Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this regular board meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order.
Katy ISD · Regular Board Meeting
Katy ISD Regular Board Meeting, June 23, 2025
Find something in this meeting
Search every word of the automated transcript. A result moves the recording to the moment the words were spoken.
In this meeting
The headings and the descriptions beneath them are the district’s own words, taken from its index of this recording.
- 0:00 to 1:09 1. Call to Order
- 1:09 to 7:15 3. Recognitions
- 7:15 to 18:21 4. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
- 18:21 to 18:48 5. Closed Meeting
- 18:48 to 20:11 6. Reconvene from Closed Meeting – The Board will reconvene from Closed Meeting.
- 20:11 to 52:19 7.1 Raines Academy – An innovative virtual hybrid campus to support student success.
- 52:19 to 1:50:59 7.2 Katy ISD Strategic Plan Result 2.3 Update: Personalized Learning Experiences and Innovations.
- 1:50:59 to 2:34:30 7.3 May 2025 Local Election Follow-Up.
- 2:34:30 to 2:36:49 8.1 Discuss and consider the approval of an interlocal agreement with the City of Bellville concerning an in-kind equipment swap.
- 2:36:49 to 3:16:26 8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Katy Independent School District compensation plan and compensation increase for the 2025 - 2026 school year.
- 3:16:26 to 3:17:31 9. Consent Agenda
- 3:17:31 to 3:20:16 10. Information Items
- 3:20:16 to 3:20:38 11. 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 23rd, 2025, and the time is 5.01 p.m.
Dr. Grigorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to the notice of this meeting?
Mr. Redman, I do confirm we're in compliance of the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting tonight.
night. Thank you. Uh we'll now ask Katie I. Steve police officer Robert Lister to
come and lead us in the pledges of allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the
Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and
justice for all honor the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the Texas one state
under God one indivisible
3. Recognitions
thank you we will now move on to agenda item or recognitions part of the agenda
This time I'd like to introduce Brandon Webb, Director of Communications for our recognitions
portion of our meeting.
Good evening, President Redmond, Trustees and Superintendent Grogorski.
We're excited to recognize the achievements of several students tonight.
To introduce our first recognition, please welcome Assistant Athletic Director Kyle Green.
Good evening, President Redmond, Trustees, and Superintendent Grigorski.
At this time, I am honored to recognize our 6A Girls Single State Champion, Ananya Shrenikev,
from Tompkins High School.
She's a 2025 graduate.
She will be attending Claremont McKenna College in the fall.
And not only is she a gold medal winner for this year,
she was a silver medalist last year as a junior.
What makes her accomplishment unique, if you're a track athlete and you run down the track,
it takes you 10 or 20 seconds to win a gold medal.
If you're a basketball player, maybe an hour and a half.
Ananya was on the tennis court for over seven hours competing in the semifinal and the final
on the day of, so a true feat in itself.
and obviously a wonderful accomplishment. So I would like to to join Nanya and
myself recognize Tompkins principal Elizabeth Brock, campus athletic
coordinator Todd McVeigh, and head tennis coach Renee Richardson. If you could join
us.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Green, and congratulations on the outstanding achievement.
During the UIL Academic State Championship,
the team that earns the highest number of points during the competition wins first place.
Last month, the UIL Academic team from Seven Lakes High School
received 160.5 points, making them the state champions for the second time.
The team won first place for the fourth time in the computer science category.
They also won for the first time in the science category.
One student also earned first place in the social studies individual championship, the
first since 2010.
There are a number of students joining us from the team tonight.
Students, when I call your name, please come forward.
Niamh San Ampuri.
Andy Trujong, who also won the Social Studies Individual State Championship.
Adab Vijay.
Eric Zhang and Richard Zhang.
Also with our coaches Paul Stroud, Mila Taylor, Sarah Flora, Faith Claus, Josh Andrews, Jason
Placette, Jay Kolkman, Sheila Abel, and Kaylin Kaebler, as well as Principal Kerry Fennison.
Please join these students at the dais.
Thank you.
Congratulations to all of these students on their remarkable accomplishments.
This concludes the recognitions portion of our meeting.
Thank you again and congratulations.
Do we have any scouts in the audience this evening?
4. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
That would be a no.
All right, we will then move on to section number four, public comments.
So this time the Board of Trustees will give members of the public an opportunity to speak in accordance with the KDISD Board Policy, BED Local.
As defined by Board Policy, speakers who signed up by 2 p.m. on Monday, June 23, 2025, provided their first and last name and signed up in 15 minutes prior to 5 p.m. will be allowed to address the Board.
Speaker who signed up to speak on posted agenda items will be allowed three minutes to speak.
Speakers that signed up to speak on non-agenda items will also be allowed three minutes to
speak tonight.
If a speaker is not finished speaking at the end of their allotted time, the audio will
turn off.
The board will not or shall not tolerate disruption of the meeting by members of the audience
if after at least one warning from the presiding officer, any person continues to disrupt the
meeting by his or her words or actions.
the presiding officer may request assistance from law enforcement officials to have the person removed from the meeting.
If speakers wish to share written materials with the board,
please provide 10 copies to the Secretary for Board Services before the meeting begins for board members,
the superintendent, chief communications officer, and permanent record.
If the speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through proper channels as stated in board policy,
the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to seek resolution through the appropriate policy.
Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.074 and 551.0821, the Board will
not permit the presentation of personally identifiable information regarding a student
and will not discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment duties, discipline
or dismissal of a public officer or employee, or to hear a complaint or charge against an
officer or employee.
Should a speaker wish to address one of these issues, they must do so through the appropriate
local grievance policies FNG local DGB a local CKE local or GF local our speakers
will be called forward in the order they signed up to speak tonight we will start
with agenda items in our speaker tonight for agenda items is Victor press
following mr. Perez will have miss Felicia Cravens speaking on non agenda
items thank you president Redmond board trustees and dr. Gorski I thought I would
weigh in on the lump sum teacher bonus payment discussion because it seems to
be somewhat mischaracterized or widely misunderstood this is a 1 million dollar
item out of a 1.1 billion budget and a 965 million payroll budget but for some
reason it seems to be dominating your budget discussion it shouldn't be
controversial it's my understanding this item is included in the budget that has
been presented it does not add to the deficit the district can afford this
due to underspending and the property value audit the projected deficit for
this year we are told will actually be a positive possibly by about 10 10 million
and likely at least break even for next year therefore at the end of the 25 26
year our fund balance would be an estimated 32 percent versus the
projected 27% shown in the slides. My hats off to Mr. Smith and the staff. As
examples in the program as it stands a 20-year teacher will receive a $1,000
bonus, a 25-year teacher will be paid $1,750, a 30-year teacher will receive
$2,000, a 35-year teacher will receive $2,250 and so on. By not carrying this
program forward you would be denying these great experienced educators
educators these bonuses. This will be on top of the $5,000 raise funded by the state. The cost for this program this past year was under $900,000 and impacted about 1,150 teachers. If carried forward, the bonus will be paid out to about 1,200 teachers this coming year, as I recall, then a different group of teachers each year.
The teacher retention bonus is intended to do something special to recognize our KDISD
teachers above and beyond for their years of service.
It's another arrow in the district's quiver when trying to hire and retain teachers.
The bonus is consistent with the focus of the state legislature to focus on classroom
teachers and reduce attrition and teacher shortage.
This is a bonus based on five-year anniversaries, just like when the district gives out annual
service awards.
Not everyone gets recognized, only those who reach certain milestones, except now we're also giving them money as well.
It was not intended that this program would be modified to include every single teacher.
That cost would be several million dollars.
The idea was to tweak it to make it even more lucrative, for example to add, say, $250 across the board or more to each anniversary,
which would cost only $300,000 more if you added $250.
or say to add more money to those that 20 years or above the board can be
creative get creative and step up and show leadership but please don't deny
these bonuses to our loyal hard-working teachers do the right thing I'm also
gratified to see mr. Schuss's presentation about the dark line moving
moving up as a result.
Thank you, Mr. Perez.
Next is Ms. Felicia Cravens, followed by Christopher Hu.
Sorry, I'm a little short.
Good evening, board members.
My name is Felicia Cravens, and my family's lived in Katy for 22 years.
In fact, we chose to buy our home because of the reputation of these schools here.
My two children are KISD graduates, successful careers.
I've served as an officer in PTA.
We are embedded in this community.
And that's why it concerned me to see the name of one of my old PTA colleagues on the early vote roster this spring,
someone who's been in the trenches for years, someone who gave so much time and energy to this district and these schools,
and someone who we tragically lost in December. Yet somehow her name appears as
having voted in the KISD election in April during early voting. In no way is
this acceptable. I know the district's election administrator is famously
proclaiming that the district does not make reporting mistakes, but there are
several scenarios in which this could have happened and none of them are good.
The most benign explanation that I can find or imagine is that the election workers at Taylor High School, where this occurred, may have checked in the wrong voter.
My husband and I vote regularly at Taylor, and the election workers always ask the proper questions and check us in correctly.
Now, how do I know whether proper procedures are being followed?
It's because I also happen to be a 25-year election judge veteran.
and one of the people tapped to conduct election law training for HCRP.
I also answer the phone at headquarters on Election Day
and guide judges through situations and problems when they have them on Election Day.
And as you know, there's no way to take back a vote once it's been cast erroneously, mistakenly, or fraudulently.
It is up to the elections administrator to make sure that things like this never happen
and that all procedures are followed in a public and transparent manner and that
errors or breaches of any kind are investigated publicly and thoroughly and
that plans are put in place to prevent any repeats this is what I'm looking
forward to from this board a recommitment to election integrity this
district has a fantastic reputation I don't want to see it suffer because of a
lack of confidence in these district elections thank you for your attention to this matter
thank you now christopher who
testing okay
esteemed members of the audience and board thank you for granting me the opportunity to speak to
you today. I've been a student at the school district for more than a decade now. In fact,
Mr. Cross, it was your wife, my elementary school librarian, Ms. Cross, who taught me to seek diverse
perspectives and speak out for issues that I believe in. I want to start the discussion with
a 1972 Supreme Court decision, Wisconsin versus Yoder, where Amish parents argued that attending
high school conflicted with their moral beliefs. The court agreed and told the state that it could
not force Amish students to attend, which was seen as a major victory for parental choice.
But recent KDIC decisions involving parental choice have been far less liberating.
The district has banned books and curriculum related to marginalized experience to protect parental authority.
Preemptively restricting what a child sees, hears, or does is not a parental choice.
There is no choice to be made here. The district has already taken that away.
This is not about protecting students.
If so, then why has the district kept Hitler's personal memoir, Mein Kampf, where he says, and I quote,
Quote, the personification of the devil and the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.
Why is this in our libraries?
The district has also continued its policy of forcible identity disclosure, alienating transgender individuals in our schools.
A 2022 survey of trans individuals by U Toronto says that school belonging made a unique and statistically significant contribution to suicide rates.
The same study also finds that 82% of trans individuals have considered killing themselves.
KDISD has 100,000 students and 3% of US high school suit US high schoolers
identify as transgender that means that at least 3,000 students will have their
livelihoods fundamentally shaken by the decisions of this board in a way that no
parent or teacher could ever bear I am urging this board to finally stand up
for its students and take proactive measures to support them this isn't a
culture war that can be relegated for later discussion this is a matter of
life and death for the students that you purport to protect this is your job now
Now is the time to take action in reverse course.
Returning to Wisconsin versus Yoder,
even if I believe in general
that choosing not to attend high school
like the Amish did is harmful,
it would be absurd to say that affording them the right
to opt out means we force that agenda upon others.
Similarly, believing that recognizing queer existence
would infringe on the rights of others is equally absurd.
However, Senate Bill 12 recently passed
in the Texas legislature and is a matter of concern to me.
It bans clubs related to LGBTQ identity entirely
in the state of Texas.
This is not a parental choice. This is a concerted erasure of spaces in which queer students are allowed to exist.
I urge the board not to be complicit in this violent and unjust destruction of being.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said in his letter from Birmingham jail,
one has not only a legal but moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
And if the board believes that is too radical, perhaps they should strike Dr. King from the library shelves next.
I yield my time.
Thank you.
This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting.
5. Closed Meeting
The board will now convene and close meeting is authorized under section 551.001 of the Texas Government Code for the following purpose.
Texas Government Code 551.071, 551.072, and 551.129.
6. Reconvene from Closed Meeting – The Board will reconvene from Closed Meeting.
The board will now reconvene an open meeting.
Today is Monday, June 23, 2025, and the time is 5.53 p.m.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's regular board meeting.
Each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Thursday, June 19, 2025.
The board will receive information and recommendations from staff, administration, and the superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting.
and board members should be able to ask questions receive answers and should be
prepared to take action the board has just reconvened from a closed meeting in
accordance with chapter 551 of the Texas government code any actions arising from
discussions in the closed meeting must be taken in an open meeting we'll now
look at agenda item 6.1 consider board approval of the sale of real property
mr. president miss Fox I move that the Board of Trustees approves the sale of
of real property as discussed in closed meeting.
Second.
It is moved and seconded by Rebecca Fox and Miss Mary Ellen
Kozula that the Board of Trustees
approves of the sale of real property
as discussed in closed meeting.
We'll now proceed to vote.
Board members, please record your vote on the screen
via your keypad.
The motion passes 7 to 0.
7.1 Raines Academy – An innovative virtual hybrid campus to support student success.
We'll now move on to section seven of our agenda tonight, reports.
And the first item will be Raines Academy, an innovative virtual hybrid campus to support
student success.
The presenter will be Richard Merriman, the principal at Raines High School.
Good evening, President Redmond, members of the board, Dr. Krakorski.
Picking up where we left off last week, I'm here tonight to present Raines Academy to
you as part of the academic presentation series you've been experiencing this year.
As you will undoubtedly hear tonight, the term innovation will be used frequently
to describe the future KDISD is heading toward with new programs and opportunities for students.
Since our doors opened in January of 2022 at our new facility, Raines Academy has been the leader
in innovative opportunities for students across KDISD. As referenced in our mission statement,
Raines Academy creates innovative learning experiences and provides
unparalleled growth opportunities to inspire our students to create a better
tomorrow. To this end, students have the opportunity for hands-on experiences,
industry certifications, and innovative coursework. The creative innovative
spirit was already taking shape prior to my being named principal as our building
was being designed to support classroom and meeting spaces that allowed for a
flexible hybrid learning environment to take place. Additionally, we serve all ten
of our comprehensive campuses as well as Miller Career Center. We offer students
the opportunity to select a schedule that meets their needs. Interestingly
enough, we do have students who are highly motivated and will attend from
7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Students on our campus have traditionally not had a positive
school experience and we put a lot of focus on building capacity with them to
to celebrate the smallest of successes to ultimately earn a high school diploma.
To highlight this, each time a student successfully completes a half-credit course,
they get to come down to the library, fill out a leaf, get a snack,
and this is the good stuff, we don't skimp, okay?
And they get to place this on the wall as seen in this photo.
Upon successful completion of all graduation requirements,
we do a graduation celebration over the PA system
where we celebrate each student in the cap and gown of their home campus and
then place their photo on the graduation wall which is on the second floor for
everyone to see. These two visuals of their success are consistent reminders
of their achievements and provide them with a sense of pride. Our campus
supports students all year long with the exception of professional development
week when staff return to campus. Currently we are supporting KSAT at
at multiple campuses across the district.
But our flexible space can be used for many purposes
or programs throughout the year.
The Student Success Program is an opportunity
to support students who are new to Katy ISD
and who are 18 years of age or older
and need to accelerate their academics
because they are not on track to graduate
with their four year cohort.
As the principal of not only Raines Academy,
but the Katy summer term,
we work with students all year round
to improve their academic standing so we get them to graduate quicker than they
could at the home campus the flexibility provided ensures students can jump right
in and get to work in this photo we are proud to recognize our campus and
district college and career facilitator of the year mrs. normal white who works
tirelessly to support students with not only academics but post-secondary
options the KD ISD student work program is an opportunity to gain paid work
work experience as a KDISD employee while completing course requirements as a student.
We support students with resume building, application submission, interview preparation,
and job evaluation follow-up. Since fall 2023, over 29 students have been employed in various
departments such as technology, communications, central office, and transportation, to name a few.
students upon graduation have the opportunity to then transition to full-time employment
within kdisd our cdl program is one of only a few in the state of texas launched in fall of 2023
students who meet text dot requirements by being 18 years of age or older pass a text dot physical
and have a class e driver's license are eligible to earn a class a license we have successfully
successfully supported 79 students in five separate cohorts to obtain their Class A.
While working on their requirements in the course, students gain the opportunity to meet
with employers for post-secondary employment.
Our graduates have already transitioned into careers where they are able to put their achievements
to work as either a firefighter, military service, private sector, family owned businesses,
and even, as I mentioned last week, the KDISD Transportation Department.
department.
