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, June 16, 2025
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In this meeting
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- 0:03 to 0:28 1. Call to Order
- 0:28 to 1:34 2. Pledges of Allegiance
- 1:34 to 2:04 4. Closed Meeting
- 2:04 to 2:53 5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 2:53 to 1:29:55 6. Reports
- 1:29:55 to 1:37:57 7.1 Presentation on the 2025-2026 Federal Grant Applications
- 1:37:57 to 1:38:08 7.2 Public Hearing on Presentation on the 2025-2026 Federal Grant Applications
- 1:38:08 to 1:41:41 8.1 Discuss and consider Board Approval of the April 2025 Financial Reports.
- 1:41:41 to 1:48:43 8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the June 2025 budget amendments.
- 1:48:43 to 1:52:12 8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of Plan Administration and Individual Stop Loss Insurance Coverage for the Katy ISD Self-insured Health Plan.
- 1:52:12 to 2:02:56 8.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Pharmacy Plan for the Katy ISD Self Insured Health Plan for Plan Year 2026.
- 2:02:56 to 2:03:56 8.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of a contract for the security fencing at multiple elementary school campuses
- 2:03:56 to 2:04:13 8.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of a landscape easement to Land Tejas Companies associated with the construction of Cross Elementary School (#48).
- 2:04:13 to 2:05:04 8.9 Discuss and consider Board approval of the prevailing wage rate schedule.
- 2:05:04 to 2:22:57 8.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of the design associated with the renovation and addition to Beck Junior High School
- 2:22:57 to 2:38:20 8.5 Discuss and consider the Raines Academy Optional Flexible School Day Program.
- 2:38:20 to 2:46:20 8.10 Discuss and consider Board approval for the Electronic Content Management (ECM) system District wide expansion project to meet the immediate needs for workflow automation and document management.
- 2:46:20 to 2:48:29 Items 8.11 & 8.12
- 2:48:29 to 2:53:30 8.13 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2025 - 2026 Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS) Second Appraisers
- 2:53:30 to 3:32:56 8.14 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the Katy Independent School District compensation plan for the 2025 - 2026 school year
- 3:32:56 to 3:36:09 9. Information Items
- 3:36:09 to 3:36:28 10. 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 Monday, June 16, 2025, and the time is 5 p.m.
Dr. Grigorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to the notice for this meeting?
Mr. President, I do confirm we are in compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act for our meeting this evening.
We'll move on to agenda item 2.1, the pledges of allegiance.
2. Pledges of Allegiance
KDISD officer Sergeant Clarence Howard will lead us in the pledges.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which
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 officer Howard do we have any scouts an audience tonight that's a no
all right the next item of business is public comment we do not have any
speakers signed up tonight so we will move on from item 3.1 to the board
4. Closed Meeting
convening and closed meeting is authorized under section five five one
zero zero one of the Texas government code for the following purposes Texas
access government code 551.071, 551.072, 551.076, and 551.129.
Like John Wilkes.
5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
The board will now reconvene in open meeting.
Today is Monday June 16th 2025 and the time is 6 o 5 p.m. On behalf of my
colleagues I welcome everyone to this evening's work study. Each board member
received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Thursday June 12th
2025. The board will receive information and recommendations from staff,
administration, and the superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting.
Board members will be able to ask questions, receive answers, and should be
prepared to take action the board has just reconvened from closed meeting in accordance
with chapter 551 of the texas government code any action arising from discussions and closed meetings
must be taken in an open meeting we will not be taking any action on anything discussed tonight
tonight uh moving on to agenda item 6.1 a 2025 26 budget update presenter chris smith
6. Reports
All right, well, good evening, President Redman, Superintendent Gorgorski, trustees.
It's exciting to be up here.
I know y'all are real excited to have me up here, especially with a rainy day.
Sleep therapy, I need to hang a shingle to be a sleep therapist.
Now, I'm here tonight to give where we are with our 25-26 budget update.
date just as a precursor what I'm going to say remember we don't adopt our
budget as a district until August we have districts that are already having
to adopt their budgets by the end of June because they have a July 1
beginning fiscal year date I think the majority of our districts around us have
moved to that there's pros to do it and there's cons I think the con is is
they're trying to adopt a budget with all this stuff still very fluid and they
So we're August, and so we still have two months to get this budget kind of massaged through.
They'll be amending their budget over these next two months significantly probably.
So here we are in May and June, and we thought about doing this in May, but nothing had happened.
It would have all been a waste of time because nothing had happened by the time we met in May.
So here we are in June, and everything did happen.
and two weeks ago today was signed ADA,
or the end of the legislative session,
and the funding bill was signed into law,
I think 12 days ago.
So it was signed into law,
so what we're talking about is real,
although what we're going to be talking about
is left to a lot of rulemaking by TEA,
interpretation as well,
continued interpretation as well as potential fixes
fixes in case something wasn't was done in error not that that likely to happen
but it's still and then next month we'll bring to you all funds today we're gonna
primarily talk about the general fund and as you know going into the 89th
legislature you knew because I told you and you knew because it's been over the
in our local medias and across the state etc that state was dealing with the big
budget surplus school safety was going to continue to be high on their list
they're going to continue to want to do property tax cuts and increase our
exemptions special education they're running drastically behind I have a
slide on that on funding special education was going to be a big topic
and obviously education savings accounts we're going to be in we're a big target
topic so the 89th session ended again on June 2nd 14 days ago today it had over
8719 city of Katie's let me know it's raining outside they had 8719 House and
Senate bills were filed and 1,213 were received and final passage about 76%
were passed. For comparison in the previous session about 1,246 bills were
passed compared to this 1,213. So kind of the same amount of bills passed about
about 15% of the bills that were filed achieved passage and then the governor
governor has until the 22nd of this month to not do anything and they automatically
go into law or to veto them.
So the investments that we're looking at with House Bill 2, House Bill 2 spent $8.5 billion.
Now I do need to say this, I had something that I thought was going to be cute to give
to you all today but you know, this is one could argue not a cute topic so I decided
decided not to do that. But $8.5 billion, if you'll recall, two years ago in the
eight legislative session, they put $4 billion in the budget for public education and nothing,
a bill didn't pass to get that to districts. You know, we were talking about static, stagnant
revenues, et cetera, et cetera, with the inflation environment, but there was still not a bill
passed to deliver that to school districts. So we've been on our own absorbing that through
budget deficits and fund balance use as a state since then.
And so $8.5 billion is a lot of money, but I like to look at it as two sessions worth
at least.
So keep that in mind when you look at the headlines and stuff like that.
Again, $4 billion was set aside two years ago.
Had that been funded, it would only be a $4.3 billion investment.
investment. The big part of that is teachers' compensation. That's the big part and the big
spend in House Bill 2. House Bill 2 is going to deliver, according to the Legislative Budget
Board, about $50 million. According to consultants that are out there throughout the state that work
on the district's behalf and our our calculations say around 53 million
dollars a lot of that varies on still interpretation but mostly on the number
of counts that you have for teachers because that's the big that's the big
catch when it comes to this yes it's a lot of new money but yes twenty eight
point nine million dollars of it needs to go directly to teachers and I'll
elaborate on that on that here in a slide or two they're non-administrative
staff company also received compensation that ended up being about $45 per
regular program a DA that's not how we would normally look at average daily
attendance that's taking out all the special needs FTEs and all the career
and technology FTEs to get a lot lower lower number when it's regular program
a DA and that was at $45 if you take our anticipated revenue regular program
average daily attendance times 45 you get about 3.6 million dollars I'll talk
about that in a couple of slides. It creates a new allotment for basic cost.
This county already receiving a nickname of ABC allotment for basic costs at 1.3
billion dollars statewide. It's 106 dollars per enrolled student in KTISD.
Enrolled or in any district enrolled. I think that's a key thing because they've
not typically funded off enrollment. They funded off of average daily
attendance and full-time equivalencies so now we're looking at enrollment
funding mechanism part of me likes it part of me doesn't is this an entrance
or a kind of a teaser the way we're heading to be funded on average daily
enrollment I hope it's average daily enrollment this is not this is I
understand it is as of the peem snapshot day well what happens in Katy we grow
from the key peem snapshot date all the way to the end of the year and so if it
It indeed is the peem snapshot date, and we grow 1,000 kids,
and we're going to miss out on a million dollars because of our growth over the course of a year.
Does that make sense?
So that's one of the yuckies about it.
But it does generate $10.2 million or $10.3 million.
Again, I've got a slide that's going to elaborate on that quite a bit.
Other investment in House Bill 2, they had a modest increase of $55 to the basic allotment.
That sounds good.
It's only $55. Remember, we've been with $6,160 since 2019.
But they redirected golden pennies to pay for that.
So the yield was, I think it's $129, and it was going to go up, and it's going back down to what it was.
Old law from years ago had allowed that to move up every biennium.
and unfortunately that moving up is not going to happen.
It's going to be static where it is as we're operating right now.
And so they kind of, I like to call it Rob Peter to pay Paul
to pay for that $55 investment in the basic allotment.
So we lost, but we gained.
The school safety allotment increases doubles basically from $10 per ADA
and $15,000 per campus to $20 per ADA and $33,000 per campus respectively.
Again, I've got a slide along with the special education slide that's going to show you, I think, something enlightening on that.
You've seen it before, but I'm going to reframe it now that we know this is happening.
Special education, I'm sorry, early intervention, that's $250 to the number of students in early intervention.
We don't know how to calculate that.
We've not gotten any guidance, so it's not in any bottom line numbers you're going to see.
So if there's revenue that's generated from that, that's not included in the numbers that you're going to see tonight.
We just don't know how to do that yet.
Special education has $850 million for an overhaul of special education funding.
The way I look at that, that's probably about $8 million-ish, maybe a little less.
But we don't know how that will be delivered.
That's how much if you divide $850 million divided by the statewide.
Years ago, I may be off on that number now, but we won't know what that is until next year.
It won't start until the 26-27 school year.
So that will provide some additional funds that will go into 26-27 school year, but not the one that we're looking at.
Those rules are going to be made by the Commissioner of Education and TEA, and we don't know what those are at all.
operational support is in here I think there's a modest increase in the
transportation allotment career and technology education and the
certification and preparation process let's talk about the big change a big
change in as far as money goes teacher compensation that cost in house bill to
four point two billion dollars of that amount with the number of teachers that
we had in the last school year and taking our new teachers and trying to
guess what kind of teacher experience we're going to hire, again it's a budget, it would generate
just under $29 million or $28.9 million is what that is. So of the $50 million, $29 million
that comes right off to go to the teacher salary increase, which is wonderful for teachers.
And the reason we're here is to teach. But that breaks down like this. States specifically say
that it goes to classroom teachers we now know as of thursday of afternoon of last week that it's
a roll id 87 as far as peems is coded so that's going to be a classroom teacher and if you have
zero to two years they specifically left zero uh one and two year experienced teachers out
so there's a big zero out there we had 695 of those this last year that that leaves those
those folks out. The three and four year teachers get $2,500. There's 825 of those. Again, it's only
two groups of people and that generates about, or that costs about $2 million with their $2,500.
And then five year plus is where our bulk of our folks are at 5,367. Again, that's what we had this
last year, plus what we're anticipating the type of people we'll hire in our vacant positions
at 26.8 million dollars. The good news on that is if we hire more experienced
people it's going to cost more money but it's going to we're going to get more
money and if we hire less experienced people it's going to cost less money
we're going to get less money. So those kind of go hand in hand so it's not
anything to worry about too much. I will note that districts that are less than
or equal to 5,000 students got four thousand and eight thousand dollars in
in those same areas.
So I would say anybody between, or most everybody at least,
between here and San Antonio, for example,
received four and 8,000,
and we're probably the last district on the west
to get that, if you're just thinking I-10,
you know, just in the general vicinity.
But so they did send more money to rural districts.
Now admittedly, districts like Katy,
districts in the Houston area, they pay more.
It's more expensive to live in a metropolitan
or a suburban area like Katy and the Houston area,
but they did send more to the rural areas.
Non-administrative pay raises, this is the $45 per regular program ADA
that I mentioned earlier.
That generates about $3.6 million.
Again, if ADA, if it goes up, the amount we generate will go up a little bit
and vice versa, but we're anticipating it to be about $3.6 million.
dollars if you do the math on what that cost that would give everybody but
teachers a 1.3 percent salary increase that costs about 3.6 million dollars is
what 1.3 percent would deliver we're going to talk throughout the budget and
our I just show you there that 1% there's the 2 million 750 so 1.3 is a
little higher to get you to 3.6 million 2% doubles of the 2.75 and triples
when you get to the 3%.
So I put those in there.
And then House Bill 2 specifically says it is not for administrators.
And they still, I think, have we seen the definition of administrators?
It's central office, people that work in the central office and principals,
essentially, is what they're saying.
And they specifically said there is no money that is supposed to go to those folks of House Bill 2.
So I want to include that.
If we pay that locally, those are the amount of 1%, 2%, and 3% for our principals, et cetera, on the cost of that.
But they are excluded.
And in none of these, nor the ones I should have said this earlier, those amounts do not include benefits.
And I'm going to talk about those here in a minute, but there are not any benefits associated with the teacher salary increase nor the staff salary increase.
And we've taken that into account in the numbers that you'll see tonight, but there are some significant insurance with mainly TRS, TRS care, TRS statutory minimum that we'll have to pay because we're paying higher salaries when it comes to teachers.
For fixed cost allotment, that's the ABC, if you will.
It costs $1.3 billion statewide.
That's $106 per enrollment.
enrollment. That generates about $10.3 million. That covers, it's to cover and specifically states in the law, utilities, insurance, retire, rehires, benefits on raises and inflation on other fixed expenses. So I listed a few here. The benefits on the teacher salary increase alone is $3.2 million. So yes, that's great. They're paying for the salary increase and they're providing this to help us pay for the benefits because
because $3.2 million is as much as the,
what was almost as much as the 1.3%
for the rest of the entire district.
Raises for one- and two-year teachers.
What we're proposing is that all teachers are treated the same
and that we locally pay for 2,500 for the year one
and two experienced teachers.
When they get to three and four years and they qualify,
what will happen is we will have paid for it locally,
we'll still pay for it locally,
but now the state will pay the district for that.
Until then, as we're advancing it to the younger teacher before they qualify,
it's just coming out of local funds.
Does that make sense?
So they'll age into it, but when they age into it, we'll get money for that person.
At that time, we're going to be having retirees on the back end, et cetera, leaving,
and it's always going to be a moving target.
But we will get paid for them eventually.
But for the first two years, we're recommending just going ahead and giving them the $2,500.
It makes the salary schedule cleaner as well, significantly cleaner.
And Mr. Schuss may elaborate on that.
Raises for, I've already said that, county appraisal districts, our appraisal amounts continue to go up.
That's done off the three counties, Harris, Fort Bend, and Waller counties.
Those continue to go up.
I put it on there because that was fresh on my mind that we're going to have to have about a half million dollar increase
We can't control that
That's just the basic cost of doing business
And so we pay about five million dollars a year for those services to those three appraisal districts that's going up by five hundred thousand
Dollars we know that and so we've put that in there as an example of what this can pay for
Health insurance losses you'll see at the very last slide
That I do that we're anticipating that as a loss three million dollars that that goes
That's a perfect example of what they want to cover with that.
And then meaningful raises for counselors, librarians, aides, custodians, bus drivers, and support staff.
When I say meaningful, that's the difference from this $3.6 million and a 3%, which is the 8.25.
So the difference between 8.25 minus 3.6 would be $600,000.
And that's the difference to get us up from, get that staff up from a 1%, 1.3% to a 3%, okay?
And that would be something that this would cost for.
There's $14 million, maybe $15 million that I outlined, and I could go on and on for things that are fixed costs,
that are out of our control, that are continuing to go up, software costs, paper, goods, fuel,
all of that is things that have property insurance etc have continued to go up
and squeezed public education especially here in Katy and as those continue to go
up I could have listed all that but it would have just taken these are low
hanging fruit that I could I could pop out of my head pretty quickly and and
staff could get in those numbers pretty easily so school safety this is a good
one 430 million statewide it basically as I mentioned earlier it doubles from
from $10 or $9.72 per ADA to $20, and then from $15,000 to $33,540.
That generates about $2.3 million, and that's a good thing,
but I'm going to show you here in a slide or two of why that little an asterisk, if you will, on that.
And so I'll try to remember to say the word asterisk when I get to that.
Early learning program, $677 million.
We're still learning about that, but it essentially expands pre-K to teachers.
Any teacher in the district that has a pre-K child can bring their child to the pre-K program here in Katy.
And that's a benefit to teachers.
That's a wonderful thing.
In a district like Katy, when we're fast-growing, that makes space a concern.
But we'll manage our way through that, I'm sure.
Mr. Veerling?
Yes.
Sure.
And then it does provide $250.
I mentioned earlier, I don't know what that is at this time, or a dollar amount, but we'll find that out in the next week or two, or month.
Special education, this is the $850 million.
There is about $3 million that pays for the tests that we're doing when it comes to testing kids and placing students in special education program.
that generates about three million dollars based on our historical number
of of those cases that we've done this is the majority of this is going to
happen and be written over this next year and so we'll that'll help but we
won't know what that is property taxes a relief of six point seven billion dollars
Senate bill four is going to take it to the voters to increase the homestead
exemption from $100,000 to $140,000, that's going to cost $2.7 billion. And then on people over 65,
that homestead exemption is going to increase from $110,000 to $200,000. And that is going to
cost statewide about a billion dollars to pay for that. And that's for over 65 and have disabilities.
I need to make sure I say disabilities, and I don't want to be misleading to anybody.
The expansion would reduce our taxable property value, and in Katy, that would be worth about $5.4 billion.
Now, that $5.4 billion is in taxable value.
You take taxable value and generate the tax on that.
It's about, and for the debt service fund, it's about $22 million.
million dollars. So if that passes, that's going to hurt our debt plan and everything by $22 million.
However, the state does have a program called ASAHI, Additional State Aid for Homestead Exemption,
that helps us with our debt service. And so on Monday of next week, we're going to have a bond
transaction. We're going to have an annual sale. We're selling $450 million in our transaction next
next week, and we're going to make a payment on that by August.
That's going to put it eligible to be eligible for ASAHI.
Had we not had that debt eligible for ASAHI, it would cost about $20 million a year in
lost taxes, and so we're squeaking it in under the wire in order to generate dollars.
