys had 4,000 students that you gained a couple of years ago, two years in growth.
And so we, for our purposes, we look at both.
For those that are small and growing, then, of course, the percent increase is going to be really high.
But when it comes to a district that is robust and doing a good job, they're staffed up,
then we're looking at the sheer numbers of students that are coming in because
that really is what drives the number of facilities you've got to have on the
ground and then one of the other questions I had is I noted that the
focus was on the kinder the kinder students on here and when we're talking
about that bulge that you mentioned why is it the focus on kinder because you
said that we don't really know how many kinder students when they move in or
actually coming in here because there's so many programs and all those other
things why is it not focused on like a third grade rather than why like could
you explain can you explain that so when we're talking about how many students
are you going to gain how many are going to be enrolled here next year a big
chunk of that is a function of exiting 12th grade and entering kindergarten and
so that's where we have to start right and when I'm talking about the
kindergarten being low it wasn't just the kindergarten is low the first and
second grade there were all of those numbers all of them are low yes so when i'm talking about
a shift you i've got that bulge that was moving through like i showed there on the table that
that was showing the maroon sort of working its way through that was to emphasize that you've got
large classes leaving in your 12th grade and they're being replaced by smaller classes so it's
the entering of the kindergarten class that is always offsetting that 12th grade class we look
at all of them we have to look at all of them and understand what's going on some districts have a
jump from k to one or from one to two if they happen to have large church schools or something
like that that were daycare and then they also enroll kindergarten then they then they enroll
in first grade and so we have to we have to pay attention to all of those attrition retention
rates for every grade every grade level that comes through it makes sense i'm just curious
like i said i just wanted to kind of pull it apart and see why just for my own curiosity yeah it's
It's really all of those grades.
KDISD has been for the longest, our rule of thumb has always been any district that has EE through 5 as their grade level,
their grade grouping, almost half exactly of their kids are going to be in elementary grades except for Katie.
Katie has always been under that.
It's been .48.
It's been .46.
Those sorts of things even back 20 years ago.
I ought to look it up at this point because I don't know, but it's always been a little under that.
It's always been, Katie has always felt from that standpoint as though it were like an aspirational district, you know, that people may not be here with those kindergarten kids.
It takes them a little while to get here.
I've got friends that did that.
They were elsewhere, and then they came here when their kids were in second grade, that kind of a deal.
So all of that, though, is rolled into, that's why I was trying to emphasize all of these different pieces that go into the projections.
And when we start seeing those lower numbers, they're going to work through.
Right.
And we have to be prepared for that.
all right that's all i have thank you i had a follow-up uh on the on the enrollment forecast of
uh 101 for 2029 and then in the mid case 103 for 2034. do you recall what that was a year or two
ago like you know i did look it up because i knew you guys would ask i will have to look it up it's
a little flatter um let me find my notes here so it was about 103 for the midpoint and then it was
about 108 for the end point and almost all of that has to do with those little grades those younger
grades working through if we let the model work through and those kids go ahead and move on
forward you know are we over projected your elementary this year by a bit and so when those
move up and they become sixth graders and so forth then that that affects basically in a handful of
years it affects all 12 grades you know to flatter it is flatter flatter than it was a year ago yes
Okay 101 versus 103 and 103 versus 108. Yes. Okay thank you. Okay. Anything else?
I would just add on the spirit of this with the past growth allotment again TEA publishes that
information and KDISD is the fastest growing school district not in just the region but in
in the state that we grew over the last six years.
According to the TA, 14,872 students.
There was four districts that grew over 10,000 students.
That was Katy, Prosper, Lamar Consolidated, and Conroe.
The 10th fastest growing school district in the state
grew only 4,999 students.
So at our 15,000, it's no longer a big percentage,
but it's still the highest number of new belly buttons to the school district.
Thank you. Thank you for that. Anything else? Thank you very much. Really
appreciated. Great stuff. Good information. Our next item is a discussion item 7.1
7.1 Discuss and consider future Board approval of naming Elementary #47 as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
and that's to discuss and consider, and we have 7.1 and also 7.2,
discuss and consider future board approval of naming of elementary number 47
as recommended by the naming advisory committee,
and then following by that, after that would be elementary number 48
as recommended by the naming advisory committee.
And the presenter for both is Dr. Andrea Grooms, Chief Communications Officer.
Welcome.
Thank you, Mr. Perez, and good evening, President Perez, Trustees, and Superintendent Gorgorski.
This past September, the Board will recall that the Trustees authorized the Superintendent to form a naming advisory committee for two new elementary schools that will open in fall 2025, Elementary School No. 47 and Elementary School No. 48.
Following that authorization, the district solicited for name nominations for seven and a half weeks before bringing a committee together to review nominations and select a recommendation for the board's consideration this evening.
The naming advisory's recommendation for elementary number 47 is Alfred and Ann Boudny.
And I have with me Ms. Rachel Ross, who is our media relations manager.
She's here with me to read aloud some additional information about this recommendation.
She tells me it's about a three minute read, but a lot of good stuff.
So we'll buckle in for about three minutes and learn a little bit more about Mr. Alfred
and Anne Boudny.
Good evening, Board and Dr. Gorgorski.
Alfred Al Boudny always aspired to teach, starting his career in 1975 at Eagle Lake
middle school where he met ann he later joined kdisd at west memorial elementary in 1981 he
opened nottingham country elementary with richard bruce as a fifth grade team lead and in 1982
he and ann helped open memorial parkway junior high al served as department chair and contributed
to the district realignment committee for fifth and sixth grade centers in 1987 al received a
KDISD certificate of recognition for leading students in district level history competitions.
In 1991, he helped open McDonald Junior High where he was social studies department chair
for 15 years and was named teacher of the year in 2000. He earned a certificate of recognition from
the KDVFW and a celebration of excellence award in 2001. His final role before retiring in 2014
was at West Memorial Junior High where he received an honorary life membership from the PTA.
Al retired with 39 years of teaching, 34 of them in Katy ISD.
In retirement, he tutors at Katy Elementary, serves as a Keys mentor, and volunteers at several schools including McRoberts, Memorial Parkway, and Tom Wilson Elementary Schools.
He remains active in the Katy area retired educators supporting scholarships and community projects.
Anne began her education career at Eagle Lake Middle School.
school from 1979 to 1982. She taught language arts at Seeley Junior High and Seeley High School
in 1982 and joined KDSD with the opening of Memorial Parkway Junior High where she served
as department chair for 30 years retiring in 2015 after 33 years at the school she contributed to
the Blue Ribbon Writing Committee textbook adoption committee and language arts curriculum
COMMITTEE. JUST BEFORE RETIREMENT SHE RECEIVED AN HONORARY LIFE MEMBERSHIP FROM THE MEMORIAL
PARKWAY JUNIOR HIGH PTA AND ANN IS AN ACTIVE MEMBER OF THE KATIE AREA RETIRED EDUCATORS
ORGANIZATION. AL AND ANN ALSO REPRESENTED KATIE ISD AT TEXAS MIDDLE SCHOOL ASSOCIATION CONFERENCES
MENTORED NEW TEACHERS AND REGULARLY SERVED AS COOPERATING TEACHERS FOR STUDENT TEACHERS.
AL AND ANN HAVE TWO DAUGHTERS WHO GRADUATED FROM KATIE ISD SCHOOLS. AARON BOOTNEY NOW MARRIED WITH
two sons and a daughter works as a land representative at Exxon Mobil.
Alyssa Budney attended Diane Winborn Elementary, King Elementary, Katie Junior High, and Morton
Ranch High School. She recently earned her master's through the KDISD Aspiring Assistant
Principals program with the University of Houston Victoria. Alyssa has taught at McRoberts and Tom
Wilson Elementary Schools and is currently on the inaugural staff at Nelson Junior High.
Al earned an Associates of Arts degree from Morton County Junior College, followed by a Bachelor of
Arts in Teaching with a minor in English from Sam Houston State University in 1975, and received an
Associates of Arts degree from Blinn Junior College in 1976 and a Bachelor of Arts in Teaching.
and Library Science with minors in English and History from Sam Houston State University in 1978.
Okay, thank you Mrs. Ross.
Thank you so much, thank you. Really impressive and really appreciate your service to KDISD.
Any comments or questions? Mr. President? Champagne? I am so happy with the committee
who decided to do this and I wasn't on the committee but I'm very grateful for
the decision that they made I've known the Bhutanese for quite a while and not
through KDISD but as customers at Hallmark so anyway and then I found out
that they were famous so I know that they are very very involved with
volunteering and they also are just so concerned about children and children's
well-being and we spend a lot of our time talking about that and even with
Alyssa and all that so it's a great family and it was a great decision and I
couldn't be more happy for you all and the future children at that school mr.
president miss Tami I'm I'm very excited because I opened Nottingham country with
mr budney and i opened as a student i was a student and then as a student i helped open or i
opened memorial parkway junior high with mr bimmy and mrs boudney i never had either one of them but
they had my sisters and i always knew that they were expected had very high expectations of their
students which as an adult i appreciate as a child maybe not so much but um but i do appreciate that
I think that's a great family to represent our district and that we do want to have high expectations for our students
So thank you for your commitment to that
Thank you, Mr. President and Miss Fox
What it what a great honor for the Bhutanese and what a great blessing you will be to Katie I see and the children
of your school I
Know you you're delightful. I love that you are still after you've retired so involved in
You're mentoring, you're helping, you're retired educators.
I see you there often and it's just great.
And Alyssa, to have the generational teaching and the love and learning that you pour into
your students is so appreciated and it's great to see your brother and sister here with you
tonight, Mr. Budme and the brother-in-law.
We talked about being outlaw sometimes with the famous families. It's nice to see you
Thank you very much
Thank you
7.2 Discuss and consider future Board approval of naming Elementary #48 as recommended by the Naming Advisory Committee.
Okay, so I will move on to item 7.2 the recommendation for elementary number 48 a
Naming committee or naming advisory committee came together to review
Nominations to bring forth a recommendation for this board's consideration this evening
the name that they are recommending is James and Mitzi Cross and again I'm
going to ask Miss Rachel Ross to provide us with some information about that
recommendation through a bio. James and Mitzi Cross both have extensive careers
in education contributing to their communities and inspiring future
generations of students and educators. James began his teaching career in
Levellyn, Texas where he taught English and US history while also serving as
assistant varsity and then varsity tennis coach at Levellyn Junior High
until 1998. That same year he transitioned into administration as
assistant principal at Levellyn Junior High before going on to become the
principal at Whiteface Junior High High School. James moved to KDISD's Beck Junior
High in 2002 where he served as assistant principal and later as
principal until 2009. His leadership journey culminated in his role as principal of Cinco
Ranch High School in KDSD where he served until 2022. Mitzi Cross also had a long and fulfilling
career in education. Her career began as a seventh grade English language arts teacher
at Brownfield ISD from 1983 to 1986. She then taught fifth grade social studies in ELA at
Roosevelt ISD before moving to Levellyn ISD where she taught fifth grade ELA. Mitzi then shifted to
the role of librarian in levelin before becoming a fifth grade ela teacher at alexander elementary
in kdisd in 2002. she later served as a librarian at diane windborn elementary and michael griffin
elementary in the district mitzi retired after a 40-year career in education having made a lasting
impact on countless students james james and mitzi have deep ties to education james comes from a
family of educators his brother served as a teacher and coach at wood creek junior high in kdisd
and as assistant principal in Cy Fair ISD.