Just this past spring, we began to include a forklift certificate to give our students
another competitive advantage for post-secondary employment based upon feedback from students
and employers.
With the help of our contracted partner, RGV CDL Services, it should be noted that we are
able to complete this program completely on-site with the exception of two trips to DPS to
to register and to get their actual official license.
New in fall 2025 is a brand new water operation licensing program.
Seniors will have the opportunity to participate in an apprenticeship program
where they will earn their clean and wastewater certificate.
Upon successful completion, they will be offered the opportunity to become employed with companies like Inframark.
This new exciting opportunity is geared towards supporting community by ensuring clean water is available.
The Communications Department has prepared a promotional video for you guys right now.
ISD's Water Operations Licensing Program takes you through the fundamentals of career opportunities in clean water.
Certified professionals keep water systems running safely and efficiently.
Hands-on training and mentorship from industry experts offers career-ready, you-can-put-to-work-right-away.
Guided by professionals, you'll gain a real-world understanding of water solutions.
Jumpstart your career with KDISD's Water Operations Licensing Program.
Now we're rolling.
Find out more at kdisd.org.
Thank you, Dr. Grooms.
Our dual credit real estate license program was new this past year.
This program is a two-year requirement that culminates in a practicum course where students work directly with industry experts at real estate offices to learn the real-world implications of the coursework they have completed over the past year and a half.
In just our first year, we had over 20 students successfully complete the first year, and over 80 students are currently signed up to start this coming fall.
Students, after satisfying all course requirements, will be eligible to take their state real estate license test and become a real estate agent in the state of Texas.
I am proud to say that Raines Academy is a place where lives are transformed to support in a hybrid setting higher education certifications and real world experiences.
We work tirelessly to build capacity with our students to reach a future that wasn't always within their grasp.
As Art Williams once said, I'm not telling you it's going to be easy, I'm telling you it's going to be worth it.
So here we have a graduate from every high school we've supported since we have opened.
I'm open to any questions you guys may have.
Thank you, Mr. Merriman.
Board, are there any questions?
I have a question.
Ms. Coughlin?
Specific to the CDL program, it's a great program.
I know the kids, there's usually a waiting list, from my understanding, to get onto that
program.
It's pretty popular.
One of the questions that I have concerning that is what are we doing or how have we overcome
or what are we doing to set up our graduates to overcome the hurdles for insurance once
once they graduate.
I don't know how many people are aware
about the rising cost of insurance,
I'm sure, of your own personal vehicles,
but for an 18-wheeler, for a student to absorb
and carry the cost of the rising cost of that insurance
is extremely prohibitive.
So how do we encourage third-party companies
to hire our CDL licensed students or how are we helping them to overcome the
insurance hurdle that they're gonna face once they leave being 18 with a CDL
license most 18 year olds can't afford a million plus in insurance for their own
18 wheeler yeah no great question so a lot of things to try to unpack there
briefly but one of the things we do is we work with employers to come in and
talk to the kids about hiring opportunities. In many cases, kids are
going to be taking an opportunity at more of an entry level before they're
actually going to sit in what would be an 18 wheel truck because yeah, insurance
is expensive. Employers have to typically bear that cost unless they're willing to
pass it on to the employee. So we've been working in actually just about a week ago, waste management
who's a district contractor is taking a chance on one of our kids and starting with one to hopefully
expand because they see the benefit and the need to fill seats because not everybody can get a CDL.
And so they're willing to take this opportunity out. We reach out to other companies all the time
for any sort of employment opportunities. You know, kind of what the industry tells us
is realistic for kids to expect at the end of the day. And it could be starting at an entry-level
job, which is where the forklift certification comes in, because that's a great way to get
started. And then companies will build employees up to get them to a point where when they hit 21,
typically, the insurance costs will start to subside a little bit along the way.
That was my next question. When do we, when are we, are we, what's the realistic setup that we're
giving the students because most of these kids who are going for a CDL
they're not necessarily college-bound that's not necessarily something they're
wanting to do they're more wanting to either start their own business or just
get into the workforce immediately so one of those things that I would be
concerned about on how we're setting them up for success is best to be set up
in a way that this is what you can expect when do we see those insurance
insurance costs? Is it 21? Is it 25? When do we see market-wise those insurance costs dropping
to where it's no longer prohibitive for a company or for a student to obtain their own?
Don't know the answer to that because I don't work in that industry, but we're very upfront
with the kids, I'll be completely honest with you, about the trajectory that this has. Most kids,
I would be shocked to find out, go into an 18-wheel truck right off the bat for one of the
big companies right right but there's a natural progression that goes through
there so we train them on this we go through job embedded skills to help get
them to understand what they're signing up for and they know what they're
getting themselves into and at the end of the day we're not preparing them just
for a job we're looking at a career for them right this is something they want
to do and so anytime you're in a career you look at longevity what do I have to
do to get from point A to point B to point C and so we do that with our
our college and career facilitator, our teachers, our partners that we work with on this.
We're going to create a CDL group.
I can't remember the term we're going to give it,
but we're going to create a group with local community members of what do they see,
what do they forecast us to need to do with our kids
to get them to have a competitive advantage in the industry,
even at a young age moving forward.
Right. Out of the 79, we have 79 students that have, is that right?
right? 79 students. Out of the five cohorts, yeah. Yeah, so how many of those are we seeing that have
percentage-wise or number-wise out of those 79 who have jumped into that workforce? I don't have
that specifically in front of me, but I would venture to guess we're probably 40 to 50 percent
at least right off the bat that are getting into some job that has a CDL Class A end game attached
to it. But they're not necessarily working, they're not using, but the CDL license, so I guess to help
for others to understand once you obtain that CDL license, you're not having to go and get that like
next year. It's not, you're not renewing your driver's license every five years. What does
that renewal rate look like on the CDL license itself? Well, we're not there yet because these
kids were only in year two. So they're going to renew their license like they would any of us at
whatever that point is. But we don't know what that timeline is for the renewal? Not off the top
of my head, no. I don't think, I don't know if CDL follows a different trajectory. And outside of
them getting their CDL license right now what would that cost that they would be
bearing if they would just wait until they were 18 or 19 and they went and did
the CDL license on their own do you know about what that cost would be typical
average is eight to ten thousand eight to ten thousand so we're offsetting that
cost for them in the immediate and then we wouldn't necessarily know when they
would be renewing it but the renewal cost is not going to be as much as the
initial cost to get the CDL I know because I remember when I was a teacher
and a coach back in the day and I had a class BCDL I would renew my license at
the typical end time but I wasn't having to pay for anything additional for the
license to be renewed I typically had to do a either a 20-hour course or an
eight-hour course at the time that was online for us to complete and that's all
I had to do to sort of recertify my requirements okay and on here I just
have a couple more questions on this on when we're looking at kind of
collaboration with companies around here I mean are we obtaining anything with
like Amazon or with igloo or any of the surrounding larger companies that are in
here have we had any success or any luck and reaching out to find like an on-ramp
kind of progressive mechanism to do that Mr. Merriman wasn't able to attend he's
busy with summer semester a lot going on but Norma the college and career
facilitator we met with Katie EDC they have apprenticeship programs and so in
looking at how we're going to launch the water operation program which comes
with an apprenticeship we sat back and look at that said why do we could
liaison that same thing with CDL in our HVAC program Kelly Carrillo was with us
as well with Miller so we're working with them to do structured apprenticeships
and the way they explained it was while the students are completing their
coursework at each point that they complete that coursework before lift
lift certification. They would have an apprenticeship with one of our area businesses where they would
go to work and work under someone that would teach them how to do that, whether it's Amazon,
maybe move on to being the rider in one of the box trucks to see how those drivers use those box
trucks. So they're in paid apprenticeships while they're going through the program. And so we're
going to try to, with the three, the water operations, the CDL, and then the HVAC construction
instruction trades for the fall. Kind of start there and then expand and try to build out apprenticeships and the other programs. And that will start in the fall, those
cooperations working together. We're in contact with them and working on as we speak. In fact, we're having a
what is it?
The student job fair in August and so our initial group that Mr. Merriman's been working with
that small group we've been working with will have a small
advisory council meeting before the job fair and then they will be on site for
the job fair to start launching that apprenticeship program and then I have
one last question on that as far as it pertains to Katie ISD specifically so on
ours we always have a need for bus drivers and for people to help us in our
maintenance and operations departments now I see that we may have one bus
bus driver as far as our transportation from our CDL program? Is that accurate?
Have we hired one of our own graduates? Is it
just one or have we hired more than that? Just one right now. And then as far
as cost for insurance, we're offsetting that cost on
our own, right? That's not causing skyrocketing costs. Having, you know,
an under 25-year-old drive a bus necessarily. I would
imagine that that's... Couldn't speak to that. Okay. I'm not the insurance guy, unfortunately.
Okay. Wish I was. I'm sure we're varying the cost at some point. That would be my guess.
Okay. Somebody's got to pay it at the end of the day. I think one of the questions I would like to
have kind of understood as far as cost is what do we, because I know whenever you have a kid that
comes on to your own insurance, once they're under 25, specific to males, your insurance costs
skyrocket and go through the roof and might as well be another mortgage. So what does that do
do for us as Katie ISD when we're hiring 1819 20 year olds to drive a bus full of 32 conservatively
to 50 children. How are we absorbing that cost and offsetting that cost? How are we
managing that? Because we want to make sure that our kids who have the C. D. O. License
obviously have a career pathway progression,
but how are we managing that?
Anybody know?
Yep.
At this moment, there's no upcharge.
If we bring an 18-year-old on and begin driving a bus,
there's no upcharge or added expense
to our liability policy with TASB.
Okay.
Okay.
So it's...
It's negligible.
There's nothing there.
We don't even provide a list of drivers, their ages, to TASB.
Do you anticipate that being a problem if we did this on a regular, like if we started doing this more regularly?
I wouldn't anticipate that at this point in time based on what I know.
Okay.
All right.
That's it.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Yes, ma'am.
Mr. President?
Thank you.
I love what you do and I want to thank you for all that you do and your leadership and it makes a big impact on
These young people it's very uplifting to hear about again. I
Was just curious about the enrollment from year to year. I we get enrollment or reports all the time
It's hard to track from you to you. I would love to know that it's
Growing in the right way. We would never want it in a perfect world. It wouldn't exist, but we need it, right?
So can you help talk to that? Yeah, so
growth is different for us because the kids we support in this hybrid
environment typically apply to come to us for whatever the case may be right so
enrollment can be a roller coaster at different times so the easiest answer I
can give you is we can support up to 500 kids at any one given time within the
building we push anywhere from 375 to probably 450 on a consistent basis
because every time we're bringing kids in we're also graduating them because
you can graduate at any point with us so we're gonna fluctuate anywhere probably
between 375 and 450 at any given time during a school year with the enrollment number how steady
is that that you just said pretty steady it actually dwindled years or well we've only been
in the building for four and since we've implemented the new model in the three years
we've been there we've we've probably supported a total of anywhere from 550 maybe up to 750 total
kids during the year at any given point so to speak if that makes sense it's just a roller
roller coaster of going in coming out so it's hard to gauge what enrollment truly is versus
hey at katie high school we're sitting at 33 50 right yeah totally appreciate that it's tricky
i just want to make sure you're equipped and i want to know that the building you have and the
researchers you have are addressing the students that have the need no i can tell you wholeheartedly
we have excellent support anytime we need something to help a kid we can get it uh at any
given time we are very blessed to be able to do this because it is innovative it's creative nobody
like i said last week does what we do and so anytime there's been a challenge there's a
conversation mrs hack and i'll talk all the time about how do we attack this problem if we're
running into something we haven't uh encountered before but we we have all the resources we need
to be successful so no hamstringing you don't feel anything yet not yet great no all right
thank you very much yes ma'am mr president this box mr merriman i'm still ready to do backflips
but had to wear a dress to match these fellas tonight with the matching ties so
you know tonight I won't be able to do that everybody's this is you know
president Redmond's forcing us all to dress like a privilege we took photos
tonight as a board and that's why we're wearing matching ties this is not any
new that's new we're get to do it every month I felt like I didn't get the memo
first when everybody came out but anyway no backflips for me tonight but my heart
is doing them. I have a question about the new programs, the water program, the
real estate. Those are assigned to your campus. How do students at a traditional
campus get to do that? How can they? No, great question. It's all about
communication. So my college and career facilitator, Ms. White, like I was
mentioning earlier, she does a lot of work with the home campus CCFs and it's
all promotional. Like, I mean, we'll send emails to students kind of like what we
we did with the water program recently, but it's all about the communication that we give
to campuses to let them know, here are these opportunities.
Additionally, School Links is a central hub for kids to go research opportunities within
the district at any given point.
So when it becomes course selection time, they're going to see everything from the CT
pathway and where that's offered.
So they may go look at automotive, and that's going to tell them you're at Miller.
If you're doing real estate, that's going to be at Raines.
So they have the information in front of them all throughout the year, but particularly
particularly when course selection time runs around, they're going to get all of these
pieces.
The curriculum fair that's done here at the Merrill Center, we're there promoting the
programs and so forth.
So every opportunity we have to communicate those programs to kids, we're utilizing those
and then they're going to sign up for those courses just like they would course selection
during the year in January through March.
So is it a virtual or do they have to come over to Reigns to take the course?
No, so the cool part about real estate is it is completely virtual.
So they could come if they want some direct support because the teachers house with me
But we take our teacher and move them to the campuses to touch base with the kids as they go
But that course is completely virtual
The water program is going to be in person because we're going to be taking the kids from rains to the job sites for them
To get practicum experience with water testing and so each program is unique CDL
You have to come to me because we've got all the concrete to do all the driving
but real estate is virtual, we can support that with kids remaining on their home campus.
This is the cool part about being a hybrid campus.
You aren't always required to attend REiNS to be able to access things we can provide
for the district.
I mean, that's just taking success right to the students.
And I love your tree symbol that's about you are changing children's family trees through
the programs that you have.
So, I love, love, love the video, right?
Any video that you show about what you can do, and so great job to whoever put that together.
I wonder if there's any benefit in having, at what point, I know you probably do this,
at what point do you tell students and maybe eighth grade moms that are helping their children select four-year programs
that trades and real estate and water management
is more lucrative than a four-year degree,
that they make more as an, maybe not apprentice,
but as the certification comes out,
than someone entering the education profession
with a four-year degree.
How do you communicate that to them?
It's in the literature,
so I can actually go back to it real fast.
But this graphic right here
is similar to what we did with CDL,
where it has all of the information you're talking about.
So a kid can walk out of high school,
and they're not going to know what some of this means,
like a 401K, right?
But we're going to talk to them about these are benefits you get
as being a full-time employee when you get into the workforce.
And so we've got these graphics, these images out there,
pretty confidence embedded in school links as well
for students to access.
But these questions that come up,
the college and career facilitators across all the campuses
can provide kids this information just as easily
is looking at this graphic if they have questions and we get calls all the time about hey you know
how does my kid get into this we had a call today of a parent said how am i going to be able to how
do i do cdl in this like what is that going to look like and so that's where i kind of get
involved and we figure out okay what do you need to do to graduate high school and how do we pull
it off without you having to get rid of something in your schedule for whatever the case may be
i love this it came across too quickly that i didn't read that but it says entry level positions
ranging from $44,000 to $67,000 entry level
that comes with insurance, vacation,
and a 401K, which is a retirement program.
I mean, I shouldn't say that out loud.
We're going to have paras leaving us and going over there
because our paras make nowhere close to that.
And this is with a high school diploma
and a certification through a program.
I know these programs are going to grow
like the ones at Miller,
and having this kind of success for our students
is what we're about.
I just wanted to end with this.
The feeling that happens
when you walk into Raines High School,
the students that you have,
who they are, what they look like,
how they blend together,
and you just see everything.
You see our whole community in one place
and how they work together and how your teachers and your counselors and
everybody they're all mingled at lunch tables at work spaces my my mentee was
there I've told you that story so many times because so precious to me they
would come out of the little room where she wouldn't come and do one-on-one
because you're going to get this past because you're going to grab you're
going to have the credit in 20 minutes when we finish this and that celebration
celebration of every small, small, huge milestone excites everyone.
And everyone stops to applaud when a student completes something or they graduate and it's
11, 12 in the morning and all of a sudden everybody stop and here's the cap and gown
and come out and everyone celebrates you.
And that feeling, I didn't ever want to leave, but I couldn't stop crying.
I love your campus and you're the right leader for that.
And I appreciate everybody there.
Thank you. No, we appreciate it. Mr. President. Ms. Champagne. Hi, so you know I'm a big fan of yours, Mr. Merriman, and of Raines, but what I'm wondering is, so I just want some clarification. I know you probably said this, so if some student at some other high school wanted to take this water operations licensing program, they could take the program in the second part of the
that question because I know at Miller if they take something there they also take a couple
other classes so that they're not being going back and forth so much so can you kind of answer that
yeah so I'm not going to get in the weeds but you're looking at two different scheduling formats
to achieve sort of the same objective so Miller career has to align their schedule to be with the
home campuses because those kids have to go to Miller and go back. So while Miller may offer
courses other than CTE during their day, it's in an effort to make it to go back so the kids still
have seven classes in their day. For Raines, we operate a completely different flexible schedule
that allows me to start and end classes at any 30-minute interval throughout the day.