It's not the rest of our authorization.
I think that leaves a hundred million dollars, but we had parameters to do 400
and then there's some other things that we can do with that additional monies
that may not be a sahi eligible but it'll be a benefit to the district to go
ahead and keep that out and have other types of sales and we may not have to
sell it as soon as well. In addition they're compressing the tax rate
statewide that's going to cost about three billion dollars in this first year
We're looking at just a little over a penny.
So I'm confident that when our values come in in July, late July, and we work with TEA,
that y'all will be able to further reduce the tax rate by a little over a penny on the maintenance and operations tax rate.
And again, that loss for the maintenance and operations fund,
That loss in homestead exemption increase is made up by the state of Texas for maintenance and operations already.
And the lower tax rate, the loss of those tax dollars generated for maintenance and operation will be paid for by the state.
So those are kind of a wash.
It's only really INS that makes it tricky.
There was a time where that if we hadn't sold any bonds, it looks back, it looked back until January 1 of 2025.
So every bond we had sold would be eligible for a SAHI, but anything from January 1, 2025 moving forward was not going to be eligible.
So luckily the legislature listened to our advocacy efforts here in Katy and statewide and they moved it to
September 1 giving us a chance to have
That be eligible
Other budget related items. I'm not going to talk in detail, but the elections there was an effort to have all elections school board
V a TRE s bond elections only in November that did not that did not make it out of the session
that would have caused some issues when it comes the majority of our bond
elections have been in November and not May but if you had them all in November
and everybody passed them in November or you know assuming those that passed
everybody would be sailing bonds at the same time everybody would be going to
bid at the same time that would drive bond costs up or interest rates up and
probably calls more expense on the construction project so having that in
multiple times does spread that out over the course of the year and and that's a
good thing that that didn't pass in my opinion again we're not we don't have
most of our bond elections are in November it wasn't that it was just
really to spread it out school district liability there's a there's a gross
negligent thing that will cost districts I think it's a half a million dollars
per case that's going to drive up our expenses we have no idea yet but
But statewide, that's going to drive up our insurance liability expenses exposure, and that will be ultimately an increase in expense.
Procurement, this is a good thing.
It went from $50,000 to $100,000.
As far as if I wanted to go buy this mouse and I bought $50,000 worth, I need to have a legal procurement.
And our purchasing department does a wonderful job finding me legal procurement because in a district our size we spend
$50,000 pretty quick because we're so large that's been moved to a hundred thousand dollars. That's gonna help
Administratively make move some things through and to make it a little easier for us
We're still gonna procure because we're better off
Procuring everything we can because we get better prices that it requires a sharper pencil
But that's going to be a good thing and then of course vouchers passed
they put a billion dollars for that that starts in the fall of 2026 so a year
from about what's that 14 months from now is when it starts and they think
that'll cost a billion dollars but moving forward the legislature has said
that they think it's going to cost about four billion dollars per year about year
2030 so here's that asterisk slide I talked to you about so they're putting
more money in special education that's that gap I showed you back in March so
So about $29 million is what that orange, that dark orange is what they're funding.
And the yellow portion or above is what we're spending.
So they're funding about $29 million short.
That's going to close the gap.
It's not going to close it all the way.
But it's a step towards the right direction.
And I appreciate the state attempting to do that.
But they're going to close it in the right way.
So we're still going to be underfunded, likely, in special education.
but it will be closer and we are getting better portion.
Same with safety and security.
You know, I said we doubled it.
That's $2 million.
Look at that little navy blue thing at the bottom go from that to double.
And so they're still...
going to be uh uh actually that's when they added the 15 now if we did another one it would double
again that little blue thing would double again but we would still be significantly underfunded
in what we're currently paying for safety and security so locally we're still paying for but
it does is going to close the gap and then same with transportation that little navy portion may
increase slightly and close that gap but but it won't it is no way it'll it'll
ever a long time before it'll reach what we're actually spending to transport
students in KTISD so I'm going to move into what that looks like from what we
know anyway into into our budget and so here are the assumptions you look at the
golden penny yields you see the basic allotment increasing from six thousand
one hundred sixty dollars to six thousand two fifteen that's the fifty five dollar increase
the golden penny yield uh back in march it was a dollar thirty two a hundred and thirty two dollars
or 134 i can't remember which but it's moved back down to where it is currently and that was going
to generate about three million dollars to the district but that got cut uh but it was replaced
with the 55 million dollars or 55 increase by and large so it's a rob peter to paypal but that's
where that is we're budgeting 97,000 from enrollment to enrollment or
enrollment that's only a 524 student increase we think that's conservative
and that's a low amount but the students did slow down this last year and then we
think that's a lot of interest rates okay there's still a lot of moving
around a lot of lot of new homes going up so hopefully that's conservative but
But that's what we staffed on and what we're using in the budget.
And time will tell.
We'll know by really not that first week of school,
but by really around Labor Day is when we kind of figure out
and it kind of settles into what our enrollment is really going to be
and we start trending it then.
Property values, we're budgeting a 5% increase there.
That's the gross property values.
The net, if I showed you net to net,
We are assuming that the increase in the homestead exemption and the tax revenues you're going to see, we're assuming that that's going to pass.
It's going to pass.
We're going to continue to assume that as we adopt the budget.
If it didn't pass, we'll just amend the budget and state revenues, local taxes will go up, state revenues will go down.
It'll wash.
But we are looking at that now and a 5% gain.
and again we're doing what we can to try to get our the Asahi covered so we don't
lose that in the district our size with about 65 66 percent in residential that
that's a pretty big hit if you're a district that has a lot of commercial
not a hit at all right on their debt service but it is in a district our size
we're open to the elementary schools there's the growth that we that has been
approved in the two staffing plans and then again what I'm modeling in these
expenditures is $2,500 and $5,000 for the teachers, zero, all the way up to over 40 years experience,
and then 3% for everyone else. And going back to the teacher salary schedule,
as I understand it, that's about a 6.51% average salary increase for all teachers. It's averaged
out at about 6.51 percent so that's a very good percent and I very much
appreciate I'd like to say as the spouse of a teacher which he retired so so but
as a fan of teachers that's a great thing for teachers to be recognized to
that and and that'll be a well-deserved salary increase that the state's passing
on. Should have used that. Tax revenue, look at that, it goes down again. We're
gonna lose about five billion dollars when the homestead exemption
kicks up. So taxes are gonna go down substantially and the little over
one cent tax rate decrease. Those two combined you see even though we have
value growth, it goes down in tax revenue. State funding goes up there
there substantially makes up for that that's a wash and then it funds the the
what I just talked about for the last 15 minutes those those things there's the
state funding going up from a hundred million dollars and then the TRS
contributions I always point out that's a big increase and that's because of the
higher salaries and that's a wash on this particular line item and you'll see
that here on the revenue coming up okay so teachers uh the new positions we're getting 3
uh point two million dollars worth of new new teaching positions uh those that we're
anticipating somewhere within uh three and four year regenerate 2.1 million dollars those match
the slide earlier and five plus is about 26.8 million dollars and then the cost to go ahead
and pass that along to one and two-year teachers is about $1.7 million,
or estimated to be $1.7 million.
That would be a local contribution, not the state.
Non-teacher pay group is about $254 million in current positions.
Net new positions is about $8.3 million.
We're opening that transportation center up north,
and the two campuses with the food service staff and all that good stuff
actually food service staff is not going to be in that number sorry but with the
fixed costs associated with opening those two campuses adjustments and
reclassifications about six hundred thousand dollars salary increase that's
the meaningful salary increase that I mentioned earlier plus the this is a
threat salary increase for our principals and administrators at three
percent as well that cost total is about 9.6 percent again if if if that were to go through
uh that would be paid by the board locally uh out of local dollars uh for the principals and
administration um if that's what we did so total salary is about 818 or 819 million dollars
uh the benefits uh you see an increase in stipends that's you know that's growth uh and everything
else is pretty much the same substitutes didn't need to increase that a little
bit substitute expenses is is not has not been as robust over the the first
few months of the school year we're gonna after this payroll today I'm sorry
on Friday that pretty much all the substitutes from the the school year are
gone through and now it's a stagnant deal to really do some analysis on so
So that analysis is really about to start by Ms. Rios and her department.
Let's see what else on that.
I guess that's it.
Well, the total other compensation is about $50.8 million.
Benefits, about $95 million.
This is where you see the big jump in the salary increase,
and I'll just take it down to there.
You don't see it there, the TRS care.
I think we may have over calculated that last year.
And so you see the 6.1.
But the TRS local contribution, it goes up substantially, the 2%.
And that's because of the higher teacher salary that we're paying.
That's about a $3.5 million increase.
And then this is where the big one is, is statutory minimum.
Anytime that a district pays above the minimum salary schedule, the increment from the minimum salary schedule at, say, year 10 to what we're paying someone in year 10, we have to pay statutory minimum on that.
And that's a penalty or a tax at 8.25%.
And that is we're already paying above it.
We're going to pay that much more above it once we pass these salary increases on.
And so our TRS on behalf is going to go up substantially.
That's what we're using a large part of that ABC cost on.
But they are funding it, just not directly, kind of indirectly through the ABC allotment.
So total payroll budget, about $965 million.
That's a $55 million increase.
Again, 30 of that is to teacher salaries.
And then of course new growth related to growth would probably be the second portion of that from a larger standpoint.
There's that wash, that 65, that's what showed up in revenue and that's the wash from the expense side.
So we'll have about a billion thirty, a little over a billion dollars in just payroll costs, payroll and benefits.
Non-payroll costs, you can see campus growth there at 7.9 to 8.9.
I'm proud to say that we've not had to mess with that number and I know a lot of districts
that are trying to cut back and you can cut that back 10% and you gain $800,000.
And that's not good for children and campus morale.
So we've not touched that.
That's just grown organically at the allotments that we've provided historically.
Department allocations though, because campuses don't have the budget for their own utilities,
water, et cetera.
A lot of the testing materials, etc. That's all done. The athletic program, the fine arts program, those are all budgeted centrally.
And those campuses don't budget for that. That's why those department budgets, especially the utility budget, is so large in that number.
And then non-allocations. That's for things like our appraisal district fees is $5 million, I mentioned earlier.
that would include things like software I'm sorry the the print shop at a million five that's gone
down Thank You technology that's gone down by we think it we saved a half a million dollars on that
capital outlay any white fleet purchases there's none in this budget but that would be a special
project those are the type of things that become special projects are enlisted in non-allocations
So here's the big bottom line slide.
I want to focus on that middle column, a $26.7 million deficit.
You're going to hear from Mr. Hines tonight.
You've heard from him for the last seven months where we talk about underspending.
I'm confident that when it's all said and done that that $26 million is going to be not a deficit.
When we get our audit in January, if it is a deficit, it will be very small.
I think we're going to have a surplus because we're going to have underspending.
We have underspending.
We got significant, like $30 million in underspending.
We budget for underspending, but we continue to always have underspending on top of it.
And that's a good thing because it's a backstop.
What we don't want is for everything to line up perfectly and us to be fully staffed all year long
and to spend everything that we, we wouldn't want to do that,
but to spend everything that would be a, we would spend that whole amount.
but we're not going to um but we don't budget that way we budget as a backstop and then we don't
budget for things and i want to be clear on this uh for for the property value audits that we did
a property value audit from the 22 school year this last year and it generated 15 million dollars
we're not going to budget that because i don't know that number one how much the next one how
fruitful the next one will be and then also when it's approved sometimes it takes a while to get
through the comptroller's office sometimes it happens fast some and once the comptroller
gives it to tea sometimes tea will pay it immediately if they have the money and they
run out of budget too and then they'll hold it till the next biennium and so for me to budget
that plus again it's not sound budgeting but i'm going to try to always disclaim that that's why
we have a conservative revenue budget because we don't budget for that and we don't always spend
into our budget. So I didn't lose sleep over the $26 million. I'm still not losing sleep.
We're going to add to fund balance. But if you look at next year with all the things we did,
the House Bill 2 ladder in our hole helped us kind of get out of the hole a little bit,
but not very much. It would have been about a $35 million deficit had it not been for some of the
the gains in House Bill 3 that weren't salary related, but we still are in a hole, and that's
a statewide problem. The bigger problem on that, in my opinion, is because, again, we're going to
underspend. We're going to do a property value audit. One's about to be starting to tee up that
will probably happen and be funded in the 25-26 school year. That's going to be good news.
We'll amend the budget appropriately, etc., but even without that, I'm comfortable with our
historic underspending that that's that's not a deficit that will actually
hit our fund balance when it comes to the audit 26 million dollars and there's
that other sources and uses that that three million just above that that's
what I picked up for the health health fund loss as we move forward this year
we may just put that in the expenditure budget and not show that as a transfer
for out and just call it what it is and that's an expense to keep the health
insurance fund healthy but we're working through that still so you know you're
looking worst case at a 27% the fund balances a percent of expenditures again
it's not going to be that we're going to start off with a higher fund balance than
that I know that for sure so I'm very confident in that and then as we move
through the 25-26 school year and even really now what kind of growth are we
gonna have that's the big question we were guessing it's an educated guess but
we're guessing right now property value impact changes only state and local
funds so if the again I mentioned earlier if the homestead exemption vote
in November passes or fails it's not going to change our bottom line and on
it when it comes to the maintenance and operations increase in homestead
exemption again that's that's that's probably going to happen and the
increase the tax rate compression we're going to lower be able to lower taxes
but we still have to work through all of that with the appraisal districts and
with TEA and with of course this board when it comes to setting the tax rate
enrollment growth and special populations growth goes back to organic
growth with property values just like that you know how many students are
going to show up we'll know and in a couple months whether that's robust or
sluggish or what have you we still are the fastest growing school district in
the state of Texas and when it comes to new students to the district even though
we had a slower year this last year and I'm confident we're gonna remain at the
top state funding again an asterisk to all of what I've just said we're still
finding stuff out Sinai DAR the end of the legislative session was passed 14
days ago signed into law what I've talked to you mostly about tonight just
just 12 days ago.
And we're getting rules from TEA over the weekend.
I think y'all got a letter on rules just this morning
on items that we're learning about.
I'm going to the Texas Association of School Business Officials Conference
just to learn Wednesday, just to learn about all of this.
And I'm sure I'll be enlightened.
And so there's going to be changes.
Again, we're not adopting a budget,
but this should be pretty close to what you're looking at.
and there is a deficit unfortunately but again I'm not gonna lose sleep over that
deficit so there's where we are through now we've done through June again next
month we'll look at a little bit closer some answers will be questioned we're
not going to go into the details of House Bill 2 and the ebbs and flows of
that unless I'm asked to I don't plan on it we're just going to really kind of
of get down to what the bottom line looks like in the general fund or the
maintenance operations fund, debt service fund, and this special revenue fund or
the child nutrition fund. Those will be anticipated or provided to y'all in July
and then in August it's going to be a lot easier than that because I love
that'll be the hardest part is in July and in August this is going to be one
more summary. Please adopt. And I'll be glad to answer any questions if you have
any thank you mr. Smith or do we have any questions mr. Redmond the champagne
yes I have some questions and thank you for the presentation I know that was
that's a lot I was a little bit sad that there wasn't anything funny in there but
I guess it's not funny usually you throw something in there I thought about it
but you know it's all good and I appreciate the state and all that but
But it's hard to make funny stuff funny.
Sometimes.
All right.
So I do have a few comments to make and some questions.
Okay.
So I don't know where to begin, but first of all,
I just came out of the TASB, the summer leadership,
and then I kind of met with some TASB directors,
and we talked about some of these house bills,
and we got the legislative update and all that.
But on House Bill 2, there's something I'm kind of concerned about,
which is the $2,500 that we're going to give to the year 3 and 4.
I know that's a state thing.
That's not our thing.
But if we – so I've asked this question several times.
I know I've talked to Dr. Gregorius about this,
but I just want to make this a public thing,
that it's in the bill that every third-year teacher –
so when the second year teacher becomes a third year teacher the third year that new third year
teacher is going to get 2500 it doesn't say there's a time stipulation on it doesn't say
it's for 10 years or two years or whatever it's just supposed to be right now forever so my
concern is if you if we give the year one and and two year 2500 that we're gonna give okay so
you know i i can show you the chart but you're you know math too so i won't do that to you but
But if we give the year one and two-year teacher the $2,500,
and then on year three, they're going to get another $2,500.
But this is what my concern is.
It looks like that's what the law says,
is that we have to give them an additional $2,500 at year three.
And if that's the truth, then our new year three people
will be making substantially more than the new four-year teacher because the
year four your teacher won't get another $2,500 because they already got one last
year but by advancing the $2,500 now locally and we could write it in an item
I'm sure that we basically are saying this is the $2,500 the state's going to
pay you when you get to year three we're paying it early locally out of local
funds so we don't have issues like that so what so I think that it's good for me
to hear it it's good for the public to hear it it's good for teachers to hear
this that you're your to teacher and we're gonna give you $2,500 but you're
not gonna get another 2,500 next year because you're year three you're just
gonna this is your 2,500 and I don't know how we're gonna be able to state
state that or whatever because there are teachers who also read these bills and
sure and it's clear in the law that says that we're just delivering in early and
we can work on wording on that essentially what's going to happen in
this I understand it again this is all fresh off the press and still evolving
is that every year we're going to report these student these FTEs to PEMS we
currently do in a roll ID 87 and so every year those numbers that we report
to PEMS as the last Friday in October, those numbers are going to change every year.
Essentially, they're going to be left off of the submission this fall, and maybe if
they're in year two, if they're in year one, they're going to be left off this fall and
the next fall.
But they'll be in there two years from now.
We'll start then receiving dollars from the state for those folks.
Right.
But they're already being paid it.
We're paying it in advance.
I know we have to get reimbursed.
Okay, so just so that everyone knows, I realize it's in the law,
but it also says in the law that year three teachers get $2,500.
But if it's going to be paid now and not going to be paid again,
then that's good.
But I have another question.
It's about the – because I didn't see it in the budget.