The couple's daughter and son-in-law are both teachers in KDISD,
with their son-in-law having previously been named Teacher of the Year at West Memorial Junior High in 2018.
James and Mitzi's youngest daughter is currently pursuing a career in education.
Together, James and Mitzi Krause have made significant contributions to the KDISD school community,
nurturing generations of students and fostering a legacy of learning and service.
James graduated from Texas Tech University with a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Master of Education.
Mitzi graduated from Texas Tech University with a Bachelor of Science in Education and a Master's in Educational Technology and Library Specialist.
Thank you very much. Thank you and thank you for your service to KDISD. Thank you.
Any comments, questions?
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
Congratulations to the crosses. Again, what an honor for you. I know a lot of namesakes and they're always like, what? It's daunting.
but you are beloved in KDISD. 70 years of combined education. Both of your
daughters are educators. She married an educator who's teacher of the year. I
mean it and your brother is an educator and your sister-in-law. I mean it's
education is your life and the difference you've made for students and
and for families is well known and so appreciated.
And I'm very happy for you.
And your little granddaughter is so talented.
I saw her in the musical at Griffin Elementary.
You did such a great job.
Yeah, so I could gush all night on both of you.
I know that blessings are about to pour out
on boys and girls when they see you coming down the hall.
You will be treated like rock stars.
ours and you will seek to be a blessing but the blessing will be multiplied with
those boys and girls and so for you to continue your legacy with education it
is incredible the Katie magazine today wrote an article about namesakes from
our from our celebration at legacy field on Friday night our namesake
appreciation night and just seeing some of the quotes from those legacy namesakes and like how
much it means to them to be a namesake and i'm just so very happy for all of you thank you any
other yes mr president champagne this is another family that i indirectly knew from my job at
Hallmark because Mitzi's father and mother shopped there and actually your
I know your father was a coach correct and I don't know was your mother also a
teacher so okay so that even adds to it and they're very very wonderful people
and then I found out that they were the parents of you all but I just want to
say my my relationship with especially my indirect relationship with Mr. Crosses
is I had half of my friends went to Cinco Ranch High School
because we came from an elementary school
where we ranched to McMeans and to Beck,
and then the Beck kids went on.
And so all of the parents that I knew
that were heavily involved with the volunteering and all that
back in Exley just always ranted and raved about Mr. Cross.
And so I knew just from the personal testimonies
that I received from my friends
that you were an awesome principal and I appreciate all the care and concern that
you've given throughout the years to the parents and the students and then Mitzi
I've gotten to know since I've been on the board and I visited you a couple
times in Griffin and I can see how the children just gravitate to you and I
just really appreciate all that you have both done for the children for the last
30 40 years thank you so much thank you thank you so much thank you thank you
very much thank you
dr. dr. grooms will we talk about the next step or are we gonna talk about the
next step now about this I apologize would you like me to talk about what
happens next okay so like it like it doesn't happen tonight right there's
Right, so this evening is just a recommendation from the naming advisory committee. It will be followed by a public forum that will be held in December. We will provide information about the public forum following this evening's meeting and throughout the week leading up to the public forum in December.
That public forum will provide opportunity for anybody in the community to speak on the recommended names.
After that, the committee that recommended the names for this evening will shortly reconvene, consider the additional input,
should they wish to further inform the recommendation that they have brought to the board.
and then typically it would be anticipated that the board would take some type of action at a future meeting.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
7.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the November 2024 budget amendments.
We'll now move on to item 7.3,
and that is discuss and consider board approval of the November 2024 budget amendments,
and the presenter is Esperanza Rios, Director of Budget and Treasury.
Welcome. Good evening board president. That is.
Board of trustees and Dr. tonight we bring forth budget amendments, which are all direct functional offsets.
These functional offsets include assessment, clerk, mileage, building modifications, camera, installation, instructional supplies, graduation expenses, extracurricular activities, interpreter services.
extra duty pay, overtime, and student competitions.
The approval of these amendments will result in no impact to the general operating fund
balance.
We are also bringing forth a capital operating budget amendments which will repurpose current
funding for the building control replacements at single ranch, junior high, and high school,
and for the life safety systems at several high schools and elementaries.
These were presented at the October board meeting and approved, and this will also result in no change to the capital projects fund balance.
We do, because of the way the board meetings are set up for this month, we do have some additional functional offsets,
which we will add to the bottom of the report for December.
So those can actually go ahead and be processed also, so we don't actually have to kind of stop on those.
but only those that we deem are necessary that have to be that won't be
able to provide services for January.
Any questions?
Thank you. Any questions?
Thank you very much.
now we'll move on to the board approval of the consider discuss consider board approval the
annual review investment policies and strategies as perhaps a Reyes continued item 7.4 is the
7.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the annual review of investment policies and strategies.
annual review of the investment policies and strategies this item is a compliance requirement
with district policy CDA to review investment strategies by fund type and
to approve brokers investment pools and training resources which are included in
the in the board documentation the public funds investment act PFI a
governs investment activities by school districts and is and its requirements
are incorporated into our CDA local and legal policies the FIA authorized
Authorized investments are described in the policies and our quarterly reports meet all CDA disclosure requirements.
Your consideration of item 7.4 meets the requirements set forth in the Public Funds Investment Act.
Any questions?
Mr. President, I just want to make sure I understand.
So something precipitated, you're suggesting a change to local policy?
Yes, ma'am.
And what was that?
So some of the changes that we're making is so we, the investment officers.
Could you pull your microphone a little bit closer?
Better?
Thank you.
Okay.
So we're updating our investment officers to make sure that we include all of them due to some changes in our organization.
And so that's one of the changes that we have.
And then the other change is, based on the meeting that we had last year,
There were some questions that came out about how those funds are actually allocated and how we can go ahead and use those funds.
So we aligned all those strategies to go so they're all kind of similar in how they're able to be used.
And then there's a part of it that talks about what we're required for PFIA for our brokers.
And so we updated that information to go ahead and make sure that we're complying with PFIA.
Okay.
So the changes are kind of like housekeeping changes.
Yes, ma'am.
Honestly, okay. Yes, and you're going to be making those updates to the physical policy or who does we submitted them?
Okay, and so once it all the changes happen when they presented those who could change that then time
Okay, I noticed the policy was last changed June of 23
So is this a typical update that usually happens from year to year? We review them every year and
we work with
TCG to make sure that we are compliant with BFIA and so based on those recommendations
These are the changes that we make. Okay. Thank you
every minute changes to the investment the brokers or the
The funds per se like any new no we got to the funds to the brokers
We do work with hub investment partners
Which is TCG who used to be called TCG and then based on who they work on the brokers that they have and those are who?
We are are we updated this list on there. So I think
I think we didn't make any changes this year to those.
And we're using the same pools that they're on the same?
Yes, sir.
We haven't made any changes to any of our investments,
our strategies at this time.
Anything else?
Mr. President?
Mr. Redmond?
Thank you.
So saying we earned an additional $21 million in interest?
That is what we earned in interest in the general fund.
Yeah.
So in the general fund, based on our investments and just interest, that's just what we have in our pools and our bank.
Yes, $21 million.
Is there anything that earmarks that for anything or just goes back into the general fund that can be allocated whatever this board wants to do?
That's actually what we look at when we allocate the revenue.
So that actually has helped with our deficit to kind of reduce the deficit that we have based on where we keep those funds.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
7.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of the September 2024 Financial Reports.
Next we have discuss and consider Board approval of the September 2024 financial reports.
Presenter Jamie Hines, Assistant Superintendent of Finance.
Good evening, President Perez. Good evening.
Thank you, trustees, Superintendent Grodorski.
You have before you our November financial reports, including our financial statements, our construction report, and our tax report through the month of September, as well as our check register summary for the month of September.
Since September is the first month of our fiscal year, there's not a lot that you can really look at with this, but I am going to talk about a few things.
When we look at this each month, our financial statements each month, we really look at the percentage of the fiscal year that we've gone through.
And one month is 8.3%, so that's the number you kind of utilize as you're scanning through these.
And I think the one thing I'm going to draw you to on the first page, the interim statement of revenues and expenditures, as well as our changes in fund balance, is the line for 6,300.
and that's supplies and materials and you'll notice that that's higher than
than 8% and and I'm just gonna I'll show you in just a moment and we'll go back
and look but that really comes into the fact that during that first month we're
really fulfilling a bunch of our software renewment renewals and so we
kind of front load those and so I'll show you that in just a moment if you'll
You'll turn to the next page, that function 53 data processing services.
If you scroll over, you can see that it's at 15%.
And so for that function 53, that's what causes that 6,300.
So those correlate, and we kind of bring that up each year.
But just wanted to make sure I brought that to your attention.
Also, on financial reports, this next month, these will go to consent next month, but we will not bring our October financial reports before you the way I usually do and do a presentation, but they will be presented for consent agenda.
So you will be approving those and if you have questions about those you can pull those out
And I'll be glad to come up and we can talk through any of that
One other thing I wanted to bring up
Since the last time I did the
Financial reports is the construction report and miss gazelle a you and you and I believe requested us putting
Some sort of notation when there's a change
From month to month on those estimates that are over or under projections
And if you'll notice on that page now, there is an asterisk next to those and down at the bottom
It'll say change from prior months. So we have added that in so that makes it hopefully a little bit easier for you to read
And I'll be glad to take any questions concerning the financial reports at this time
any questions trustees
Mr. President
Thank you
Yes, that was means because Ella Thank You, sir
Thank you very much for the notation.
I mean, it really helps.
We read so much in preparation for this meeting, and I read all these details as much as I
can on these financial statements.
I really appreciate the asterisk.
I actually didn't notice it.
I apologize.
I was going to ask you about it.
I used my glasses, too.
Thank you.
And that's, let's see, do we have a way of showing, so I've got to go back to last month
to see the delta?
Yes.
Is there no way to show?
You would have to go back to last month and to see the Delta. Okay, we did look into how we could show that it was
Kind of difficult the way the reports are presented formatting, but we we do have the prior month available
So we can show that if it's something additional maybe we could we could talk about it
But we we looked into the best way to do that and we really couldn't find a way without
Almost adding and revamping. Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'll try it out
Thank you very much.
I had a question that relates to some of the projects, the designs.
But maybe I'll ask that later on when Ms. Kastman is here.
She's an expert on that.
Because we mentioned the different bond, 21 and 23, et cetera.
So maybe I'll just ask that.
Thank you very much.
7.6 Discuss and consider Board adoption of a Resolution to cast Katy Independent School District's votes for the Fort Bend Central Appraisal District Board of Directors.
Okay, the next item, 7.6, is to discuss and consider board adoption of the resolution
to cascade independent school districts' votes for the Fort Bend Appraisal District Board of Directors.
And, Mr. Hines, it looks like your name is down for that.
I was making sure. I got a little confused there.
So again, we went through this last year, and prior to that, we never had to do this every single year.
It was something they did every other year.
But now that there's been a change because of Senate Bill, I believe it's 621, they actually require, they've changed the way all of the CADs do the elections.