But you don't actually have to attend with me as long as the program is virtual in nature
unless you truly want it. If you just want to come to have some in-person support, great.
But we work diligently to go to where the kid is at if needed, so the kid is not having to go back and forth if not necessary.
The water program will require them to be on site, because we're going to shuttle them to the water treatment facilities to do the practicum work that's necessary.
Trying to do that with ten different high schools all at the same time would be more problematic.
And so, like I was saying earlier, this is where the creativity comes in.
We'll all take a look at a kid's schedule and we'll figure out the best way to achieve
that come this fall so kids aren't having to give things up in their day if they don't
need to.
Okay.
And then the other thing I wanted to just reiterate that you said, that when students
get into these programs, so whatever kind of CTE class they're taking, they're kind
of given full disclosure.
So if the CDL thing is, may not be a direct, you know, you're not going to immediately start driving an 18-wheeler, they know that.
And I kind of equate it to there's a lot of kids now who are becoming pilots, but they're not going to all of a sudden go drive the Boeing 757, you know, when they're 18.
I mean, they could get the license, but they're not going to just all of a sudden do that.
they're going to do a bunch of other little things and then eventually help maybe they will do that
but they're not going to just you know what i'm saying because like young like i know i know a
kid who got their pilot's license and before they got their driver's license but i think they
understand they're not going to go work at southwest airlines and drive a big jet someplace
place right away you know that's kind of how i equate it to they're more they're more interested
in the opportunity that it provides them at an earlier age than most uh and the doors and
pathways that can open sooner than it would them waiting to get it on their own down the road
any more questions board thank you very much thank you we appreciate your support mr president
Are we still going to work on a field trip to range?
We're coming.
Okay.
You should get kiddos.
Do you have kiddos there all summer?
Yeah, so we're currently running all of Katie's summer term right now.
So we have summer semester, sorry, summer semester.
But, yes, we have kids in multiple campuses that I oversee all the secondary campuses.
Thank you.
And we're fixing to touch on this, how many kids are in original credit and it's all virtual.
I think a lot of the questions that y'all asked, Mr. Merriman, out there, the complex of innovation, Miller, Raines,
and how all that's going to come together and how we're going to build out that flexible scheduling so the kids can do what they want to do,
whether it's at their home campus or out there on the complex.
The next presentation is going to answer a lot of your questions.
7.2 Katy ISD Strategic Plan Result 2.3 Update: Personalized Learning Experiences and Innovations.
Now we'll move on to agenda item 7.2, KDISD strategic plan.
Result 2.3 Update, Personalized Learning Experiences and Innovations, with presenters Leslie Hack,
Dr. Emily Craig, and Carrie Sanguinetti.
Ready?
You might want to come up to the front row, too, because you may have to answer some questions.
And Richard Merriman.
Yes.
Just in case.
You never know.
Well, good evening, President Redman, Dr. Gorski, and Board of Trustees.
We're excited here tonight to follow the presentation on RAINS Academy to touch on Strategic Design
2.3 Update.
And if you remember back in October, we gave an early presentation ahead of course selection
in the spring about how we were going to start building out innovation year one that would
impact the complex and of course our comprehensives as well.
But we'll touch on that through the, yeah.
Oh, I'm not using the wrong one.
It's still not coming up.
Okay, we're here tonight just to touch on a lot of legislation passed this past spring,
but the one we're excited about was Senate Bill 569, and that is related to the provision
of virtual education in public schools.
And again, the legislation is giving public school districts the opportunities to continue
to innovate and offer different types of learning modes and flexible scheduling
for our students it's giving our families and our students choice
Senate bill 569 what are the key components just real quick establishes
a forward-thinking framework for implementing virtual and hybrid
education mr. Merriman just talked about how we were already doing a hybrid
program out at Raines Academy. So let's look at what it would look like if we
were to launch a full virtual type of campus. It expands access to digital
learning and ensures that districts utilizing these innovative instructional
models were funded and sustainable. So where are we now in KDISD? Again, I
referenced we did an initial presentation in October. The goal is to
increase student-parent choice. We know that's just been the talk the whole
legislative session and to identify communicate personalized learning
pathways for all students think you're going to really enjoy what dr. Craig and
Carrie are going to share and the how is enhanced opportunities for innovative
four-year graduation plans endorsements and student program participation that
they don't have to choose they can pick their endorsements they can pursue CTE
pathways and they can continue to play ball or be an orchestra and all those
those things that we offer in KDISD.
These we introduced last October, but these were created for this past spring during course
selection, and it was the high school innovative pathways and what the 9th, 10th, 11th, and
12th grade opportunities entailed, because this was new.
This was new to them during their course selection.
The flexible scheduling, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders, they could elect to take five to
seven courses during the instructional day.
day. If students still want that traditional seven period day, they can. All courses in
person, go for it. You can still do that. However, if you would like flexible scheduling,
I only want to be on campus five periods a day, I want two late arrival or two early
off, then you're going to take two asynchronous virtual courses, which we're already doing.
Our learning modes, we designated I think about 26, 28 courses that students during
instructional day could elect to take face-to-face or virtual we were going to
offer them both ways and help campus get teachers trained to teach in person and
virtual if they want to optional or the fee based virtual courses which were
already doing outside the instructional day we call that eighth and ninth period
I'm going to turn it over to Carrie she has been instrumental in setting up our
case that framework works closely with mr. Merriman but she does elementary
that you're in secondary KSAT and so I thought that summer semester thank you so virtual coursework
for original credit is actually something we've been doing for quite a while in KDISD over 10
years so this isn't really anything new we have been increasing our enrollment every year in our
virtual course offerings we had over 8 500 unique students selected summer courses this summer with
with us. So we're really excited because that's an increase of almost 1400 students over last summer.
We did offer or we did actually have over 15,000 semester courses requested this summer by our
students in our two summer original credit terms. The first one is from May 28th to June 26th
and our second semester term will run from July 1st through July 30th.
So we're wrapping up that first semester right now
and getting ready to launch our second.
During these semesters, we're offering 37 unique courses for students to take,
and we have over 200 teachers that are unique virtual trained teachers
that are managing and teaching these courses for us.
Each one of these teachers has an additional revenue stream, which is great.
We're excited to be able to offer that to our staff.
These are KDISD teachers who are earning $100 per student per semester for academic courses that they teach,
and $150 per student per semester for any CAP or AP courses that they're teaching.
We are looking to increase these opportunities in summer of 2026. We are anticipating increased
summer semester enrollment. We are anticipating that as our students become more familiar with
the course selection process and how that works in School Links where they can select their summer
courses as well as their fall and spring courses. We'll see an increase in the
amount of students, number of students who want to take more online options in
the summertime. We are also hoping to launch our courses in summer to out of
district students and we will have an application ready for them in the spring
so that we can increase our revenue opportunities for our summer adjunct
teachers these again are our KD ISD teachers who are doing this in addition
to their regular contract as well as provide a potential revenue stream for
the district which is always great and dr. Craig is going to tell us a little
bit more about what our next steps will be so I wanted to share with you an
example of a student schedule and so we know that we have students who are
involved in a number of different opportunities and courses so this is a
student who's actually a student from this school year and their counselor was
able to utilize the virtual courses that we already were offering to ensure that
she didn't have to make a choice between her courses at Miller you see that
she's got first and second period as a clinical rotation she didn't have to
choose between that she's got study hall
allowed her to transition back and forth and you see at the very end of the day there in eighth
period is her dual credit eco course which is a virtual instructional day course that she was able
to take so that she didn't have to make choices because those two classes circled in the middle
are only offered twice a day on her home campus so if she wanted to stay at miller still be an ag
still take AP bio still have all of these things those things can really
lock up a student schedule so by availing herself of the opportunity to
utilize our virtual coursework she didn't have to make choices between
those things and could continue to do all of those activities in her senior
year so as we think about what summer of 2026 looks like as Miss Sanguinetti just
talked about looking at moving forward into 2627 with our secondary innovation
planning continuing looking at in the in August of 2026 launching a KDISC
virtual high school campus where we would offer two different types of
coursework for students so I'd like to direct your attention first to kind of
the columns on the left so when you look we have one piece that is an a la carte
course we are doing this right now with our KDISC students so our students just
like in the schedule that you just saw i might need one course that i want to be able to take
to fit in with that the only piece new on the a la carte side is offering that to out of district
students as well it does offer an opportunity for our current and retired adjunct virtual teachers
to come in and teach student teachers who are very familiar with our courses our content and
the expectations of what it looks like to teach and receive credit from a kdisc campus it also
helps to support instructional vacancies so we are currently already doing this
with our virtual programming so our hard to staff areas some of those are ASL
courses our computer science courses sometimes it's very hard to find a
teacher that's highly specialized in those courses and so we're utilizing the
virtual instruction for that as well already it also helps us when we might
have a course that may not have enough students to make that particular course
on one campus but if we aggregate those students across our district we can make
sure that students still have access to that coursework so most of what is on
that left-hand side we are already doing we have all of the pieces really in
place for that on the right-hand side we're excited to be able to talk about
the opportunity for full-time enrollment in a virtual campus along as Miss tax
said with Senate bill 569 passing so with our in district students who might
choose to participate in virtual in a virtual high school still offering those
students the opportunity for home campus student participation so they don't have
to make some of those choices but they could still participate and then they're
out of district students those students would have some would have a tuition
base with that piece but supporting parent choice we know there are people
who may have to move because the parents job or something relocates and want to
be able to stay part of kdisc and this allows us that opportunity to continue that as well
our virtual courses right now currently are kind of branded in two ways so we just wanted to share
with you kind of what we are already doing on the left in green you'll see mr merriman's reigns
branded courses you see those um there in their canvas courses they're branded with the green you
see the reigns academy logo there with them and then you'll see what is currently our kvs or kd
virtual school branded logo there as well for our students that are already
taking those virtual courses so you see those two pieces and wanting to be able
to bring those two things together I'm going to show you and we'll we'll hope I
can get back and forth between these two things Daniel's assured me that I can do
it so we'll see if that's true so just kind of wanted to share with you some of
the courses and I'll just scroll them it's not for you don't have to study all
of that but the courses that we're doing what we're taking is opportunities with our teaching
and learning department curriculum instruction instructional technology and really working
through the courses that we have to ensure that they are exactly what we need them to be in order
to continue to offer those in a virtual environment so that the the rigor and the coursework in our
virtual environment matches that in our face-to-face classrooms to really make this happen
We have been working on some things here, and I know this is small for you, so I'll kind of go through it with you.
But really kind of working on those two sides of the house, like I said, in teaching and learning and with our instructional technology
department so that we have our content area experts and we have our experts in instructional technology that can help ensure that that
coursework is accessible in the online environment with that. And so they are working together to provide the support,
support, professional development, all of the pieces that are necessary for the teachers,
and distributing those through school leadership in our department to our consumers, which are all
of our high school campuses, utilizing Miller to be able to use that space more flexibly with
students. Raines Academy, as you just heard from Mr. Merriman, we do use virtual coursework as well
through our OAC with that when students are over there as well and then really
through that virtual high school and so again you see in the virtual high school
part those two sides the a la carte side which is kind of a one-off course that I
might need to take to fulfill a graduation requirement a scheduling kind
of situation for some of our out-of-district students it may be a
course that their their district can't offer because they don't have the
resources or capacity for that but a student might be interested in pursuing
doing it and we can provide that for them as well as then our full-time students enrolled
both in district and out of district.
All right, and I'll turn it back over to Ms. Hines.
Ms. So we'll go into planning considerations as we move forward.
We've got to constantly look ahead at what innovation out on the complex looks like and
one of the things that we're really having to consider and in the discussion with Dr.
Rogorski is space.
We need seats because there's going to be a lot of interest in there and we're already
running waitlist before we move forward on the planning considerations i want to make sure that
everybody that you are aware multiple departments have been participating in this just quickly raise
your hands if you're in on those monday meetings teaching and learning school leadership we got
finance back here research and accountability cte all the technology it takes the team to do this so
moving forward planning considerations include and ted and me as of today yes you'll find out why
they need me we do so planning considerations currently the steam center is under expansion
it's in progress is anybody driven by the steam center they are pushing dirt it is all kinds of
exciting things happening there and we consider steam center one of our innovative buildings out
there on the complex as amazing things august 2025 rains academy is going to launch the water
operator licensing program and continue to build to that arsenal we have out there our need is
Miller I mean we have reached capacity at Miller and I think we've known that
for a while so I spoke with Miss Cruella last week and she gave me these numbers
we had over 3,000 course requests for students to attend Miller applications
accepted she pushed it we accepted 1950 last year we thought we were pushing it
at 1700 where we're trying to find those seats is kind of to pull off non CTE
courses at Miller make it more flexible by we're putting them in the virtual
courses to make them mobile and to get more seats for the specialized CTE.
Her and her team were creative. We were able to get about 200 more kids accepted for this
year, but we're pushing it at capacity. We wait-listed approximately 800 and
these 800 met the requirements to be accepted, but they weren't because we
just didn't have enough seats. Discarded, when you say discarded, it was about 300.
year they just those students for one reason or another didn't meet the
prerequisites or something like that in that program so miss Kirill and her
staff communicate with the home campus they let the counselors know what they
know do we need to double up on something the following year can they
take something virtual in the eighth and ninth year so they can reapply the
following year lots of conversations about that so our planning
considerations are and for something for the board and dr. group dr. Gorski to
to discuss is to relocate the Opportunity Awareness Center to allow for expansion of
Miller II, a campus to support increased student access.
And we kind of noted that approximately 70 percent, and I think Dr. Gorgorski shared
these stats just recently with the group, approximately 70 percent of KDISD graduates
pursue a post-secondary pathway.
We knock it out of the park.
Our kids go to junior college, community college, technical school, university, and 70 percent
that is a pretty high number but we also have about 30 percent they want to enter the workforce
well it's just as a priority for us to make sure when they enter that workforce they can earn a
livable wage that's crucial and so we're doing the innovative programs we're doing innovation
out on the comprehensive high schools and we just want to continue to look at what can we do out
there on the complex to increase increase seats and this is what it's going to look like if you
were to consider it, OAC would be there for this school year. Maybe it would be Miller too for the
26-27 school year. Now that we have CTE programs at Raines Academy and Miller, we, TED and
Transportation, we have a white fleet where we could run shuttle. As you know, the state reimburses
for all CTE transportation so we can make it even more flexible as the kids go back and forth to
their campuses so they can come over and do the water operator licensing program, go out
to their site, come back, catch a shuttle, go back to their home campus, do their couple
courses, go out, do early off and go out to the barn and work your animal project.
It's flexibility, it's innovation, and we're doing so much of it, it's just wrapping it
up and moving forward, and we need space.
So we invited Ted to the meeting today, ahead of tonight's meeting.
So anyway, we thank you, and we're all happy to answer any questions.
Thank you so much for the presentation, Board.
Questions?
Mr. President?
Ms. Champagne?
I'm so excited, but I feel bad about Mr. Merriman and where's the OAC going to go and all that after we've heard this wonderful.
So would the OAC remain there and we squeeze in the Miller kids into that?
Yeah, I'll go ahead and jump in there as I've been involved with a lot of this going on as well.
And we think there's some flexibilities also with House Bill 6 that came through on discipline
and what we can do with kids with some virtual options in there and some other options in there.
So you might recall that current building over there now that is the OAC,
and that's run by Janelle Coleman over there, and she has the BTP in there as well.
Remember, BTP will be moving out when the section of Burchens Way is ready, so that clears out a portion of that building.
The other portion is the DAP side, which we think we could relocate and build a smaller building that would accommodate what we're looking for out of DAP with some of those flexibilities of House Bill 6 and how we can accommodate those students who choose that program over our typical high school programs.
and that we can do things a little differently with that.
We do have a few locations in the district that we think would meet that.
It would require to building something, but it would not be building anything near what we have right now.
We envision something that would have classrooms, would have some virtual opportunities.
Kids would stay in classes. Teachers would move around,
almost like that RAINS model where the teachers move and kids don't.
But it would not require some of the things we have in the in the OAC right now
We wouldn't build it with library. We wouldn't build it with
PE we wouldn't build it with the gymnasium. So all of those things can be changed now
like I said
we've got some different options we can do DAP differently than we've ever done it before and
Probably save some money in the long run on that
You heard a lot today about space and spaces is a priority on that piece of property over there
So what do we do long term with a building? How do we adapt that?
and and that would take a lot of work with our
architects and we have some excellent architects who have done fantastic work out there and
We would look at those buildings and say how do we either repurpose them into CTE centers?
Or what would have to be maybe demo down what would have to be built up and what does that look like?