It's about the teacher recruitment and retainment amount.
so is that is that in the budget somewhere the dollar amount that's
associated with that is in the expenditure budget draft yes but what is
it called it's in the other compensation at this
time at this point so since we're giving so we my understanding was when we
developed that teacher recruitment and retainment it was because we weren't
part of it was because we weren't getting anything from the state since
2019 but now that we are getting something maybe this could be in lieu of
that because now they're getting the year five teacher is going to get a
$5,000 more income and maybe they don't need that $500 I'll tell you if this
were chris smith isd and speaking as a cfo um i i think that that would be a good thing to use to
pay for uh zero and one and two year teachers or for to give counselors nurses and librarians a
raise that they deserve so for me i would like to see that as as a line item because i don't know
how much that is and if it's all bulked into together i can't know to say i would like that
to be struck stricken or struck you know i can't identify that as a dollar amount because it's it's
lumped into something else let me jump in on that one miss champagne so you know so that's probably
a broader question with mr shuss and his compensation plan the board generally doesn't
see every line item from the budget because it'd probably be a print off longer than i can reach
across this dais but what happens every year if the board wants to include certain things in their
their pay structures, those have to be built into the compensation plan.
So if the board wants to do something on compensation,
we put in the compensation plan and then we fund it in the budget.
Dr. Gorski.
Oh, Mr.
Sorry, just to have that removed, how would we do that?
Because there's not really a place to call that.
Yeah, so think about it this way with a budget.
When Mr. Smith builds the budget, he takes a current budget we're in,
puts it over in the new budget.
And then we build from that.
We add things, we delete things,
we take things in and out of the budget all the time.
So that's just dollars that are sitting over there.
So once again, in terms of the compensation plan,
the board can make any myriad of decisions
when it comes to compensation.
And I think, I can't remember who said it last year
when we talked about building this in,
but somebody had mentioned that
that when something like this is designed,
the board has to approve these things annually, which they do.
You might recall in the past when we were able to,
when we were a little bit more fruitful with some dollars,
we would do one-time lump sum payments around Christmas,
and those were always approved annually.
So the board always has an option annually
to include anything they want in compensation or not include it.
So at that point we would just need direction from the Board of Trustees.
How do you want to include things? I think Chris made a good point over there
when he talked about that is the language in House Bill 2 as he had put
it is this is a teacher retention allotment. It's very clear in House Bill
2 that it's a teacher retention allotment given to teachers. It is a bit
strange to me and I'll say it to put it on the record. I have no idea and I've
I've asked it, nobody could ever tell me why teachers at one year or two year were excluded from any allotment.
But I'll also say this, and I already put it out on the video so you guys know how I feel about that.
I just can't look at our teachers who are one and two year teachers, brand new teachers.
Most teachers who leave the profession leave it within the first three to five years of the profession.
And then we collectively as the state of Texas not we the board are gonna look at all our teachers across
Texas and not a lot one dollar not even a dollar for first and second year teachers
It was just strange to me
So that's why we came up with the idea of trying to cover that locally until the state started funding it at year
Three, but that is the design of it. It's a teacher
retention allotment payment that's like you said good for life for as long as it
unless a different legislature takes it away but otherwise it's there for life
okay I just want to I just want to say one more thing so when we I'm glad you
brought up that that bonus or the whatever you know I'm some that we gave
at Christmas because when I was on the board then and it was listed as a
separate thing so that we could every year we could re decide on that so
that's why I would personally like to see that retainment thing listed out
separately as you know because every year we read we re voted on that and so
this is me to me another thing that we would re vote on and you know alone you
know whether we want that in there or not because actually one year we voted
voted not to have that in there. But we, but it was on your presentation, it was listed
out separately and it showed the amount and everything. So I would just like to see that
so that I, cause I have no idea, you know, I think it was like $1 million or something
like that. I don't even know what to call it. I don't know what y'all are calling it.
So if I wanted to somehow vote against that, how would I do that?
I think it's more of a way of you just as a board of trustees telling us what you would like us to include in the compensation plan.
If the board wants to include different pay structures in the compensation plan, then we would tell that.
We'd talk about it here and then Brian would take that comp plan back and he would put specific language in there that would cover that.
That's generally how we cover anything with compensation is whether it's general compensation ie the pay structures and the pay grades
or one-time lump sums or substitute pay or
Special duty pay, you know, I mean there's all sorts of stuff in that comp plan
I would just need the board to tell me you would like to include something separate and different in that comp plan that way
Otherwise, it's not there
Mr. Champagne, if you look at it right now,
I know it'll be, say, 0.14 when we start talking
about the compensation plan.
So the chart actually shows it separated each year
and is noted that our local funds are going to make up
for years one and two.
I think you're talking about this past year where
it was every five years.
I did ask that to not be included in the compensation plan for this time knowing it was in the budget
Because it did seem to be more generous more inclusive and had a funding source
So we would have it on there, but again we get a chance to decide all those things
so that's why you're seeing it in the budget presentation because
Our finance team not knowing what we were going to do as board has budgeted for it
but as a compensation plan we have some flexibility there as we talk about that
tonight that's why it is not separated right now
mr. president yes miss gazelle is it a follow-on question so the what we're to
be clear what we're talking about is the teacher retention payment that we voted
on last year and that is years of service with Katie ISD so it is a little
different than what the state is providing I just want to highlight that
right that's years of service with our district
I think it was total.
Mr. Schuss, can you clarify that for the board?
That was just years of service or years with Katie?
Yeah, we discussed it in several different ways,
but I think in the end it was years of service for all.
Oh, okay.
Apologize.
Okay, so it is somewhat similar to what the state is providing,
but I certainly want to know how much that is in the budget.
Just like Ms. Champagne, I'd like to see that dollar.
clearly delineated that's been budgeted for that so we can discuss that appropriately
currently that amount is in is in other compensation uh and i'm going to say it's
at a million dollars and ask esperanza to throw a rock at me if it's not it's it's in the ballpark
of a million maybe a hundred thousand okay i'm sorry it's the only thing in other no in other
companies there's a whole lot of stuff in other conversations so it is not on a line item by
myself i'm just telling you the amount that's in there and i just you know i don't don't want to
spend four hours talking about too much detail and so at some point we draw the line and didn't think
didn't anticipate needing to disclose that i'm sorry okay thank you um and then for years one
and two um i understand it's just a it's who's funding it i i get that um but from what i read
and please clarify but from the rules from a wrath that dr. Gorg or see just
share with the board today I thought it said in there that the SSRA support
staff for retainer retainment allotment could be used towards years one and two
teachers as well and could we not use that somehow to fund the 2,500 we're
trying to give you could use that six one half dozen the other right now I'm
I'm kind of using the ABC allotment to cover that, but it could be done either way.
It's not going to change the bottom line to our budget.
Okay, so there was no material difference where you were pulling from?
No.
Okay.
Okay.
And then one question on, I wrote down slide nine, but I may be wrong.
It was where you were
Delineating the difference
Yeah, you're slide 9 I believe the meaningful raises 3%
Yes for counselors librarians etc, and you wrote it's 4.6 million. That's but the the Delta was
600,000 is that what you were saying?
The Delta from the allotment
That we pay I'm just about there
Yeah, there it is.
So let me start here.
That $45 per regular ADA generates $3.6 million.
A 1% salary increase is $2,750,000.
So it's a little above 1% or 1.32% there on the left.
Okay, in order to get that number to something meaningful is if we did 3% 8 million 250 thousand dollars minus 3 million 623 thousand is the 4.626465.
Thank you for clarifying that.
I think that's all I got right now.
I have questions for Mr. Schoeschlager.
I have another question, please, Mr. Redman.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Ms. Fox?
Ms. Mine's all along the same kind of stretch here, which no one's surprised that
this is difficult to figure out.
Mr. Smith, the $45, is that the ABC allotment basic cost?
Is that what that is?
Mr. The $106 is the ABC basic cost.
the 45 dollars is the amount uh that they passed on for other staff got it there were the not not
administrative pass uh staff pay raises is what that was for okay so the 45 is for raises for
other people not teachers yes and the abc is the 106 which is basic cost of all kinds of things
yes and i use just as an example on this slide just some low-hanging fruit that popcorn in my
head and our heads as we put this together just just some things to just
show that yeah and we could probably continue to go on for ten more lines on
examples of things that that are that are strenuous that have been affected by
inflation or supply chains or etc etc that could be added to that that's just
low-hanging popcorned up that got to 14 million dollars real quick and while we
We appreciate very much the $8 billion they gave to education.
It still does not fulfill all the needs we have.
It won't make us whole on many of the things that they mandate that we must have through
the security, through the cost of all the things.
Correct.
But we do appreciate the help on that.
Okay.
Okay, so my concern is that the ledge pretty much told us
exactly how they wanted us to spend that money.
Nothing for zero, one, and two.
And, right.
And I just have concerns to go against what they allotted.
They gave a significant raise, $2,500 and $5,000
was way more than the retention increases that we gave,
which were $250, $500, $750, right?
So $2,500 for year three and four,
and $5,000 is a significant increase for teachers five years and up.
So as they're calling that a retention increase,
increase, I really hesitate to make an adjustment to value every teacher, no matter how long
they've been here.
I'm grateful they're still choosing education.
But if we give increases to brand new teachers in year one and year two when the ledge clearly
didn't want us to do that, what are they going to do the next time they meet?
and they're going to be, if you don't do what we say, we're going to take it away or we're going to do differently.
I just, we've watched that happen about the vouchers for the last 10 years when we never really,
we kept fighting against that and they just held the money for a while, right?
And they made our lives really hard.
So not saying they will, but I hesitate on doing that.
And the money, every dollar we have left over for anything, those hourly employees are just really barely making ends meet in many opportunities.
And so when we're talking about the retention increase, the million dollars we had from the decision made last year, like that million dollars could go a lot farther toward the hourly employees and our paras and our custodians and all those things.
So I'm really in favor of giving them as much increase as possible.
I'm not sure that.
Okay, last thing.
The 0, 1, and 2, you say for years 1 and 2, we would give it to them now, and then we wouldn't give it to them.
It would already be there, so when the state chips in, we'll just keep it for us.
It'll go to our bottom line.
I know, but that's not what the ledge says.
That's not what HB2 says.
So then do we have our teacher saying, according to the law, you owe me more money?
I just it complicates things for me and I'm just trying to sort through it so
miss Fox we have a legal from my perspective I would say this and I can
see which where your wholeheartedly but in 2021 and in 2023 and their years in
between those the ledge did not give our teachers or any of our staff funds to
to pay for a salary increase, and our board did those locally.
And so they've set a precedence by not funding the $4 billion from last year
and didn't do it.
Our board passed something along to our staff,
and I would say that the precedence has been set that what's different for the
zero, one, and twos, they just didn't send it.
And now locally you're picking it up.
One more.
This is more a comment than anything in that when many times our teachers are like 3% of the midpoint, we give the same amount to every teacher or every, let's call it teacher.
When we give that, the ledge just did that exact thing.
A five-year teacher gets $5,000 and a 30-year teacher gets $5,000.
They didn't make any significant difference in retention with service.
So I was a little disappointed to see that, but I get it.
but I'm grateful for the $5,000.
Mr. Redmond.
Ms. Amy.
I'll be quick.
It kind of falls on what was just said.
But our first and second year teachers have a very market current salary
that was offered to them.
I also just wanted to make that comment that I want us to consider that
their salary is quite high because it's been trued up with today so I want to
consider that in deciding if we give that $2,500 for first and second year
teachers and then our what are we calling it the teacher retention that we
decided on last year that the board did pass kudos for the board passing it
because this is what state was thinking I think that's great and it but it does
have that graduated payout for years of service so do consider that we could you know our 30-year
teacher or 25-year teacher with experience was going to receive a bump or did last year right
so i want us to consider that that is lacking from what the state is offering
just so we know what we're dealing with thank you mr edmund thank you um okay just a quick question
I just want to make sure I wrote this down right so you're you're saying that
About the teachers are getting about six point one percent increase
From the state of Texas is that right mr.
Smith as I understand the average pay increase from years two to year forty
Would be about six point five one so some would be higher than that some would be sure okay?
So an on average on average okay, and that's paid for by the state of Texas
Yes. Okay, and then except years one and two they're getting they're not getting it as of as of this as of what the state
Has the budget has put in for this for us to come to compensate them for years one and two, right?
That's what the budget is currently using as a placeholder. Yes
Okay
And then the three percent of all other employees think a DSD are getting and and I mean all the other employees in case you're getting
three percent this is what your budget proposes a three percent increase paid by kdisd not the state
is that right just trying to clarify uh it would be it would be 3 million 623 coming from the state
of texas okay and the difference from what we consider meaningful in this budget draft of 4.6
million dollars would be coming out of local funds yeah okay all right and then on slide 26
When we talked about the beginning balance, beginning fund balance and ending fund balance,
you mentioned that you thought our beginning fund balance might be different than this 337.6 for 2025-2026.
Do you have a ballpark of where you think that might actually be?
Let me get this.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
No, no, no.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
So.
Oh, yeah, that's it.
That's it.
Yeah.
You're talking about that middle column at $26.7 million deficit?
No, I'm sorry.
I'm talking the beginning balance for our fund balance.
Beginning fund balance of 364 is what we began this fiscal year at after our audit.
Right.
And if we used every bit of what we originally budgeted, we used $26 million of that, we
would end up with a $337 million fund balance.
Again, I think we're going to have a fund balance higher than $364 million.
Right.
I don't think that deficit is going to happen because we are substantial underspending.
Okay.
So do you have like a ballpark of where you think that – I know you said that that 337.6 was going to change because we did have significant underspending.
But do you have an idea like a ballpark of where you think our fund balance will begin for this next school year?
Sorry.
Sorry.
I can't win to answer that.
No, I think I'll be honest with you.
I think we will, and I've said this before,
we will try to use some underspending to expense through to generate cash
to give to our health fund because it's underwater
and to try to keep that healthy.
When you do that and you look at what else would be left after that,
I'm gonna guess ten million dollar increase to fund balance
That's that's not just under spending when you add that when you go to ten million
The property value audit that we did from 2022 property values that we got around Christmas time that generated fifteen million dollars
That was in higher revenue now. We needed it because it offsets some slower enrollment that we anticipated etc
But it all kind of came out good and I would expect around a $10 million fund balance.
That may be.
Is that there?
Okay.
Well, that's actually not bad news because if you take $10 million and you add it to the projected beginning balance right now,
we're not far from our beginning balance in 2023, 2024 of $352.
Yeah.
So that's amazing that we've been through pretty turbulent waters financially in the last two years,
and we're pretty much almost where we were two years ago.
That's remarkable.
That's remarkable.
And I will say that as a growing district, when you're going to have just organic growth,
let's just say everything was fixed and we just added more teachers because we had more students.
Your fund balance needs to grow along with it.
So it is healthy as we continue to grow for fund balance to go along with it.
I've mentioned it as a railroad track.
As long as our expenditures and fund balance are changing together, we're maintaining a good, healthy position.
If our expenditures go up and our fund balance stays level and that starts spreading, we're naturally getting less financially healthy.
And, you know, just like if, you know, again, if somebody, I mentioned I think a month or two ago to this board, if somebody's family made $100,000,
Again, the rule of thumb should be you should have $30,000 in the bank in case something happens to your job, et cetera, et cetera.
And if that doubles, then you should have $60,000 in the bank and you maintain that same health position.
But if you keep it at $30,000 and somehow your family is blessed to double it to $200,000 and you keep it at $30,000, you're in worse financial shape.
If something happened to your income, you'd be in a worse financial shape.
So you should reflect personally the increase in your personal savings same thing with the school district when their fund balance
Yeah, I'm thankful that
I'm not gonna hold you to the two ten million, but I'm hopeful so I
I'm confident that we will we will have a good information
But not too good because again adding the fund balance too much too aggressively is not that means the money's not working for kids
kids. And it would be great, I'd love to have humongous fund balances growing, growing,
growing, but that means we're withholding and it's not going to work for kids.
Thank you. Mr. Redman?
Ms. Champagne?
Thank you. Okay, I have another question. This has to do with the special ed, the increase
in the amount of money that we have, and I know that Dr. Klaff is very happy about that,
but I'm happy to and everybody should be happy about that and I know this this
may seem a little bit of an ignorant question I apologize for that but could
any of our special education teachers be paid for with the extra funding from
that or is that allocated in a specific way well it has to be spent on certain
things I'm gonna go to the asterisk slide already remembering it the asterisk
side we're spending significantly more money on special needs students and so
if that orange bar grows faster than our it's just closing that local gap again
those special ed teachers are getting their teacher they're getting that same
same raise as the classroom teachers.
And I believe they're getting a stipend because they're special ed teachers.
And then one last question.
I know that we were being shortfalled with the SHARS things.
Is this going to help that?
No.
Unfortunately, our bottom line would look better.
But it was in one of the bills.
I can't remember.
I think it was Senate Bill 50 or 500 or something.
Which one was it?
500.
500.
It was in Senate Bill 500, but it got pulled sometime in May.
They thought that they were doing enough through House Bill 2 that they didn't need to fund that.
So it was budgeted and lasted quite a bit of the session, but the wheels fell off of that funding to make up for the shards.
The state of Texas didn't feel that it was there since its federal revenue flowing through the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, HHS.
It was federal funds flowing through there, and they didn't feel it was their responsibility, ultimately, I think, as I remember reading it.
But it's not there, and I did not point that out in the bottom line, but it's actually not there in this presentation.
But our federal revenue that goes to the general fund is substantially lower than it would have been a year ago and two years ago.
It's reflected in there. There's the reduced reductions already done now
What's gonna happen this Christmas since it was the two Christmases before we learned about those cuts
I'll hold my breath, but but those are reflected in the bottom line you see today
More questions for mr. President questions down as we went along so I'm gonna hop around a bit here
I, too, was at the TASB update on the legislative update after the session ended, and there
were hundreds of people in the room, and when they would go through a slide, there'd be
grumblings and groanings, right?
And there's a whole lot of things, and they did talk about the special ed and just a high
level something and said, your people in special ed will figure all that out.
And they talked about you, you know, our CFOs going to the TASBO to figure out the golden
pennies.
So I'm just going to ask about a little bit about golden pennies.
When you covered that, you said that the ABC costs are going to offset the golden pennies or the allotment costs, something.
But aren't we actually losing because they act like they're giving it to us, but they're taking it away.
Now we don't have the golden penny option.
Would you help me with that?
The gain in the $55 of the basic allotment from $6,160 to $6,215 was paid for by lowering that guaranteed yield with the golden penny, the guaranteed yield, by lowering that.
So it was a counterbalance, Rob Peter to pay Paul.
I think we gained a little bit out of it, but next year is where we take the big hit.
The yield next year, according to the law done several years ago, was going to organically grow to even a higher number, and they fixed it at the 129.