As you all know, you submitted nominees for both Fort Bend Central Appraisal District as well as Harris Central Appraisal District.
So we'll go through both of those.
But with that, the next piece of that is actually casting our votes.
and so the district is given a certain number of votes to be spread across any
and all of the nominees that are available just for Fort Bend just want
to kind of mention there are five director positions that are available
and there are five nominees available so it's foreseeable that it's probable that
that all of them will be elected.
But there's one reason we're bringing this before you,
otherwise it would have been a little bit
of a waste of time, and that's that if one
of those nominees gets zero votes,
then they would not be able to become a director.
So everyone does have to receive a vote
in order to become a director.
So I have gone ahead and brought the resolution
as well as the election ballot,
and this is your election your election ballot and so you're you're welcome to
spread those exactly how you however you would like to and then once you've made
that decision which you could do it this week then that would go to consent
agenda at the next meeting and then we have to have those in the mail and to
them before December 15th so the next meeting gives us plenty of time to do that.
So I understand that with regard to Fort Bend, each of these five are going to get elected.
There are five positions unless they get nobody votes for them at all.
That's exactly right.
So just just you could we we have in the past voted for Mr. Paul Stamatis and cast all of our votes toward him.
them. But now that you can spread those across, you could do whatever you want. But you could
give some votes to all the others, a few votes. You can do it however you want. This is your
vote. But just wanted to kind of give you some scenarios there that you...
I mean, there's no reason why we wouldn't just spread them out, but I can take it.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Okay. I can take care of that, and we'll get it filled out and ready for you all.
And then we'll vote on that next week.
Yes, sir.
It'll go to consent agenda next week.
And if there are additional questions, I'll be glad to come up and answer at that time.
Mr. President.
We're on to 7.7 with regard to Harris.
Can I have a question?
Oh, yes.
Go ahead, Ms. Adela.
So the only reason why maybe perhaps not to spread our votes equally across the five names is if anyone knows these individuals to not be up to the task, I guess.
And so I don't know any of them and I encourage the board if you do or you know people who might know them
Have a good sense of comfort. It'd be good good to do. Thank you, and I'm
the biog
Kind of the profiles from each of those was included from each of the central appraisal districts
So those are included in there, so if you want to go read about each of them that is available
within the
Mr. President, there's only one person on here that I could attest to, and that is
Pastor Mattis, and he's been on this board, I don't know how long he's been on it, but
from everything I've ever heard about him or anything, I know he's done a great job
in that position, so that's the only person I can personally attest to.
I think Dr. Gregorci, do you know how long he's been on there?
He's been on there for...
I'd bet at least maybe five years.
Somewhere in that neighborhood, I'm thinking.
I think for as long as I've been superintendent.
That's why I say about five or six.
But it seems to be.
I've only heard good things about him.
We're going to end up with all five of them.
Regardless.
Regardless.
Unless nobody votes for one guy.
That's correct, yes.
Mr. President, is it your recommendation to just divide them equally between the five?
Yeah.
I don't have any problem with that.
So we'll fill it out, and then next week we'll vote.
We'll approve it next week.
Next month.
Next month.
Yes.
7.7 Discuss and consider Board adoption of a Resolution to cast Katy Independent School District's votes for the Harris Central Appraisal District Board of Directors.
Okay.
So we're moving on to 7.7.
And that's, go ahead.
And this is the exact same thing except for Harris Central Appraisal District.
The difference is that we have 145 votes versus probably 407.
And these, though, would be spread across any number of candidates that you would like to.
But, again, there are five that will be elected, and there are actually eight that are nominees at this point.
Just as a reminder, this board nominated Mrs. Martina Lamond-Dixon and Mr. Bill Frazier in September.
So you're welcome to cast those votes in whichever way you'd like.
Do we have any discussion? Any comments on that?
I just with some comments in different conversations
People elected to this board and and people who know some of these individuals I wanted to share some information that gathered
It's so we're aware we have 145 votes based on our tax base basically that's correct
the weight of our taxing unit and
And HISC, for example, is going to have gajillions of votes and City of Houston a lot heavier, right?
Because they're purely Harris County.
This is purely Harris County, but this is going to be ours is broken up, I believe.
I believe by the new bill that it is school districts have a certain number and your distribution is based on the school district sizes.
I believe that's correct.
So I don't want to be wrong.
That's how I understand it, too.
Okay, so in some of the conversations to help narrow our focus, I understand that Robinson, Noriega, and Bandy, I believe is the name?
Yeah, Bandy are likely going to already be elected to the board.
Of course, we can vote however we want, even though we nominated two, right?
Yes, ma'am.
It doesn't matter.
So I'm just mentioning that as information.
so that really it's Sullivan Dixon Fraser Shanklin and Cohen five people for three spots if you will
so that may be a little complicated for everybody but I'd like to recommend that our board consider
giving all of our boats for Bill Frazier I've spoke of him before I've met him spoken with
him I like that he's
He would be the only elected CPA to this board, which is a very, it's a financial board, if you will.
You're working with numbers, and people's appraised values are their homes and properties, which affect all of us.
I love that as a CPA, I think it's a great asset.
It's important to build the confidence of a taxpayer in how their properties are appraised,
so that when we as a school district, what benefit is that to us?
that's when we go to our taxpayers and ask for bonds to be raised for specific
capital projects that we need it's important to have confidence in our in
our base so I'd like to recommend us considering that in in in and you know
if you don't know these individuals other than their resumes that they share
with us it's nice when you know people who endorse them or suggest so I've
heard a couple of those conversations about Bill Frazier a lot of confidence
behind him I did also understand miss Dixon if she is a sitting board member
in humble ISD and a lot of other boards for that matter she's been on the board
for a while but that I understand her own school board did not nominate her
for this position that it was I think a family member who works for H ISD who
nominated her so i just want to take that into consideration um and consider that um and that
also um it's a little confusing with uh i thought it was sb2 but i may be wrong in the last
legislative session that this board um in our board docs it talks about the people's terms that
are expiring and it labels them but like you know ms dixon would represent school districts and mr
or yada yada would represent cities other than houston etc where they have certain representations
but these board positions are now at large there is no focus that they will have so i just wanted
to clarify that for the board so that's a change from the last time we considered yes ma'am that's
correct and they are at large versus there used to be and we had a single vote as kdisd for the
prior ones. One other thing to note is these are given in staggered years in
terms of their their term. So some will be one, two, and three years I believe
are the staggered terms which I asked Fort Bend about that and they haven't
even they weren't able to describe exactly who would be in the staggered
terms at the time that I asked them. So I think this is the first year that they've had to do
this. So I think the counties are trying to kind of put together the way this all works. But
the voting is going specifically by what the new law says.
Thank you. Mr. President, may I ask some questions? Mr. Hines, can you tell me,
I know Martina Dixon is currently on the board.
Can you tell me who is in the current of these eight who are in the current, who's currently holding a position?
I'm sorry.
Is Paul Shanklin one of them?
I'm sorry.
I do not know the answer to that.
Okay.
Because I'm kind of trying to look through here, and I see some of them have listed it.
but I would like to say something on behalf of Martina Dixon I realized that
I I didn't know that that she wasn't nominated by her board but she does have
a lot of experience with the Harris County Appraisal District and being on
school board so she kind of has both roles and she can advocate for school
boards and for ISDs throughout the the county because of her experience being
being on a school board and also being on the Harris County.
Also, I would like to say about Mr. Frazier,
and I do know Martina personally also,
so personally she attends a lot of things.
I see her in a lot of things, a lot of learning opportunities.
Now, as far as Mr. Frazier is concerned, I do not know him.
I would never speak ill of him or anything,
but just reading his resume,
He seems to have no experience with Harris County Appraisal District or School Board.
He doesn't even list anything to do with any volunteering at all at schools.
He is a member of Senior Council of St. Martin's Episcopal Church, the treasurer, a member of Bishop's Committee of Lord of the Streets and Episcopal Church, providing services for the homeless in Midtown.
Those are all great, but they're nothing to do with any schools.
I just wanted to say that.
The last thing I would like to know is since Mrs. Cuzzella brought up the point of throwing all the votes for Mr. Frazier, what are our other options?
Do we say, oh, I'm going to give a third to them, a third to them, a third to them, or a fifth to them, a fifth to them?
How do we come up to an agreement like that?
Madam, those 145 votes are yours to use as you would like.
And so you can split those in any way across any number of candidates that you would like
to.
There's no requirement in terms of percentages or having to be equal percentages or anything
else.
It can be split however this Board would like to.
So my follow-up question would be actually to the Mr. President.
How are we going to do this?
You know, we already know that one of the school board members wants to give all the votes to someone.
And I'm not saying I want to give all my votes to one person or not.
But, you know, I may have some feelings about giving some to some, some to some, you know, whatever.
And she might have a different feeling.
He might have a different, you know, we all, seven different people might have different things that we want to do.
So how will we?
So I would say at a minimum we focus on the two people we nominated and that's it
We don't really want to worry about whether that be all to one or split at 50-50
There's no reason to be looking at the others
That seems fair
Mr. President the only thing to make things more complicated is on this list the only person I've spent so we want to do is make
It more complicated. Well, that's what I was gonna do
is Paul Shanklin is also serving as a trustee and Aldine and
We shared multiple meals with him, had lots of conversations.
I think he would represent our desires very well.
They asked who do we know, who we spend time with.
I'm not sure I wasn't silent.
Thank you.
Mr. President, may I make a comment?
I hear what's being said about representing schools,
and I appreciate that, and I appreciate the advocacy for the schools,
but my understanding is HCAD isn't necessarily there to represent the schools.
That's what the school boards are there to do.
So I was just quickly reading through one of the candidate profiles,
and she actually pretty eloquently states it.
It is important for me to ensure that HCAD prioritizes taxpayer needs above all else.
So when we're looking at having someone be representative,
And the reason why that's important, just in case, when taxpayers feel that their assessments are fair, they are more likely to trust the system and feel confident that their contributions are supporting essential services like schools, public safety, and infrastructure.
So when we do cast our votes for someone, I think it would be good to cast our votes for somebody who understands that system and understands that appraisal system.
So I appreciate that, yes, we want to advocate for schools.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't, but that is what the trustees are supposed to be doing,
and that is not something necessarily that the HCAD is focused on.
They should be more focused, I feel like, on supporting and representing the taxpayers.
So to that end, I mean, Bill Frazier seems like a great pick,
but I'm not done looking through everything.
I'm just throwing that out there as a comment.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. President, any other comments?
Do we know where any of these candidates on the actual,
where they voted for in the last public election?
Do we know, like, because some school districts or taxing entities get to appoint people,
there's also an election, right?
right? Or any of these on there that were not chosen by the people before?
That ran previously? Yeah, like the
voters said no. I don't know what the past, I don't know who the incumbents
are exactly or the past, I don't know who the
incumbents are other than Martha Dixon, I guess.
I didn't know either, I was just wondering.
Maybe that's something we can find out between now and December. Go ahead, Mr. Smith.
Not to complicate things even worse, but I did want to state that, you know, every year the appraisal districts across the state are required to submit all appraisals to the state comptroller's office.
We're going to report on that in the next couple of weeks.
We were informed today.
