Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this work study meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independence School District to order.
Katy ISD · Work Study Meeting
Katy ISD Work Study Meeting, August 18, 2025
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In this meeting
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- 0:04 to 0:30 1. Call to Order
- 0:30 to 1:27 2. Pledges of Allegiance
- 1:27 to 1:50 4. Closed Meeting
- 1:50 to 5:00 5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 5:00 to 19:41 6. Reports
- 19:41 to 47:08 7.1 Presentation of the 2025-2026 Proposed Budget and Tax Rate.
- 47:08 to 1:07:32 8.1 Discuss and consider SB12 Resolution.
- 1:07:32 to 1:13:43 8.2 Discuss and consider Board Approval of the June 2025 Financial Reports.
- 1:13:43 to 1:20:59 8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the proposed 2024-2025 final amended budget.
- 1:20:59 to 1:22:26 8.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of a resolution to commit and assign fund balance.
- 1:22:26 to 1:24:21 8.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2025-2026 State Compensatory Education funding and other End-of-Course Assessment funding budget, as required by House Bill 5.
- 1:24:21 to 1:32:02 8.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of the proposed 2025-2026 Official Budget for Katy Independent School District.
- 1:32:02 to 1:33:59 8.7 Discuss and consider Board Approval of the claims administration by Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Risk Management Fund for workers compensation claims.
- 1:33:59 to 1:35:39 8.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of the delivery method for the new Opportunity Awareness Center facility.
- 1:35:39 to 1:52:15 8.9 Discuss and consider Board approval to award a contract for design services necessary for a new Opportunity Awareness Center facility.
- 1:52:15 to 1:52:52 8.10 Discuss and consider Board approval of the delivery method update for Junior High School #19.
- 1:52:52 to 1:56:46 8.11 Discuss and consider Board approval of nominating candidates to fill an unexpected vacancy on the Board of Directors for the Harris Central Appraisal District.
- 1:56:46 to 2:38:10 8.12 Discuss and consider CW Local Policy.
- 2:38:10 to 2:38:38 9. Consent Items
- 2:38:38 to 2:40:21 10. Information Items
- 2:40:21 to 2:40:35 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, August 18, 2025, and the time is 5 o'clock p.m.
Dr. Gorgorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to the notice for this meeting?
Mr. Redman, I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting today.
2. Pledges of Allegiance
Thank you. We'll now move on to pledges of allegiance. KDIC officer Robert Lister will lead us in the pledges of allegiance.
Amen.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Honor the Texas flag.
I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.
Thank you.
Do we have any scouts in the audience this evening?
No.
All right.
We will now move on to public comment.
And tonight we do not have any speakers signed up to speak.
So this will conclude the open forum portion of our meeting.
4. Closed Meeting
The Board will now convene and close meeting as authorized under section 551.001 of the Texas Government Code for the following purposes.
Texas Government Code 551.071, 551.074, and 551.129.
5. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
The board will now reconvene in open meeting.
Today is Monday, August 18, 2025, and the time is 6.55 p.m.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's work-study meeting.
Each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Friday, August 15, 2025.
25 the board will receive information recommendation from staff administration and superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting
Board members will be able to ask questions receive answers and should be prepared to take action
The board is just reconvened from closed meeting in accordance with chapter 551 of the Texas government code
Any actions arising from discussion in the closed meeting must be taken in an open meeting?
Trustees I will now entertain a motion for this item
Mr. President.
Ms. Champagne.
I move that the Board of Trustees, are we on 5.1?
5.1, yes.
That the Board of Trustees approves the adoption of resolution approving contingent fee legal services contract,
including findings needed for submission of contingent fee legal services agreement
and request for expedited review by the Texas Attorney General as discussed in closed meeting.
Second.
It is moved and seconded that the Board of Trustees approves of the adoption of resolution approving contingent fee legal services contract,
including findings needed for submission of contingent fee legal services agreement
and request for expedited review by the Texas Attorney General as discussed in closed meeting.
We will now proceed to vote.
Board members, please record your vote on the screen via your keypad.
Mr. Cross, we're voting on item 5.1 if you're interested in voting.
No worries.
Motion passes 6-1.