If you'll recall, and I doubt anybody will but a few people in this room, we used to get raises off the increase in the golden penny yield.
It used to be called the Austin yield because it was tied to Austin's wealth per water.
And Austin would continue to grow those huge skyscrapers had struggling with their enrollment and their yield kept their wealth per student.
Take our total property value divided by their number of students was getting wealthier and wealthier.
And so we were making pay raises decisions across the state of Texas off the increase in the Austin yield.
They changed that.
They call it the guaranteed golden penny yield now.
And it's not tied to the index of Austin's wealth any longer.
but it still had an index that grew and now it's fixed so it's not quite the
increase that that other districts are getting because not everyone gets that
golden penny oh everybody can have up to five golden pennies locally in order to
get more than five you have to go to an election you can get up to eight total
but you can only access those additional three with an election because of
something in the night 60s well before I was born we're in a position that we
actually have all a golden pennies enrichment pennies and so that benefits
us but do all districts have golden pennies all districts well I don't know
that I would say they're crazy if they don't because they're golden but they
can have five most most I can confidently say that dang near all of
them probably not all have all five golden pennies and then you many have
gone out for BATREs to get all eight because they are golden. She did talk
about it as if people did. Okay this is my last question. You talked about
printing costs going down like half a million dollars. Do you think that
has anything to do with the Chromebook rollout and like less paper being used
and printed and sent home like you know we were hearing from people that they
They didn't have paper copies of things.
Does that have anything to do with it or why?
That's a large part of it, yes.
But the print shop itself, the technology department did a great job working with the purchasing department to go through an RFP.
They went out there and basically the providers provided us information,
and we went with the best deal to the district, and we were able to save those dollars.
There is less printing going on over there.
That helped.
but the larger part of that was the new contract that starts July 1.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Smith, I did have a couple of questions.
Everybody asked most of the questions.
I had, do we know, do the TRA, the teacher retention allotment dollars,
will they count towards TRS?
Yes.
As I understand it, yes.
Okay.
Okay. Then you mentioned that some of the changing for SPED funding doesn't go into 2026, 2027.
But then I thought when you started talking about the assessment dollars, like the $1,000 per assessment or whatever, does that go into effect sooner?
That goes into effect immediately.
Okay.
Now, we've already been doing the assessments, right?
We've already been doing that.
That expense is in our cake.
Now we're just going to generate revenue.
It's about three million dollars that is going and that's helping our bottom line
That is one of the benefits that that is going to come in there and help our bottom line
We're going to continue to have a system. We're going to be paid on those number of assessments
But but that's just kind of recouping some of the expense of the assessments that we already had
But it did that revenue will be generate goes to our bottom line
Thank you. And I just my comment was it sounds very generous for I love
uh the funding that we're able to give to increase um for our teachers and everybody um
but it's kind of one of those things that uh they're going to give us 28.89 million dollars
but then tell us we have to spend an additional 28.89 million dollars so we're not
really digging out of a hole um super thankful for it and love it uh but just hey you gotta spend
this and i'm going to give it to you board any more questions i have one more
uh can i make this comment here i'm gonna make it and then slap me if i can't but
when we had our update there were tons of things that um hb2 and whatever changed uh things
all kinds of things and so we'll be hearing about those as they come through some cell phone things
and some of gosh something went through my head now it's gone but anyway so a
lot more of that will be discussed as we everybody who makes a presentation is
going to talk about HB 2 they made a lot of changes that will affect our district
in different ways and what was discussed tonight by me was the ones that affect
the funding primarily so we you guys can make a decision on salaries and then how
how it affects the ultimate budget.
I think 252 pages was House Bill 2.
Right.
252 pages of minutia.
And there is, my last question is,
for all the employees at home listening,
when will they know how much money they're going to make?
Is that all?
Will we make this decision next week or next month?
Like, we still have to talk through, like,
what we're going to do with last year's incentive money
and how we're gonna roll things into as big arrays as we can get because for
sure the legislature put a lot of emphasis on classroom teachers and
that's where the difference is made we get it but they don't get to do their
jobs without everybody supporting them or and you know so when will people know
what that looks like yeah that's ultimately the board's decision when you
guys are ready to make that decision um i'm comfortable with the budget that mr smith has
brought forward which models that three percent raise for everybody in the district the state
allotments that are in there for the teachers three years and up and what we put in for local
dollars for our first and second year teachers but as soon as the board is ready yeah we'd want
to approve the comp plan next week and we would want to go ahead and say what the the the board
is ready to say on uh employee raises the other stuff you know i mean everything in there for
teachers um with three years experience on up that decision's already been made by the state it kind
of it's not really you know any decision we really have to make it's kind of like mr redmond explained
here's the money here's how to send it out okay so if you're a teacher out there from from three to
whatever number of years of service you already know what's going to happen with that mr president
later in this evening we're going to talk about a compensation plan right 8.14 somewhere in there
list um what everybody will make about their years of service so that's still to come stay tuned
board any more questions comments i think a data point that i would like to know is how many years
one and two teachers are we talking about 695 I'm sorry what we go with 695
if I remember correctly that's an estimate based on last year 695
teachers have zero to two years experience okay and so we can I can run
the number and that's how much it's gonna cost us to give them a 20 minutes
in there it is I'm gonna look at it on this sheet of paper that cost would be
$1.7 million.
Slide 9.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any more questions, Board?
Thank you, Mr. Smith.
I think you can do the entire Finance Department.
I know it's a moving target.
As we got the legislative update this weekend,
I was sitting there overwhelmed and at the same time thinking
I'm thinking we almost would need an entire department to keep up with all the changes
that are coming into law this year and new expenses and mandates that are going to be
happening.
We're going to figure it all out together.
So I appreciate you all.
7.1 Presentation on the 2025-2026 Federal Grant Applications
We move on now to agenda item seven.
presentation on the 25-26 federal grant applications. Presenter Nikki Coy,
Executive Director of Federal Programs. Take it away. Good evening President
Redmond, Board Members and Dr. Gagorski. I'm here to present on our public
hearing for federal grant applications. So in accordance with our federal
guidelines, any applicant submitting a grant application must set, must agree to
a set of assurances and assurance number seven states that before the application is submitted
we have to have afforded a reasonable opportunity for public comment and so this public hearing is
part of that process or the presentation for the public hearing to follow so we will start with
title one part a improving basic programs so the purpose of this grant is to provide supplemental
support to schools with high percentages of students from low-income families this helps
It helps ensure that all children meet the state's challenging academic standards.
And for this program, our entitlement is a little over $13 million.
Our proposed activities include campus staff, tutorials, instructional materials, technology,
professional development, and parent-family engagement.
Next is Title II, Part A, Supporting Effective Instruction.
And the purpose of this grant is to support, obviously, effective instruction and strengthen
the quality and effectiveness of teachers, principals, and other school leaders.
Our entitlement for Title II, Part A is a little over $2.2 million, and the proposed
activities include professional development, staff, salaries, contracted services, registration,
leadership training, an expansion of the teacher mentor program, and also a few stipends.
Moving on to Title III, Part A, English Language Acquisition.
So the purpose here is to ensure that our English learners attain English proficiency
and develop high levels of academic achievement in English and also meet in the same state
academic standards as all the other children.
So our ELA entitlement is a little over $2 million and our immigrant entitlement is a
little over $469,000.
So, similarly, we pay for professional development staff, contracted services, conferences, tutorials, summer programs, Saturday Science Academy, and then it helps to fund our parent centers.
Following that, we have Title IV, Part A, Student Support and Academic Enrichment.
So this grant aims to provide all students with access to a well-rounded education, improve academic outcomes by maintaining safe and healthy students, and improve the use of technology to advance those academic outcomes.
Our entitlement for Title IV is $967,000, and we use these funds to employ social workers,
dropout prevention facilitators, additional math and science instructional materials,
especially at our STEAM Center, and then Summer Bridge, some summer enrichment programs.
programs.
Okay.
Let's look at IDEA.
And so this purpose of this program is to make a free and appropriate public education
available to students with disabilities and to ensure that special education and related
services are provided for those children.
Our entitlement for IDEA B formula includes about 15 million preschool, 154,000, and discretionary
death 175 000 so obviously we employ a lot of staff with those funds speech services
dyag services assessment evaluation ot pt and also some professional development
okay next we have perkins five strengthening career and technical education so the purpose
of this grant is to fully develop the academic tech technical and employability skills or secondary
secondary education students who choose to enroll in career and technical education programs.
So our entitlement for Perkins V is $704,000 and we use these funds to employ program staff,
purchase supplies and materials, equipment, and provide professional development.
And finally, we have the Education of Homeless Children and Youth Program.
The purpose of this program is to identify and remove barriers for homeless children
and unaccompanied youth.
So the entitlement for this program is yet to be determined, but this year we received about 96,000.
So it kind of depends on how much we get, what we're going to do with it, but historically we've funded tutorials, purchased technology, school supplies, sometimes emergency food.
And so this is a comparison of what our final education allocation was at the end of this year and what our planning amount is for next year.
So we pretty much have level funding from the federal government.
When I looked at planning amounts for last year compared to planning amounts for this year, they were commiserate.
But just to jump on the House Bill 2 bandwagon that Ms. Fox said that we were going to have,
so the federal government provides our grant allocations,
but the state did say that all teachers would receive an additional raise.
So the staff that is paid out of our federal grants gets that same raise even though the
Federal government didn't give us any extra money, so
We don't have a rainy day fund balance, but we do have carryover
that
We will be able to cover those raises as far as title one especially title one and special ed are the
kind of the
Grants that have the most staff
Any questions? Thank you. Board, any questions? Mr. President, I have a question. Ms. Coy, thank you so much. Looking at that, it looks like we're down a little over $400,000 in grant money. Was that, like if I were sitting here last year at this time, would it have looked similar that we thought we were going to get less and then ended up getting more? Are we just really going to, because I'm sure there's not the magic federal
grant money fairy that's going to show up and make up that money I'm assuming
no there is not but we do usually get a final allocation these are just planning
amounts based on what the state thinks is going to happen I from what I've read
we should have level funding but there's usually a final entitlement in the
spring okay okay so this this when I just looked at originally I was like oh
my goodness we're down four hundred thousand dollars that's huge yeah this
This looks pretty good, actually.
Okay.
Okay.
Good to know.
Thank you so much.
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
Mrs. Coy, just on the slide you had about the homeless students,
does these grants provide for the transportation for some of those,
or is that separate?
It could provide for the excess cost of transportation,
But I do believe they put a cap to about like 15% maybe.
And so 15% of 96,000 really isn't that much.
So it's more work to document all of the things.
So we just don't fund transportation at all from this grant.
Got it.
Thank you.
Any more questions?
Thank you so much.
this one we'll now move on to 7.2 a public hearing on presentation for the 2526 federal grant
7.2 Public Hearing on Presentation on the 2025-2026 Federal Grant Applications
applications and we had no one sign up to participate in the public hearing so we will
8.1 Discuss and consider Board Approval of the April 2025 Financial Reports.
move on to discussion items now start with discussion item 8.1 discuss and consider board
approval of the april 2025 financial reports and our presenter is jamie hines assistant superintendent
of Finance. Good evening President Redmond, Trustees, Superintendent
Gorgorski. You have before you our financial reports through the month of
April including our financial statements, our construction report, our tax report,
as well as a summary of our check registers. Just for everybody's
information, the financial statements include both our expenditures, our revenue,
and our changes in fund balance, as well as an analysis of all of our expenditures
by both function and object. I've got a couple of things that I just kind of
wanted to point out, and Mr. Smith alluded to it before, but first of all on
the the financial statements um if you can turn to the first page our biggest expenditure as you all
know is is in payroll it's in our 6100s and you can see this year already today we're at 64 percent
now understand this is through april which is two-thirds or about 67 percent of our fiscal year
and we're currently at 64%.
Comparing that to last year when we already had
some pretty substantial underspending,
we're actually a percentage better at this point.
So that's where, it's about 30 million in all,
just that one spot.
But we have some underspending in other functions as well,
but that's the major one.
So I just wanted to make sure I pointed that out,
and we've been bringing it up month over month,
and we'll continue to monitor it because that can change as positions fill up. If
you go and you look at safety and security, we have had a lot of our police
officer positions get filled so we know that there's going to be some depression
in that one. But we'll keep an eye on it and Human Resources is obviously keeping
an eye on that and if that continues throughout the year then that there's
going to be again some substantial underspending that's going to help us
with that deficit. The other thing I wanted to bring to your attention on the construction report,
you'll have an item, item 8.10 tonight, I believe, and it is the funding of an ECM,
Enterprise Content Management. Mr. Smith and Mrs. Rampelli from Technology are going to be
presenting on that, but I just wanted to kind of bring to your attention exactly where they're
looking at having that project funded and that is through the 676 million
dollar authorization which is our 2021 bond authorization and it's got
underspending in there in Proposition B the technology proposition of about 4.7
million and I believe they're going to be talking to you about 1.7 of that so
that's where it's coming from in that underspending and that underspending is
taking into account all of the expenses for what's planned for that so
So that's the end of where we're going to be with that problem.
I'd be glad to answer any questions about the financial statements.
Thank you, Board.
Any questions?
Thank you.
No questions.
8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the June 2025 budget amendments.
Thank you.
We'll now move on to Agenda Item 8.2, Discuss and Consider Board Approval of the June 2025 Budget Amendments.
Presenter Esperanza Rios, Director of Budget and Treasury.
Good evening, Board President Redman, Board of Trustees, and Dr. Kigorski.
Tonight we present a budget amendment for the teacher incentive allotment in the amount of $3,134,976.
This budget amendment has a direct revenue offset.
We also present a budget amendment in the amount of $24,578 for the purchase of new and replacement refrigerators and freezers at Rhodes Stadium.
All of the budget amendments are direct functional offsets.
These functional offsets include filtered water stations, replacement technology vehicle, data breach, privilege insurance, books, mileage, staff development, supplies and travel, printing, instructional supplies, student worker pay, start of year expenses, summer extra duty pay, and campus building modifications.
The approval of these amendments will result in a $24,578 reduction to the general operating fund balance.
months. We also are presenting budget amendments for the capital funds, capital projects fund
in the amount of $250,000 for the Seven Lakes furniture retrofit to be covered by the 2023
bond project savings and a budget amendment in the amount of $1,862,000 for the purchase
of white fleet replacement vehicles for transportation, police and maintenance to be covered by capital
projects entrance income proceeds the approval of these amendments will
result in no impact on the capital fund balance thank you board any questions
mr. president miss champagne thank you so much for your presentation I just
want to I think this was already made kind of clear earlier but the money that
that we need to spend for the state requirement, HB2,
to pay for the $2,500 and the $5,000.
So initially, we're going to have to pay,
we don't have the money yet,
so we're gonna have to pay that out of our money
and then we get reimbursed with that later.
Is that how that happens, maybe in September?
Well, this is different.
This is the teacher incentive allotment.
This is the program that KDISD,
the state has a separate allotment for the,
they call it a TIA, teacher incentive allotment.
Oh, this is TIA, okay.
Yeah, this is a TIA.
Oh, I see.
Yes, and so we get reimbursed for that cost.
Excuse me.
Yes.
But do we pay, I thought, do we pay for the TIA?
So the state reimburses us, so they give us a list of teachers.
Those get verified.
Once they get verified, they get paid before the end of the fiscal year,
and then the state will reimburse us that cost,
Plus any type of costs that are associated with the certification cost that they have to pay also we pay it
And then they give us the same money. Yes, so it's a it's still the kind of the same
Yeah, and that's not to zero at the end of the day. So all right. Thank you
Mr.. President
Thank you. I have a question about amendment 5 just more informational not not for you Esperanza
I don't think unless you know about it, but there was just fun it interesting, but McBeans is
is purchasing books to maintain an up-to-date library.
It just seemed odd to me.
Do you have information about that?
Another question.
It's $2,500.
I didn't think it was directed for you,
unless you'd like to speak to it.
It's Cassidy.
Specific to what the books are, no, I'd have to go back and look,
but they would have had to post on the 30-day dashboard
and have been internally reviewed before we would purchase them.
Okay, just because that's one school,
and this is a systemic update, I would have expected to see a lot of schools.
So is it a one-off or I'd like more information?
Okay, so normally what the schools do when they get toward the end of the year
they start to kind of review their budgets and kind of see where they have excess money and at that point they decided to kind
of figure what they want to do and so this campus is
most likely has decided that they would like to be able to purchase more books, but we can get some information for you.
I just it was my understanding that the purchasing of books for libraries is on more of a systemic schedule
for schools, so we do have that you're talking about the library rotation, but they do have a set of
About five campuses every well every five years
They kind of change and so we do have a rotation for mass books so they can go ahead and purchase those
That rotation we didn't have it this past year
And so they do kind of buy one-off books here and there for things at their campus based on their
their demographics. And so we'll see some of those small purchases here and there.
So if I may add to that, each campus has a budget and they can budget for library materials
up front as part of their budgeting process. We would have to comb through every campus to see
what that line item is for library materials. I suppose we could provide that to the board for
our 78 campuses of what they budgeted for what i'm asking okay and then anything separate that
wasn't budgeted for on the front end under library materials would come through as a budget amendment
yeah i'm just curious why mcnean's of all schools the only one school has a budget amendment
i'd like to know what it is why so because they're moving money into function 12 as an esperanza yes
2500 in the function 12 so it required a budget amendment because they needed the additional 2500
Probably over and above what was left in function 12.
Thank you.
Mr. Redmond, can I?
Ms. Simi?
Okay, Mr. Yost, maybe you don't know.
Maybe Mr. Nileman knows this.
But on Amendment 3, to pay for data breach privilege insurance, I don't remember seeing this before.
Have we had a problem?
Are we anticipating a problem?
I don't remember seeing a line item for data breach privilege insurance.
We historically, when we put in our property and liability insurance, it's included in that.
Okay.
And we list that amount out.
Now, one of the things, we just list that amount out.
When we do it, it would be lumped in the property and liability item that was presented back in, I guess, February or January.
So this just allocates it by the function because TA says we have to record those as certain functions.
So this kind of just moves that money to where it needs to go.
Okay, thank you.
Any more questions?
Thank you very much. We'll now move on to
8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of Plan Administration and Individual Stop Loss Insurance Coverage for the Katy ISD Self-insured Health Plan.