And in January, they're going to release the results of that property value study.
And that's the comptroller saying, yes, appraisal district, you're doing a good job, or no, appraisal district, you're not doing a good job.
That's the state comptroller's office that does that.
The ramifications to a school district are if an appraisal district is not doing a good
job and is undervaluing houses or appraisals, the state comptroller's office will assign
state values.
And basically, you all have heard me talk about we're paid based on our wealth, right?
And if the state comptroller says you're not taxing, then that's their job.
that you're not taxing at the appropriate level because your appraisals are valued too low they
will penalize school districts across the state and give them local value so you're not getting
taxes then you're not getting state funding that's that's the uh importance of an appraisal district
basically just to do a good job yeah so we and and from a from an isd standpoint we just want
to make sure they're doing a good job yes to be fair to taxpayers but also to be fair to
the system that pays us based on our wealth.
Right.
So we receive that information from the appraisal district.
We don't generate that.
We just want to make sure that they do a good job.
When they certify their values in July and send out statements and all that stuff,
all of that data from all parcels across the state are sent to the comptroller's office.
And the comptroller provides a does a big study called the property value study and they make sure that school districts are not
Or
They make sure that appraisal districts are doing it appropriately and so I'll give you an example
Let's say we had a nuclear plant. We don't and that nuclear plant was valued at two billion dollars, but
Because of the interest on the appraisal district, we just cut them a deal was only a value met a billion
Well, the state of Texas would get that and say, hey, you have valued that too low.
You should have valued it at $2 billion because it's worth $2 billion.
And therefore, they will penalize us or a school district for not doing that.
So the hammer that makes them do a good job is that makes appraisal districts do a good
job is the threat that they are not that the state could hurt school districts throughout
the state.
It doesn't affect counties or cities and all that, but it's school districts because we are paid based on our wealth per student.
Right.
Okay.
Thank you.
I have a question.
Go ahead, Ms. Goplin.
In the last few years, has there, we'll say 10, has Harris County ever had an instance where they did undervalue and they were penalized by the state of Texas?
Not to my knowledge.
It has happened once in one of our appraisal districts that I can remember, and we were
put on the, what's it called, the probation.
I can't think of the right word, but we were put on a probation for a year, and had that
happened again, we would have gotten state values for that county.
So it would have been either, so it wasn't through Harris, it would have either had to
have been waller or fort bend who would have gotten that probation or would have gotten that
ding but when we're talking about harris county that has not occurred in the last 10 years my
recollection it is not okay i mean i've got my appraisals and i've never seen them undervalued
i'm sure everybody else in here just got theirs and um definitely not undervalued so i appreciate
that to take that into consideration for sure um but i just wanted to make sure that that wasn't
something that we were historically dealing with um so mr president thank you okay all right
mr president yes go ahead miss fox so i um
i'm fine with dividing them three ways between shanklin um fraser and dixon i i know martina
very well pretty well you don't hang out but I know her well I know she's the
current president of the board or chair whatever it's called and you know in
these times when school boards are not what they used to be and maybe not as
cohesive as we used to be years ago if I ran for this you all wouldn't make me
the person you wouldn't give me the nomination that doesn't mean I wouldn't
it be good at the job, especially since she's done the job very well. So I wouldn't put a lot
of stock in her particular board choosing her, but she has experience. I know she has a very
strong relationship with Paul Bettencourt and works closely with him. And, you know, he used
to be the Harris County tax assessor. So understanding that the margin, all of their
appraisals have been within the margin of error every time consistently so it's it's strong run
well and the it is not a financial board it's a board very similar to a school board they oversee
a lot of things they oversee all the ships that come in the port channel i don't know the names
they oversee ships they oversee boats they oversee all the things houses building all the things
So it's very complex and it takes a lot of time to do the job well, a lot of volunteer time.
Meetings are in the middle of the day.
They're lengthy, that kind of thing.
And so, I mean, I know she does a good job.
I've worked with her on other boards.
She's very thorough.
She's super smart.
And so I would give her all my votes, but I'm happy to concede and split them three ways if you'd like.
But you're right, Mrs. Cuzela, some of these people are getting all of Houston ISD's votes,
and so they're in, right?
So a couple of them are already in, and a couple of them are pretty much a shoe in.
So we've got some fringe folks.
Mr. President, may I please ask you?
I just wanted to say on Martina's resume, she said that the top workplaces awards were
HCAG 2023, 22, 21, 20, and she's been on the board since 2020. So it was named the top for one, two,
three, four years. I don't know if 2024 has even been named yet. So that's just another little plug
for her. Mr. President, just one more comment. Like the more we split our vote, the weaker it is.
So just please consider that.
And also consider sometimes the established board members, their year in, year out, may need to go.
And a new view, fresh, someone who's extremely equipped in a CPA might be a good addition.
And I'll leave it at that.
Mr. President, I would just like to say.
Yes, Ms. Champagne.
Go ahead.
What I'd like to say is if you already have something that's doing a good job at, you know, a person or a system or a board or whatever it is that's already proven to be working effectively and doing a good job, then why change?
You know, if everything's good, then why would you want to vote for somebody that we don't know how they will be?
So that's an uncertainty.
even even you couldn't 100% vouch for that he's gonna be 100% great so I just
want to say that you we already have she's already proven herself I guess is
what I mean sure can I respond a point taken I totally agree but I know through
people who work with her who don't agree so they're not satisfied all right and
And those are people who work with her on the board.
Okay, let me interject this.
Mr. Redmond, do you feel strongly about Mr. Shanklin?
Yes.
Okay, all right.
So I'm going to suggest we just split the votes three ways.
and we can vote on it and discuss it for the next next month if we need to
president I don't want to complicate it anymore but the hundred and forty-five
votes would not split by three I don't believe well I get mr. president oh so
So let's give 45 or whatever the number is to Mr. Shanklin.
And then the...
May I ask, if you feel, Mr. Redman, if you felt strongly about Mr. Shanklin, why didn't you nominate him?
We can remove my recommendation.
Okay.
I didn't know he was running at that time, but...
Okay.
I think we should split them 50-50 between March and March.
All right, let's do 50-50.
Thank you, Mr. Rickman.
Mr. Mize is saying there's one person's going to have one more, so whatever.
I'm good with whatever.
We all decide with that, because it's an odd number.
It doesn't matter to me.
Martinez, the leading expert.
Mr. President, is the vote on December 9th the ballot that we're voting on?
It will be a certification of the ballot as well as a resolution,
and both of those are required so that's not approved what happens like what what
I'm sorry I wouldn't it be approved if if we don't submit a ballot we just didn't vote as
an elected body did we read discuss the ballot December 9th before the vote correct yes ma'am
Okay. Just so I'm clear. So then we're going to open it up for discussion at the next board
meeting, or we're going to split it and give the additional vote to someone else?
I think he wants to know, is it on consent? He needs to prepare the ballot for us. Yeah,
well, just, what are you missing? You're missing, you need one, where to put one vote?
yes okay give it to build with with miss Dixon or mr. Frazier mr. Frazier is fine
thank you all very much okay thank you putting way too much emphasis on this
7.8 Discuss and consider Board Approval of Stop Loss Insurance Coverage for Health Plan Year 2025.
thank you very much we're moving on now to the board approval of the stop-loss
insurance coverage for a health plan 2024 let Lance Nauman director of risk
management good to have you good evening president Perez dr. Gorgorzky and board
trustees in 2004 Katie ISD began providing health benefits to plan
participants as a qualified self-insured employer as a self-insured employer
providing health benefits to staff the financial responsibility rests solely
upon the district to date benefit options have been given employees
quality care while allowing the district to manage inflationary cost streams.
Each year, an independent actuarial study is performed to analyze how large losses will
impact the plan with premiums and deductibles driving this study.
Prior to plan year 2020, a conscious decision was made not to carry individual stop loss.
However, for plan year 2021, the district engaged with Aetna to begin providing stop-loss coverage for individual large losses.
Recently, the Risk Management Department looked into providing updated market pricing via an RFP.
As a result of this effort, eight companies were approached with seven declinations to quote.
The incumbent carrier, Aetna, has provided a renewal quote with a self-insured retention of $1 million with an estimated annual premium of $1,684,617, or otherwise $17.75 PEPM, which is per employee per month.
Factors to consider in determining the need for stop-loss insurance are as follows.
One, protection against large individual losses, medical and pharmacy inflation, and future pandemic-related events.
Authority to purchase individual stop losses provided via CRD legal.
And I would also add, to give you a little perspective on this, historically, since 2001, or 2021 rather, the carrier has paid $10.1 million in claims above our SIR, and we have spent $5.25 million in premiums.
So we have benefited to the good with individual stop loss to $4.9 million.
Great, thank you. So the the 10.1 million
These are claims
The total claims that exceeded a million
Would currently individual players fifty thousand dollars. Sorry
Kurt, I'm sorry
Currently we have a seven hundred fifty thousand dollar SR
We are looking at a million dollar SR because of the current pricing model and actual and actuaries
of the society. Okay so these were these were claims that have set into 750? Yes
correct. And individually? Individually they're paid individually and one unique
thing about unique that's that's good with this program is once we reach that
threshold Aetna begins paying those claims. Other other arrangements if you
will you have to wait to the end of that entire policy year and then I have to go
go chase those dollars as they mature.
So it's a very begin payment now once we press that threshold.
Okay.
And how did we, on the $1.6 million versus,
let me see the options there.
$1.1 million.
So there the retention is $1.2 million versus $1 million.
and so you're kind of gambling, I guess, a little bit on the...
And we are beginning to see...
Because that's a big difference in between the two as far as premiums.
Yes, it is a significant amount.
The number of large losses or severity of those large losses is declining,
so I think this is where the comfort level will find us best at.
So you only need two large losses to really make up the difference in premium, right?
Correct.
Any questions?
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
7.9 Discuss and consider Board approval of the annual course additions.
Okay, the next item is 7.9,
and that is discussing visitor board approval annual course additions welcome dr. Senebel
that's an a bell welcome good evening president Perez board members and dr. Gagorski I'm here
this evening to present new courses for the 2526 school year each year the division of teaching
and learning facilitates the process of course review including soliciting input
from central and campus staff regarding course additions and revisions for the
upcoming school year as requests are received the division assesses each
request considering the following criteria content of the course
availability of the curriculum highly qualified staff student interest
alignment to the teaks technology and facility needs impact on other programs
sustainability of the course over time, and relevance to the district strategic plan.
We also continue to take into account the state's expectations for districts to develop pathways that lead students to
completers in a program of study and prepare them to earn industry-based certifications.