We'll now move on to 5.2, consideration and approval of contingent fee legal services agreement
with Thompson Horton LLP Island and Bonin PC and Oh Hanlon Demerath and
Castillo PC mr. president miss Fox I move that the Board of Trustees approves
the contingent fee legal services agreement with Thompson and Horton LLP
Island and Bonin PC and Oh Hanlon Oh Hanlon Demerath and Castillo PC as
discussed in closed meeting second it's moved and seconded that the Board of
Trustees approves of the contingent fee legal services agreement with Thompson
Horton LLP Island and bone in PC and Oh Hanlon Demerath and Castillo PC as
discussed in closed meeting will now proceed to vote board members please
record your vote on the key screen to your keypad motion passes six to one
6. Reports
We'll now move on to the reports. Item 6.1, the 2025 state accountability ratings. Is it 2025 or is it 2025? Our presenter Natalie Martinez, Executive Director of School Improvement. Thank you.
Good evening, President Redmond, School Board, Dr. Gagorski. Tonight I will be presenting the 2025 accountability ratings, which were released by TEA last week.
week. Our KDISD district overall rating is an 88B. This is up from our 87-2024 rating.
For a comparison, we look at large districts across the state and of the 10 largest districts
in the state of Texas, KDISD earned the highest overall score of an 88. Thank you. Clap right
there. We also ranked highest for each domain, including
including Closing the Gap, which focuses on individual student groups, their performance,
growth, CCMR, and graduation rates.
The overall rating is determined by three domains.
Domain one is student achievement, which includes STAR, and for high school it also includes
graduation rate and CCMR.
KDISD increased from an 86 in 2024 to an 87 in 2025.
25 domain 2 is school progress which has two parts that focus on growth and relative performance
kdisd increased from an 85 to an 87. domain 3 focuses on closing the gaps which is on student
group performance at the meets level growth graduation telpass ccmr and overall star
katie earned an 89 which is a consistent score from the 2024 school year
student scores on star and eoc are a large part of the accountability system standards are set
for each of the four performance levels tea designates approaches meets and masters as
passing there are times when we review approaches but in kdisd we push our students to the meets and
and master's level.
These performance levels are used in accountability.
TEA averages the percentages
of each passing performance level.
We call this the AMM average.
The AMM is not a percentage of students who pass,
but rather a number that combines
all three performance levels for comparison.
You'll see those comparisons on this next chart,
which shows approaches, meets, and masters
for prior year and current year along with the AMM average.
These scores represent STAR and EOC combined.
Notice that ELA and social studies maintained their high AMM average
while math and science increased by one and two points.
CCMR and graduation rates are also part of the accountability system.
These measures highlight the amazing work at our high schools.
We are excited to see an increase in CCMR to an 83% and an increase in graduation rate to a 95.4%.
Campuses also received their accountability ratings.
In KDISD, you'll see the distribution of campuses across the letter grades.
Every year, we strive for higher success.
We believe all schools should reflect and make adjustments,
and we work with principals on their individual results during learning time with them this fall.
From the EOC, here are a few topics that support growth for our schools.
The first row represents work for all levels, followed by secondary specific work in the
middle row and elementary specific on the bottom row.
We definitely want to celebrate our students, staff and leaders in KDISD.
know that principals have celebrated with their staffs already and are already deep in the work for this new year.
At this time, I'm happy to answer any questions.
Thank you, Ms. Martinez.
Board, any questions?
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
Ms. Martinez, is it accurate to say, as we go back to maybe slide, what is this?
Sorry, let me find it.
Okay, let's go back to the slide three, the domains.
Is it accurate to say that every year the bar raises and to get there is harder to do?
Is that as I remember it?
So when we go from an 85 to an 87 in school progress or from an 87 to an 89, that that's not just a little bit of increase, but it's like the bar went higher and we did better.
So technically, the system should stay the same for five years.
There was a huge difference in from 2022 to 2023 and there's also a lot of debate
behind that statement. So TEA will tell you that it stays the same. The cut
points do you stay the same? It's the logistics behind it that might be more
difficult. Yes the cut points stay the same but the the difficulty in the
questions, the more, strategy is not the word I'm looking for, the more content,
the more knowledge that children need to have and the expectations of what their learning is higher.
That's what I mean, not cut scores.
Correct.
So if you remember, we used to have straight multiple choice questions,
and now we have TEIs, technology enhanced items.
And so students do have to manipulate that question a little bit more.
And so, yes, it is different.
TEA will say it's the same, but there's debate behind that.
But we know from our students.
and the using only technology makes things even more of a challenge.
As they learn that, we're going to get better and better.
I celebrate, too.
Way to go, teachers and staff and everyone who poured into students
so that our students could succeed like this,
and for us to be the best is not a surprise,
but it's also not taken for granted.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. President, I'm sorry.
Ms. Giffey.
Ms. Martinez, thank you for the presentation.
I love it that we're doing better.
Of course, that's always great.