What I'm sharing with the board tonight is is trying to set this district up for success
when this district is 115,000 kids and we have no more space over there for for
our fantastic programs so we've got to probably be thinking now about the
future of what that looks like or we're going to be with the numbers you saw
tonight of squeezing kids out of opportunities but I think that building
across the street there from Miller to put programs in there that are CTE
that's the way of the future that I think we could really do some excellent
work out there probably cost us some bond dollars and a future bond probably
don't need another bond until 2027 is what we're thinking but what can we do
with current monies and current bond or bond savings or dollars that we have
creatively like we have done with how we purchased merchants way very creative on
the structure of that to be able to pay for that building when we need to do
that so you leave that up to us as a team and and mr. Smith over there you
and i've had some conversations we've got some ideas we can bring to the board
mr president um thank you very much um it's it's the last slide was um an amazing
pictograph of what you were talking about it's pretty crazy actually um what i'm trying to get
my mind around is the heart of RAINS and why it's there versus another virtual
flexible campus are we gonna lose sight of why that's there that's for student
to help a particular group of students who otherwise may never graduate I would
never want to lose sight of that I don't really hear that in here are we trying
there's no plans to change the programming at RAINS Academy are you
you think because we want to offer a virtual high school yeah it just looks
like I'm trying to figure out the distinction right with virtual highs
we've got rains and virtual guys I think virtual high school rains Academy is
rains Academy hybrid program no change to programming there and how we're
supporting it with the nine-week virtual courses that would stay the same let me
Let me see.
If you look here, let's say a lot of students we know look for
something different than seven periods in person all day long.
We know we have students that probably are not going to KDISD.
They're looking for virtual and a different type of format.
So this would just be us offering another way for kids to remain enrolled in KDISD
and more suitable to how they want to learn and prefer to take their instruction.
So, for example, for full-time enrollment in district students, they can enroll in the
virtual campus.
All their courses would be virtual.
They'd be enrolled at that virtual campus.
What's unique to Senate Bill 569, in district students, they would still retain the opportunity
for student program participation back at their home campus, which is a big win.
So that keeps them engaged, but then they have choice on where they want to go to school
and how they want to learn.
out of district we would get the ADA increased enrollment it supports parent
choice but they would not have the opportunity since or not they're out of
district to participate in student programs okay thank you maybe the better
way to ask the question is then how is a rain student different from a 100%
virtual student full-time how are they different it's yeah go ahead so with
With Raines Academy, those students are part of a hybrid program.
So they do have in-person time with that teacher there because there's been some traditional school that might not have been as successful.
So they are coming in to work with teachers, to work with them.
In the virtual setting, that would be just that, virtual and asynchronous.
So that's not always the same student that would be, you know, that would be successful for both pieces with that.
So with RAINS, they do have some virtual components where they are working through their coursework in virtual, but also with that in-person support of being able to come in, being able to go to tutoring with that teacher in person, meeting with some of those other support staff as opposed to being completely virtual and working in an asynchronous environment.
Okay, good.
Because I see that as critical, right?
Yeah.
For RAINS students.
Right, there would be, I think, you know, some students might be able to transition between both of those settings,
but really the target audience is different for both of those, too, as well.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
So, and the other curious student population is the ones who do not live in our district boundaries.
This is totally different.
I remember you talking about this and that there would be a revenue stream.
So my ears perked up.
Love that.
but it's so curious like are we saying or did the bill say this I'm not exactly
sure in detail what sb 569 said but that a parent who lives out of our boundaries
can enroll their child in KD ISD full-time virtual school is that what
we're saying yes okay so what's out what's that game I mean how's that look
between districts so what what is the landscape here what's going on I think
I think across the state of Texas everyone's going to see more and more what I would call parent choice or parent opportunity.
And we can see that probably in a handful of different bills that have passed the legislature and some that didn't pass the legislature.
There were actually a few bills out there early on where they just kind of what I would just refer to as almost open borders.
Any kid can go to any school district they want to choose whether they live in the district or not in person or virtual.
So we're seeing a lot of different choice and I think what you've seen here tonight are a few different models for that kind of
Future thinking of how do we customize things and make them more personalized to what our kids might want in the future?
Or what families might want?
I did appreciate Leslie sharing that if kids still want the traditional stuff. We've we're always going to have that
I don't want anyone to think that we've moved away from that model that will always have our traditional high school seven periods a day
everything that we've always imagined to be but i think it can be so much more than that
so you are going to see some districts have already said it there are a small number of
virtual high schools in texas right now they got in under a provision of tea and then tea
kind of turned the faucet off and nobody was allowed to have one again but they have them
right now to where any kid in texas can join those virtual schools there's not many of them
So 569 comes along and says, well, now anyone can do that.
Now, there will be rule setting by TEA.
It will come with an application process, and you'll have to go through all of the parameters TEA sets up, but that's coming in the future.
We're not sure what that piece would look like, but what it would look like is exactly what Ms. Hack and the team have explained.
We could create something that's really fantastic, which we could enroll people and give them a diploma virtually.
We've got all the courses already.
I know it went really quick when Emily was scrolling through,
but we've got many courses already set up and more in the works
where there's enough in there to go ahead and roll out a virtual high school
where all the courses you want are in there.
We can take in-district kids and we can take out-of-district kids.
Any kid that comes from out of the district, I believe, Leslie, correct me if I'm wrong,
a virtual program it's a hundred percent ADA I think that's what it was remember
right now we get a refined ADA based on who's in the seats but so every kid we
enroll in Texas in this kind of program we're collecting the full ADA on that
kid and we believe we can deliver a virtual program because we've got so
much in place already to which it would be a revenue stream if it's not then
it's probably not worth doing but we think that there's revenue out there we
can bring in by enrolling folks in a program we have here mr president i have a question
is the motivation i think you said it so i apologize if you need to repeat but is there a
true need of of space or we're looking forward or you know you mentioned 115 000 enrollment
someday or somebody did uh is it primarily that or is it primarily revenue stream a wonderful
opportunity to capture what what is it yeah I would put all those in the same
stew that we're cooking here that says innovation definitely personalized
learning for kids more choice for kids that's all in their revenues in there as
well but space is in there as well certainly as we grow and we have more
opportunities in there I'd like to think we don't have to build high school
school number 11 one day. Ideally, if I could sit here and tell you today, we won't need it. I can't tell you that. But if I had many other options, is there a possibility we wouldn't need it? Maybe. I don't know. I don't know about you guys, but a new high school is awful pricey. Last one I saw being built was $300 million. I really don't want to build another one. But if I have different opportunities that are going on all over the district, maybe that buys us some time. But there's no doubt
out about it that our demographers have been pretty good for 20 years we're
gonna hit 115,000 at some point Katie ISD we're darn near a hundred thousand
now so it's a little bit of everything you said there Annette miss because I
think it's just more innovation and more ways of looking at things differently and
doing some things different I think it's gonna be exciting for folks thank you
my question is kind of along the same lines as far as cost or funding
mechanisms you're saying that the ADA for an out-of-district transfer we get a
hundred percent of that so along with that ADA how does that formula what does
that formula look like so what's attached to that ADA is that dependent
upon the course that the student is taking is that a CTE student formula
based like what does that look like per student depending on what they're doing
yeah you have an idea I do so if we had a virtual high school and kids were
enrolled in the virtual high school the guaranteed minimum of the ada is the basic allotment right
so every kid is worth the basic allotment who rolls enrolls now the part i wouldn't know is
what weights would come with those kids because every time a kid enrolls if they are cte that's
a weight bilinguals await gt's a weight sped's away economically disadvantages await so from the
basic allotment all those weights go up depending on which kids would enroll in the program so then
but that they're an out-of-district student, then that's still, we get all of that.
So if you have a student who is out-of-district, bilingual, sped, economically disadvantaged,
that all goes into one formulaic weighted amount that we get to educate that student.
Am I correct in that?
You're correct, but if we're going to get into some details, I'm going to ask Chris for some help over there.
He knows the funding much better than I do. He might be able to explain it better
So
It's a good question, but that's you know, if you're doing sped online as trustee
Fox has asserted that would be kind of difficult to do depending upon what the sped need would be
But nevertheless if they're designated sped and you would then take in that formulaic weight into account
count not that it couldn't be done i'm sure it could and can but beyond that how are we funding
the teaching of this so who's teaching these courses in a virtual mechanism to an out of
district student who does not live here is this i know we had talked about we had seen that on the
screen of what that looked like in that little breakdown so so there there are some um parameters
to teach virtual classes that are very similar to whether you're teaching virtual or in person.
So these would be educators.
They have a teacher certificate, okay, to teach for the course that which they'll be teaching.
And they have to have a virtual course training certificate.
Our technology team has that course.
We train our teachers currently right now to have the virtual certificate.
So you do need to have that to teach virtually.
And how many students did we say we were anticipating?
Do we have a number of that?
We don't know.
Or like a best guess?
The next steps if we wanted to move forward with this, we would work with communications
on communicating out that KDISD was moving forward with this in August of 2026 and kind
of Dr. Gregorski referenced.
There are some other districts moving in this district, moving in this direction as well.
And then with that we would of course get everything set up, open up an out of
district student application so that in the spring we're monitoring those
numbers as they're coming in and then following along with HR when they begin
staffing for the in-person campuses we would be staffing for the virtual. I just
have a thought on the ESAs that were just passed. Would that if you were an
out of district student and you are coming to Katy would we then be taking
advantage of any potential would that do anything for us at all as far as like
the ESA's are concerned there's something in the language and I'm not
remembering it to quote it wrote right now but it says if a student is eligible
to collect the ad a then you couldn't take the ESA okay okay mr. president
Ms. Eaney?
Ms. Eaney?
Ms. Thank you.
Thank you for all of your hard work and innovation that your whole team has put together.
I greatly appreciate it.
I know our community does too.
Just wanted to circle back with a little bit.
I know we talked about full ADA funding for non-district students.
What about the district students?
Is that a different formula or is it the same?
Ms. My understanding is it's the same.
Ms. Okay.
And that's one of the things, the components of Senate Bill 569.
They are providing us the guidance on how districts that offer this,
how they're going to fund it equitably and that it can be sustained.
Okay.
So I'm excited about opening this up as a possible source of revenue.
However, I do wonder, do you all have a system in place to give priority to our district students first?
first because I do think I would like to see them prioritized over out of district.
Although I'm not saying I don't want additional revenue, I just think our community should
get first steps.
I don't think any of us have even considered that we would turn one down.
If they were our students, they get their preference of how they – it's all about
choice and the first ones we're going to take care of, of course, are going to be our
KDIC students.
Okay.
So you all have already thought of that.
Okay.
Great.
Great.
Thank you.
Especially since they can retain their home campus, when I say student program participation,
their ability to participate in their academic UIL program, what we saw tonight, the speech
and debate or athletics or fine arts.
It would have been nice if they would give us a financial incentive for our own kids
so that we always look for our kids first.
You know I mean, I think it's great that we are open can open up to others
But I think a financial incentive to take care of our own would be
wise
Yeah, true
But if we do have a number of kids out there that would prefer the virtual environment instead of going to a large
In-person comprehensive at least now we have the ability to offer that and right that's good for our kids. Yep. I agree
I used to president miss Fox in
Tagging on to what Mrs. Timmy said, don't we, I mean, is it the same?
Like we get the ADA for our students first, and so it's kind of the same.
We pay for our own first.
Okay.
Thank you.
I appreciate your questions.
I have a couple of questions.
So where would the teachers teach?
Like from their home, or do they come to a classroom?
And then is there a teacher at one classroom, and that classroom is broadcast everywhere?
All of that is still in production.
Okay.
I haven't got that far, but to kind of give you a visual, during the instructional, during the fall and spring semester,
if it's during the instructional day, the teachers are in person.
They're either teaching in person or virtual.
If the students are taking what we call an eighth or ninth period virtual course,
it is teachers that are now teaching those virtual courses outside of their instructional day schedule,
so they're getting paid, and so they're doing it from home.
Summer semester, both are summer semesters.
Those 207 unique teachers, they are standing up those semester courses this summer from
home.
But what about a student who needs, these are probably questions too far in advance
of my little puzzle brain putting puzzle pieces together.
So just, you don't know, I'll stop asking.
But let me ask this one more.
A student needs a course that isn't offered at their campus during sixth
period which is their only opening. Is there a virtual course they could take
like when they get home at night? Right? Somebody somewhere has taught it and
it's online you can go in and grab it, right? Some of that exists.
Speak to that, a little bit of what you said on flexible scheduling.
Yeah, so that's what it looks like right now too. So those courses are asynchronous.
So students can, they can, they might do it during a study hall they might have
during their school day or they might do it in the evenings we know our instructional technology team
would tell you some kids love to log in from 1 a.m to 2 a.m in the morning like that's when they
they do their work i have a college kid that does the same and his day is different than mine
um and so that they have that opportunity to where it works in their schedule it also we've had kids
currently doing it where they can kind of front load what they know what their week looks like
So if they know they have a busy week with their in-person courses or that our ag shows happening, they know I'm going to be very busy, right, this week looking at this schedule.
I know that I can do my virtual work over the weekend.
I'm going to get a lot of that week all the way done because I can work on that asynchronously and free up some time.
So it allows some of that time too for them to manage kind of the pace and the
the rate of work that they need to do as well. So that sounds to me like that
course could be loaded in by a teacher time by time by time it's loaded in
ready to go you could do three lessons. Right the way we have it set up students
can kind of work at that at the pace that they need to and be able to make
some adjustments. Also sounds like more opportunity for students to do you know
flexibility but also to free up classrooms if they don't all have to
come to a classroom where a teacher doesn't have to be at ten high schools
right such a great idea the last question what did the state say about
rehire retirees can we do it for this or is there still that penalty that we have
have to pay to hire them.
I'm going to tag Mr. Schuss over there to see if he knows what that is.
There are some flexibilities in there for less than full-time work.
But for a full-time retiree hire, Brian, do you know how that has changed now with the
new legislation?
Yes.
So a couple of years ago, they took away the district's ability to, you're talking about
the penalty of the surcharge, to pass that along.
to the retiree but they repealed that um uh this session uh so we can we we can essentially do that
uh if that is something we would like to do and that may be an opportunity in this setting
uh um to hire uh retiree hires well we actually have jeremy one or two retiree hires teaching
this summer to retirees teaching summer semesters and they of course you saw what their pay is and
and they just get a check cut to them for however many students they taught,
times whatever.
I think they're both AP teachers, retired AP teachers,
which are difficult because we have so many,
and James knows this, how many kids request AP courses.
So we're already kind of doing that and working on the job description.
You know, Ms. Fox, we also see it as possible opportunity.
If you guys know how colleges operate with adjuncts and part-times
and full-times, some professors are not full-time.
We think with the teacher shortage and everything that's going on
across Texas we probably need to tap into some people who were good teachers
at one point and have moved into a different position so this would allow
us also to grab folks who would work outside of the school hours but doing
schoolwork like we have probably dozens of good teachers in our curriculum
department experts in curriculum experts in teaching we've technically got them
all over the place and I mean we might even tap into an assistant principal who
who wants to teach a class for us.
And there'll be that opportunity out there.
And that's something Mr. Schuss is looking at in terms of that as well,
is how do we contract with people?
How do we do more of an adjunct-type employee
who may not be a full employee for us and just teach a couple of classes?
And really looking at the flexibility that could be out there
of meeting this other need of there's just a shortage of full-time teachers.
This is all very exciting and very surprising, but not surprising.
KDISD is the best because you all are already light years ahead of what just happened with
the ledge on like here's some things that could happen.
We are ready, out of the gate, plans are done, brain trust everywhere in the room, creating
opportunities for students and also for teachers.
teachers, it's why everybody wants to be here.
And I'm going to close with shout out to Mrs. Wagner, biology teacher.
She taught my son.
She was a favorite at our house.
Hey, Ms. Wagner.
Mr. President.
Mr. Champagne.
Okay.
So while or during or after your presentation, I looked up the Senate Bill 569 because I
was just trying to, so we're not mandated to do this.
this is just something that we're going to offer it's kind of like what mrs fox said you know
we're the district of innovation and all that and it kind of that that center bill kind of tells how
how it's funded and all that so are you are we worried that hi carrie are we worried that so
many kids would want to do this that we would have too empty of high schools are we going to
to set a limit to how many kids will do this? That's a good question. I am. One of the things
that I think, and Dr. Gorgorski, it's been ever since we stood up KVA with COVID. We went up
and we saw we could do it. We could do it pretty well. It was kind of clunky with some because we
had to do it so fast. And then we pulled back and we thought in the 2023 legislative spring,
we thought districts would be able to do that. And it just kind of died. And so we just let it
it go but dr. Gorski we kept talking about it like if we ever get the chance
to innovate and the thing is if we innovate out there on the complex
everything we do out there on the complex it's got to be offered and
accessible at the comprehensives so if you think of our ten high schools so
like year one this fall some more than others the kids have opportunity to take
in-person courses virtual courses participate in their student program we
We make their flexible schedule.