Aligning CTE courses into complete pathways, specifically focusing on offering courses that are preparing students for high demand,
high skill and high wage careers in Texas has been an area of focus outlined
in the strategic design process for the past several years teachers and
administrators are invited to recommend new courses for review and provide input
on course revisions input from district level staff who support the
implementation of courses was also considered before finalizing this
recommendation based on input from multiple stakeholders the administration
is recommending 10 new courses from the CTE department animation to pilot AP
career kickstart cybersecurity to practicum in cybersecurity which is
offered at Miller practicum and computer technician which is also offered at
Miller and marketing in America fine arts courses include instrumental
ensemble levels one two three and four and from the secondary and curriculum
instruction department dual credit Texas government the CTE course editions give
students the opportunity to complete the programs of study and animation
marketing and sales cyber security and computer technician the pilot AP career
start kickstart cyber security 2 is part of a college board's new focus career
focus program that will lead to credentials and college credit for all
students who want to prepare for a career whether they are heading to a
two-year or four-year institution technical schools or workforce the fine
arts courses are designed for students who are concurrently enrolled in band or
orchestra and gives them the opportunity to extend their experience in an
instrumental class lastly the dual credit Texas government course builds
out the young educators pathway that gives students the opportunity to earn
an Associate of Arts degree in teaching from Houston Community College. It is
important to note that dual credit core academic credits are transferable to
Texas public colleges and universities. They can also be applied to an
Associate of Arts or an Associate of Science degree or a bachelor's degree. As
you can see we're adding several new and exciting courses to our students. These
new courses will provide our students with several choices and pathways
designed to help prepare them for post-secondary opportunities. The complete list of proposed
courses is included in your board packet and I'm happy to answer any questions that you
have at this time. Thank you so much. Thank you. Any questions? Mr. President? Ms. Cotella?
Thank you. The cyber security sounds awesome.
I have a question about the instrumental ensemble, one, two, three, and four.
Is that exactly what would that be?
Is that what?
What is that?
I'm familiar with band and orchestra.
So how are we going to split that out?
It's not split out.
It's actually the students would have to apply to be in this particular course.
It's for students that are already in band and orchestra, but we have students that may
be passionate about studying another a deeper study in music for example like mariachi and so
this is the um like this would be the course where they would also have their regular band course but
then if they really want to study something a little bit further or deeper they can take this
course as well it's a concurrent enrollment so it's not one or the other okay concurrent enrollment so
Do we have enough teachers qualified for, that seems like widening quite a breadth of.
You wouldn't necessarily have the same quantity that you would have in a,
like the band program per se.
So this would maybe be a smaller group of students depending on what that particular course is,
like jazz band or, so you'll have kids that are in regular band, but like,
they really want to be a part of jazz band.
So yes, we do have the staff. That's one of the pieces that is taken into account when we bring new courses
We ensure that we have staff we have facility spaces
Their student interest and so that is something that has been I think presented a couple times and mr
Archer is here from fine arts if
I'm not doing a good enough job of explaining this he is here. We already have jazz band as we do
We do. That's an example that I was giving.
Okay. But we already have that. So, like, what's the new offering?
Just so I can explain it to people.
I'm going to get the expert.
Like, is it for woodwinds or flutes or what do we – and why do they need two fine arts credits?
Like, why are we offering that?
So the reason this course is here is there are several components.
Number one, it's the mariachi ensemble. We're providing the opportunity for that.
okay the other the other component is some of the students study multiple
instruments and in our current structure we're not able to put them in the right
course at the right time because we don't have that capability so if you
want to learn another instrument and be part of another ensemble you have to do
that and it's legal by UIL we don't have that capacity right now to give them
credit for both yes I attended a mariachi concert at Morton Ranch high
school it was awesome really good yeah they're doing a great job mr president may i please thank
you so i know that i i know at taylor and i don't know if they still do but they had music theory
and that would be another you know they were in choir or whatever but they could also take
music theory and a lot of the students that i used to know because my kids were all fine arts kids
they had such a passion for the music that they wanted to they if they could they took all their
classes in music and then they go on to college and they become music teachers
or directors or I don't know all the different options but there's lots of
different options so I'm really happy that there's more I am just really
really proud of our district to make fine arts and keep fine arts an
important part of our offerings and I think by having this it just it just
kind of highlights the importance of it to to our district and i really appreciate everything that
y'all have done to make this possible for our students and and the future students and all
that i'm just i'm just thrilled by it thank you i just had a quick uh i was just curious about the
title marketing in america like with like as opposed to just marketing well this specifically
specifically focuses on how services are developed,
created, branded, and so it's really focusing on
the marketing in our country and how we are part of a global
society, but specifically looking at the branding and
services and goods and how things are developed.
Okay. I mean, why go to college? You know what I mean?
With the words you're adding.
Okay, thank you very much.
Mr. President.
Yeah, Ms. Fox.
Thank you so much.
This is my favorite night, as you know, course additions, giving our students more opportunities.
And I know that you spend a lot of time researching what the market needs, like what's the future of the market and where will jobs be and where will children be successful.
And meeting children where their creativity is.
So I love them. Excellent. I love the ensemble idea because a lot of kids get to take band, but it's like, I really would like to be in something more specialized, you know, and learn how to put things together. And it just builds confidence, right? When they want it, once they leave high school, if there's no marching band, where do they perform? Right? So I love the ensemble idea. And I think that's wonderful.
I don't know if anybody watches Shark Tank, but I just happened to turn it on and there were three boys pitching an idea.
And they're like, we're three best friends from Katy, Texas. And it was called Creator Camp.
And we have a teacher and one of her her son was one of the boys there.
And I texted her to see if I could say her name out loud. And she hasn't texted me back.
so I won't but still look for creator camp on shark tank and you'll see three Katie kids creating this thing and getting a million dollar
Deal on shark tank. I'm like I'm just so proud of our of our children and the opportunities they have here and it was all
computer games and things making summer camps were for kids and and they just had this idea and
Bring their smart little brains together and their creativity and you know, just then they show up on the TV
Thank you. Thank you very much.
7.10 Discuss and consider Board approval of a contract to the build out of the Merchants Way building.
Okay, the next item is 7.10, and that's discuss and consider board approval of a contract to the build-out of the Merchant's Way building.
Lisa Kastman, Executive Director, Facilities, Planning, and Construction. The award-winning Lisa Kastman.
Thank you.
Yay!
Good evening, President Perez, trustees, and Dr. Gagorski.
I have three items.
The first one is the construction contract for the first floor build-out of Merchant's Way.
We had seven bidders, and Division I ranked first overall.
We're happy that the project came in just under $11 million.
I know last meeting we talked about maybe $12 was the max.
We went and looked at the plans all over again.
We had a great team.
Art Campbell was project manager, worked with our designers,
and we're happy to present that project tonight.
Let me kind of recap on that a little bit
because it has a little bit of a history.
So when we initially bid that, not initially,
but after the bond was where it was gonna be 5.2 million,
then you all went out for bids and it was like 10.9,
I think roughly in April.
And then in August you came back,
you looked at some maybe downsizing the project a bit to lower some costs and
it that came in around I'm gonna say an average of 8.4 which was you know just
doing part of the part of the floor and then we talked about if we did the whole
floor with the 18 plus and the behavioral learning center what that
number might be you know because of inflation etc 12 million possibly we
talked about so now it's come in we we have a lot of bidders and the numbers come in about 10.9
million are those numbers kind of apples to apples like when we look at you know eight and a half
million versus a 5.2 is it pretty much uh so it's so the first time i went out for bid we didn't
have any bidders the second time we went out um we did the whole building first floor um that's
when it came in higher and then we went back and looked and looked at the rooftops half the
building we really weren't saving that much money so we decided to go back out to bid for how it
really should have been done with the central plant and both sides of the facility built out
okay so for uh because i didn't i think the lower number the eight million change whatever that
number was eight to eight point eight million um was leaving out like 41 of the floor correct
and so for basically another two and a half million going from there to the 10.9 we're able
to do the entire first floor the whole project correct essential plant as well right with the
children central plan etc as opposed to the rooftop correct so so the number we have is 10.9 million
again for another two and a half million we finish out the entire floor correct okay uh questions
comments mr. president champagne yes I'd also like to congratulate you on the the
director of the year from the international with an organization that
you're associated with but I want to say something so I I appreciate the
chronological description of the process of all that but we had 10.9 million and
And then they did the bids and they came back with still $10.9 million.
So I just want to say that it still came back the same numbers.
And so we kind of, in my mind, wasted a little time with that.
I understand that some of the board members wanted to make sure that we were getting a good bid.
But I'm really happy with this bid.
I don't know how the rest of the board members feel, obviously.
So I'm hopeful that this will be passed this time, and I appreciate the work that has gone into this.
And I know it's not an easy job, and that's why you got the Director of the Year, so there you go.
So I just want to clarify something, because that $10.9 million, the first one in April, never came to the Board.
The Board never rejected that. It never came to the Board.
Yes, sir, that's correct. Yes, sir.
We did not bring it to the board.
We didn't bring that first 10.9 to the board because, to be honest with you,
it was much higher than what we thought we had to spend.
So we did not bring it to the board.
We pared it down a little bit, and as you said, Mr. Perez,
it really didn't do us that much good to shave off as much of that project as we did.
So you are correct.
You did not see that first 10.9.
You guys saw the 8.4.
We didn't reject it and waste time because we never saw it.
But I thought you said it was $8.5 million, and then for $2.5 million more, we could finish out the floor.
I was just listening to what you said.
Yes, that's right.
And so that equals $10.9 or $11 million, based on what you just told me.
I was just going off what you told me.
Yeah, but the board never saw the $10.9.
We never, like, turned it down.
Well, I'm just restating what you said.
You said it was $8.5 to half the floor, and then add in $2.5 million more, and you can come back.
Right, I'm saying...
So you're the one who told me those numbers,
so I just added it up.
Right, I'm just saying for 2.5 million,
they were trying to shave costs
and brought us a smaller project
that would cost between $8 and $8.8 million.
So they've now come back,
they've re-bid it to see what it would cost
to have the central plant
and finish out the entire first floor,
and that number is $10.9 million.
So what I'm saying is,
for another $2.5 million,
we're doing the entire floor
floor, including the central plant as well. So that's what we've done, basically.
Okay. I'm sorry. I thought you said that the last time we talked, it was two and a half more
million, because I remember it was just a couple million more to finish out the whole floor.
We didn't know what it was going to be. Okay. So I apologize for that. I thought I was just
repeating what you said. They went out for bids, and they got like seven bids.
They thought it was going to be higher because of inflation, et cetera, and it could be 12 million,
whatever we didn't know but it's coming at 10.9 million so for another two and a half million
we finish out the first floor okay okay um questions comments
mr president and ms fox i appreciate very much all the work that was done i remember last time
there were talks of 12 and 14 all the things and so they didn't have all the bidding they needed
to find finite numbers and i appreciate i know it took a while um i'm very appreciative of all
the work that's been done and i just wanted um to talk like this is considered our work study this
time because we're only having one meeting in november one meeting in december so this is the
work study we will come back and vote on all these things at the december 9th meeting is that correct
Yes, that's correct.
Okay.
So this, I'm not hearing negativity assigned to this.
I appreciated that one of our teachers was here with her son, you know, kind of supportive of this and was probably too hard to make him wait that long.
But he would, he's either in the 18 plus or would be, I guess.
Yes, so looking at his sweet face and knowing all the children who will be touched by this building
and given an opportunity to become stronger and more ready for the world.
And then plus it's not called BTP.
It's called BLC, I think.
Also, I'm very excited about it.
I hope this passes successfully and we can get it going.
I'm so excited about the whole building and the processes and the opportunities we have for that will make everybody successful
Thanks
Thank you, and you're mr. President
I just for the public who may be listening or maybe listening later to the recording just to make sure everyone
Understands the decision here is is we already have the Katie plus program. We do service these wonderful
young adults
18 to 21 year olds we have for years
And we do have places for them.