But I'm just curious, do we still, you may or may not know the answer to this, but we
had some legislation that I remember seeing.
There was a certain percentage of kids in Texas who are supposed to all be at CCMR by
2030.
I think it's like 80% or something like that.
Do you know anything about that?
Are we still trying to do that, first of all?
Second of all, how do we measure that?
So for CCMR, that was one of the biggest changes.
It went from a 60 to an 88 to get an A.
In KDSD, we're sitting at an 83.
So there was a slide on that one too.
So, yes, we are still striving for that.
But you'll see on this slide right here, we increased from a 79 to an 83 for CCMR.
Lots of work is going on behind the scenes for that.
campuses are very involved in making sure that every child is reaching their
CCMR potential so definitely still a focus so but thank you for that but is
it still there's some kind of thing about 2030 or something like that that
there's in the state of Texas do you know anything about this doctor might be
speaking of the Texas plan 60 by 30 yes where I can't remember the age range but
But something like young adults and adults aged, let's say, 24 to 35, by 2030, 60% of those folks would either be college educated or career ready with some sort of certification or technical experience or something like that.
Workforce ready, we should say.
And that is still going on, yes.
That's a goal for Texas.
Mr. President.
Ms. Gazelle.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Martinez.
is um i appreciate it um so this is nothing new but i gotta ask with the with these ratings um
critics of the validity of these ratings will say uh yeah but you're you're counting approaches
as part of this score and they're frustrated by that which i get because the definition of
approaches is likely to succeed in the next grade with targeted intervention right and then even
meets as needs short-term intervention to succeed in the next grade so ouch
right so what they like to do is pull out the approaches and look at the
meets and masters or maybe I just the masters and it's quite low right on it
on a percent scale can you can you speak to those or speak to that please in
domain three approaches is taken out for the academic achievement and it only
focuses on meets and masters. I'll say when we work with our schools as well, we focus on the
AMM, but we also pull out their meets and masters because every kid should be moving up regardless
of what level they're performing at. The calculation system, I can't help, but in KDISD, I can tell you
we look at kids moving from every level. And even the bottom level, we divide it into multiple
sections. TEA does that for us so that every kid is moving up, and that's what our focus is. So I
I agree with you, approaches is not technically passing, but in this system it is.
I'll say the work that we do in KDISD is not really focused on the methodology of the system.
It's focused on growing every child, period, wherever they are.
And once they hit that master's, they have to stay there as well.
And so the focus on that child up here and the focus on the kid in the red is the same.
We have to focus on all kids.
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
And you do present, you have in the past, I don't remember when that happens,
but very specifically it gets into race even and I think it's just race is that
correct and programs and programs when is that presented we might do that
during assessment data but the assessment data has already happened we
could also do it during the annual performance report which is in January
okay around that time okay thank you and then I apologize if I've missed this
email but do we have this by campus yet or no dr. Gorgorzky I thought you had
mentioned that we would get this by campus you the grade letters for the
ratings by campus yeah I can send that out okay yes we do have that by campus
okay thank you thank you okay mr. president on slide 8 and the campus
ratings it looks like we increased our a's we stayed the same then we increase
on and then D I know we went from five to three that's awesome but what is our
do we have a plan in place or to bring those three remaining D's up to you know
increasing I'm sure we do but I worry about you know the stamina of the
employees to keep working so hard but also the resources so can you just I'm
not trying to single anyone out right now i just uh just worried i'm just concerned sure um so i'll
tell you even if the state doesn't identify campus kdisd does we have a higher standard for all of
our schools and so there's support in place it is a team effort between dr caskey's team and ms hack's
team to come together for support for these schools we meet with dr hack as well on identified
schools to ensure that the support is a wrap around services we're talking about curriculum
We're talking about behavior, staffing, all the things included.
All the assistant supers are there, including Dr. Fowle.
So it's all of us at the table talking about how to support.
I'll say our teams also go out to the schools.