They can be on campus as few as five classes and do two early
offs like this student did.
So as long as we're building the innovation out on the complex,
we want to make that accessible to kids that want to stay at
their home campus.
And they still experience flexible scheduling and get to
pick their learning modes in person and virtual.
So I think if we just keep that innovation going across the
district, students will have a lot of opportunity either if
they stay at their home campus or want to go over here full-time to the complex or to the virtual
high school okay but so you know when covet happened and then people a lot of people came
home and worked and then there's a lot of empty buildings downtown and during and you know along
the energy corridor and some people like i know a lot of people who do hybrid even my daughter does
is she works from home two days a week and she goes to work I don't know I
don't really know her schedule but something like three days a week or
something like that and so the buildings are kind of half empty half the time so
it seems like you know they gave my for example they gave her a choice and she
chose to do the hybrid thing and I'm sure she's one of a million people that
they've given choices to like that and i have a lot of friends that do a schedule like that so
it seems like a lot of people would choose that and so i'm just i'm just a hybrid and that's if
we can make it look like at the comprehensives they had hybrid opportunities which is that
flexible scheduling so i'm just concerned that given the opportunity and i'm glad that i'm not
I'm not saying not to do it, but I'm just saying, I just get worried a little bit that
a lot of kids would take us up on that.
Possibly, but I also see with kids too, they think they want virtual, this is some,
and then going back and they're also involved with their student program participation,
they may the very next semester want to go back in person and we're going to have to
be prepared for that too.
We really don't know what it looks like.
Like we just know that now public school districts have the opportunity to do it.
We're already doing it in so many different ways that the offering of virtual full-time enrolled campus just seems to be the next thing because we are still a fast growth district.
And we're still looking at adding another 20,000, 30,000 kids.
And like Dr. Gorski said, maybe this is something that we could build slowly as we monitor that incoming growth.
Maybe we don't need high school 11.
We are 11 high schools, the virtual being the 11th one.
And would our graduation ceremonies be virtual also?
What will we wear?
Y'all up for 11, especially when Freeman comes on in 2027?
Mr. President.
Just one more question.
So I know we talked about giving our students preference,
but do we have have we thought about maybe if we're going to allow give our
teachers preference over maybe out of district or out of the different amongst
the state okay can have we thought about that far yet we probably won't start
getting into the application and staffing and working with HR and of
course building that budget out with finance and that's why that all of them
are a part of this planning because they all come at it with their lens and the
the information that they need to provide or research or bring to the table.
So this is the early stages.
Right.
This is the preparer.
Well, I'm only one person, but I would love to see us prioritize our students first
and our teachers first for these opportunities.
Yeah.
There's a few things in there.
The bill is the bill.
It gives us a lot of information on how it could work in the future.
A lot of it's going to have to wait until TEA gives us a little bit of rulemaking
and the application process and what does that look like and how can we hire
people so that's going to be be a big part of this we talked about wanting to
get something open by August 2026 I don't know if that's possible with TEA
and their application process or how long that's going to take but that would
be our goal to get an application in and get approval and know what all those
rules are and then we can start setting some of the unknown rules but it's good
feedback thank you mr president sorry just a couple other thoughts that came to mind after
listening to the discussion uh wouldn't i would i would assume we need to be careful about virtual
first and second period be quite popular to enroll in a virtual first and second period for high
school students who don't like to wake up early i mean there could be well right now the way we're
offering on the comprehensives they could have two late arrivals and then be there the rest of
the five periods in person the rest of the day giving them the flexibility too because you are
right they don't like them i'm sure there would be a lot of students who'd like virtual first and
second periods but i'm you might be thinking about that um and then um what was the third
question the second question um oh just you know from coven we have to say it that online learning
was damaging to some students i think trustee um champagne was touching on that but that that's
a very serious I'm sure you guys are thinking about that we are talking about
an older student population so I get that and I do know that this is
happening at the college level exactly what we're discussing all of these I
think this is a reality at college university campuses but still there are
courses and and and that need to be taught or more successfully taught in
person and I'm hoping that's all part of this discussion that there's some things
that should not be taught online there are people who say that and experts who who discuss that so
i don't know if that's part of this i'm hoping that's part of the discussion it is and you are
right um it was very difficult with elementary and junior high and it was what it was during
coping but we also saw with high school students some of them do very very well and they are
looking for that choice and again in college if you look at most of our kids that have kids in
college right now they're probably taking three and for 15 hours three are in person and two are
virtual because that's the way of it also too if the student's not successful in the virtual they
can be remanded back to their home campus too that is something we need to look at as well so that's
all the stuff we'll be looking at and courses that we think would be challenging to teach virtual i
will tell you we're researching that i'll use ut virtual um university of texas virtual high school
been at it for 15 years we've been in talks with them on how do you do some science courses what
do you use things like that so we are actively researching it so that we offer the best resources
and supports for the students that would be enrolled in this campus all right thank you
mr president i have one one last thing thank you for bringing this up miss kuzella because
so my daughter does take online classes through college but her classes so even though
it's online. If she has something due, it's due that day.
So whatever's taught is due that day. She doesn't just have the whole
week to do it. So just because the FFA example, for example, they're
showing their livestock that day, but if they were truly in an online
class like the classes that my daughter takes, you may be doing that, but by
midnight that night that still is due it's not like oh they just get the whole week or what
already doing that in our virtual courses 11 59 pm look at their nodding back there and if they don't
submit there's automatic grading notification sent you missed your deadline you have a zero
please contact me all kinds of things like that just as if it was in person
Mr. President, just a quick, based on what Mrs. Champagne said, virtual courses take a lot of self-discipline.
Right. It takes a lot of things. It's not for everyone and I think when they try it and be like, oh no, I don't have that.
And I know we'll have accountability built into, but they're not for everyone. I don't think we'll lose that many.
But I love the hybrid option.
And I think going back to their home campus that there's a hybrid option where they can
get mirrors more of college in person.
And so at least we're diversifying enough so that students can find, I like this, this
fits for me and I get to do everything that I want to pursue in high school.
Because children go to high school not because they love biology or calculus, but because
they love whatever they're involved in.
And so I think we're still going to see a whole bunch of children there for fine arts or all the maybe athletics.
Yeah, that too.
Good engagement.
Mr. President, one more thing.
I'm so sorry.
She made me think of something else.
So if in the middle of the semester they can't, you know, I can't do this.
I thought I could, but I can't.
and they want to come back to in person how do we know that there's going to be
room for them now at the campus there's always room there are students they
withdraw from one campus and go to another one okay so we'll just take them
back in the middle of the semester we're not drawing a line in the sand it's just
this campus is our 11th high school campus it happens to be virtual you can
do all in person or hybrid back at your home campus we withdraw kids and
re-enroll in another campus every day. We've been able to experience this in my
house because my son surprisingly signed up for AP government when he was going
on a mission trip for a week and family vacation and he's I'm getting emails
right now saying that grades are changed on Friday and so personally been able to
experience exactly what it could work out as a young man learns
responsibility he's doing great in the class by the way he figured it out but
one of the things that excites me about it is if I want to produce more in my
business I'll have people come in and work or an earlier shift right I'll have
them working extra if they were if they choose to they'll work extra right and
with some of the flexibility like like what I've always seen with rains is the
with like a flexible school day as family dynamics change and all kinds of
stuff are we able to get an extra couple of hours of our out of our buildings as
dr. Gorgorzky shared where we don't have to build that 11th high school can we
take advantage of those you know that that three o'clock to seven more so for
instructional time period I know there's a whole can of worms to open up with
who's working and what's required and all that kind of stuff but but this
But this excites me that it seems like we're taking steps towards being able to do some
of those things.
And so one of the things I heard, we don't know what the demand is, but there's obviously
a lot of work that we'll have to do.
Are there any like fixed costs or positions that we'll have to hire to stand this up for
a year?
So say we ran it in 26, 27, and then it didn't work out.
Don't believe that's what's going to happen.
happen? Are we having to have like a principal and a counselor and like what's that kind
of lift that happens with those people? That's what we'll gradually be doing and
we'll be in discussions with Dr. Hraborski and of course Brian and what that looks like.
But right now the way we've structured the production team with teaching and learning
and instructional technology and then pushing it down what we call the consumer school leadership
which is the campuses and looking at probably initially that virtual staff
Carrie Sanguinetti will be a big part of that she's kind of the one that took the
case that built out that framework well now that summer semester will live under
that virtual high school which is really already doing because rains is our
extended school year so we've got staff out there so we're just going to kind of
slowly do that bill towards the spring and then have those conversations with
that Dr. Perforst can apply.
Thank you.
Any more questions, Board?
Well, thank you very much.
That was a great discussion, and we learned a lot.
7.3 May 2025 Local Election Follow-Up.
So we will move on from 7.2 and move on to 7.3,
May 2025 local election follow-up,
and our presenter is our General Counsel, Justin Graham.
So can you hear me from here, Daniel?
Board, can you hear me?
I know the microphone's quite a bit away.
So I wanted to go over 2025 board election post-election review.
Oftentimes this is given at the canvas or at least a portion of this is given
at the canvas. This year the canvas, the presiding board president at the time
decided to have the canvas outside the regular board meeting. I just wanted to
bring this back to the board so that y'all could have an opportunity to hear
about this. So as I go over an overview of the May 2025 election, five goals
today. Provide a summary, talk about successes and wins, discussion of local
logistics, think about lessons, modifications, things that we may need to
do better in the future or things that we did better this time around and then
questions are input from the board. So first things first, KDISD, just like
every other governmental entity we endeavor as the elections administrator for this district to
provide free and fair elections you know universal suffrage as we talk about what that looks like
universally making sure that every vote that's cast appropriately counts is that the is of the
highest priority for for my team and what does that look like we actually have a charge this
is the legislative intent which was actually modified in 2021 i don't know 100 sure why
But it is the intent of the legislature that the application of the code, which is the elections code, protect the secrecy of the ballot from open or access, ensure that all legally cast ballots are counted.
So a summary of our May 2025 election.
We had, so KDIC, let's talk about size first.
We have over 242,000 registered voters.
And so that would make us, if we looked at all of the other 254 counties in Texas, that
makes us larger than all of 11 of the 254 counties in Texas.
As we know, each of those counties has their own divisions and divisions and people that
work on their elections process.
Now we're unique in the fact that we only hold elections one time a year for our trustees.
We don't have primary elections and things that we don't actually register voters here in KDISD.
We actually get all that information from the county.
So we don't have to do those things, but we do have to run our own elections.
In May, we had over 18,000 votes cast, which was up 10% from the year previous,
which was more than double from five years ago.
You'll see some numbers on that here.
We have six early voting sites.
They're all district-owned facilities, five comprehensive high schools,
and, of course, the Merrill Center attached to this.
And then 13 election day voting sites.
Let's talk about successes of the May 2025 election.
Our partnership with the city of Katy.
We were approached by the city of Katy three or four years ago
with the opportunity to say, hey, they were looking at their elections process.
They were running their own elections.
And we actually had, we were going through the process of buying new equipment.
And they looked at the new law and said, well, we're going to have to make the same investment of the equipment.
Perhaps we could all get together.
So we actually ran the city of Katy's elections, both the mayoral election
and then the elections on the amendment to the city charter. That partnership's
been very successful. I believe if you talk to them they're happy with the
product. We're trying to get voters an opportunity to go vote. If you're a City
of Katy voter that also has a Katy ISD vote as well, then you can go cast both
your votes at the same time, either early or Election Day. And we've defrayed the
cost. So the City of Katy was going to have some sort of cost to their
their elections. We already have that cost built in here. So we're trying to
not double dip and actually save taxpayer dollars both from the city and
the school district. We've been successful in that. Um, you've got our
record voter turnout, um, engagement and enfranchise five years running.
Let's look at the numbers 2021, which is our May election. The first May
election that we had after covid. Uh, we had, you know, 8600 voters. That's
more than doubled in four years. And while I do think that some of that is
that the community is paying attention to what happens both in this room and at
the polling box, I do think it is the fact that we offer a tremendous
amount of opportunity for early voting and Election Day engagement. Also, if you
look at our internal audits and partial manual recounts, they were consistent. We
that we don't have the one-offs, the person that comes and signs in and then goes and looks at the ballot and goes,
oh, this isn't the city of Houston mayor election, or I don't know who these people are, so I'm not going to vote.
That happens from time to time.
Or people that don't, they run out without depositing their paperwork, or they say I'm in the wrong place.
These things happen.
But all of our numbers matched up consistently every day.
Then one of the things that we've had here, we've had a robust trend for poll watchers,
which we encourage. We're happy to have those folks come look at our process.
For the past four or five years, that number has increased almost daily at almost every one of our early voting sites.
Then we also have the Texas Secretary of State assigned inspectors this year.
year. Um, they did so for the first time since 2019. Now, if you recall, when the
Texas Secretary of State sent in a inspector in 2019, we got a very clean
bill of health from the individual inspector said, You guys are doing a
great job. We found no irregularities and we're happy for the service that
you provide your community. So now here we are six years later and let's see
what the Texas Secretary of State says again.
If you look at here, it talks about that we had problems and that we were able to solve
those problems.
It talks about all necessary custody chain documentation and verifying seals as we proceeded.
Oath was performed for all staff members.
Ultimately, a really good report.
At the end of the day, I did not observe any abnormalities during my time at Katy ISD.
This individual stayed with us at Central Count from the time that we opened around 7 o'clock to the time we closed, which was around 11.30 p.m.
So we had an opportunity for she and I to have some discussion while the process was going on.
And I will tell you that her feedback was that she was kind of amazed at how professional we were as a school district.
She said most school districts that I see don't have the equipment or the capability or just the processes that you have in place.
That's always positive. Again, for that to match consistently with what happened six, seven years ago shows a continuing trend that the community can have faith in what we're doing here in Katy ISD with our elections.
Let's talk about turnout. Again, 18,000, over 18,000 voters this time around.
this is actually pulled I think off of our precinct report so you can go by
this is for position one where mr. Perez and mr. Cross ran and you can look
precinct by precinct you can compare precinct by precinct who won the
individual precincts and compare those to the voting roles that you have also
have the same information for mr. Redmond miss Reed and our write-in
candidate you'll see the W next to mr. Fields name this was the first time
We've got a write-in candidate and we'll address that here in a minute
So then let's talk about logistics guys again
242,000 registered voters. It's a large operation that we have we have over 70 poll workers judges clerks ballot board members that serve in different
capacities
47 voting booths, you know, we have the reason we have so many is because we have 13 election day sites
But we also
have equipment that goes down sometimes, right? I mean, that happens and we had
it. We have to have back up and continuously planning for that. I will
tell you that despite the size of what we do here in May, the cost is actually
if we were to do it in November, if we were to move the elections to November
because we actually had to do that for Covid if you're required in 2020 cost
us almost half a million dollars more to do it in November. So by doing it in
made not only do we have ownership of it from the get-go it's actually saves the district a
considerable about a considerable amount of money also i would tell you that to the extent that we
had november elections because we still have buildings that are used for november elections
we continually get building modification requests from folks that want to come in they want to put
in ramps and things of these natures that we don't feel like are warranted or even viable
to have a ramp which may years ago we had a ramp at May Creek High School that
was near the bus staging area and it caused us considerable delay in our bus
schedule while they were running while Harris County was running the primary
elections again logistics we're in three counties so why did we run our own
elections that's probably I don't know who made the original decision to do
that that was probably done before i was born um but we've we've as far as i can as far as i know
and as far as anybody that i know knows we're talking to the bill haskets of the world we've
always run our own elections and primarily that's because we're in three counties it's not that
we're like cyphair and where it would be easy enough for us to go to harris county or fort bend
isd which can easily go to john oldham and say hey can you run our elections and they can do it
The communication between the three counties causes us some considerable amount of headache.
Thirteen KDISD precincts, I believe that'll show up here for those, all those color-coded precincts that you see.
Two City of Katy wards, to the extent we're running their elections, wards A and B.
But look at that number, 316 different ballot styles based on precincts and splits.
So these precincts you might have a Harris County precinct or Fort Bend County precinct
No
Let's take 1148 has like four different splits in it and that may be split because you have a ballot for for those people
Who actually live in the city of Katy who will get that ballot are those people that don't live in the city of Katy?
That won't get that ballot. So
Consider a lot of information and data that comes in
Then let's talk about early voting
So I think this map is instructive and I think this is the thing perhaps I want you to spend the most board
I want you to spend the most capital of the most
Thought about tonight is
What are we going to do with our early voting locations?