They're not.
So what we're voting on here is a different location and a very upgraded facility.
And that's the decision.
We're not on social media and conversation.
I think some people are confused about what exactly we're talking about.
So I just wanted to publicly state that, that we're not choosing to cancel a program or have it.
We already have it.
We do have it for 165 kids or so.
who are 18 to 21 year old, I was able to speak to a high school teacher who teaches the same,
the kids who then graduate into the program, and was asking her thoughts on this Merchant Way
discussion. And she brought up and was asking, and I'm just offering this, that why we're not
using more of the Jeanette Coleman Annex building. That is a huge building that we already own that
that used to be U of H Zinco Ranch, I believe,
and was bought for the Creech Elementary
when Harvey came along and flooded the entire school.
So it is a complex that the district owns already
and where these students do go together
and congregate in one location to train.
They actually make beds.
They learn how to make beds there.
They have a simulated break room.
So we do service these wonderful kids already right now.
So that's something that I consider.
and that any bond project that we do decide upon later becomes part of our
operating income all years in the future right so so to consider that and that's
that's the income we have to use for for teacher raises and bonuses etc so it's
it's important to me to be a good fiduciary trustee of our financials and
and how we use bond money um with that said the um the interest the way we're able to pay for this
overage because we promised on the bond that the estimate for the voters when they voted for it was
5.1 million so that's what everyone's expecting the voters at large and we're able to cover that
with this interest income that's approximately 5.8 million so that's income that could be available
for other things correct so when we pay for one thing we we're not paying for something else can
is there any how do you treat that let me see if i can answer that uh
currently the 2023 bound authorization has project savings in it of about 16 million
dollars we saw that on the financial report uh because we had two very well bid schools
that came in well under budget.
The interest that we're using is on the $250 million bond sale
that happened and closed in July, and that earns interest.
We pay interest on that, too.
That earns interest.
Those interest earnings go into the capital projects fund.
And so those can go into the capital projects fund and just sit there,
or they can go into the capital projects fund and be used.
And I guess this board would have an option to use project savings of those two elementary schools, which there's plenty there
But if another project comes in over budget, that's what that would help make that
Adjustable but with the interest earnings, it's going to go back into the capital projects fund
We're very confident that even at considering arbitrage yield that that money will earn enough interest to do this
to finish this project out at the $11.9 million.
I'm sorry, $10.9 million.
Okay.
What is the balance of that fund that's being pulled from right now?
The balance?
I don't know right off the top of my head.
I'm sorry.
But I will remind the board that when we sold that property,
when we bought this piece of property,
we sold the property over there near Wolf Elementary,
and then we bought this piece of property.
That sales proceeds from Wolf Elementary was not enough.
So we did that same thing.
We used interest earnings in capital projects fund to finish that off to buy and acquire this piece of property
What in July of 2023 and so this is the same thing using that interest to do that and again?
We're confident that interest will be more than enough even considering arbitrage
Okay, and then just operating wise what do you usually earmark?
This this capex income proceeds for what would we normally do this for?
But what do we why do you think I'm using interest income? What do we normally earmark it for something? What are the categories?
Interesting come as far as when it goes into the capital projects fund there is no
no
History if you will other than the one I just told you about
We but it does stay in the capital projects fund because there's capital projects proceeds on those bonds and and
And we can spend it on this project, or it'll just gain a balance.
Okay.
Mr. President.
Mr. President.
I'm sorry.
Can I just address something that Ms. Cuzela said?
She questioned about the Jeannie Coleman, but Dr. Coffey went over that last spring,
and Jeannie Coleman is used for the high school kids, not the 18-plus.
and so since Jeannie Coleman and it's and it's and it's has great use and so
even the high school kids aren't getting it very much because so many people have
to rotate through it and everything so you also add it in 18 plus then they
would they would even get to use it even less because I don't know if you have
you ever been to Jeannie Coleman okay because it's kind of small in there
actually that the area that the kids could you know make beds and do things
like that it's not a huge area but am I getting this right dr. coffee I wish you
can come say it I think the teacher that I was speaking who goes there regularly
that's I rely on her input was just explained it could be used further or
maybe she's talking about using the Jeanette Coleman plot I know she's gone
over this way so the Jeannie Coleman good evening Jeannie Coleman Center is
used for a variety of things we do have labs over there we use for work based
learning which is one of the ways that we teach these skills when students are
still in grades 9 through 12 work based learning they do rotations we do have 18
plus rotations over there but because we're using the same basically three
free rooms for all of our high school students in two programs. It's simply not as often as would
benefit students to be able to have. Additionally, that is one of our preschool testing sites,
and so we have lots of students that are rotating through there on a daily basis doing
mandated testing. We also use it for our itinerant employees, so LSSPs, OT, PT, MT,
our bilingual assessment team, all office out of that area. So it's a very full building,
and we don't really have further capacity to be able to increase those rotations.
Mr. President, may I ask Dr. Coffey a question?
Someone asked a question about gen ed at the 18 plus.
Will they only be doing labs and workshops and things like that,
or will there be any gen ed opportunities while they're there?
There are no general education students on the 18 plus side.
That is driven by IEP goals, only they must be eligible for special ed and must be zoned to KDISD.
So at the 18 plus at the campus, they don't take classes?
There are no general ed because the students in 18 plus have met graduation requirements.
So when a general education student meets graduation requirements, they graduate.
So their constant focus is on skills to prepare them for the work?
Ongoing IEP skills that their art committee has determined.
There's some very specific things that we look for, whether or not, for example, they're connected to outside agencies that provide things that we do not as a school district.
And so we're getting them ready for their second post-secondary piece.
But general education students are not eligible for 18 plus.
Okay.
And so then the benefit of them being in one location is not visiting the Coleman Center once every 10 days or so, but being there every day consistently, you expect to see.
but more growth i don't know how to say what i'm trying to but you know that will be improvement
and a quicker exit possibly for many of the children is that what you've said in the past
something like that i think that's a fair statement it's very individualized which is what
i love and hate about my job every situation is different there's also if you think about it
economy of scale right right now we have to provide these supports for students across all of
our high school campuses but having them at this single location allows us to maximize our staff
special education staff is at a premium not just teachers all of our related service providers
everything and so we're having it's becoming more and more difficult across education as a whole but
specifically special education it's an area of critical shortage across the nation and so when
you look at the economy of scale of having them all there at the same it allows us to more
efficiently utilize our staff get services to students in a more efficient way it helps with
things like transportation because it's a centralized location so it is absolutely about
providing as we have always done and this board has always supported a high quality education for
our students specifically special ed has always been an area of focus for this board that's why
we're a destination district and why i'm proud to be in kdisd but additionally it helps our staff
It helps us with staffing. That sounds like a savings when it comes to funds as well. Yes, ma'am
I think that's it. I think that it's it's a lot of money up front, but I think in the end it
Yes, we'll save money in staff positions and things and transportation and all the things. Thank you. I feel like that's fair. Do you mr. Verlaine?
Thank you
From a transportation standpoint. Absolutely. Yes, ma'am because it's a central location much easier than
and then taking kiddos from way across the district
to another location across the district.
And from the campus to the JCSA and back.
Mr. President.
Mr. Redman.
I'd also like to point out to the board
as we talk about like the VLC,
as we expand those resources to our elementary students,
all the things that Dr. Coffey mentioned
as far as co-locating those resources and our staff,
the amount of time they're spent.
I mean, we've all got caught in traffic at some point
trying to make it from the south side of the district
to the north side of the district.
But it would be interesting to see just the growth our elementary school kids can make
that are needing those resources that are not able to maybe get them right now
at an effective, well, we're effective in what we do, but even more effective.
Adding elementary is huge.
Mr. President?
Ms. Champagne?
I want to say something.
First of all, I understand that we are required to do 18 plus, but so is every school district
in Texas.
What makes us the better school district is, you know, than others, is that we offer, you
know, just like the course selections that just came up, you know, we offer more and
better and so we always want to be better.
And I know that Umbil ISD just opened up a brand new building and I was hoping, you know,
to beat everybody at that.
that. But anyway, so I'm a last. He just paid a lot of money for it. I realized that this
million, I believe that this is a a small population of people as as other people on
the board have said, but it's a very, very important population of people. It's not just
the hundred and sixty five people that are going to be in it. To me, it represents families
and communities and it's, you know, it's a thousand people of its hundred sixty five
people and I am just so excited about this and I know it'll mean so much to so
many families and I think that more more of these 18 plus kids will might be
enrolled in the future because they have the option to not come back but now they
may want to stay and I think that the 18 to 21 22 year olds are very important
time for all all people to kind of learn their skill and such the other the last
thing I want to say is I think it's it's really important that 22 year olds
aren't with 14 year olds in the same environment that's a big difference in
age and that's kind of always a little bit you know worried me but you know
when I had younger children so this that's just another bonus of that thank
you so much mr. president comments or questions mr. president dr. Harvey I
I just want to thank you so much for your dedication
and the way that you love the students
and the way that you advocate for the families.
And that is incredibly special in the way that you do that.
And so what I don't want anyone to take away from the way
that we ask questions or the way that we try to pull things
apart to better understand is it's not for a valuation.
Because there's not a valuation number
that could be put on any one student to say,
oh, you're worth $30 million or you're only worth $5.9.
That's not possible.
Nor are we ever trying to devalue any one person
for their special needs, lack of special needs,
or special needs as a whole.
That's not what we're doing.
And I do not want anyone in the community
to feel that that is what we are doing,
nor do we want to do that to you as a professional.
This is solely just for us to be able to answer to the people who elected us to this board to do a specific job, specific to taxpayer monies and how it's allocated and how it's being spent.
And that is why we take it so seriously.
That's why we try to drill down on those questions.
And I know that everyone in this room recognizes that and respects that.
And I thank you for the way that you guys do that.
And I thank you for the way that you advocate for your students so heavily.
and it is very well respected in what you're doing so thank you thank you yeah
I think that the the impact on the elementary schools in terms of making
room for kids that need to be in the behavioral learning centers going to be
is going to be very significant will be felt across the district any other
questions or comments mr. president can I ask one more the the growth for
behavioral we're calling it learning but what are we calling it now instead of
BTP we're calling it LC BLC of the the growth and demand for the BLC for this
new building that we're building out they're getting 60% of the floor roughly
And what kind of capacity are we going to fill it with?
What I'm trying to get at is I foresee a greater growth rate with that group of students needing that,
that affects thousands of kiddos in other classrooms that are left behind that can now learn,
and teachers that can now teach, and then that child gets what they need.
I mean, that growth rate's got to be higher than the KD plus community.
Is that fair to say?
And are we able to design smartly to be able to adapt to that demand?
Can you speak to that?
I'm going to try.
I've never looked specifically at the growth rate of behavior issues versus the rate at which 18 plus is growing.
But I mean, I think it's very clear to everyone in education across the entire nation right now that behavioral issues are we're experiencing a spike.
So I think that's a fair statement for sure.
And we see that in special education as well as the necessity for interventions.
Those students, because we also have we have students who are served through 18 plus who also have significant behavioral concerns.