Discussion item 8.3 discuss and consider board approval of plan administration in
Individual stop-loss insurance coverage for the KDIC self-insured health plan with the presenter Lance Nauman director of risk management
Good evening President Redmond, Dr. Kogorski, Board of Trustees
Here to talk to you this evening about plan administration with me is Tommy Harris with
Baldwin Group who is our benefit consultant who helps us out in this process.
Recently the KDISD Risk Management Department went to the marketplace to secure pricing
for program oversight and individual stop loss insurance coverage for the KDISD Self-Insured
health plan for the next cycle. These services provided in the program
oversight include, but are not limited to, access to contract discounts with
providers, accumulation of deductibles for plan members, pre-authorization
services, case management services to provide member support, subrogation
recovery, data file feeds for enrollment services. During this process the
the district received five proposals for review and consideration.
As a result, Aetna provided significantly lower pricing
in both the near and long term,
along with no network interruption to staff members and their providers.
The contract provided is an annual contract,
plan year 2026, with four future renewals upon mutual agreement by the parties.
Additionally, pricing for individual stop-loss coverage is presented
with Aetna selected as the carrier.
This selection will avoid the district needing to purchase additional tail coverage
for incurred but not reported claims from the previous plan year.
Authorization to purchase these services may be found through CRD legal.
It is recommended that the Board of Trustees approve the proposal submitted by Aetna
for plan administration and individual stop loss coverage,
coverage, insurance coverage for the KDISD self-insured health plan.
Thank you.
Any questions, Board?
Mr. Nauman, I've got a question.
As I'm looking at the program oversights, the RFP results, is saying right the recommendation
is Aetna, which I look at for the, is that per event per million?
Is that P per M means?
We are going, for program oversight, we are going from $36.02 for this expiring plan year down to $25.50.
Per employee per month.
I think that was your question.
Gotcha.
Correct.
And so there's not a total.
What we're looking at is program oversight and stop loss.
Even though stop loss may be a little bit larger of an expense, the savings on program oversight more than makes up for that.
Yes.
Mr. President, we do have the ability to carve out the stop loss to a standalone stop loss vendor.
Gotcha.
But overall, there wasn't a total line on there, so I was trying to, okay, I made sense of it.
And on an annual basis, this looks at, on the program oversight, we're saving over a million dollars a year.
Yep.
So to help reduce plan oversight.
Thank you.
Board, any more questions?
Well, thank you very much.
8.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Pharmacy Plan for the Katy ISD Self Insured Health Plan for Plan Year 2026.
We'll move on to 8.4 discuss and consider board approval of the pharmacy plan for a KDIC self-insured health plan for the plan year
2026
An integral part of the KDIC self-insured plan is the pharmacy program which provides necessary
medication for plan members to manage their health
The pharmacy program provides a multitude of services which are as follows
formulary management
Formulary management creates and updates the medications that provide efficacy while maintaining cost controls.
Preauthorization. Preauthorization is a system control to make certain that the dispensing of medication utilizes best practices for the correct use of the requested prescription.
Step therapy. Step therapy is the process to locate and identify the many medications available used to treat illnesses, finding best outcomes.
outcomes.
Quantity limits.
This program reviews that quantities are in line and works to eliminate waste.
Member support.
Members are able to discuss issues and questions at no charge with the appropriate professional.
Recently, the Risk Management Department placed an RFP in the marketplace
with nine respondents submitting proposals with four finalists.
historical claims data was provided to the prospective vendors for analysis for their submission.
Baldwin Group, KDISD's benefit consultant, reviewed and analyzed the submissions via their software to complete a comprehensive review.
From this review, the KDISD Risk Management Department is recommending HEB to provide pharmacy services to the plan.
When comparing the fully developed pharmacy spend for plan year 2024 of $22.9 million
against the proposed net spend for plan year 2026 of $12.2 by HEB,
the annualized savings to the plan will be $10.6 million.
The HEB proposal is a narrow network in which HEB will be the sole provider of pharmacy services.
However, in the event that staff members or dependents do not have access to a nearby
HEB pharmacy, a broad network of support pharmacies are available to make sure that prescriptions
can be filled.
Additionally, this proposal does not contemplate any changes in the existing formulary that
staff are presently using to receive their medications.
The length of this contract for this renewal is an annual contract with two renewals upon
mutual agreement of the parties. Authority is granted through CRD legal.
Any questions board? Yes Mr. President. Ms. Champagne. This is good news so we we could
potentially save ten million dollars. Yes, now this is based off 20 we took
We took 2024 data.
Whoa.
Ooh.
Uh-oh.
Now you did it.
I'm sorry.
Now that's going to cost $10 million.
Yeah.
Put it back on.
That claims that were fully developed,
and we took what our staff members were using
and modeled it up against what HEB would propose to us.
So this was as best we can get apples to apples,
and that is a pretty close estimate of what we think we'll end up spending and saving.
So we don't.
So we don't know this, this is a projection, this is a very...
It's based off utilization.
Okay.
We're assuming the same utilization trending forward.
So we may have just found our money for our extra teacher pay.
Yes, ma'am.
Right?
For the other non-teachers who aren't getting funded, I mean, there you go.
And you might ask, like, why is this so good?
This is too good to be true.
I will say that the pharmacy market, I've been doing this 32 years,
in the past five years has moved at light speed.
I mean, so that's the reason we did a one-year look at this,
because we need to be taking the pharmacy out to market every year,
and then my team does monthly monitoring to make sure that we're getting the rebates,
that the dispensing fees are correct,
that the average wholesale price of ingredients costs are correct,
because right now pharmacy is trending at 4% above medical.
So when I started in this business, pharmacy was 2% of the cost of health care,
and now nationally it's 40%.
And with pharmacy trending at 4% above medical, that's going to continue to grow.
And so HEB, basically we're getting the same deal that they get for all of their internal employees,
and they've recently rolled this out to private sector and also public sector employees.
So we're piggybacking off of a very large population already through the HEB pharmacy.
All right, and so let me just also say, I just really appreciate how we have you.
You're with Baldwin, right?
Yes.
And have we been using Baldwin for quite a while as a consulting?
Third year.
Third year.
Okay, well, I think that's a good investment.
I really appreciate this because, you know, I know that you cost some kind of money,
but if we're saving $10 million to have someone else overlook this and help us out like that,
that is a huge benefit, and I appreciate the team's effort on that.
Very excited about this.
Mr. President.
I'm embarrassed to ask this question, so I don't know.
So when you look at the cost savings,
is this the plan savings on something that they enroll in,
or is this cost of the drugs?
And if it's cost of the drugs, is that savings to the employees,
or is this money to KDSD?
What we will be doing is this is a net savings to the plan,
and I will be coming to you in August or September,
as Mr. Harris was alluding to, we will look at our medical trend, as I've talked about in previous presentations,
and we'll look at our pharmacy trend. And then we will begin to see where we kind of shake out in terms of premiums and deductibles and things of that nature.
This is very exciting to help curb that medical trend, if you will.
But we'll begin to move forward here very shortly, beginning to analyze where we look at for the cost of plan members for 2026.
So hopefully it's the savings to both.
I mean, we're trying to do everything we can to curb that medical inflation the best we can.
And this is very significant, very, very significant.
But currently that ten million dollars of savings would go to the actual plan if we wanted to adjust the plan designs to lower
Copays internally within the plan well of course that would erode some of this savings
But that would be up to you all and we'll show all the options around that
Thank you
Mr.. President, Mrs.. Gazelle. Thank you
Yeah, fantastic, and I'm really glad that we had multiple respondents that hasn't always been the case
And so I'm appreciative of that. I appreciate that here and on the other on the coverage on the last agenda item. Thank you
Ten million great, but there the other respondent was 12 million savings. So why didn't we go with them?
Well, I think
Mr. Harris can allude to a little bit more of it
One of the the kind of concerns I guess if you will was their ability to manage the prior authorization
And step therapy in their proposal. There was significant difference
There would be some formulary interruptions where employees would have to possibly change their medications.
And if you think about this in terms of we were just talking about the health plan,
That's very important because if you interrupt people's physician relationship and having to switch doctors, that drives the total cost of the plan up because I'm going to have to go see a new doctor.
I'm going to have to get a new prescription.
So there's those big factors to think about.
And, you know, one other aspect, that was a national collaboration, if you will, cooperative, that would be very subject to ebb and flow of membership in and out, so that could affect our average wholesale price.
Whereas with the HEB deal, it's fixed, it's local.
And I like the aspect personally of being able to have HEB here locally that I can reach out to and address service issues if required.
Do you care to add anything to that?
Yeah, I would.
So the other one, which is also a very aggressive pricing, and we negotiated very hard with them because we were not sure where HEB was going to come in.
When I looked at the exposures with that, it is a national cooperative with hundreds of employers in there coming in and out of it.
So would they be able to sustain that savings long term?
The other piece is we've been very successful using direct primary care for outreach, population health, and closing gaps in care.
And our direct primary care provider is already embedded and integrated with HEB.
So we know this plan is going to have the least amount of disruption, which is I know is important to your member population by still achieving the 10 million in savings.
Okay.
Okay.
I appreciate that.
I had to ask.
I mean, there's 2 million more sitting on the table.
So it sounds like some very important services for our peoples.
We had many discussions about that exact topic.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Board, any other questions?
Thank you.
Board, so obviously our computers are all shut down and we're getting ready to
make a presentation up here. We can take a break for a few minutes or we can
rearrange the agenda to move on to people who do not need to use the
computers but you won't we won't be able to see any of the information that we
have for board book what not or docs. So keep truckin.
Do any of them include singing and dancing and fine arts?
Yes, you have a presentation in about five minutes.
Dr. G?
Me.
Wendy.
Me.
Okay, then we will continue on.
Dr. Gorski, if you can give us some direction onto who we would not need.
I think you skip 8.5 and 8.6 for a moment.
Okay.
And we'll go to 8.7 about security fencing.
Ms. Kassman?
Ms. Gassman, 8.7.
So we'll move on.
We're going to skip 8.5 and 8.6 at this time,
8.7 Discuss and consider Board approval of a contract for the security fencing at multiple elementary school campuses
and we will move on to discussion item 8.7,
discuss and consider board approval of a contract for the security fencing
at multiple elementary school campuses.
Presenter Lisa Gassman, Executive Directors of Facilities Planning and Construction.
And before Lisa starts, if I could just say a quick word, because I heard something super special today about Lisa, and she was named a 2025 fellow for the Association of Learning Environments, which is their highest honor, is my understanding.
So congratulations to Lisa.
Very exciting.
Thank you very much.
All right.
So good evening, President Redmond, trustees, and Dr. Gagorski.
I have four items.
we're going to skip one for the moment this is the approval for a fencing contract to foster
fence for 43 elementary campuses this project was part of the may 2023 bond board any questions
8.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of a landscape easement to Land Tejas Companies associated with the construction of Cross Elementary School (#48).
the next item is for landscape easement to land tejas for the entrance to cross elementary to
support the landscape they are providing in the area this is so that all that landscaping matches
in the four corners any questions board 30.9 it's an adoption of prevailing wage
8.9 Discuss and consider Board approval of the prevailing wage rate schedule.
rate for the Texas government code 2258 a kitty ISD as well as our surrounding
districts use this wage rate prepared by PBK since it's reflective of our actual
local wage rates they reached out to over 150 contractors and subcontractors
to kind of get an idea of what people are paying in this area.
Any questions, board?
No?
Are the computer ready if we want to move back on to the presentation for 8.6
since you're up here already?
Yes?
All right.
There is a presentation for 8.6, right?
Yeah.
If you do 8.6, then 8.5.
Perfect.
Go back.
They're ready.
So, Mr. Merriman, you will follow this.
We'll go back to you.
All right.
Just to give you a heads up.
So then we will move forward with eight point discussion item 8.6 discuss and consider board
8.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of the design associated with the renovation and addition to Beck Junior High School
approval of the design associated with the renovation in addition to Beck Junior High
School. Yeah this design is comparable to McDonald Junior High and Katie's Junior High which are
sister schools to this campus. Dr. Leah Radloff the principal will say a few words followed by
the design presentation by danny brewster of arcadis also joining us this evening is
casey doubledy the project manager and julie torres project manager for arcadis
the board will be seeing more detailed layouts of the of the school versus what the public will see
so i'm going to turn it over to dr good evening thank you so much um sorry for the little glitch
and we're back um at beck junior high um it's been a pillar of excellence for 30 years in the
the Cinco Ranch community and it's exciting now to see that our kids are
our staff in our community get a renovation and get an addition so that
our learning space can really match that level of excellence and so I hope this
evening you can see some of the the planning that we've been doing working
with Casey and Arcadis they've been excellent and really wonderful to work
through and listen to really the needs of the campus and our kids and our
community so enjoy okay thanks a lot for having us we're super excited about
being a part of this project this is the third one you allowed us to partner with
the district on and we're super excited about it before I get started as the
current past president of the southern region of a4 le Association for
learning scape or for learning environments i hope everybody here understands what a great leader
lisa has been in that organization for a long long time she is fantastic okay we'll just run through
the agenda here we're going to talk about the scope let you see what the existing campus looks
like give you some proposed plans on how we hope to improve what's going on out there a little bit
a flash with some images from the inside of the school and outside and a schedule
please i'm going to go pretty quickly because we're getting kind of late but i'm happy to be
interrupted so please do this is a slide of the scope of work it's very similar to what we've
done at katie and mcdonald there's going to be two small additions to this facility we're going to
add a new entryway at the front that allows for a little more creativity at the administration and
and helps us get the secure vestibule more usable
this campus, and then there'll be a new classroom wing.
We're also gonna renovate much of the school.
This will be a complete refresh, finishes, casework,
ceilings, HVAC system, lighting,
just about everything in this facility
is gonna be fresh and new when we're done,
including the HVAC is a really big deal,
it'll be much more efficient.
Okay, so those of you that know this school, we've got some pretty interesting constraints.
Well, first of all, the school is immaculate.
This is one of the most well-cared-for junior highs I've seen of its age.
It's really in really good shape, and so it made our job really easy.
But as you can see on the north east side, there's a really nicely landscaped area between the school and the road.
But that's also a pipeline easement. So we didn't want to build on that side and we couldn't get a road in on that side.
What you don't see on the southwest corner is, it doesn't show up as well in this photo, but there's an easement for a flood control district right there.
So we'll show you some solutions here that were kind of created to get around this school with some really, really interesting site constraints.
But other than that, we're not going to change the impact that this beautiful facility has had on its neighborhood for a long time.
Very sensitive additions.
Again, this kind of shows the constraints we are up against.
We don't want to cross the easement.
We don't want to have cars driving in the flood control district.
And we've got too many portable buildings on this campus, and so we're going to attack that problem as well.
And so this is our solution that we'd like to show you tonight.
It does have the two building additions.
The main primary addition is to the north of the building.
It adds on all the new classrooms and science labs, as well as some new things like teachers'
restrooms that we didn't have on this campus that are really important.
At the front, there was a little bit of space right where you currently walk in, so we can
leave the entrance where it's at, but we can rearrange the spaces within there by adding
on a small addition there.
there. We hope to get rid of all but three of the portables. We'll have more people inside the
building finally. The new parking, very difficult to get it in there without taking out your existing
facilities at the tennis courts and the play area, but we did get quite a few additional parking
spaces. Any question on that? We always need new parking. So here's a just a larger plan of this
of the school to just give you an idea. The dark gray are the additions. That's how much new
square foot is happening. Inside the building, those are places that are highlighted that are
getting more than just finishes HVAC. That's where we're actually moving some walls around to make
the school a little more efficient and to work better for the for the needs of
the staff that are there now and this is our new classroom addition it's got a
lot of the same things in it that we've added at that at Katie and McDonald we're
going to get you more up-to-date science labs some more classrooms as I said the
the core facilities is like restrooms for teachers that we're kind of lacking
on that campus right now we've got a little bit more space for restrooms and
we were able to keep a really nice circulation pattern around so these kids
will still feel like they're a part of this school when they're walking back
here to this part of the town so this is renovated areas on the right side are
science labs and what what I didn't show you is an existing lab but currently
Currently there are five labs there that share that prep room along the far right hand side
of the drawing.
Because we've moved, we've got enough science labs in the new addition, we could take those
five, turn them into four and get them to match current standards for junior high science
labs.
So that was a real benefit because we can reuse the prep room without having to redo
it.
And that also allowed us to move some of the facility, some of the rooms just to the left of that where we're going to have a suite of special ed and, yes, special ed.
I was confusing it with Katie.
We almost had some other folks back there.
So any questions on that?
So as you can see from the existing to the proposed is really really similar.
The what you do see in the proposed picture behind the canopy is that that
extended addition to get the new front entry in that's got a little bit of
administration addition. So really well we'll have to lose a tree but the front
front canopy is in good shape, we can clean it up, get some new colors on it, and get
the folks into the school and it still says this is the front door, it still does what
it needs to do to make a safe entry for the kids.
Another view of the proposed addition with a kind of, just a splash of new color there,
and the proposed new addition if we do our job right it'll look exactly like
the building that's out there right now same color same roof same everything
it'll look like the building just grew from itself now the fun stuff on the
inside upper left-hand corner as you walk into the new through the new secure
vestibule we're gonna have a little bit of a flex space that's a place just to
gather it's a place for kids to wait it's a place to recharge your iPhone
phone, there'll be a messaging board in there. It's going to be a really nice space. The top
middle is new library finishes. Just going to brighten up that space, get them some new finishes,
get them some new patterns. The far upper right, that's from the new admin vestibule looking into
to the attendance and then below are kind of refreshed you've already got
some large graphic walls out there these are just kind of refreshed ideas of
those to kind of celebrate who we are at Beck junior high I'll let you go guys go
through this at your leisure because it could get a little bit tedious but this
This is a, these are axonometric drawings of the science labs so that we can account
to make sure we've got all the equipment in there and casework in there that you need
to operate those classrooms.
And I did go fast, sorry.
And here's where we hope to be with this facility to get the kids in October 2027.
August 2027.
Sorry.
Long meeting.
Anybody want to go back and see anything?
Mr. President.
Okay, so Mr. Cross and I are Beck Bulldogs,
so we're over here very excited going,
okay, where is this one, and where are we,
like that Beck Bulldog bottom left one,
where is that wall?