So we have six early voting locations if you'll recall we added paytoe high school two years ago
And you'll see paytoe high schools that black square that's on the north side of the district just west of 99
99. But we've got a shifting population. Um, in a breakdown by counting by
numbers. When I went and looked and I just did, I apologize. I didn't have
the full numbers in front of me. But when you look at what the shifting
population is right now, I believe that we have almost two to one the number of
voters that are registered in Harris County versus Fort Bend County. If we're
just, I'm not talking about people that participate in the election talking
about registered voters so if you look at the difference there and then waller county we
actually think we have about 11 000 or 12 000 registered voters in waller county that number
is expanding with the addition of sunterra and is going to continue to expand with the grange
and they build out of kane island that we have but eventually that will be capped as well
but if you know the top hat of our district up there by john paul's landing there's the bridge
and expansion there's other things that are going on up there that's where the rest of our growth
is going to happen. Your Fort Bend County is basically capped. So that Fort Bend County
percentage is never going to increase higher than it is now. It will continue to be less and less
and less of the registered voters that we have in KDISD. So when we look at our polling sites
and locations for early voting, do those make sense to us? We'll continue that discussion.
Challenges, lessons, modifications. So this was the first year, if you've been to a polling
location we always have that information outside oftentimes you can tell where to
vote because number one you know where you're going but you can see the
candidates signage you know at Morton Ranch it's in front of the signage is in
front of the gym it's the same way at Seven Lakes at Cinco Ranch it's in front
of the pack and kind of separate and apart so we have signs outside to direct
you but then we also figured out we needed signs within the buildings
especially if you think of like a Maid Creek junior high on election day that's
actually in a separate hallway so we have to have signage out in the front we
felt like that was more successful for us and then no cell phone signs in the
booth yeah obviously when you're voting you can't have your cell phone out you
can't be using your electronic device for a variety of reasons that's a
continuing problem that we have I think it matches society everybody has their
their phone with them at all times. Um, you know, folks don't even think about
it. They pull it out of their pockets. So we actually put signs in the booth
this year to try and help with that. Uh, we added more information on our
website. So we always tell folks when they have increased certain increase
related to your register voter registration, we will direct you back
to the county that you live in because again, KDSD is not responsible for nor
do we have the ability to register you as a voter yet to do that in the county
that you live in and we may direct you to the Texas Secretary of State or
Ethics Commission on a variety of things but we included your voting guide in
Texas which is the Texas Secretary of State's reference which has some
frequently asked questions for those who may be new new voters new voting to KDIC
or just want to know more about the process let's go the last one we
handled a write-in candidate was the first time we had that process so for
for those of you who were expecting the early voting numbers at 7.15 on Saturday night
and did not get them until 8.30, I apologize.
But that was in large part due to the fact that we had our first write-in candidate.
And so for the 500 or 600 ballots that the write-in candidate was actually on there,
our election judge, which is not me for that, Mr. Russell, had to go through there
and he had to look at every single one of those write-in candidates
and also the signatures to make sure that the votes were counted correctly.
And so that process took us a little longer than normal, but now we know it.
And we've done the write-in process, and my team feels pretty confident that we would
do it again.
And then the last thing is, and I hear this, and you guys hear this from your constituents
every election Saturday in May, how come I can't vote anywhere?
I can vote anywhere early on early voting, but on election day I have to go to my precinct.
Now that often happens, especially over in the Taylor zone, right, when you're considering
that Taylor is a voting location, Pattison's a voting location, and then you've got West
Memorial Junior High, Memorial Parkway Junior High.
And they're all like very close by, so oftentimes we have folks that will end up in one location
have to go to another on election day.
And I get the frustration there.
And they say, we even heard some ladies say,
look, Fort Bend County, we can vote anywhere.
Fort Bend ISD, I can vote anywhere on election day.
And they have the same voting day as we have.
How come we don't have it that way?
Well, because we're not accounting.
And the rule in Texas for allowing election day voting
anywhere you want to vote is a county-specific rule.
So until that law is changed to include municipalities
Municipalities like Katie is D. We're stuck with that so which is why we blasted from the roof
Please come early vote. We have early voting hours that we've extended. We have the most I think
Early voting that I know of any district that's in our area seven to seven we also offer the Saturday voting ahead of the election
And again, that's probably why for some of the reasons we see turnout, so then I got questions or input
put do we want to continue with a six early voting location so let me give you
some payto numbers okay so payto was the newest one that we added you can go back
and look board at some of the reports that I've sent you and the candidates
we were going to the elections process this year for early voting payto high
school had 488 early votes which was by far our least number in fact we had a
a lot of locations that were averaging that many voters a day, whether it be
the Merrill Center or Cinco Ranch or even Taylor. Some days we had that many
voters happening a day. And so when we pulled when I pulled the die, I just
had my team. I said, Let's have this discussion. Is it worth it for us? Is it
worth it for this board to continue to do that? So we spent $5300 in just the
staff members to staff that location that doesn't include the paper. It
get the folks out there moving the signs etc so you're talking about over ten dollars a vote
right if we're talking brass tacks on that but then i also talked to you if you'll recall when
i pulled up the map that showed our early voting locations it's our only early voting location
that's that high north and we know that the rest of our growth in kdisd we anticipate is going to
be up there so do we anticipate that that number is going to grow is that something that this board
wants to continue to invest in.
Again, $5,300 is just a small portion of our budget,
but again, with the current political, not political,
the current economic climate that we're in,
we're always looking for every dollar that we can.
And so that would be a question for this board
if we want to continue in that manner to do that.
And also, this is an opportunity for you to provide
any questions or feedback that you have well in advance of the election next year.
With that, I have some thanks to give, and then I'll take questions.
Obviously, everybody knows Ellen.
Everybody on the board knows Ellen.
She's going to be your primary point of contact,
and she really is the engine that pushes this machine down the road.
So a special thanks to her.
And then, obviously, we have other folks that are listed therein.
We have namesakes.
We have volunteers.
We have folks that are retired that are doing this on a part-time basis to some of them
to do it to keep busy, some of them to earn a little extra income.
And we're appreciative of the folks that continue to come back and choose to work in the KDMA
elections as opposed to going to a different county in which they live in.
So that being said, Board, I'm happy to take any questions you have.
Thank you.
Board, do you have any questions?
Mr. President?
Ms. Giselle?
I have a question.
Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Graham.
Morton Ranch High School, we added that last year or two years ago, I think.
What was the turnout there?
Do you remember?
I remember it was higher than Pato this year.
Am I correct?
Morton Ranch High School was an early voting location for a long time.
Right.
Several years ago, we moved it to Pato.
Right.
And then we decided to reopen it so we were then we reopened it
Morton Ranch had about twice the number of votes of pay to have less than a thousand this past election
Okay, I think that's important to think about
okay, and then
The partnership with city of Katy I love when there's efficiencies that can be achieved and both taxing units save money
That's great, or we can lend savings to another
Can we do that with city of Fulshire?
Why wasn't that looked at or is that something we could consider?
Well, we were not approached by the city of Fulcher and we the problem with the city of Fulcher number one
I think that for the county runs our elections because the entirety of the city of Fulcher is in Fort Bend County
So that would make sense that the county would run their elections
but we only make up a small portion of the city of Fulcher whereby
by almost every child that resides in Katy ISD except for a few actually streets in my
neighborhood that go to Lamar, almost every kid that lives in the city of Katy goes to
Katy ISD school.
Okay, sure.
That's an important difference.
Because it would be more of a, if Fort Bend runs their elections then it's probably a
moot point for city of Fulcher, I guess.
Okay, I was curious, somebody had asked that, for the convenience of the voter.
Well, we have tried in the past on Election Day to have both the city of Fulcher and the KDISD elections in the same location.
We've had years in the past where they haven't had an election.
That's something that I'm going to continue to correspond with Mr. Oldham about, about seeing if we can offer that on Election Day.
Yeah, that was the issue.
I remember now.
The voter was quite frustrated going all over the place, apparently, trying to vote.
Okay.
Okay, and then you mentioned we have 242,000 registered voters, which is huge,
but we still only have single-digit turnout.
I know that the total numbers have increased, which is great,
but I'm looking at the percent of registered voters.
So we still have – it was 7.5% this election, and it is a trend.
And since we've had elections, all elections have always been single-digit turnout.
They've gone from 5%, 6%, 7% since I've been paying real attention.
Are you thinking of anything?
Have we ever thought about trying to increase turnout from the district standpoint?
Are there things we should be doing differently?
Well, so when you talk about the district increasing voter turnout, district has to
be very careful that we're not spending district resources to say come vote for a particular
candidate or come vote for or against a particular measure.
Definitely.
Especially if we have a bond election that we're going to call in May, which we haven't
had one of those in a while.
So we have to be very careful with that.
But I think that our communications department does a pretty good job on elections because
we're consistent whether it be a kdisd election in may or a november election for president or
midterms dr grooms's department does a really good job of pushing out information to students
and staff on that okay i just you know if you keep getting the same result you might want to
try something different so i was just wondering if there's creative ideas and thoughts i don't
understand it i i see all the communication but it is a number that remains consistently low in
my opinion and in many others um you had mentioned that you talked about november elections i was
curious to hear that and that it's expensive for it would be expensive for the district to have a
november election if they administered it correct that and that's what happened during cove or is
that when it coveted happened so if we were to move to november elections and kdisd would no
longer administer its own elections. It would be administered by the county. That's by rule.
Right. So then the county would take over and the one election that we did that for our May
election cost us almost more than half a million dollars. I can pull the numbers for the board,
but it was extremely, extremely expensive for the district. And what is the driver for that?
We got to pay the county's costs. So like if we pay, so we're contracting, number one,
we're contracting with three counties waller fort bend and harris county well if you think about it
we're paying a portion of harris county's elections but we're paying a portion of every election that
happens in harris county and that's broken down by number of registered voters and i already told you
we have a large portion of this district that has registered voters so even if it's a let's say it's
a um a mayoral election the city of bel air we're still paying technically we're still paying a
portion of that cost when we pay into the big pot okay um okay and then um i think i had one
other question oh uh the um precinct map i love that map that's the colored map not this one you
have shown but the other one that's such a great map it used to be online i remember it being
easily accessible is there some is there a way that could be put back on i believe it is online
But I can check in there now. We'll make it or the links moved or something happened
It's not in the same place, and that's a really really helpful map
I know we have the interactive one where people can put in their address and figure out their
Precinct that's awesome, but this visual is really nice
Thank you
Mr.. President this box I
Appreciate the presentation mr. Graham, and I especially appreciate you trying to work with John oldham to get the
city whatever fort bend voting that's happening if that could happen at Jordan
high school the same time as ours because that's so hard to watch voters
be so frustrated I've been driving all over looking for where to vote and it's
confusing and they don't understand entities and that kind of thing they
just want to go and vote the way they promised neighbors and friends they
would vote so thank you for that um and i i appreciate what mrs Cuzela is saying about
voter turnout it's always as long as i've been around always been so incredibly low i like the
may election because people who are voting are engaged they they know people they've done their
research they've heard about candidates when in november it's at the very bottom of a ballot and
and they're choosing a name that sounds good to them
because it's almost impossible to know about a school board person
in a presidential or governor's year.
So when we think about the number of candidates
in each of these years that you have there,
I'm going to guess that these, I think in 2021,
there were seven candidates on that ballot.
I don't have that information for me, sorry.
I kind of think I know.
In 23, was that the year y'all were elected?
23, is that correct?
How many candidates that year?
Three races, seven, eight or nine, eight candidates.
2024, there were four.
And 2025, there were four plus a write-in.
So you think that more candidates turns out more people.
And it does because we've grown over time.
I think the engagement in our community and people paying attention and
you know
There's a lot more
Notoriety about school board elections in the past maybe three years. So that's there but
Normally you think if you have seven candidates, they're all driving their people to the polls, but we've
Like you said doubled in size. So for the school district to be able to do anything we put out
everything we can it's on schools we let people know you can't really do any more
than you know people do your civic duties and pay attention and we love our
school district and people care about the leadership of that so so I do like
seeing it grow well to your point if you're voting in a KDIs DMA election
you're coming to vote in that election it's not that you're coming to vote in
somebody else's election you have to you have made made up your mind so the fact that we don't have
that many uninformed voters is what i would say you've got a really informed electoral yes that's
exactly right and it continues to grow and people are paying attention and you know i especially
love that our our employees not just teachers but our employees understand the importance of
what leader what school board members how they impact what happens to their jobs and their their
um yeah their work workplaces and things and so i like that they're more engaged and i hope they
stay that way and anyway it's difficult to have it spread so 181 square miles that's difficult
we used to have it at wolf and we would have i don't know 100 votes in 10 days right and so we
did close that location because it was so very uh niche and so now you can vote there on election
Election Day but not early voting used to be there for the whole 10 days or whatever it was
so I appreciate going to where the voters are and I hope that they get more and more engaged as they
know that area more thank you for the hard work that you do and big shout out to Miss saber she's
incredibly kind and knowledgeable and if you have a question she answers it if you show up and you're
like oh I forgot to sign here she's just so kind and professional and I so professional I appreciate
her. Somebody has to contrast me. Mr. President. Ms. Champagne. Yes, Mr. Graham, I would like to
first of all say I'm in favor of keeping PAYTO. I know I'm only one person, but I just see it as a
potential to grow, and as we've all been saying, you know, we've been getting better and better
at promoting our own election, and maybe it'll finally start to spark more interest there too,
and especially with the, like how you were saying,
that area north of there is growing so much.
And I think, I like to think of this as like this.
A lot of people that live up in that quadrant
aren't necessarily from Katy.
That's what I'm thinking.
They've moved from somewhere else.
And so they're just learning, you know, about everything.
And maybe they have younger kids out there and everything.
thing and so they're just now getting into the groove and and I just think
that but like with a lot of other things it just takes a little bit of time
that's what I'd like to say about that and then I just want to give my input
about November elections I think that you hit on something I'm gonna go about
the informed voter and when we had the 2020 election I'm not going to discount
the people who won it's just that I think mr. Schulte had 70,000 votes and
And, you know, and although that's great, I don't think that there's necessarily 70,000 people that were necessarily informed about what they were voting on.
I could be wrong, and I hope I am wrong, but I don't think I am wrong.
I think that, you know, the school board is at the bottom of the ballot, and everyone's voting for everything, and then you kind of feel compelled to keep voting all the way down, even for something that you may not know about.
That's kind of when I learned that the May election was valuable because the
people who are coming out to vote in May are people who, like you said, are people
who have made up their minds and they know who they want to vote for and that's all I have to say about that.
Any more questions, Board? Mr. President, who do we talk to about getting to vote anywhere on Election Day?
Who do we call?
Hey, legislators.
Got it.
I'm on it.
Mr. Graham, I know this would open up a whole can of worms, but it just got me thinking.
Do our early voting locations have to stay in the same place during the entire early voting period?
Could we have mobile early voting locations?
Like say the first three days was at Payto and then the second three days was at Freeman.
So your question is can we do that?
My answer is going to be let me look at that and get back to you.
I think that there may be some opportunity for us to do that,
but then you're going to run into the same problem of, well, yeah, I came to the Merrill Center today
because it's been at the Merrill Center all week, and now you're telling me it's at Randolph Elementary or some other place.
And that's why I said the can of worms because I know already it's a struggle to communicate between early voting and voting day and and whatnot. But just as I try to think about it, if if we're catching a certain number of people, each of those locations, does that give us the ability to grab some more over the location?
Well, the good news is on election day that when you go to a voting location, like I said, the Taylor-Pattison-MPJH triangle, you're only going to go to two locations, right?
You're not going to be chasing your tail all day.
You go to one, we'll look you up, and then you'll go to another one.
So, yeah, I know a lot of people actually really enjoy voting on election day because they like the climate of it.
Free and fair elections again.
Thank you.
I love that idea of getting more votes by spreading out the early voting.
Because to go, how is it from Freeman to Jordan?
I mean, Freeman to Pato, it's not that far, but still that would spread it out some more.
And Maid Creek High School isn't an early voting anymore.
Not an early voting location.
In fact, when you look at the, I encourage you to go back and look at the precinct reports that you have.
when we look at we oftentimes my office hears complaints about voter
disenfranchisement north of I-10 west of 99 but if you look especially in my
life today we have several sites I mean we have a ton of sites up in that area
whether it be the Bear Creek or your May Creek junior high or your
Morton Ranch High School but if you look that those areas some of those areas
is like precinct 8 has 44 000 registered voters and they'll have a one or two percent voter turnout
like the voter turnout north of i-10 west of 99 is traditionally our lowest turnout
this time around our highest turnout would have been east of 99 east of 99 sorry this year our
highest turnout would have been on our south side of the district right around 99 so you would have
have been talking about like Creech and Beck and Cinco and Seven Lakes and Beckendorf. Those were
our highest areas. Some of them upwards of 14-15 percent. Mr. President? Ms. Gazelle? One more comment
maybe or a suggestion. You might have already done this but in Pato High School it's a little
awkward. You're coming if you come from the front of the school it's extremely awkward.
It's very confusing to find the poll.
If you come from the back of the school, it's simpler, but not everybody knows that.
So I'm hoping someone's looked at signage somehow, maybe a different way to improve from the busy streets to push them in.