And so those programs do mesh a little bit.
And we are seeing, and I do, I hate to blame everything on COVID.
I don't mean to, but we did have, for students especially who have intellectual disabilities,
emotional disabilities, severe anxiety, or AU, a combination of those things, that time
away from regular routine and such, we're only now seeing to some extent the long-term
impacts.
I know there's a lot of researchers right now that are doing studies on that, dissertations
and such.
So I think it's a little bit hard to predict what that's going to look like as far as growth.
What I can tell you is we see growth and need pretty much everywhere right now across all of our populations.
But I do agree that capacity-wise there are likely, which is why we need to expand, right?
That's why we came to the board, you know, a little while ago and said we project a greater need moving forward in the area of behavior.
And we're seeing that realized right now.
Yeah, I do expect that to have where I'm coming from. Thank you where I'm coming from is if if I would hate to see that our
behavioral
Program needs are greater and we're now stuck with 40% of the floor that we can't move into and service
These behavior problems the is there a way we can flex space the design. I would say yes
There's a way we can if we were to need to do that
there are some ways that we can flex space but the other piece of that is that while the growth trend
and behavior is much more significant it's also a much smaller portion of our overall community
than is 18 plus so when you look at the number of students we have at the at the btp or the number
of students that we project we will need or that will need the blc and let me say that i'm really
bad at magic but in my head kind of my ongoing calculations after years it's
still less than you know right now than what we project as 18 plus like we
project that we'll be serving you know within the next several years somewhere
between 200 250 to 300 18 plus students I do not anticipate anywhere near that
number at the BLC because that that would be that would be unmanageable on
that side of the building because of the level of need and teacher to student ratio so even though
a smaller portion of the building is dedicated to 18 plus 18 plus are also out in the community and
they're doing great they don't need as large of a size if we needed to flex space we absolutely
could we do that throughout buildings all the time thank you thank you very much anything else
great thank you so much and now we continue with uh lisa castman
7.11 Discuss and consider Board approval to award a contract for design services necessary for the construction of Elementary School #49.
So the second item is the approval of the design contract for VLK Architects for Elementary
Number 49, which we recently purchased in Sentara, the Northeast Quadrant.
Design will commence with Casey Doubleday as our project manager, so we can open in
2027.
Okay, I have a question on that.
And it's not about the design, the contract for the design.
It's more about the cost that it mentions.
I think it mentions in the contract that the owner's cost is 50 million.
Correct, and that is just our estimate based on current pricing.
But the contract will read it'll be 3% of the final construction cost.
Right, for the architect.
Correct.
So when I look at the 2023 bond for that 49, school 49, it's got allocated $64 million.
So is it $64 and then $50, apples and apples?
In other words, are we thinking that we're going to come in already $50 versus $64?
Or is there something else in the $64 I'm not looking at?
We're thinking based on the first two that came in lower, that it is going to come in lower than the $63.
And once again, it's just a number to put in there to get the contract started, and that'll be adjusted as we move along.
Okay, so we're not celebrating yet on the cost savings of 50 to 64?
No, not yet.
Okay, all right.
Okay, thank you.
Anything else on that item?
7.12 Discuss and consider Board approval of Amendment Two to the Stewart Builders, LLC. contract related to the additions and renovations at Cinco Ranch High School.
Okay, then we'll move on to 712.
The last item is the second and final amendment for the renovations and additions at Cinco Ranch High School.
The first amendment that was approved included roofing, fire sprinklers, and flooring.
The second amendment will include the window replacements, lighting, and selective mechanical, electrical, and plumbing.
Questions?
So on this again, it's kind of a similar question.
We say it's from the 21 and 23 bond. I think the cost here is like 42 million?
Correct.
42, 375. So in the 21 bond, I only see 28 million, this is Cinco Ranch.
But I don't see anything in the 23. Is it spread out among other?
It's the roofing and window replacement from the 23 bond that we rolled in together for the project.
Okay.
Okay.
That was the $23.
Because with one contractor on site, it's easier to manage all those trades.
So we rolled the number in for the roofing and window replacement in with the $21.
On the 2021?
Correct.
Okay.
Okay.
Any questions?
Any other questions?
So the $42 million that we're funding is from the 2021 bond,
where the sinker ranch addition was listed separately and as president
Perez is saying that's the 26 million 20 would start up 27 26 27 million okay
all right and then on the 2021 bond which was this 609 million or 676
million dollar bond okay and then this additional amendment is categorized on
roofing and the material trade right on on 2023 bond 17 million in the 23 bond that was rolled
together so when we came with the first amendment we did note the roofing we were already using that
23 dollars and now we're coming back with the window replacements to finalize putting both
those bonds together okay and i remember asking this last time i apologize the the word amendment
kind of bothers me from a money standpoint but you explained it a little better for understanding for
the public and for me one more time why do we call it amendments it's another portion of the contract
so when we award the contract contract uh it's a construction manager at risk and then as we
develop the scope of the work and we price out the different phases we're just now funding each one
of those phases you can say the the funding is not being amended the the the price the decided dollar
amount for this is not being amended that was we're within budget that is correct yes we are
It's not like a budget amendment.
It's in stages.
Yeah, it just...
Not that they're like, oops, haven't changed it.
Right.
We're amending the contract is what I needed to hear.
Not amending the budget.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
And congratulations again.
Yeah.
And...
7.13 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the recommendation to authorize the superintendent or their designee to execute an electricity supply contract on behalf of Katy Independent School District.
Okay, now we're on to the electricity supply contract.
Discuss and consider Board approval of the recommendation to authorize the superintendent
or there is a need to execute an electricity supply contract on behalf of KDISD.
And the presenter is Nathan Fuchs, Executive Director of Maintenance and Operations.
Good evening, President Perez, Board members, and Dr. Gorski.
Tonight we would like to discuss our current electrical rate, explore projections for future,
and emphasize the importance of proactive planning as we move forward.
Joining me this evening is Rob Petoskey from AEG. Rob has been a trusted
consultant in utility procurement and has collaborated with KDISD for many
years providing valuable insights and expertise. While we may not have a
crystal ball to predict the future, taking a proactive approach in utility
procurement allows us to better plan and manage our budget efficiently. With that
I'll turn it over to Rob who will walk us through some details tonight.
Good evening, President Perez, honorable trustees, and Dr. Grigorski.
I think it's exciting and good news.
By being proactive, the district is in a very, very solid, good shape as far as electricity
goes.
It's one of those things, it's a utility, kind of boring, but you have to have it every
year.
So try to optimize that expense and make it very low.
The present rate of 3.5 is the lowest in KDISD's history.
And the good news is that and that rate was obtained by being very proactive.
So many years ago we went out and we locked that in from 2022.
And you have that rate until almost summer 2027.
And so what about the same amount of time in advance last time.
See, if we go out to markets, it's a little bit like if you're a big tenant and you're going to a landlord.
If you give the energy suppliers a lot of time to plan in advance and move things around in the power plant world, you can get a much better rate.
Kind of like if you're a tenant and you go to a high rise and you're going to give them a lot of time and you're going to do a long-term lease, you might get better terms.
So by being proactive, we put the district in a position to allow everyone to plan, allow the market to plan instead of going last minute or upon short notice.
So we're not going out to seek approval right now on a specific rate or anything of that nature, but rather to provide some flexibility and optionality, which was the same process that we did last time.
And that is because electricity can move.
And here I've got a couple slides.
First, just a little background, actually.
By going out in advance at your 3.5 rate, which is what we landed, you can see the savings.
This is conservative, but you're looking at about 3.3 million dollars of savings per year
If you had to go out
That's compared if you had just the market rate right now
That's in effect and everyone's probably received high electricity bills at their house and realizes realizes
The three point five cent rate is really spectacular
That's actually conservative because had you been in a position where you needed electricity maybe six months ago
That savings figure would be more like five million instead of three point three million
So this is the lowest rate in Katie's Katie ISD's history.
That's good news too, because everything else seems to be going up with inflation, school buses, you name it.
Whereas we've been able to keep electricity managed.
Here's a couple of the last two bid processes. Of course, we go out to RFP.
It's a rigorous process. Contracts are combed over with a fine tooth comb.
And so another benefit of this approach where we seek the best value is we not only achieve a very low rate, but you might have heard some other stories in other districts and cities where after winter storm URI, there were just massive pass-through costs.
So a lot of districts, cities got hit with all sorts of hidden charges and cost blowups after URI, where KDIST also made it through that completely unscathed, no hidden costs.
costs. And so one thing about electricity, though, it's volatile. So it's not like we can get the
rate and have a low rate and then come to the board, you know, wait, wait, and then come back
30 days and that rate is still going to be there. Often with electricity, we'll have movements of
5 to 10 percent in a single day. So when we go and we get bids, the lowest one day of, you know,
six or seven bidders might well be the highest, you know, three days later. And sometimes, too,
the rates can go up a full penny per kilowatt hour in a matter of, say, two, three weeks.
And so the goal here in what we've requested is authority to obtain that best value,
same as last time how we got this 3.5 rate.
We did put kind of a higher benchmark rate than what we think we're going to achieve,
but that is to give us some flexibility to get something below that rate.
And so that's a summary.
And, of course, when I say 3.5 cents, just keep in mind we're talking the base energy rate,
so we're not talking the center point charges or taxes.
The center point charges, we can't control those.
Those are set by the PUC and tariffs.
Yeah.
Any questions?
Trustees?
I have some questions.
Okay.
So you're a service provider to the district.
Yes, we've been the district consultant since 2017. Yes, ma'am.
Okay, that was one of my questions. And I'd like to know, like, how do you make money?
Oh, great question.
If we're saving so much.
So it's a formula based on the amount of electricity, amount of meters, because that affects our
workload. But there's a provision where it never exceeds $44,000 per year. So we're retained
on an ongoing basis to identify not just electricity opportunities. We also help with electricity
disputes audits reviewing invoices really anything electricity related I'm
sorry you said that really quickly service fees I guess fees for
representing or how do you say it one more time for me though the whole thing
sorry man how do you make your money what are we paying you for this so we
have it's a formula based on the amount of meters and kilowatt hours based on
point three cents or point three of a tenth of a cent per kilowatt hour but
but there's a cap on it where no matter how much electricity you use,
you'll never pay us more than $44,900 per year.
So we have a cap on there to make that a little more easy to understand.
So we pay $44,000 roughly a year is what you're saying for your service to get us a better rate?
Not just to get us a better rate, but we do probably nine or ten things across the electricity world.