When you're walking off one of the side corridors
back to the main corridor,
He's in the main corridor facing down the secondary corridor to corridor
So as you're going down the main one of the two main corridors you're walking right past it
Okay, so that's like going toward the library
Mr.. President
Miss champion
Thank you for your presentation. I love your enthusiasm and yes congratulations to Lisa Cassman for that
prestigious award and I'm glad that that you could acknowledge the importance of
that because you're in that industry but I also want to acknowledge that we have
mr. cross here who was also a principal at that school and then we have dr.
Radloff and I don't know if she introduced herself but she's the current
principal and it's sort of in my neighborhood and so I'm really excited
about the renovations and everything.
You forgot that I was PTA.
Oh, she was on PTA.
And my kids play soccer there in the back of the field.
So we all have a connection.
But anyway, I'm really excited about it.
And the only question, the only one question I have is,
when is this going to be completed?
August 2027.
That seems so far away.
It is a long ways away.
There's a couple of reasons for that.
First of all, the interior renovation is a ton when you start talking about removing a ceiling and changing all the lighting in HVAC.
The second is there's an almost 50-week time delay from ordering that HVAC equipment and it being available to put in.
So most of the heavy lifting on the big equipment for the HVAC has to be not this summer, but in the future.
So we're not going to even start on it until May?
No, we're going to be ordering equipment.
We already have the contractor on board, so everything is staged and ready.
Probably at spring break next year.
Spring break, that's what I meant.
So it's going to be almost a year until we start.
All our renovations are typically now two summers,
just because of deliveries and fire marshal inspections.
So we have to plan for two summers.
Is there portables at that school?
And so will this alleviate some of that?
It will alleviate.
All the three?
We're taking five away and leaving three.
That's exciting.
Good job.
Thank you.
And it won't go out to bid for a while yet either.
We're still in DD, so we've got some construction document time that's worked into this schedule as well.
Mr. President?
Ms. Fox?
So the extra parking, I mean, you're parking way past the tennis courts at this point.
That is a hike.
if you teach down in that way.
It is, and we would love to be closer,
but we don't want to drive over the pipeline
because we wouldn't get it approved even before 2027.
We won't tell.
We don't want to take out the tennis courts
because that's a really nice facility,
and so we're really, really limited on this site
to where we could put them.
The good news is...
Is there such a need for a lot more parking now?
I mean well remember every school doesn't have enough parking on some days
On some days you're right. Okay
Miss Fox on the the parking we really did go round around about this because parking lots are
It's concrete right
And and what what did we do at Katy junior high? What did we do at McDonald junior high?
Both of those campuses have a campus right next to them. That's what we're thinking Beck does not so any kind of overflow that sort of thing
So we're sort of looking at these individually in terms of need there is never enough parking at any campus
It doesn't matter what campus it is
But when you look at individual campuses and situations
Events are difficult
Even just regular campus events can be difficult when you don't have enough parking
So we added it to this where we did not at McDonald and Kate that doesn't really mean that employees will park there every day
Dr. Raduloff, I hope you don't have to park all the way up.
You still get the best bulldog spot.
I'd like to get my steps, though.
No, employee parking won't be there.
This will really be for events.
Okay.
Because what we find, we don't have space,
and we are a shared campus.
So where our parents park, I feel an open house,
or we have bands and we have a basketball game going on
at the same time or someone that they're in the neighborhood across the way and um i get phone
calls from those um community members asking for parents to move so there's just there's just no space
we used to walk from our house to those so and is are we we ask people to walk right are we keeping
the uh there's a basketball goal and stuff that kids can from the neighborhoods can come over and
do all of that's just going to still stay there and tennis courts still there okay and when we
vote we vote here at the end and that'll still be the same easy access to get to the gymnasiums
none of that's moving all that's okay i like the new color to the entrance and it doesn't really
look like it's changing too much except for the added office space there which i think is a great
space for it but the maroon touch there will be really nice thank you mr.
president I'm very happy to see you dr. Radloff and I'm happy for all the
families and you for these additions I don't know exactly how the school
operated I just remember when my kids were in junior high it make means that
sixth grade was usually tucked away and kind of contained more or less for those
young junior high students in the seventh and eighth grade there were some
separation not a lot does this affect the flow and the grade separation in
this in Beck I think that's a great question and we still do the same thing
in my team and we do have that flow still where we have sixth grade and
seventh grade in eighth grade and try to keep that much like high schools you
know try to get those separated and so we still plan on doing that and so once
Once we can really get the footprint down and everything's done, we'll look at the logistics
and try to keep those grade levels together and the flow of traffic as well.
Okay.
Great.
Good to hear.
Thank you.
Any more questions, Board?
One more.
Is this very similar to Katie's renovation?
Did similar things with the office building and that?
It's shaped a little different just because of the site constraints, but the scope is
very very very similar very similar
thank you very much thank you thank you we'll now go back to discussion item 8.5
8.5 Discuss and consider the Raines Academy Optional Flexible School Day Program.
discuss and consider the reigns academy optional flexible school day program
program presenter richard merriman principal of raines high school
All right, good evening. President Redmond, Board of Trustees, Dr. Grigorski, this is our yearly renewal of the OFSDP program application with the state of Texas.
Texas. So OFSDP, as it is known across the state, the goal of the program is to support kids and
recover them who are at risk of graduating due to extenuating circumstances that typically prevent
them from coming to school in a typical 7-15 to 2-35 day or who have been withdrawn with a lever
code of 98 which would show up as a dropout eligible flexible day students
may have reported or at risk of being reported as TAS dropouts the program
provides a personalized learning plan an environment focused on earning a high
school diploma and the waiver ensures the district can offer address students
with extenuating circumstances an alternative option to obtain that
diploma how does this all come about well students can attend anytime between
7 a.m. and 6 p.m. like other students who attend reigns typically if you're
working on original credit work or credit recovery here are the hours 40 to
50 30 to 40 it typically would take students on average about three to five
weeks to complete one or two courses they're usually not enrolled in more
than that because of the constraints with whatever is going on at home so to
note it is common for students to attend fewer than two hours at a time or times
other than their official schedules may indicate. This occurs due to various challenges in the
student's life. It can be transportation, it can be child care, work schedule, family illness,
something is going on where a kid is not able to come to school in a traditional sense and they
need a different option and that's what this program provides us to do. So the benefits of
the program ensures KDIC is able to accrue ADA funding for all times in which students receive
instruction via the the flex day option here's the important distinction
attendance accrual begins after the first 45 minutes of student is in
attendance in that program and really what this does instead of capturing
attendance with a snapshot like everybody else in the district does this
allows us to record it by the minute but the minutes don't start to count for
funding unless they've attended for a minimum of 45 anything after that it's
prorated funding off of what used to be the 6160 mr. Smith talks about all the
of time for us to be able to receive money from the state of Texas it also
ensures the program can offer a flexible school day for those at-risk kids and
also provides flexibility the number of hours the student may attend and the
number of days a student may attend each week these are typically your kids who
do have a struggle they're not able always come Monday through Friday but it
does give us an option when they do to collect funding for those kids because
they would not otherwise meet the snapshot time during the school day here
to answer any questions you may have about OFSTP. Any questions, board? Mr. President. Ms. Fox.
Can you tell us about the tree? So the tree came about when we built the new building and
the whole point of when we were building the building with Mrs. Hack and a whole bunch of
people was what do we want out of RAINS? And so next week, I'm not going to talk too much because
we have our academic presentation to bring to you, but it was all about growth. Like how do we grow
kids that struggle with the many challenges that come in their life and a
tree is a symbol of growth that is typically always growing the leaves the
branches all of it and so if you come to campus at some point which I encourage
all of you to do you know the leaves really represent when you come and visit
each individual have credit a student earns during a year it's a really cool
thing we do and I'll talk more about that next week but this is a symbol of
growth for kids and how we can help them have a better chance at a better quality
quality of life at the end of the day.
And it's something I'm super proud of, our campus is super proud of, and it's a way for
us to change lives for kids by doing something different within the same constraints everybody
else does.
Mr. President?
I'm sorry.
So, Dr. Merriman, I appreciate your presentation here, and I really love your school, and I
really, I don't know if every board member has had an opportunity to go and visit it,
but and I hate to you know you're the you're the host so I'm sorry for doing
this I wouldn't want you to invite anybody to my house without me but
anyway I really I really do think that it would be great if the board members
I don't know have y'all seen it anyway it's it's it's a beautiful school and I
I kind of get the feeling when I went to come visit you that time for me it was
more of like a completion of in my mind of the idea of it you know what I mean
because you saw the the students there and I don't know I just think it's an
awesome thing and I'm really proud of our district for having this available
to kids and I'm just you know when we expanded to the second floor and all
that I'm really really proud that's a really big check plus that makes our
district extra great thank you for the presentation mr. president miss Fox okay
mr. Merriman I know you don't want to repeat yourself but repeating myself I
consider a spiritual gift so I'm just gonna say this school this facility is
the one that would make me do backflips down this down this aisle if I didn't
have to sit here you know this very minute or maybe I couldn't even actually
accomplish it but the students who come through there and I've been there many
times and just watching them get so excited and I'm probably covering what
you're gonna do next week and we'll repeat ourselves and call it spiritual
good but the the way you celebrate a student all of a sudden just everybody
stop whoever's in the area in the big central area this student right now just
just finished and is graduating, it's 11-17, and he graduated.
And there's this huge celebration because it is a big deal.
And you're changing students' lives, you're changing their trajectory,
you have programs there that is nowhere else,
maybe not anywhere else in the state of Texas.
The opportunities you give students to fit their time when they have it and
And when they kind of get behind to watch your people cheer them on and say,
it's okay, come back.
It's okay.
You're going to get there.
All of that, all of the resources poured into them.
them be successful because it's flexible because if they had to do seven to four or seven to three
it would never happen and i know you'll probably bring us pictures and people and songs and dances
all the things but i love this place well i'm not a singer or a dancer so you won't see that
okay but no we appreciate we appreciate it because uh it really is an opportunity to meet the the
mission of the district unparalleled learning experiences i would put us up against anybody
as far as how we do business, how we try to reach kids, the support we provide and
how we do celebrate every little success to ultimately get them to meet that
culmination which is their diploma. And so it is exciting at 730 in the morning
as some of them in this room have experienced when a kid finishes and we celebrate
their graduation sort of as a campus with them. That's a unique experience
nobody else can provide. So I appreciate that and I'm looking forward to
sharing all the wonderful things next week. I heard Miss Fox say she'll do
back flips down the hallway if anybody else heard that.
We will make sure to keep the video running.
If I didn't have to be on this side.
Mr. Merriman, just to share with you while everybody's Tony Hollis in New York.
When we were able to bring trustees from around the state last year to visit, there were two
things that I thought were amazing.
Was one, about halfway through once you shared why and what the purpose and mission of RAINS
is everybody got a wow on their face because they thought they were in early
college high school the the professionalism and the way that you you
and your staff lead and love on those kids so when they heard that oh wow
these are students that maybe dropped they were just need a different
experience or may have considered dropping out that afternoon we debriefed
that visit and had a trustee that said from the other side of town said you
know honestly lance i was not looking forward to katie um y'all have it all together y'all
y'all got it all figured out but when i realized that this school would have support i she had
family she said what i realized this school would have supported me as i was walking through a teen
pregnancy and got me out of school if i didn't have that family support or if i just needed
something else and she broke down crying and i was like we're doing a good job on kids and so
So I just say that not just for you, but for your team and staff that you've put together and the way you lead there is that every day there with kids that many times would get forgotten or traditional schools would not provide a great opportunity for them.
And so I'm super proud of you and Raines because we're not leaving those kids behind.
So I appreciate you.
and please pass that on from our entire board.
I'm going to share that with them.
We appreciate the kind words.
It is a team effort.
It is not me.
It is all of us, and it takes everybody.
Ironically enough, our cafeteria manager retired this year,
and you would be surprised at how big of an impact she had on our kids,
seeing them every day.
It was the first smile, the first hello.
She's a big loss for us, but it's a team effort.
And I would expand that because there are so many people sitting in this room
that had that vision of something that did not exist,
and now it does.
And from thin air created this idea,
and kids' lives are being changed.
And so to everyone else, we thank you too.
Board, any other questions for Principal Merriman?
One more.
Thank you so much.
You know, we, and this is rightfully so,
So we kind of get frustrated with our state about money and funding and lack thereof.
But I will say that give kudos to the state of Texas, the fact that they will fund a kid in this way.
And one thing I learned tonight that I did not know is, if I understood you correctly, that if the kid puts in more than 45 minutes, we get extra dollars proportionally for that kiddo.
Did I understand that correctly?
Yeah, correct.
Correct. So instead of the snapshot being, hey, if you're here at 1010, we get the full day funny like everybody else.
Once you hit 45, the clock, so to speak, starts running.
And you can, in essence, get fully funded for a kid up to 6160.
It's just you've got to record the right number of minutes.
Now, don't ask me to get too technical about that, but it's a very cumbersome system that we don't have to use very often,
but it is a tool in the toolbox for us to have in the event a kid cannot be there during one of the two snapshot times during the day.
Gotcha, yeah, that's fantastic.
Cumberson system, I've never, gosh, I wouldn't know what that is.
Thank you so much, Dr. Merriman.
Yes, sir.
Mr. President, I've said a few times from here that a learning walk would be very cool for us to, like, go and see something cool.
And so there are three of our board members who have never been there.
I wonder if we could do a learning walk at some point or maybe make a time when we could all just
Come over and the day you're making burgers. I mean if I had my way dr. Gorgorzki has been the beneficiary so far of one of the
cool programs we offer but
The student work program is a really unique opportunity. We have where kids can earn a
Diploma while also being a KDSD employee at the same time
One of them is actually a school bus driver in the district who completed the CDL program we offer
So I'd like for him to come pick you up on a school bus
Bring you over
We can do a tour and all the pieces and I can show you how we put two programs to work to support kids support
The community at the end of the day
So that's something you guys would love to do would love to organize that
Bring you over have you meet some of the kids have lunch with them like we've done with
Other board members when they're there and you can hear stories of kids where this place single-handedly has changed the trajectory of their life
And given them a new opportunity
To meet that diploma so
So, okay.
I have a question then.
Could we also work out there?
You can also come work out.
I'm known to, I do a free cookouts for the kids and the staff multiple times a year.
As long as we're doing what we're supposed to be doing.
That's an opportunity kids don't have.
And so if you guys want me to cook for you too, I'll happy to throw the grill on.
But I love the workout.
Yeah.
You can come work out.
Yeah.
After you're done eating, you can go work out.
You can have a good gym there.
And we'll have a big rig there and we can, you can have the big rig.
I'll get, I'll get somebody to take you around in a spin.
and show you how all that works.
I do have a question.
Do kids really use the gym?
Yeah, long story short.
So the gym is a two-prong approach.
So it's for PE credit, so kids need to obviously earn that credit
for graduation requirements that's there.
But good research suggests that kids who are physically active
are more likely to be engaged in school.
So if you want to come and put an hour in your day to work out,
you're able to do that.
It's just not for credit.
And so that way they can get in there and they can become physically active.
And it's about creating real-world experiences to support kids when they leave.
When kids leave high school, they're not thinking, hey, I'm going to get a $10 Planet Fitness membership,
and I'm going to go in there and use all these fancy machines.
We give them an opportunity to learn and grow in a safe environment to where when they do graduate,
now this is an option for them to learn or be physically fit moving forward.
And so that's the whole premise of the place is how do you take kids and provide real-world experiences
that you don't get at a comprehensive high school that are more practical for
their life in the post-secondary world and that's what that provides I really
like that because they could they could actually learn how to be a what do you
call those trainer I think I would be a trainer and we have a few kids that
would love to do that and so it's it's an inspiration it's a hope it's a it's a
dream it's whatever they want it to be but we're there to support them through
whatever it is they've got going on to have those experiences that you can't
otherwise get at a comprehensive campus. So I don't want to take too much thunder
away from next week. Any more questions for? We need to come and see the tree
because this tree is pretty but to see the tree for every half credit that they
earn is it covers the whole thing. I'll have a picture in it next week for y'all so you
can kind of see and go over a lot of stuff but we appreciate the support very
very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it y'all. We'll now
8.10 Discuss and consider Board approval for the Electronic Content Management (ECM) system District wide expansion project to meet the immediate needs for workflow automation and document management.
move on to discussion item 8.10 discuss and consider board approval for the
electronic content management system district-wide expansion project to meet
the immediate needs for workflow automation and document management
presenter Joe Chris offers an director of technology operations no we try to
carry ramp Ellie I'm so sorry you have to follow me some other guy I mean
Christmas. How are you changing kids' lives? Oh yeah, you are. Go ahead. Well, it's much like
Esperanza and Jamie. Carrie's going to be the brains of this presentation. I'm really here to
just set the stage. The superintendent has clearly challenged us, his board has challenged us to try
to reduce costs without affecting student learning. And we've been very successful at that.
this is a what i think is a key piece to reducing cost in our general fund can it be substantiated
how much are you going to save probably not we will save it will be administratively uh more
efficient to do this we are already using a a portion of intertwine electronic content management
with our student side of the house we did that a few years ago for survival reasons to be frank
with you and this hack could probably elaborate on that but uh basically we needed stuff to move
around the district and move around the district faster it's been very successful for them
we're wanting to expand that the way we've cobbled it together over the last few years
we've been doing it through general fund budget and stretching and doing as much as we can and
then we run out of budget and kind of start over our miss hacks area has done that now we're
wanting to go in and capitalize it and do as much as we can to efficiency the district and we think
that this will save and reduce strain on the general fund as we move forward and become more
successful and get this implemented but right now there's over a hundred forms and things that go
through our district a lot of them are electronic and they move through electronically through
things that either are really smart programmers have written that they get there electronically
electronically in one little section, comes through some other software workflow, some stuff comes in a signed PDF via email, but we're wanting to basically put everything in, and you all have all probably seen that in your personal lives if you've gone to a bank lately or on a mortgage where you do the electronic signature and workflows.
This is essentially that and what Mr. Hines mentioned it earlier tonight.
There's about 1.7 million in the 2021 bond authorization and we think there's
4.7 million dollars. We think for 1.8 million dollars we can light speed ahead
of where we are now and move to 2025 or 2026 with this and I'm gonna turn it
over to her. Good evening Board President Redmond, members of the Board of
Trustees and Superintendent Grigorski. Tonight I'm recommending that the board
approve the budget for expanded licenses and enterprise features of our current softdocs
platform to support a new district-wide ecm implementation following a comprehensive
district-wide needs assessment we identified several manual paper-based processes that are
well suited for automation this proposal expands the use of softdocs beyond student records to a
fully integrated district-wide platform the enhanced system will provide electronic signatures
features, automated form workflows and approvals, secure document management, intelligent document
processing along with enterprise wide retention and version control.