I do agree that it's one of our more difficult areas to find, and that's something we've been trying to address, and we'll continue to look at it.
Thank you.
I have a thought towards the November elections.
I'm not really one way or the other, to be honest.
But what I'm hearing is you want more ideas about getting voter engagement, voter engagement, voter engagement.
But we don't want to do the November election where there is extremely high voter engagement.
And I hear what you're saying about the uninformed voter, but you have such investment and such desire to get out and to impact, specifically because of a presidential election oftentimes or a primary election.
you would have informed voters who would be wanting to dig in to see and if you're really
wanting to get the most amount of voters to engage in the process in the election that is going to
have the most impact on them like yes your president matters and yes your state senator
matters all those things matter but your school board sets your tax rate so that's going to have
the most felt impact on a voter is their school board so when you give them the
opportunity to engage because oftentimes what I would think that we would find so
the time that you get to May you have a lot of voter apathy they're exhausted
they don't want to engage in the process anymore because they oftentimes like
with this last presidential election they're tired they don't want to
to continue to engage in the political rhetoric and just the exhaustion of what goes with
the campaign, which I get.
I'm not knocking anybody for that.
So allowing the voter to have that.
at that moment in November, if you're looking for engagement, it makes sense to at least consider,
and I understand the cost aspect of that, but is the juice worth the squeeze there? Is it worth it?
I think that the financial investment into having more voter engagement absolutely is worth it if
we're trying to capture the voice of the community. Why would we not go to where they're speaking the
the loudest, which is in a November election. It's just something to weigh. Like I said,
it's, I get it when you look at May, you do have an informed voter base that's really
focused in on the school board election on a local issue. You can make that argument,
but if you're trying to capture the most amount of voice of people looking at November,
makes sense. That's just my thought towards it.
Mr. President, may I please address that since I understand what you're saying and I actually see your point, Mrs. Callahan, I actually do.
But I would be curious as if we did some kind of, if you ever could, but we probably could never do this, but could survey the people who actually voted in November.
because most of those people are not coming out to vote for school board,
and they have no idea that even school board is even going to be on there.
So they're coming out there to vote for their president and their higher people.
They have no idea of this.
So now all of a sudden they're going to see the school board is at the bottom,
and like I said earlier, they're going to feel compelled to vote,
but they don't have any idea who those people are.
So they're just going to randomly, oh, that's the guy, or that's the first one,
or that's the woman or whatever it is, you know, that their emotion is going to play into that.
Or they like that name or something or they recognize that name,
but they don't know anything about that person.
So that's what I would be concerned about.
And also another thing is I think that a lot of people, I can't speak for all people,
but I know a lot of people don't really like national politics being mixed in with local politics.
and so I think that that's you know once we get to that national you know the
November election it does kind of blur the line of the national or state bigger
politics and with the local politics it just kind of gets blurry some people
don't care about voting in the national election and would only vote for school
board or vice versa that was this is my two cents but I see what I understand
understand what you're saying and I and I value what you're saying also I just
wanted to say my piece on that mr. president I'm gonna weigh in too I
appreciate what you're saying too but the primary election is our real
election I tell people all the time you've got to vote in the primary that's
where you're choosing your candidate because by the time you vote in the
November election you vote in party lines for the most part not everyone
does but for the most part you're gonna vote for the party and you're gonna go
down and look for everybody in the party you you you believe in march primary is what matters
choose the best person that you want there the same with school board if you want to choose
who's setting your tax rate who's determining the kind of school district you're going to have if
you want success like what kdisd has choose the leaders that sit at this desk that's where you go
in May, go vote for the leaders who will make sure that your school district serves students,
hires the best teachers, teachers that they provide the best environments, that we have
quality facilities.
If you need to care, but you need to show up and talk about who you want to be in school
board and in November, by the time you get to the bottom of the ballot, have people call
me all the time, which judge should I vote for?
And I'm like, I don't know all the judges.
Well, tell me who.
Should I just vote for the woman?
No.
No, you should vote for, you know, do the research.
And I do the research, so I'll tell them why, but not of them.
Most of them don't.
They'll vote for two, three people, or they'll just go through and choose the name.
And that's not the May election gives us an informed electorate,
and I really appreciate that.
And it's nonpartisan as it should be.
Any more questions, comments, discussion?
No.
8.1 Discuss and consider the approval of an interlocal agreement with the City of Bellville concerning an in-kind equipment swap.
Well, thank you, Mr. Graham.
I believe you're the presenter for the next section.
As we move on to discussion action section 8.1,
discuss and consider the approval of an interlocal agreement with the city of
Belleville concerning an in-kind equipment swap.
So, trustees, move down to the table because this is a discussion and
consideration item for you.
I don't have a presentation.
I apologize for adding this to the regular board meeting agenda.
Chief and I didn't actually have an opportunity to speak until last Monday.
And so what you have in front of you is an interlocal agreement, fairly standard.
We used to have a K-9 unit here in Katy.
We outsource that to a company now on an as-needed basis.
And as part of that, we actually had a carrier.
So if you think of the back seat of the Tahoe, there was a cage there.
It's a cage, very nice carrier that the K-9 would get in and out of.
We've since removed that because we don't need it.
It's just been sitting in our shop.
Well, as it turns out, the city of Belleville's police department is starting their K-9 unit,
and I believe that they have a need for it.
I don't know if our police departments have been talking.
And they have the partition that we would need to put back into our Tahoe or our SUV
that would make it to where we could transport passengers again.
It's an in-kind swap.
I think it makes complete sense for both taxing entities to do this
The reason that I brought it to you as an inter-local agreement is it does have taxpayer dollars assigned to it inter-local agreements must be
Approved by the Board of Trustees under chapter 791. So therefore we just need your simple
Vote and agreement on this tonight happy taking questions you may have
Any questions board
Then I will entertain a motion mr. Mr. President champagne
I move that the Board of Trustees approves of an interlocal agreement with the City of Belleville concerning an in-kind equipment swap.
Second.
It is moved and seconded that the Board of Trustees approves of an interlocal agreement with the City of Belleville concerning an in-kind equipment swap.
We'll now proceed to vote. Board members, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad.
All right, the motion passes 6-0.
8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Katy Independent School District compensation plan and compensation increase for the 2025 - 2026 school year.
We'll move on to item 8.2, discuss and consider board approval of the Katy Independent School
District Compensation Plan and compensation increase for the 25-26 school year, presenter
Brian Schuss.
So tonight we're not having necessarily the presentation that was presented last week.
Sorry, I was just trying to make Brian squirm over here.
and so if there's more discussion let's go for it otherwise have a motion I'll
hear a motion yeah mr. president I wanted to make a few comments just
because I'll go for it thank you sir so just to be clear this benchmark years of
service payment is in every five years of service is in addition to salary
increases that teachers receive there's some community confusion about that last
Last year, all teachers received the salary increase that we gave, and then some teachers were especially thanked with this benchmark years of service payment.
So this year, a different set of loyal teachers will be thanked with these payments if they're approved, if it's approved.
So if we don't pass the benchmark years of payment, for example, a teacher with 20 years of experience,
She will not receive the extra thousand dollars that she was scheduled to receive if we had if we approved the benchmark years of payment
a
25 year teacher isn't going to receive the thousand 750 that they were scheduled to receive this year a 30 year teacher
$2,000 that's in addition to the salary increase that the state provided
So those are
are substantial dollars to me. The cost of this last year was less than, or was about $860,000.
That's a very small amount. This year it's a little more. It's a million. It's already budgeted,
as Mr. Chris Smith had stated last week. So we're not considering something that we can't afford.
We can afford this, and we're spending a great deal of time on something, a very small amount,
which is for teachers at that so we're expected to have a very good amount of
under spending right and a very healthy general fund balance our deficit will be
eliminated or minimal that's what's expected with a lot of good amount of
under spending that we expect we spent a million plus on some police cars that we
needed uh it's important uh we barely had any discussion on that um and teachers are that much
more important right or um yeah i think they're more important um some of you talk about distributing
the amount of money to all teachers that's discussed right uh so distributing the million
dollars that it would cost for these benchmark year of payments across all 6887 teachers
only amounts to about $145 for a teacher is that really meaningful right so the
district already honors and record that recognizes teachers on their five-year
anniversaries they get a little pin lapel pin I would like to see the
district give them some cash on their on their when the budget allows and our
budget does allow for this even more so this year so I and again this is not a
salary increase this is a very special thank you that changes the more
experience you have and longer you stay with our district it's very similar to
what corporate America does yet they don't get cash usually usually it's a
you get to pick out of catalog and you got to get a clock or some strange
blender but this is cash that I want to give to teachers so I'm just I'd like to
encourage you all to think about this and please consider including the
benchmark years of service payments in this year's compensation plan.
And if we think these payments aren't enough, we can certainly consider increasing them
if you wanted to.
But at the very least, could we please consider keeping this in the compensation plan?
That said, I want to do also all that we can for paras.
I don't know if we've really discussed different ways or different monies that we
could potentially apply to our paras um there's amazing work that they do and i i hear that from
teachers who who want their paras recognized not just the paras themselves um you know one one line
item that we might could look at and and there was some discussion i hope we can discuss it more
tonight is the first and second year classroom teachers um you know giving them a raise already
when their salary has already been it's very current to market so that I believe
that figure was 1.7 million that mr. Smith quoted that's something perhaps we
could use towards Perez or differently I also have a comment about the stipends
should I continue mr. president all right all right this year I realized the
focus was on athletics as mr. shush mentioned I had a question and then I
want to continue on athletic stipends but I had a fine arts director very well
respected and successful tell me that they have not changed the fine arts
stipends I realize that's not the focus but they haven't changed in 15 years is
that do you find that about accurate is that correct
well actually there was a fine arts review last year right and some of those
stipends were adjusted i don't have all that with me tonight but but i can get that for you okay
because that seems uh you know that's something we need to address if that's the case perhaps
certain fine arts stipends changed last year but maybe not the ones that needed to or just wanted
to provide that then the um athletic stipends we didn't really talk about stipends last week
i know you you presented them mr shush thank you for that but we as a board didn't really talk
talk about them and I was able to talk to a few coaches before this meeting
tonight and just overall you know before I say all this I want to say that I love
my great state of Texas I'm a sixth generation Texan my my dad played
football at A&M so I I know what Texas football is and I appreciate it but
these stipends that we are presenting all assistant confer this is one data
point the assistant coaches of all non football sports make less than the
football assistant coaches okay so let's let's come up with an example that's
fairly fair I think the volleyball season is very similar to the length of
the football season right but the the volleyball assistant coach her stipend
his or her stipend is less than half of the football varsity first assistant
coach it's it's less than any football assistant coach the volleyball stipend
that's the same with boys and girls non footballs but soccer baseball softball I
realize there's probably seasons that need to be looked at in the length of
time so that's why I like the volleyball football comparison it's fairly similar
they start early in the summer they end in November so I just it doesn't seem
fair to me is there any justification for that is there something we could
maybe look at further when we look at these typically and if we compare to
other school districts it's it's comparing sport to sport I understand
what you're saying I do just you know how we look at it when we look at it
kind of from a market base, and then we work with, when it comes to athletics, Mrs. Hack,
and then the athletics team review that information and then take their recommendations.
And that's how the one adjustment came to be this year.
I do understand your comment, but I don't know that I can fully answer that this evening,
unless Ms. Hack wants to jump in.
Yes, I'm happy to answer questions.
I will tell you in review of stipends that is done in conjunction athletic directors the fine art directors CTE
directors and
academic directors Danielle over all our academic
Programs we look at the stipends within each of the departments and we do market comparison. We pull the same district
Districts across the board and look at them and then as a group we look and see where we are off
by some and those are the ones that we will recommend we try to
pretty much done a review year over year and we have made adjustments to fine art
stipends in recent years theater being one the two that you're looking at tonight
coach carter came in with a couple adjustments on that one athletic stipend knowing that this
was a year that we're also we're very careful because of the deficit budget we want to be
cognizant of that as well but i will tell you miss Cuzela the stipends are reviewed every year
as a group and as a team.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
So the only athletic stipend that was adjusted,
please correct me if I'm wrong,
which is the focus this year,
was the assistant athletic director.
That's the only one that was adjusted.
But that's the focus for this year.
Okay, so the rest of the stipends,
there was a lot of stipends,
particularly in cheer and dance, I believe,
quite substantial, the changes.
those are not athletic so correct and and because there were very few uh and this does happen from
year to year you know we we we don't necessarily go do a full deep dive into ones that aren't on
the rotation but if somebody brings us a concern we're going to listen to that and since there
weren't a whole lot of adjustments this year and we did um have discussions pretty if i miss hack
If I remember this correctly, it was pretty soon after the compensation plan was approved last year, this concern arose from cheer and dance.
And, you know, we said, hey, we'll take that into consideration and we'll look at that for next year.
And those may be some of the ones you were discussing earlier because I do believe it had been many years since those had not been adjusted.
And so that's why we went ahead and did that this year.
um so so the compare thank you the comparison of athletic stipends is not you're not this is it
sounds like you're more looking market to market district to district which is a fair comparison i
get it but within uh sport to sport i'd like us to consider that i don't know if this board will
entertain that but i'd love if we could spend a little more time i'd like to see if we could do
more for these non-football sport coaches perhaps it's not equivalent but
something and the Delta's seem so big so I just this is the year for athletics so
I'd like I don't know if anyone has any comments about that on the board but
it's something that jumped out at me and then I spoke to coaches asking if I'm
off here on do you have any input and that's what I heard so thank you
other questions for mr. mr. president the champagne I'd like to address the
the teacher retainment and recruitment incentive that we did last year and I
appreciate you very much the way you presented that because you know I just
just want to make sure that people know that this is not something we're taking away.
And unfortunately, this is something that has to be voted on again every year.
And it's just like the lump sum payment at Christmas time that we used to do and all
that.
It has to be re-voted on every year.
But last year, the reason why I was personally, one of the reasons I was personally not in
favor of it is because it did exclude so many people.
and I'm not just talking about the years of teachers that weren't going to get it,
but it was only addressing teachers.
And so I think about half our staff are teachers.
Is that right, about half?
Okay, so about half our staff are teachers,
and then only 20% in any given year would get that.
So really only about 10% of our entire staff would get that year to year.
And 50% of the people would never get it.
So that's why I just don't, in general,
people that work at KDISD don't like the being excluded from it.
Because whether you're a para or a bus driver or a principal
or a custodian or a police officer
or someone who works in maintenance operations,
you know they all contribute to the success of the student so last year it
was it was kind of like said over and over and over again by the prior board
president that they only wanted to to reward teachers and I just think that
that's a bad direction and I'm happy that the state has given enough money
that the majority of our teachers are going to get a substantial raise this
year and that we have found a way to get the first and second teachers more I see
what you're saying about that too you know that they already make pretty good
but and that everyone else is going to get a 3% raise and I feel happy about
that because I even though the people like I've been hearing from people that
say well three percent is only blah blah blah and i know it's not 2500 and i know it's not 5 000
but it is more than what the state gave us and so the state was only going to give us i think
i think what y'all said last week was 1.4 percent or something like that for everybody else and
we're finding a way to do three percent and it includes everyone that's why i'm in favor of not
not including the retainment recruitment incentive plan that we had last year.
Mr. President, can I respond?
Okay, so I hear you're saying you want to make sure everybody gets something,
and I understand that, and we are giving everybody something this year.
Everyone's getting a 3% raise.
Everyone's getting the 20, or we'll discuss year one and year two,
But there's twenty five hundred and five thousand dollar increases to salaries for all teachers for almost all teachers if not all
and that amounts to about I
Believe it's about six to seven and a half percent raise for our teachers
Per this from the state. That's what the state provided which is wonderful, so everyone is getting something with those
increases, but three percent or the
the bonus or the increase that the state provided.
So just something that doesn't cost a lot.
It's budgeted.
We can afford it.
And we're going to thank our experienced teachers.
It's a thank you in the form of money in their pocket.
I don't understand why we'd take that away.
Excuse me, Mr. President.
But as you said, it's a thank you.
But you're only thanking teachers.
every year it's the difference I know but it's only teachers we're not we're
not going to give anything like that to the principal the system principal the
librarian the counselor the nurse the parrot anybody else only the teacher and
I'm not discounting the importance of a teacher but they're not the most they're
not the only important person in our equation so by only rewarding them at
those levels then you're saying everybody else who has 30 years you know
be happy with your 3% raise or your $5,000, but we're not going to give you any kind of lump sum.
Who are we not going to give?
Well, any other employee who reaches the 30-
A non-teacher.
Right.
Anybody else.
And that's what I'm saying.
Yes, everyone's going to get something, but it's like you said, you know, they're going to get the pen.
You know, last year I heard the $250.
$50 the reason why that was important is just because it was like a little thank you not that it was substantial the business of
Thank you. Well, what about the the counselor that's been there for five years? So what about the librarian that's been there for five years?