So that also included pulling together data, things like that to go get a center point score to assist.
just the this is a big district so you're using it's about 15 to 20 million dollars a year of
electricity so if we can save even or help the district save even two three percent it's a big
savings so yeah we do we do more than just look for electricity rates but that is probably our
primary goal is to go out there you might recall the story of southwest airlines way back in the
day when they figured out that fuel prices might be rising and they kind of killed it compared to
the other airlines because they knew to go out there and hedge but a lot of other people didn't
do that and so that's that's a lot of what we do is figure out how to do that
the correct way and there's a lot of districts right now that you might have
heard about but they're they're paying about seven point four cents right now
so whereas you're paying three point five cents just to give you an idea on
that magnitude every penny per kilowatt hour that we save you that's 1.8 million
dollars every year so on a five-year contract that 1.8 million dollars times
five years is $10 million dollars whereas we're probably three cents below
low market. So that's where we're getting that. I just wanted to know what we were paying for that. Oh, yeah. Thank you. He's trying to equate it all because you use a lot of electricity and it's hard to equate that into dollars sometimes. Thank you. My pleasure. What would what would so what we have now is a five year contract. You have a five year contract. Yes, sir. It started in May 2022 and it goes all the way till May 2027. So are we saying that we want to go out now?
potentially go out now and instead of waiting until 27 with the three and a
half cents we may want to go now lock in something let's say for another five
years that we're doing here yes sir this is just for the period out past May 2027
so you're covered up through May 2027 but when we get out there the way we got
that 3.5 cent rate is that last time it was actually 2019 we went ahead and got
you covered from May 2022 forward so we were three to four years in advance last
last time. And that's how we got such a good rate. So this kind of the same amount of time right now
that we're in advance of your next contract expiring. So we're not saying we're going to go
run out tomorrow or three weeks from now and lock it in. But we are being proactive, letting you know
where we stand and seeking the flexibility and the approval so that when we see these prices,
because these rates will go up and down like this. And when they bottom out sometimes,
they may bottom out for four days and then they kick right back up. And so we're seeking-
We'll still have three and a half until 27.
Absolutely, and that's phenomenal.
So we're basically adding to that.
We're potentially adding to that.
Yeah, we're looking to look for additional favorable rates
to get you covered out past May 2027.
So you would sign something for like 28, 29, 30, et cetera?
Yes, sir.
What would that number look like now?
Again, it varies every day,
and there's been a lot of volatility since the election.
There's a bunch of new information every day,
but we're hoping high 4s, low 5s.
Okay.
What's it like now over today?
Exactly.
One more clarification.
There's a lot of ways to explain electricity rate.
There's no standard definition of electricity price in Texas.
So when we give you a rate and you try and compare it to a different rate,
I'm talking a rate that would be apples to apples with your existing rate,
just because I know this is public and people may have questions.
And your rate right now is phenomenal because it not only has,
it's not only correctly defined,
it doesn't allow pass-through charges of like nodal basis.
A lot of people pass through.
all sorts of strain charges. Your rate has all that baked in. It also has
unlimited bandwidth. So when I say, you know, you're probably somewhere between
4.9 and 5.1, maybe 5.5. Somewhere between 4.9 and 5.5, depending on the bidder, we
would be looking for best value. The other thing to keep in mind is that you
might have some bidders out there that are going to offer you 4.7 cents, but
they may not have the financial wherewithal to represent or to serve a
district the size of yours. So I'm talking, when we give you these benchmark
smart prices. We're talking credible REPs with the financial wherewithal to actually back that
number up. Because a really, really low rate doesn't mean much if we get out to 2028 and
they're bankrupt, which does happen. And as we do these longer-term hedges, we do have to look at
that much more closely. Because we're talking about several years out in the future. So we
have to make sure these REPs are going to be in business and in good standing when we get there.
I mean, you say up to 10 years. That's pretty unlikely. It's just up to, right,
that we would go out and it is yes sir that's a great question so the the goal
is really to get more flexibility I think last time around the the
inclination of the of the administration at the time was to only go out five
years had we had a little more freedom to go out even more than five years we
could have locked in that possibly that three five right even even a little bit
longer and so if we get that position again it just gives us more flexibility
it doesn't mean doesn't mean we will be using it the other thing to notice if we
do use it and we exercise pursuant to this authority we will come right back
to the board in the next meeting and we'll report back and and explain to you uh you know here we
met the benchmark here's what we locked in on and uh you know see gratification mr president thank
you mr president fox so the summary says six five here up to six five is what we're giving you
authority to do yeah well we're the the designee so the the district would have the authority it
wouldn't be us but yeah we would be working with that but we would be looking our designee
the authority to give you the 6-5 we might lock in.
That would be the worst-case scenario.
I don't think that we're going to need that 6-5.
It's just pure worst-case scenario.
But, yeah, it has to be below that.
The reason we have –
But it's written here 6-5 and you said 5-5.
So I'm just –
Oh, no, you're right.
I'm just saying.
The reason we have it set higher than market by quite a bit is because we have seen –
we've been working with school districts for many, many years,
and we've worked with a lot of them.
And we have seen a situation where we had the benchmark set a little bit too low
to make the board comfortable.
And then we got caught in a bit of a market pickle where prices just started going up and up.
And we wanted to go lock in, and we couldn't until the next board meeting happened.
And then we got stuck paying a higher rate by the time we got back to a special meeting.
And so, yeah, that's just there for some security.
So our action would give you up to 6.065.
The designee would determine, you know, this is good based on the rates you're seeing.
Yes, ma'am.
So my question is, what are the transmission and distribution charges?
just like this doesn't compare to my rate at home because my rate when I'm shopping and it's miserable to shop it every year but is I
Want all in cost. I don't want six five. I want to know with all the other cost. Here's how much it costs so
Great question. That is a common source of confusion in the electricity world. So when you get your residential bill at home
There's a rule under the Public Utility Commission where they have to show you a bundled rate inclusive of TDSPs
But they have to do that at set
at set kilowatt hour levels because the more kilowatt hours you use the lower
your TDSP charges will go as a as a you know as a function so you can't really
in the industrial world you can't really show a rate inclusive of TDSPs because
it depends on how much you use so we would have to perfectly forecast so the
for that reason you kind of know how much we use like how much are we paying
now with three five yeah to give you an example so at your home in Centerpoint
you're paying about 5.2, 5.3 cents, if I recall.
You're paying about 5.3 cents in TDSP charges,
which would be center point charges.
So yeah, if you're, it would be comparable.
Think about if you had 3.5 cent on your commodity rate at home
and you added the 5.3 cents of TDSP charges,
it'd be like having an 8.5 cent rate all in at your home,
which would be very, very low.
Yeah, which is unheard of right now.
That'd be unheard of, yeah.
So that's the position you're in as a district,
is you have a very, very low and enviable rate.
And yours is, we just don't know what it's going to be, but it's going to be lower than that because we use such a big amount of electricity.
You use a lot of electricity, and your, well, yeah, your TDSP charges are also, it's a different formula for industrial users because you get a bit of a better deal because you're using it at an industrial level.
So, yeah, your TDSP charges aren't going to be anything close to a 5.3 or 5.6.
So I was a director on the state board for energy, our energy co-op through our state board.
I did that for several years so we negotiated electric rates for all school districts in Texas who are a part of that co-op and
So I'm quite familiar with how all this works and so I appreciate you coming
Your the rate sounds good, and I mean I I know it's I know it's a challenge. Oh, thank you for clarifying
Fantastic time I'm tracking
Fantastic good. Thank you. Yeah, and we do always invite I
Imagine this might be a TASB that has be energy cooperative
Yeah, we always invite TASB to compete.
And it's not just TASB.
If there's any energy cooperative out there or any program, period, that claims they can provide the best value, we say, hey, get in the ring.
Let's see it.
And so, yeah, we love the competition.
The more, the merrier.
But without KDISD, they don't get as good a rate because we help to drive the price down because of how much electricity we use.
So once KDISD used you, that caused everybody else's rate in Texas to go up.
because we drove so much of the price reduction because of how much we use.
Right.
So for the small school districts who don't use that,
they benefited from Katie being a part of that rate.
But, you know, you're still saving us a little more money than we had with TASB,
just a smidge.
I would just say the counterpart to that, and I think you're exactly right on that.
What happens when you aggregate a small district with a very big district
is the big district usually ends up paying a little bit more than they pay on their own.
The small districts end up paying a little less.
And so yeah, there's it can be a can of worms to aggregate and that's why we just say if any program says they can
aggregate make it better then let's compare it to what we get without aggregation and
We're really just going for Katie is DS best interest out here
Which is let's get the best value for Katie is D if it means there's a couple small districts out there that maybe don't get
The lowest rate that's not our call, but that's it's not a couple. It's tons and tons, but I wasn't I wasn't
Competing with any of that. It's just I wanted to let you know that I'm tracking with you and and I
I have done this before, and so I appreciate what you all are doing for us,
and I'm here to save KDSD money so we can spend it on kiddos.
Thank you.
Appreciate all the questions, and thank you for your service.
Mr. President, I didn't get to say anything yet.
I just wanted to make the point that you're like a financial advisor, sort of.
So we, you know, I have a financial, we have a financial advisor,
and we don't really directly pay him money.
He just makes money on the things that we do.
But the main thing, all I want to say is, basically, you cost $44,000 a year, but we save $3.5 million a year.
Yeah, we think that $3.5 million is conservative.
That's pretty good.
I think that's a good rate of return.
Yes, ma'am.
Okay, that's all I wanted to.
The final thing is, we pay $44,000, and we save $3.5 million.
Thank you, ma'am.
Mr. President.
Thank you.
Quickly, so 120 months you would actually is that realistic that you'd sign a contract for 10 years?
It is it's not probable, but it's conceivable and it's just for flexibility
But yeah, there are just a lot of flexibility, right?
There are but it would only be if you get the best value and if it's the best rate again
If how do we know and it does seem inconceivable?
Yeah, yeah, there are some districts that have gone out till 2034 and they did that back in like
2021 for example, so there's
it's not likely but it's conceivable and sometimes you get in these situations see where the market
turns a little bit and the further you go out the lower rate you get and that's that's often
why you would do it thank you all right thanks a lot thank you very much it's very it's very
electrifying thank you sir okay 8.8 information items we've got the list of items that are
8. Information Items
donated to Katy ISD and it was provided to the board and do we have any any
requests for information mr. president I have a question I have a question on
some of the donated items I was just going through and looking at the list I
always like to see all the numbers but I had a question on one of them Katie
Katy Elementary had $24,000 purchased for Chromebooks.
Why?
I'd have to do some investigating on what that purchase was.
It was donated by their PTO, which is great.
PTO is covering the cost, but my question is, why was it necessary?
Were those just backups or whatever?
whatever you know without getting some specific information from Katie
Elementary what program they might be doing I can't answer that but I can get
you an answer remember also that the one-to-one initiative was covering
grades 3 through 12 right so it may be some type of initiative this is just
speculation for your early learners okay possibly but I'm not sure what they're
doing with their Chromebook we could just have a request for information just
just to kind of clarify what that is.
Mr. President, on that, it was under the non-cash donation,
so I think what happened was they donated actual Chromebooks,
not the cash to buy the Chromebooks.
But why?
Mr. President.
Why do they need them?
Well, we'll find out.
Mr. President, I would like to say that I've been talking to a lot of elementary schools
when I visited them, and they were saying that their PTAs were donating Chromebooks
for the younger kids.
I'm not saying that's what it was at Katy Elementary.
I don't know, and I appreciate the information,
but I do know a lot of elementary schools are having Chromebooks donated for their younger kids.
Okay.
So we have just that one request for information, right, Madam Secretary?
That's correct, Mr. President.
9. Future Meetings
Okay.
Our next meeting will be December 9th.
We will have a regular board meeting on Monday, December 9th,
and then we will have the next work-study meeting after that is on Monday, January 13th, 2025.
25 and
We have no additional businesses meetings adjourned
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