The platform is already delivering efficiency gains in its current use and expanding it
across the district will build on that success by improving the accuracy and completeness
of existing paper-based processes and will support long-term cost savings by reducing
paper consumption, manual labor, and physical storage needs.
Like they both said, the requested amount includes five years of software licensing,
implementation services, and necessary hardware, and funding for this initiative will come
from project savings within Proposition B of the 2021 bond authorization with an estimated
amount of $1.8 million over the life of the project.
And we're happy to answer any questions you might have.
Mr. President?
Thank you.
Ms. Gazelle?
Thank you very much.
You said the life of the project? What's the life? Five years. So, but it would be
implemented throughout the five years or implemented? It would be, so it would be
kind of a, you know, we can't tackle all 100 forms at one time. We can't kind of
make it an enterprise level. I'm so sorry. I know it's awkward here. But we can't make it an
enterprise level system within, you know, just over those five years. We'll do the
foundation first and then start some of the really you know cost savings and
those kind of things that have been identified as very valuable we'll start
with those and then go forward for the five years okay so it is a five-year
rollout it is I mean the contract for the software is five years we hope to
get it implemented prior to the end of the five years and then just be in a
continual maintenance or new form type mode or in project mode but the life of
the project is five years okay and then after the five years um what is the cost is it a just the
license we're renewing yes ma'am it would be that's correct yes it would be just the regular
maintenance and operations and that's that's where the monies are coming from now is a regular
maintenance operations budget we'll put a pause on that some of that will still be paid by those
current that current budget that's been paying for it but this pro this part where we're going
We're going to take it to the next level.
It is going to come out of bond proceeds.
And basically, we're going to use the implementation team, not Dr. Alaune's staff.
They're overworked.
We're going to use people that can come in and work on our behalf to get this done faster.
Okay.
Without overburdening people and adding staff, frankly, that once we get these forms built,
that we won't need any longer.
So is there a yearly cost to it? Just for my peace of mind, like after five years?
After five years there will be an ongoing cost and again those the general fund is picking up a large portion of that ongoing cost now.
Will it increase? Probably, because we'll probably have more licenses when we turn it over in the next five years,
but I'm confident that the
savings we're going to have, hopefully it'll, as we grow, it'll be less of a need to have clerical staff.
not that we can get rid of any but to add as we grow.
Roughly how much is the license?
I don't know that.
I don't know.
Because that would be an ongoing cost, right?
Yeah.
I may just add to that.
The current license we're paying is I think it's approximately $135,000 a year.
Okay.
That's great to hear.
And Ms. Cuzela, I also think that, again, we're going to use less paper.
That's not probably much, but it will be some savings.
But, again, I think, excuse me, I do think that, I forgot what I was going to say.
Oh, wow.
But, yeah, we're using other softwares to do this
and a hodgepodge of things that we've done to move forward as best we can.
And there will be some expenses that we'll lose likely over those next five years too as we move towards this.
So we'll be shifting it from other little baskets into this one as well.
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Any other questions, Board?
All right. Thank you so much.
Items 8.11 & 8.12
We'll now move to discussion item 8.11,
Discuss and Consider Board Approval for the Memorandum
of Understanding for Operation of a Juvenile Justice
Alternative Education Program with Harris County.
We have presenter Sherry Ashhorn,
Director of Student Affairs, and she'll
be with us for these next two, which
you can roll just straight in the next one
as soon as you're ready.
Perfect plan.
Thanks, President Redmond, members of the board,
Dr. Grigorski, I'll just give you kind of a quick update for both MOUs because there's not a lot of
changes from last year. And this is a routine process that we have. So as you know, Chapter 37
allows us to expel to a juvenile justice alternative education program because the
population of our counties, well, multiple counties, is over 125,000. So we are reestablishing
our MOUs with both Fort Bend and Harris County where our campuses are located. And there's no
change to either one so first up at 8 11 is with harris county we are going to be re-requesting
three permissive seats we basically hold those seats we reserve them ahead of time
in the case that we do expel a student permissively and they do attend i want to just
remind you that house bill 6 is floating out there i anticipate that the governor will sign it or
will go into effect which does move some of those permissive reasons back to the mandatory so we
We won't have to pay for those moving forward.
Some of those off-campus Title V felonies
and very serious behaviors.
So I think three seats is gonna be a great number
for us to continue to reserve
so that we can use those if we need those.
And if you don't mind if I just roll
into Fort Bend County as well, same thing.
With Lamar, we have an MOU
and we will still continue to reserve our two seats
so that if we have students who commit offenses
in Fort Bend County campuses,
we have a place for them to go as well.
As a reminder, there's no cost to any mandatory placements outlined in Chapter 37.
Any questions, Board?
All right. Thank you.
8.13 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2025 - 2026 Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS) Second Appraisers
We'll now move on to Discussion Item 8.13, Discuss and Consider Board Approval for the 2025-2026 Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System, T-TES, Second Appraisers.
PRESENTER BRIAN SCHUESS, CHIEF HUMAN RESOURCES OFFICER.
GOOD EVENING, PRESIDENT REDMOND, MEMBERS OF THE BOARD,
DR.
KIGORSKI.
DON'T WORRY, I DO NOT HAVE A PRESENTATION ON T-TEST SECOND
APPRAISERS.
I JUST DECIDED TO DO THIS VERY ROUTINE ITEM FROM HERE SINCE I'M
GOING TO ROLL RIGHT INTO A PRESENTATION.
SO THE T-TEST SECOND APPRAISERS, THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE HAVE TO
BRING TO THE BOARD EACH AND EVERY YEAR.
WE DO HAVE TO DESIGNATE SECOND APPRAISERS IF ONE IS REQUESTED,
AND THE WAY WE DO IT EACH AND EVERY YEAR, WE DO DESIGNATE ALL
campus principals and all campus assistant principals as potential second appraisers
for t-test and again it's just it's a routine item it's it's we're required to bring that
to the board i've got one question how often do um employees request a second appraisal
is very rare um it's less than five typically um less than five less than five a year and
And when you think about almost 7,000 teachers, that's basically none.
Okay.
Mr. Redman?
I have 15 questions about this.
No, just kidding.
All right.
I'm going to go to the restroom real quick.
I wonder if we could have a description for the former principal over here what a T-test is.
I do have one more question.
Yes, sir.
As a movement, T-test is used for TIA, like designations.
questions. Has this been happening throughout the state? Are there any rumblings that more
people are requesting a second appraiser because it now potentially could affect additional
monies coming from the state or their pay?
There's an excellent question. And I don't know about rumblings, but it's something that
Dr. Hill and I talk about quite often that this definitely could increase second appraisal
request it did not have that impact this year but but we'll see how that is
moving forward okay thank you any other questions on this item board mr. president
just to tell you I'm when I taught we had like a two-week window where we
could come and get evaluated is that still is it still a two-week window well
I mean now with t-test it's pretty much it's a year long process I mean now what
they would be requesting a second appraisal for would be the formal
evaluation that's usually complete by December and then if we do get a second
second appraisal request it's usually immediately following that right so like
when I taught there was a two-week window of them when my formal evaluation
happened and I never knew when it was going to be that dr. Hill so I think
that's varies from campus to campus some principals get with them and they they
They have an idea when they're coming, or they can set a specific time when they would like them to come.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Thank you.
My point was I don't think, I mean, not many teachers want to go through that two-week window again a second time.
Gotcha.
Any other questions on 8.13 board?
Mr. President.
You asked.
I was going to say traditionally what we found too is through the data is that the second
appraisal 90% of the time, maybe more, did not change significantly from the original
appraisal.
I mean, I think that has a little bit to do with it too.
I'm not talking about just on a particular campus, just in general.
And so I think that has a little bit to do with it.
I think teachers also go, well, do I expect a significant change?
But also I can attest to we weren't doing TIA then when I was doing that,
so I'm sure that could increase.
And I don't know the number of TIA teachers we have in the district right now.
I don't know that anybody.
A little over 600?
No, well, that are actually designated, I think it's about 540.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we have several, then, the point being that, you know, there certainly could have been already some challenges to that.
Yes, sir.
You could have had an impact, absolutely.
Okay.
That's it.
Thank you.
Mr. President, can I add to that?
Yes.
It's my understanding the state's going to pour a lot more money to TIA, so we'll see that desire increase.
Yeah, they've created a new designation.
There's not a ton of information out about that just yet.
I was at a teacher incentive allotment training or training a conference a little over a week ago,
and and folks from TEA actually said that we're gonna be getting information
out soon about this new designation so we'll start hearing about that soon I
think we were hoping we might have you give us a lot more information maybe in
another month or so yes sir yes sir all right well let's go with 8.14 discuss
8.14 Discuss and consider future Board approval of the Katy Independent School District compensation plan for the 2025 - 2026 school year
and consider future board approval of the Katie independent school district
compensation plan for the 2025-2026 school year sir thank you it's something
that we present to the board in June excited to present this compensation plan tonight for the
2025-2026 school year you know this is a large document it's very important document governs
88 of the district's budget it is a rather brief presentation one of the reasons for that is is
you know a lot of what's contained in the compensations plan is discussed quite a bit
throughout the budget process and so i don't necessarily want to be redundant with that but
i do think there are some things that are that are very important to point out and so when it comes
to compensation plan development and contents obviously market analysis is extremely important
we've got to maintain we've got to be market competitive and and want to maintain a competitive
edge if we can not only with teachers but throughout the district and so reviewing that
market for teachers and i've got some slides that typically do after this that'll show it's it's
actually pretty exciting but also with reviewing district benchmark positions as it compares to
the region i will say we are very competitive as we go through those positions and look at those
individually we come across many positions where we are a hundred percent
or more to the market with those positions if we come across some that
are 95 percent or lower we do a little more in-depth analysis but but after
looking at those I will definitely say that we are definitely very competitive
with not only teachers but other positions within the district and I
think that says a lot for an organization this size because that's
not always that's not always easy to maintain but you've got to make sure you
continue to do the analysis so you can maintain that.
The teacher hiring scale and district pay grade.
So a lot of conversations about that, or a lot of conversation about that in Mr. Smith's
presentation.
The teacher hiring scale has been developed and it is in the comp plan that's in your
agenda and it has been developed according to what we feel is the interpretation of House
Bill 2.
A couple of things that have been added are the years one and two.
once you've completed years one and two of service we have added the 2500 in for those now we have
put an asterisk by those in the compensation plan that says those are provided using district funds
mr graham and i were talking a little earlier today that maybe maybe even add to that a little
bit to make sure we make that distinction the year one and year two have been provided using district
funds until year three when the state when the state picks up that and picks up that funding
But definitely want to show that distinction in the comp plan.
As this is modeled, we've got a starting teacher salary of $66,180 for next year.
But again, that's just as this is modeled currently, knowing that that could change
depending on conversation.
And then the district pay grades.
As you can see, the district pay grades have been adjusted, and those have been adjusted
to support a 3% raise for all other employees, as Mr. Smith discussed in his budget.
And again, we can talk more about that in a little bit as well.
Stipend review.
As the board knows, we do a rotating review on stipends.
This year was athletics.
Next year will be academics.
The following year will be fine arts.
And as you know, we did fine arts last year.
There are very few stipend adjustments this year.
And that actually allowed us to go back and address a small number of fine arts stipends
that we were not able to address last year.
But again, still very few number of stipend adjustments for this year.
The comp plan is kind of a culmination of everything we've talked about from campus staffing.
So it incorporates campus staffing, it incorporates additional department staffing, and incorporates all position reclassifications.
And just to touch on position reclassifications a little bit, I do this each and every year.
I think that's a great process. I'm really glad that we do that. It helps us maintain efficiency.
I mean, you know, reclassifying a person that maybe has, because we're a growing district and things are constantly evolving,
Reclassifying a person that maybe has taken on more technical duties, more duties, more supervisory duties, and being able to handle it in that manner keeps a department head or a cabinet member from potentially asking for a whole other position.
So going through the process of reclassifications, again, really allows us to maintain efficiency and saves the district money because if a department head or cabinet member had no other recourse, the request would just be for additional positions.
And so additional department staffing that we bring you in May would, chances are, be significantly more without that reclassification process.
And then, as always, we've got some policy and benefits information included.
But now on to, so this is exciting information.
Now, this is for 24-25, and this is as our teachers compare to the region.
And you can see it's graphically represented.
And if you remember last year, those two lines were, I'd say, quite a bit closer to each other than they are for 24-25.
And from a numerical representation, if you look at the fourth column over where it says comparison to market,
zero-year salary 105%, 103%, 104%, 15-year 104%.
Those are all, I think, great numbers and show that the district has done what we've set out to accomplish
in maintaining teacher salaries above the market median for Region 4.
So that was really exciting to see when we could start looking at that information.
And now the next chart, and I know this one's a little messy, and Dr. Hill gives me a hard time about this graph all the time,
and I think you all maybe gave me a hard time about it last year too, but the reason I didn't take it out is because,
okay, so I know it's a little bit hard to see, but we are the thicker black line that's running across the top.
When we got that, started getting this information this year and started developing these charts,
if you remember last year, that black line was almost right in the middle of everybody
and maybe just barely above the middle.
And so you start plugging in all this new information and to see that line jump as much
as it did, I thought, okay, I need to include this information because that was really pretty
exciting to see.
better representation of it though is the comparison to the median for those
same districts and these are what we consider our comparable districts when
we have third party come in and do a do a salary study these are the districts
that they use as comparable appeared districts and if again if you remember
last year that blue and orange line were very close together so we've definitely
made I think a good impact on our competitiveness
We've broadened that gap and again you can see that in the comparison to market for the comparable districts 102 percent
across the board
Again, this is 24 25 don't have a whole lot of information on what folks are going to do
With 25 26 and mr. Smith can correct me if I'm wrong
We're dr. Kogorski. I certainly haven't heard of school districts planning to go above and beyond what House bill 2
dictates that we do outside of maybe our adjustment with with years one and two
and so knowing that you know we pretty much solidified ourselves as far as our
competitiveness in the market for you know for hopefully years to come so and
let's see if I make sure I got everything oh another thing that is
included in the in the compensation plan that we haven't done for the past two or
three years is actually an increase to substitute pay. We do have an increase to substitute pay of
$5 per day that is recommended within the plan. Very excited to do that. Our substitutes are
extremely important to the district. They perform an imperative role and very happy to do that. And
that is on all of the $5 per day on all the different substitute positions.
positions. And I think that's all I've got as far as the presentation goes. And then if y'all have
questions. Mr. President. Ms. Champaign. Okay. So you also have something in here about the
the one-time lump sum payment. Yes, ma'am. And do you want to address that? Okay. So what that is,
And that's been in the comp plan for actually many years.
So, and that goes back to the discussion earlier about the one-time lump sum that we used to make around Christmas.
If the district is going to authorize a one-time lump sum, it doesn't have to be specific, but it has to be in the comp plan.
It has to be authorized in the comp plan to give a one-time lump sum.
So that's why that's in there, just in case the board did want to authorize that.
So we, so since we have to, so since, I don't want to say we have to, but it's on the plan that we're going to authorize our vote on this next week, we would have to come up with this to add to the comp plan for next week?
No, ma'am.
So, I'm sorry, Mr. Redmond, if you want to.
Go ahead, Mr. Redmond.
No, this just gives us the authority.
in the so in in years past going back to when we used to give the one-time lump sum in december
this would be in the comp plan that was approved in june but that might not be decided until till
until later or could be approved later this just gives the authority to at some point in the future
or not uh to give a one-time lump sum okay then i'm sorry i just want to keep going so where where
is that teacher retention and recruitment in the in this plan because i thought that it was going
going to be kind of highlighted here somewhere.
That is not in the comp plan as it sits.
We would take direction from the board to approve that again for next year.
Mr. Redman, I'm sorry, I'm just going to ask you this.
So if we're going to vote on what's been suggested,
Is that without the, is that comp plan that has been derived, is that without the teacher
retainment from last year?
Yes.
It would be, the way I asked Dr. Gorski to have a scene created was that the plan presented,
funded by the state, would be like the next iteration of it.
All right, so obviously we get a chance to discuss that but it's not embedded somewhere where I can't could be you because
Yeah, cuz mr. Smith said it's all part of the
Together and so I don't know if I understood correctly
It was technically there's still that amount that we would need this year if we had in the budget
It's still the funds are still budgeted
But it is not in the plane I went back and looked at last year's
plan and the document we had online that's still there did not have any reference to that plan.
So we did vote on it. We put it in place. It was not necessarily in this document we're looking at.
So when we vote next week, will it be in the plan or not in the plan?
That's what we're discussing right now.
Oh.
I guess I just need to know what the amount of it is and all that because I don't I don't have
it's about a million dollars and so how do we suggest that we take that out I mean what do we
is there a word for it is there something that we call it my understanding right now is is the way
this is presented if we approve this as is that would not be in it what would be in it would be
what the state has given us to do the teacher retention along so let me
clarify a little bit about how you develop a compensation plan and what
goes into that so anything the board would want us to authorize would be in a
compensation plan all sorts of things go in there and it's like mr. Schuss
explained of why we leave the lump sum in there that gives the board an
advantage to do that later should they want to do that without having to go
back and readopt a brand new compensation plan.
So you might remember last year we adopted a compensation plan in June like we do every
year, but we didn't make a decision on that teacher, retainment, benchmark years of service
until after the comp plan, so it didn't make it in there.
So what we would recommend, or Ryan might have a different recommendation, we'll see,
is if the board wants us to do things like that in terms of compensation,
you give us that direction and we build it into a comp plan
and we adopt a comp plan that has everything in there that the board is authorizing.
That's what we would normally do.
That way it gives us authorization to make those payments either now or into the future.
So the only thing I can say, Enrique, it was not in there
because the board had made that decision after the comp plan had been adopted.
so it would have appeared if the board wants to put something in there i mean we can put anything
in the comp plan anything you guys say tonight we can add in there but um it's not it's not in there
okay so can i ask another thank you very much for the clarification because i wasn't sure
may i ask another or i just want to make a statement here so i know this because i'm
friends with a financial clerk and i really appreciate and i know she does and all the
high school financial clerks across our district appreciate that that has been raised to another
step or however you call it because the high school this is a good point the high school
financial clerks i'm not trying to take away from what the elementary ones in junior high
school but they do they do do a lot more they have a huger campus they have a lot more programs and
all that and so they're going to be a lot better compensated for it so i don't know who
made that judgment, but whoever did, I really, speaking on behalf of them, appreciate that.