You know you're leaving all them out
That was that was what I was trying to say. Mr. President. Ms. Galvin
So I listened to some the meeting that I missed last week and got up to speed on kind of what we were talking about
with the teacher retention
attention. When we did that, my thought towards that and kind of the discussion as a whole was,
and what's been reiterated again and again, is that we have a teacher shortage across Texas.
This is statewide. So the job market as the employer is going to be pretty competitive,
if I'm not mistaken. If there's a teacher shortage, then that means that everybody's
hiring teachers. That means everybody's trying to get teachers into the door and to keep them there,
not just to get them in the door for a little bit, but we want retainment.
So if we need a competitive edge, yes, the state is doling out the money to raise what we're paying them across,
and they're telling us we have to do this, which is great.
I think that this is what we've been shouting about for quite a while now is that teachers needed raises
and we needed to have the money for public education put back into public education,
which is what we're seeing reflected here with the 3% raise across the board.
However, again, to give us a competitive edge to say, hey, this is something that's unique to Katie.
This is something that is unique to Katie that we reward loyalty, that we want to reward you for retaining you here,
just to give us that little bit of competitive edge, like I said, to say this is why we want you to stay here.
This is why we want you to grow here.
This is why we want you to be a veteran teacher here because we need veteran teachers as well
This isn't just about just our first and second year teachers while we desperately need them, too
We also desperately need veteran teachers to stay on to help bring up
Those that are new to the new to the teaching so I understand what you're saying of not wanting to
exclude anyone
one, but the teacher is the one that's in the trenches in the classroom, and she's the one,
or he is the one, that is really carrying a very, very large load. Not to say that anybody else is
also not helping to shoulder that burden, but we have reiterated this, like I said already,
again and again, there's a teacher shortage across Texas. I'm not the only one saying that.
that. Dr. Graborski coined that earlier tonight. He didn't coin that there is a different shortage
across Texas, which I'm sure there is, but there is a specific teacher shortage. So if there is a
way for us to, again, step out and say, hey, we do things differently in Katy. This is why Katy
is different. This is what makes us special here. One of the things that incentivizes you to stay
that doesn't cost us a whole lot. I don't know why we wouldn't do that. Beyond that, if this is
something that we need to continue to flesh out and we need to continue to talk about more,
we haven't had our committee meetings yet. Our finance committee meeting has not. We haven't
met yet since we've adjusted things with the new election. If this is something that we need to
continue to talk about while we're voting and we're passing on what we need to with a compensation
plan but removing that teacher retainment of this stipend that we're
talking about right now to vote on that later I think that that could be
positive so that we can continue to discuss this and continue to flush this
out to see what this looks like long term again I know we already did this
but let's I think it warrants further discussion if we're looking again my
largest argument is we just need something to make us stand out just a
little bit more than everybody else and this may be that thing mr president missini um just i just
want to quickly remind my colleagues that every teacher is getting either 5 000 or 2500 so that's
great but it doesn't help us compete with other neighboring districts because they're everybody's
getting it so that's why i'm in favor in keeping this benchmark because it does help us have that
competitive edge that maybe our neighbors don't have so considering it's
something that statewide and all teachers are getting we that's great but
it doesn't help us compete further so that's how I view it mr. president I
moved to amend the motion for the Board of Trustees to approve the compensation
plan as recommended and the compensation increase for 2025 2026 school year
but include the benchmark years of service one-time lump sum payments using the same
structure as was used last year postpone the decision on athletic stipends until this july
or august still include the third to fourth excuse me the first and second year classroom
teachers who will receive a twenty five hundred dollar stipend the third and fourth year classroom
teachers who will receive a $2,500 increase through the House bill to
teacher retention allotment TRA the fifth year and beyond classroom teachers
who will receive a $5,000 increase through this TRA and all other employees
will receive a 3% increase from the midpoint of the pay grade second so do
you mean you want to make the motion yes not an amendment I made an amendment but
But there is no motion on the floor.
Amendment can only be made to a motion.
you're just moving that we do that yes I don't understand there's no motion so
which I think what this gazelle was saying is she was amending the motion as
written in our thing she's not actually amending a motion she's making making
this whole motion as she's like all right so we have a motion presented and
seconded any more discussion board mr. president so my discussion is that while
I I think teachers deserve way more I think they should be paid like
superstars like Taylor Swift and JJ Watt and all the best I think they should be
paid like they are because they're superstars but when you choose which
which ones get something extra.
You can call it a thank you,
but it creates angst and hard feelings and bitterness
when a 31-year teacher is next door
to a newer teacher in her fifth or sixth year
and helping and doing all those things
and you see someone who's rather new,
or it doesn't matter, you see someone getting it
and you're not because you were off a year.
And now the 30-year teacher makes more
than the 34 year teacher the 15 year teacher makes more than the 19 year teacher it just creates
angst and i heard from teachers and principals and campuses that that created such hard feelings that
nobody believes they deserve more and so having a structure where the next year you make more
and this $5,000, they're thankful for that, and the $2,500, I just don't think it creates the environment that we want,
and we have no data or statistics to prove that someone is staying in Katy because they're getting an extra $500 or $750 or $1,000 coming up if they stay two more years.
So I don't think we have any data to prove that, and I don't think that's why teachers stay.
Teachers want to be in Katy because we're Katy.
They like the structure we have.
They like the support that happens, and we're at the top of the pay scale.
Not that that's the reason they come anyway.
People want to be in Katy even if they were not getting paid more.
Mr. President, just to gently push back on that,
the reason we don't have any data is because we haven't done it before.
So we can't have data on something that hasn't been done.
So we don't know if anybody would stay because we haven't done it.
We haven't done like a five-year cohort to say, hey, did this work?
Did this not work?
We haven't measured anything out.
We don't know what this looks like long-term because we did a payout one time.
And now we're saying, well, we're just going to be done with it.
So I understand what you're saying of like, okay, well, they're not staying here because of that.
but we still have a teacher shortage in Katy.
So we still have teachers that are leaving the profession in Katy
just as much as they're leaving the profession in HISD or in CyFair
or anywhere across Texas.
They're all still leaving.
So you still have to have, I'm going to say it again,
a competitive advantage here and to use this, throw whatever you got at it.
And then in five years you can come back and say,
hey did this work or did this not work was this money well spent or was this not money well spent
we tried our best and yes it worked we're seeing retainment of teachers staying year after year
i think we could keep doing this or hey we gave it our best shot it didn't work we tried we got to do
something different mr president miss steamy thank you um i hear what you're saying mrs fox but i
also hear what mrs calhoun is saying and i agree we don't have any data but i think it's because
we haven't done it very long but i will tell you i do have some data because i have spoken with
numerous teachers that were looking forward to this and are heartbroken that this board is going
to take it away so um i i understand the dad the data piece um i understand also there's not time
for it but I have heard feedback and it you know when people have budgeted for
this I have a hard time I have a real hard time mr. president it was very
clear last year that this could be a one-time opportunity so to budget for it
would be unfortunate and I too have had tons of feedback and it was like why we
don't like it we don't like the division we don't like the hard feelings I feel
I feel guilty because I got it.
I can't believe they give it to some and not all.
And if they care about seasoned teachers, why didn't they give it to everybody over 20 years?
And this is a finite amount of money divided between a handful of people.
And we saw tonight with the work that's happening by incredible people at this building getting ready to make a big, huge investment and transition for our students and opportunities.
And none of those people were included with what the state thought would be best to spend money, which is teacher retention.
attention and I appreciate what the state did a six and a half to six and a half to seven percent
raise for teachers is a great reason to stay in teaching it's a great reason for teachers to come
to teaching it's what the state intended I'm grateful for that and I think that that's the
piece that will be great for Katie Iced is the six and a half to seven percent raise that classroom
teachers only will be getting mr. president the champagne I just want to
restate that it's disingenuous to say that we're taking it out we're not
taking it out every year we have to vote it in it's not in the budget it's no but
it's not in policy can you find it in a policy so we're it's not taking it out
we have to revote for it every year just like when we did the lump sum for the
the Christmas time and the first of the year we had to revote it in every year
and that's what I stated probably a dozen times last year in the in the
special meeting that we had that wasn't recorded that every year this is not a
guarantee so every year we have to restart over with this and so you can't
guarantee that the next board is going to want to do what the last board did
you can't make promises like we can't make a promise this year for what the
board wants to do next year so you can't put some unless you change a policy
maybe that is more substantial and has more you know feet in it but just this
that we just put into the budget last year is not something to be counted on
and so we're not taking it out we'd have to revote it in mr. president so so the
million dollars is in the budget like trustee team he said it's already been
budgeted it's there so financially it's there maybe it's not in writing in our compensation
plan i understand your point but in reality it's there money-wise in our budget that our
great cfo has presented so now if we don't include it we're going to be moving that million where do
you suggest that million go where are you wanting that to go that's that's are you can we are we
going to be creative and maybe talk about paras how we can pay them more do none of you want to
entertain any of this you just want to rubber stamp what you've been presented
or can we talk creatively about some things about how to help our frontline
people that are with students with with all due respect I don't want to rubber
stamp what you're suggesting I want to use that million dollars to add into the
little bit of money that we got from the state that added up to 1.4 percent for
for all everybody else and maybe that number becomes 1.5% I don't know but we're going
to give 3% so maybe that million dollars gets added back into that portion of the money
that we can divide up between all the rest of the employees that's so I'm not the financial
person but that's where I assume it would go.
My experience over the past six years has been every time we've tried to separate, whether it was forced upon us or maybe the board thought it was a good idea,
has been every time we've separated any of our employees, it's been a bad thing.
We've had principals stand here when principals were going to be cut out.
We've had ICs stand here when they were not included.
When an attendance incentive says if you come to work and work you'll get a bonus
Our employees shows not to continue to get that bonus
When it actually helped help have more
substitutes available
And then in 2019 when our government also told us that it's only classroom teachers
That also was a pushback and so
So I'm a slow learner, but I think I've seen every time from 2019 until now, any time we've
tried to separate, it hasn't worked.
As far as what to do with the million, I believe part of the reason we've been so successful
financially as a district is because we've tried to move towards a balanced budget.
And so I don't see when we're in a deficit and we say there's a million dollars that
we're not going to spend.
I don't just say we should go put that somewhere else.
I think we should not have it in our budget.
Be closer to a balanced budget.
And then, again, what I've seen our administration do is when there is money left over.
2019, I believe it was, we got a late insurance payment.
Maybe in 2020 it came in from Harvey or somewhere along those lines.
and we ended up doing a return to school August bonus oh sorry not bonus a one-time lump sum
payment and we did a end of the year payment because anytime those dollars have been there
and it has been financially responsible our district our financial office this board has a
history of doing the right thing with that money not just sitting it popping it in the bank account
We we wisely look at it and say what is this best use for is our fund balance growing are we are we hitting those?
buckets that allow us next time
We run into some type of hyperinflation
We're able to run that the way we have been
Right because we've made wise decisions in the past
It's allowed us these past three years to operate in a healthy way that we haven't had to add to fund balance that we haven't had
To make all these super tough decisions. We've made some tough decisions
but we haven't had to shut schools down right and so that that's why I would be
in support of as it's written but as we're looking at unless anybody else has
anything dad mr. president thank you so but as mr. Smith presented last week our
projected fund balance as a percentage of expenses is less than the last two
years less than the last two budgets okay it's it's 27% so it's gone down
great so we're in a really good position fund balance has gone down in the
percentage of expenses excuse me
am I looking at this correctly yeah the fund balances percent of expenses was
35.6 percent okay sorry that's so it's it's lower i apologize so that's a bad example in that case
but it's within a few percentages of how we've been operating the last two years i guess
um i apologize i looked at that wrong um and he made the comment we have a bunch of underspending
that we're going to realize to where it'll bring us to a low deficit of 10 million or nothing if i
that's how I understood him if anybody heard it differently let me know so
we're in a very healthy position and we've got a million to spend on teachers
I just it hurts to not do that and in your comment you might think of this all
of you who want to give the same amount to everybody we're not given the same
amount to our teachers the state didn't give them the same amount so our our
are less than five years of experience are getting half of what the rest of the teachers are getting.
So what are we going to do with that?
Do you think somehow that's okay in this case?
How are we going to, do you think there's going to be a lot of discord and division?
Do you understand my point here?
Mr. President, I don't know what the correct motion is,
but could we just take the vote we we have to vote on on what was presented first um mr president i
move uh to uh or sorry i make a result that go with what you already have your motion which i'll
say so okay that was what was written to repeat it minus just make sure i was trying to write it
down while you're going through it what's presented on the paper minus athletic stipends plus last
last year's retainment recruitment program.
Oh, not minus the athletic stipends, but please.
Put them on hold.
Oh, please, yeah.
Okay, okay.
So it's what is written, what Ms. Cuzela
has put a motion on the floor, I'm a second in,
was what is written, putting the athletic stipends on hold,
and then reintroducing last year's retainment.
And so being that there is a motion,
we will now proceed to vote.
Members, please record your vote on the screen,
be your keypad all right motion did not pass we will resume we can resume for
someone else mr. president miss champagne I move that the Board of
Trustees approves the compensation plan as recommended and the compensation
increase for the 2025-2026 school year which includes first and second year
year classroom teachers will receive a $2,500 stipend. Third to fourth year classroom teachers
will receive a $2,500 increase through the House Bill 2 Teacher Retention Allotment, or TRA. Fifth
year and beyond classroom teachers will receive a $5,000 increase through the TRA. All other
employees will receive a 3% increase from the midpoint of the pay grade. I have a motion. Is
Motion and a second.
It is moved and seconded that the Board of Trustees approves the compensation plan as recommended
and the compensation increase for the 2025-2026 school year,
which includes first and second year classroom teachers will receive a $2,500 stipend.
Third and fourth year classroom teachers will receive a $2,500 increase
through the House Bill 2 teacher retention allotment, otherwise known as the TRA.
Fifth year and beyond classroom teachers will receive a $5,000 increase through the TRA.
All of their employees will receive a 3% increase from the midpoint of the pay grade
We'll now proceed to vote board members. Please record your vote on the screen via a keypad
And the motion passes 6 to 1 I
9. Consent Agenda
Will now move on to item number 9 consent agenda a consent agenda shall include items that were discussed and considered at the previous work
study board meeting as well as items of recurring nature the board shall be furnished with background
material for each item consent agenda items shall be grouped together under one action item
all items shall be acted upon by one vote without separate discussion unless a board member requests
that an item be withdrawn for individual consideration be legal and be local are there
any items that any board members would like to remove from the consent agenda
all right being that there are none to remove I'll entertain a motion mr. president I move
that the Board of Trustees approves the consent agenda for items nine point one through nine point
one four second all right it is moved and seconded that the Board of Trustees approves the consent
items consent agenda items nine point one through nine point one four well now proceed to vote or
Board members, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad.
And the motion passes 7-0.
10. Information Items
We'll move on to item 10, information items, board committee updates.
What I was going to share tonight was that last month we sent out any of the assignments just for the public to know,
asked the board what committees they were interested in to be a part of, and then signed those.
I think everybody was able to get at least one of the committees that they wanted to be a part of
And then we'll move between now and the next board meeting assigning or setting up some of those meetings
I do believe that there were two that were currently on the schedule
Maybe the Finance Committee already had one and then the academic committee I believe already has one scheduled and so we're work on getting the other
one scheduled
the only other thing was going to share is
is somebody made fun of our ties earlier.
Ms. Champagne here, if you notice,
has some cords around her neck
because this past Friday evening,
she completed her participation in Leadership TASB
and becomes the fifth or fourth trustee here in KDIC
to earn the designation of Master Trustee.
And so thank you, Ms. Champagne, congratulations.
Congratulations.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
What you don't know is she's on her own dime, spent months traveling around the, not months,
I mean, it's like four long weekends going all the way from El Paso to San Antonio to,
where else did y'all go?
College Station.
We went to College Station, Austin, and Fort Worth, and then I had to do a presentation
in San Antonio.
So congratulations.
Thank you.
Thank you.
A recap of board member requests for information.
Madam Secretary, did we have any requests?
The only thing that I had was, did you want,
it was your request, did you want to see information
about changing in the early voting,
if that would be possible to change the locations
within early voting?
When he gets that information, that'll be great.
Thank you.
Ms. Coughlin, you had asked about expense for
insurance and Mr. Nauman answered that. Did that answer what you were asking for?
Yeah, Mr. He had said that there was no expense, that there was no anticipated extra expense for
younger drivers driving our school buses, if I caught that correctly. So we could verify that,
make sure that that's accurate make sure that that's right just for cost analysis
it would be the person to verify it so that would be the all right so we don't
11. Future Meetings
need that one all right well then move on to number 11 future meetings we'll
have a work-study meeting on Monday July 21st 2025 there will be a regular board
meeting on Monday July 28th 2025 there being no further business before the
board this meeting is adjourned the time is 8 55 pm
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.