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
I appreciate the clarification.
I believe that because, just this is our time to discuss, right?
So, I have two things.
Thanks.
Let's talk about the retention, the step increase, whatever we called it last time,
which was I think intended to be retention and the 5, 10, 15 year marks and going up.
When the state issued a retention plan for teachers, I believe that theirs is far better
than ours ever was to start with.
so having that as a substitute for that feels right to me.
And the money that was in that almost a million dollars
could be used for our other employees
that were not included by the state
because they only address teachers.
And that million dollars won't go very far,
but it certainly is a lot of money
when you're already in a deficit budget.
So that's how I feel about the retention plan.
The other piece is when you have on this chart,
where's the chart that has the first two lines on it, that one,
with the two lines that go like that, and the starting salary is $64,000.
That one, wherever that one is.
I have two presentations pulled up.
That one.
Okay, so the starting salary is 64 on that.
Is that correct?
And it's 100 and something percent more than the people all around us.
Is that also?
For 2425.
Yes, ma'am.
2425.
So two parts to this.
I would like to know what other districts are going to do with 01 and 02.
And before we make a decision about that, I want to be perfectly clear.
I love all teachers.
I'm so glad that you are choosing a career that changes lives and makes an impact forever.
Their starting salary is $64,000, which for lots of college graduates is really, really
good.
And then you get there, and then the differentiation between 64 and the teachers who have been
here for 40 years, or in the 70s.
I just, and the state legislature told us how to spend that money.
I'm struggling with changing years one and two when they, and if it's retention, if we gave it to them at year beginning, it's for retention.
So if the first couple of years is when they're really trying to decide, is this right for me, you know, if that's not enough salary by year three, it's like if you just hang on until year three and you've got it now, right?
Like you kind of are getting your legs under you and you've got the support from all the other teachers.
And at year three, your salary bumps $2,500 instead of $500.
I just think that's the whole purpose of it.
so that's what sounds good to me is to leave it as designed but if every other
district around us it's gonna do something different I don't want to
lose any teachers that's me mr. president miss champaign I would like to
say something so when I when I got elected in 2018 and for the next three
or four years I kept looking at that chart that region for chart and we were
I think there's 44 districts in the region for something like that we were
number 10 from the bottom and every school district under us had less than
5,000 kids except for HISD I think HISD was number nine and we worked and worked
and worked as a board and then you know and I don't know when you were I can't
remember when you were seventh year okay so about the same time so together we
We have worked and worked.
I kept bringing my charts and kept talking to the different, you know, Dr. Gregorski
and poor Greg Schulte and all that.
Anyway, we finally got it up here and I'm so happy because it's kind of like the thing
with rains, how I'm so happy about that.
This is another thing.
I mean, it was just a climbing out of the thing.
It was ridiculous that we were at the bottom like that for so long.
and so although I do understand and I understand what you're saying I do think
it would be good to see what the years one and I've got that written down but
you know to see before we make a decision I personally just as a board
member and I'm sure I other people agree to me like to be at the top so I'm just
that competitive side of me I'd like to see that blue line up there so I don't
want it to fall you know I don't want to go low again so if everybody else some I
understand mrs. Fox is saying if everybody else is doing then we
definitely need to do it if everybody isn't doing that maybe maybe we don't so
and I know dr. of course he has his own feelings about that I'd love to hear
that too well the best I can give you guys since you both asked a similar
question is what are other districts doing 99% we don't know you know I mean
Nobody would, well, let me say, not nobody.
Lamar Consolidated, which was one of our neighbors,
jumped out there and announced a raise probably two or three weeks ago,
maybe last month.
I'm recalling it being something like a $2,000 across-the-board teacher raise,
flat raise, two grand.
And so Brian and I remember we talked about this,
and I remember their starting salary jumped to like $65,000 and something,
right under $66,000.
and you mean like 65 765 8 somewhere in there so that's where they're gonna be
at least one of our neighbors nobody else around us has announced anything
everyone was waiting on House Bill to nobody wanted to be trapped into that
thing of if we give a raise and then they tell us how to give a raise do we
have to give both raises so we're all kind of just sitting back and waiting
and seeing now we do have some neighbors and I'd have to put Chris on the spot
over there on some things. Some of our neighbors do have a July 1 budget, so they may be making
their decisions very soon. But like I said, we got a September 1 budget, so that gives the board
some time to decide on what they want to do in regard to first and second year teachers.
So we don't have to make this decision next Monday?
You don't have to. Board can do whatever they want to do. We can pass certain things in a comp plan.
What I would recommend to the board is don't hold up the entire comp plan to make one piece of the comp plan and just authorize us to say, listen, we'll approve the comp plan, but we're not doing anything about whatever you don't want to make a decision on right now.
because there's a lot goes into that there's a lot of things we a lot of
moving parts and we can already start making completing work that needs to get
done for teachers that are four years or three years and up and we can start doing
all that kind of work so for all of their employees too yeah and all of our
other employees too if the board is ready to make a decision on those as
well we can we can do that so there's a couple of different things we could
bring we could bring a different document that doesn't include that and you could say we'd like
to approve that for now it's just what the board wants to approve for now when it comes to that
mr redmond can somebody give me clarity on who made the decision to take the benchmark
um payments that we worked so hard on last year out of the compensation plan
We inserted it last summer we inserted them in.
I asked them to model this for us without it in it. Based on our conversations last year,
the desire to apply it to all of our teachers,
have it a funding source,
and to make it a larger incentive.
And that seemed to make that
that I thought our board would agree with.
And so I asked them to do that,
but it's obviously still not voted on,
so it hasn't been removed as far as we haven't voted that out.
Well, my concern is there are teachers
who are counting on this,
And I understand they're getting 2,500 or 5,000 from the state, but I think it's wrong to take it away from them when we've promised it.
So that's just where I stand.
It's only a million dollars, and I just feel like that isn't right.
But that's where I stand.
Mr. President, may I please?
Ms. Shipping.
So last year when we were in that meeting, I know I stated this and other board members
stated this over and over again, that retention plan would have to be voted on every year
new.
It wasn't part of our policy or anything like that.
It's like that lump sum thing.
It has to be voted on every year brand new, and it's not a guarantee that that would be
a reoccurring thing, component of their compensation.
So we didn't know last year that we're going to get all this extra money for $2,500 and
the $5,000.
So we didn't know that.
And that was, that's kind of the problem sometimes with those lump sum type things or those incentive
of plans is because there's no way we can predict what's going to happen in the future and every
year we have to rebuild the budget based on what we have now not what we think we're going to have
next year so that's all i would like to say about that mr president um i'm i'm with this teamie i
I think I'm in favor of retaining that teacher retention allotment that we created for the district for our employees who stay with us.
There's nothing in the state's allotment, which is fabulous, but nothing's in here for teachers who stay.
There's no reward.
It's all the same across the board.
It's very equitable.
I'm in favor of favoring the teachers who choose to stay here year after year
and I love the five-year it to me it's a thank-you payment to stay here more more
than anything there were teachers and I think I remember you miss shape trustee
champagne maybe miss Fox as well but complaining or concerned that there were
two not everybody was gonna get it right so this year we have a different set of
teachers are going to be thanked in a special way the bottom line expense
number seems fairly minimal I think it's doable and I think it's very important
because we're talking about our teachers who we experience teachers who I want to
thank in a very special way from the district so I'd like us to consider
putting that in statement made I have a specific question about TAS rules the
the way they stated them.
Unfortunately, counsel is not here.
Maybe he can respond back, but the rules,
just black and white to me,
but if they're not black and white, fine.
But it just says a school system per the TEA, right?
The salary schedules should reflect a base salary
for classroom teachers who've already completed
three credible years that is $2,500 or $4,000 based on school system.
Okay, sorry, $2,500 higher than the base salary of teachers who've completed two.
So I'm kind of piggybacking on what Trustee Fox has mentioned.
This is black and white.
And that's not reflected in our salary schedule that I see.
We only have a difference of $445 between.
Oh.
So, okay, so Mrs. Cazales, so the way.
So looking at it, you've got the one that's the red line, the 24-25.
So going from, let's say, going from the 2 to 3,
so you're moving kind of in a diagonal fashion, not straight across.
So you're moving from 2 at $6,500.25 to 3 at $6,725.25, and that's your $2,500.
So when you look at it, if you look at the 25-26 salary scale alone
and just go up that scale, yes.
I mean, the amounts in between those, but that's not what, yeah.
Thank you.
I was having, I was like, how are we going to get away with this?
No, that's okay.
Okay, I apologize.
No, no, it's not.
That clears it up.
No, it's all good.
Thank you.
You bet.
So, Mr. President, is there any further, who,
so am I to understand anyone who's not voiced tonight
to keep the retention allotment that we decided on last year,
Which is a very modest. Thank you payment to be honest 250 for every five years
You've been with Katie anyone who's not voicing support for that tonight
teaching sorry teaching
You are not for that. Is that what I'm hearing?
Can I expect that I were just not gonna put it in I mean I would be I
I see what we're doing with the Texas or with the teacher retention allotment that the state's providing as it's growing what we did last year.
It's an increase at every level to every person.
It's inclusive and there's funds available for it.
So I think it's kind of semantics to say, well, we're going to give it to this group or we're going to expand it so that now, right,
That nine-year teacher or, say, that 21-year teacher also gets to participate along with the 20-year teacher.
And so, I mean, what I like about this hiring schedule that we have is, again, that it's more inclusive.
That it's expanded all the way down to year five.
It's not a $500.
I don't remember exactly what it was.
I believe it was about $500.
They're now getting $5,000.
And so it's not only more generous, more inclusive, and the funds are there, it just seems like it hits all those boxes.
Mr. President, I hear what you're saying, but if the midpoint, you know, what's hard is teachers that have been in this career for 20, 30 years, their pay has not grown.
So keeping the benchmark helps with that.
and then secondly I just you know I talked to a lot of teachers at the of
the Year Awards banquet and they were like I get my next year and now they
don't I just I just don't my I just I can't I can't vote for that and so I'm
not saying what the truth that 2500 and the 5000 that's not coming out of our
pocket that's mandated by the state so we're not losing that's not coming from
kdisd it's coming from texas so um i don't i guess i i'm just shocked and i'm kind of floored that
this was taken out um especially since you voted for it so i'm just i know i'm very disappointed
i feel very feel very bad for our staff i understand that um when we had the conversation
last year one of the goals we said uh was literally that we would like to expand it to
every employee that if we would have had the money last year we would include everybody and so as I
interpret what we what we walked through last year I believe this is accomplishing that it's again it
is ten times the amount at the lower lower your levels revenues to say this is mandated by the
the state so it's really not a difference it's not coming out of Katie
ISD's pocket if it because it's all coming to us that money's tied it has to
go to the teachers if they would have funded schools in the traditional way
they would have by increasing the basic allotment it would have come out of her
pocket and so whether they're telling us how to spend it or not I know every
single person on this diets would support is in support of increasing what
what we're gonna pay our teachers and our employees.
Everybody in this room that would make a recommendation
towards that, it's obviously that they also agree,
by the way, first and second year teachers
are included in that.
And so, again, I just went back to the conversations
we had last year, that we would desire to expand the program
and include more people than we were able to,
that we would like to have funding for it,
and we would like it to be bigger payments.
And so when that allotment came available, it seemed to check all the boxes.
So I'm hearing you don't agree that it checks all the boxes, and I hear that.
No, I'm just saying we should do both.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm saying we should do both.
Yes, Mr. President.
Creating that program last year created angst on campuses, without doubt.
but it also caused us to go deeper into a deficit budget and the state if they
had given us the student allotment like you said if they had increased it to
keep up with inflation would have increased our student allotment by
thirteen hundred and sixty-five dollars or something like that and instead they
increased it by fifty five because they created what they believed to be
be important, which was a teacher increase. And they call it retention because they know that
teachers are leaving the profession. So last year, the incentive was to retain teachers. This one is
to retain teachers. You're right. It's much better than what ours was. It doesn't have the haves and
the have-nots, and teachers are not feeling guilty or feeling angry about not getting it when everyone
gets something except for the first two year first year and second year teacher
so I believe that this is the a better replacement for the plan we had last
year because it includes everyone just like you said mr. president this goes on
so the deficit is not that the cost for that is nominal it's one point what it
It didn't put us into a huge deficit, Ms. Fox.
The plan.
But it was from that deficit.
But it did cause a bigger deficit.
By how much?
Whatever we spent.
By, it's 1.1 million.
Can somebody give me a figure?
It's very small.
And we're spending that on our teachers.
I like to, last year, what I hear from is experienced teachers who are not being thanked for sticking around.
And so I saw the program last year that we voted on to give them a special incentive and a thank you for staying here in Katy as an experienced teacher.
Experienced teachers are valuable.
The state is not distinguishing between experienced teachers and new teachers, with an exception of one and two.
I get that.
but overall we're not we're now taking away something that we were giving to
experienced teachers every five years for their service so I I can't I do not
support taking that away I'd like to see it put back put put in mr. president
the shipping so this this was never taken out that this is something that we
have to put in every year so it's not taken out i just want to say that it you know the impression
that i'm i'm hearing from a couple of trustees is that it's being taken out it's being taken away
it's not being taken away because it's not here no it's not built into our budget it is
something that we have to vote on to put in every year right now we have to put it in every year
yes every year so next year what to do that's what we're talking about right now i don't know
but we didn't take it out you're asking us to put it in but it didn't take it
out semantics it was very obvious that's a that's an important semantic though
because we're not taking it out you want us to put it in and some people want us
to put it in and some people want us not to but it wasn't taken out it was made
very clear last year that this was the best we could do and that we wanted to
to increase it for more people next time,
but it was made very clear over and over,
this is not a guarantee that it will always be here.
It could change at any moment.
This could be a one-time occurrence
because we did not make a commitment for any future board.
So, and that was made very, very clear to teachers who were,
well, to everyone and for teachers who were very upset
that they were excluded.
Mr. President, I think the cost real-time and then morale-wise to our experienced teachers
isn't worth...
saving one point whatever million it is um that we would save by not doing it
i'd just like to add that you need to consider that mr president mr cross um it's kind of like
um when i think about i think it's like you know if i got you a christmas present last year
because i could you know i was in a good financial shape or whatever and i bought you a gift and
this year I said that I couldn't I didn't really take anything away from
you I was just unable to provide something again this year and I
understand to your point we have dollars it's not that we're incapable of doing
that but I also think of it from this perspective as well I'm I love rewarding
teachers who stuck it out and stuck with us but really rewarding about 20% of the
folks if I'm 16 17 18 19 year I'm not getting rewarded if I'm 21 22 23 24 I'm
not getting rewarded from 26 27 so yeah you're you're rewarding a really small
20% subset of all those folks who are committing to us and I would kind of
agree that you know because the state also didn't give us a lot of money to
help all these other folks as much as we can pour into that to make sure that they get something
that is you know certainly decent we want to make sure we're able to do that and i think
again not disagreeing that it's not a huge amount of money 1.1 million doesn't give all the rest of
folks these giant raises but it certainly goes into the pot hopefully to help toward that and
and keep us moving forward in that direction.
So that's just my two cents on how I'm looking at it from that standpoint.
Mr. President, just one more thought just to think.
This is the perfect year to do this
because all teachers are getting a great $2,500 to $5,000 salary adjustment from the state.
This is the perfect time to do that.
Everyone's getting rewarded.
Rewarded and on top of that we can reward the teachers who stayed here and we did it last year
We started it last year. We have the funds to do it
It's an easy year to do this. I
Would not take it away
And there is a support staff allotment. I know it's small but there is
1.3 percent correct. There is money for support staff to for raise
Could always be more but there is something
All right.
Yeah.
Any other discussion or questions support?
All right.
9. Information Items
We'll move on to Section 9, Information Items.
Discussion Item 9.1, Donated Items to Katy ISD, Katy Independent School District.
we have received a list of board members you should have received a list of items
donated to the board and 9.2 recap a board member request for information
miss champagne you found any or do you have any lists I have a list and you may
already have a list and if I've forgotten anything let me know but I
think it would be good for us to see the exact amount of that that 1 million point
0.1 whatever retention retainment amount the benchmark from last year and then also mrs
Cuzela had asked for something about the 2500 in the books what do you want to see with that i
wanted to know why they needed up-to-date library books what that was all about okay and then
oh and then what are the other districts doing with year one and two
and then one last thing that I would like to have is to find out how we can
go on that rains tour and get the food and all that and get the it with the kid
driving the best we so fun just just to be clear yeah we can set up something
with rains that shouldn't be a problem next school year but I don't think by
next week I will have any information about what other districts are doing if
If anyone publishes something this week, if there's a board meeting tonight, somebody put something out, I can find something in the press.
But generally, let me tell you this also, I could probably call 10 superintendents tomorrow and nobody's going to tip their hand.
Oh, yeah.
Until a board meeting.
So I just don't want to let anyone down.
I just don't think I'll have a lot of information for you this week before Monday.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
So we could, Dr. Gorgorski, you would like us to approve part of the budget if possible, or part of the compensation plan, and then we could adjust it from there if we had to wait to see what other districts are doing for 01 and 02. Would that be acceptable to you?
Yes, that would be acceptable. Possibly what could help is I could have Mr. Schuss submit another hiring scale that shows exactly what the state says on their teacher retention allotment.
That would give the board an option to take the recommended one where it covers first and second year teachers that was proposed or the other one and then just pass everything else and one part would sit kind of hanging out there.
But we could do that on Monday.
But I could have two documents for you and to approve one.
Now that Mr. Graham is back, maybe he could answer Mrs. Kuzilla's question about what the TEA said when they…
Thank you, though.
My question's immaterial, though, because I looked at it wrong.
Mr. Schultz cleared that up.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
10. Future Meetings
All right.
Moving on to number 10, future meetings.
10.1, our next regular board meeting we will have on Monday, June 23, 2025.
There being no further business before the board, this meeting is adjourned, and the time is 9.40 p.m.
Official documents
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
The motions and votes for this meeting have not been recorded here yet. Whether any were taken is not stated either way. The agenda and the recording above are the primary sources.