We have, for our identified schools, we meet with them three times in the fall, one time
in the spring, going over their plans of action, their monitoring tools for how they support
teachers in the buildings.
really looking at adult behavior data to know how we can support teachers
differently it's definitely a combined effort from all of us including the
principal and the leadership team at the campus well and I'm sure you have
already probably thought about this but you know just speaking to those two
schools that were D but not not not D's any longer maybe getting some of their
ideas for these remaining schools of course we are and those three aren't
necessarily in the five if that makes sense so there may be it's not as clean
as it looks yes okay got it okay that makes sense yep okay well thank you
that's a that's a that's a heart that's a hard job so thank you mr. president
miss Fox that's a really good discussion mr. Timmy because in the academic
committee we talked about how you take your teams Martinez and dr. Bell takes
teams that do different things and go in for interventions and helping adults
teach children better but not just the schools of in the lower grades in the
lower letters but every letter every school gets visits from you and every
school can be better and every teacher can be better and how you make it all of
them I don't know but seeing this increase in numbers is because of the
teams that you have and how dr. Caskey and her whole program looks at things
and gets it's the support people that can do things that teachers can't do
because there's not more time in the day there's not more effort there's not more
energy there's not more love they can give but you come in with technique or a
a curriculum or an intervention,
all the things that you do,
down to each child.
I love that so much.
I could talk about it all day,
but I'm thinking now.
I appreciate it.
Yes, I could.
I could, and I do.
Any more questions, Board?
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We'll now move on to
7.1 Presentation of the 2025-2026 Proposed Budget and Tax Rate.
number seven, public hearing.
We don't have anybody signed up for the public hearing, but we do have a presentation item 7.1 presentation for the 2025-2026
proposed budget and tax rate
presenters Chris Smith
Esperanza Rios and Jamie Hines
Good evening president Redmond superintendent Gorski trustees last month
I promised you that August would be quicker than last month, so I'm gonna live up to that promise
us because we've talked about this and I know everybody's about ready to birth
this budget but we're through July here's August by the state law we have
to have a budget adopted by August 31st since we're in August 31st fiscal year
end date our new budget starts on September 1 we posted this meeting to be
in this room today as a public hearing to discuss the budget and the proposed
tax rates that's generated from that budget. With that, this budget is
built around only a 5%, 0.5% or less than 1% budget-to-budget
enrollment increase, opening two new campuses, two new elementary schools,
tax base growth of minus 2.1%, and there's an asterisk there because that
minus would not be a 5% increase year-over-year, but that it
reflects the homestead exemption increase of $40,000 from $100,000 to $140,000.
It assumes that that's going to pass in November since it will be on a statewide ballot.
So instead of a 5% increase, it's an actual decrease in our tax base.
It reflects a salary increase of the $2,500 and $5,000,
depending on the experience of the teacher and the 3% across-the-board raise for all other staff.
The same tax rate that we've had the last couple of years at .7271, maintenance and operation, that's .6169 plus the 11.02 enrichment pennies that our district has and a 39 cent debt tax rate.
Maintenance tax, sorry, what we'd like to do is maintain a balanced budget.
And again, like I said last month, it was not balanced.
We're still strained from having being on such a fixed income since 2019 and having that
tremendous
inflationary pressure that we've been under we've dug ourselves into a
budgetary deficit
very grateful for what the state was able to do through House Bill 2
And then additional monies that we gave especially to give to our teachers which was much needed
but unfortunately to get us out of the hole that we've been in since that we
dug have been dug in and put in since 2019 I liken it to a stepladder and a
you know in a hole we need a ladder but we got a stepladder much appreciated
stepladder because it was able to do some raises but it did not get us out of
the hole and that's goes for districts across the state or in that same same
same predicament. We want to maintain our compensation plan and we have done that.
We want to maintain our health program and avoid TRS active care because we
feel that way it's better for our employees what the program that we have
through our self-insured health fund and we want to obviously and continually
focus our priorities on student and staff safety. There's a look at our tax
rates again you can see it's the same pretty much for the last three years
we've had those big buy downs in our tax rate from the state now that's happening
again tax relief much needed especially in a residential area like ours where
the large majority of our tax base is on residential so there are some tax breaks
coming it's just not in the form of the tax rate and I'll remind you that really
the the state of Texas the Texas Education Agency has a survey that they
published that we have to fill in two or three numbers and it basically sets our
maximum compressed rate and it's for all districts in the state and we are at the
floor meaning we have the lowest maintenance compressed rate that you can
have still as far as the general fund goes again this is a reminder eighty nine
percent of what we spend is in salary and benefits there's a more detailed
detailed look of how this budget breaks down at 89%, and then for the services, which is
utilities, is the number two expense.
Glad to say, very proud to say that 68% around it is spent right inside the classroom, and
then another 15% is spent directly on students for a total of over 83% of the monies that
that our district budgets and spends is spent directly in the classroom. I think
that's very important. The general fund, we're looking at a fund balance that's
an estimate, it's probably a conservative estimate, beginning at $357 million
with total revenues of $1.13 billion, expenditures of $1.15 billion,
dollars transfer out to the health fund of three million dollars for a net
change to fund balance of 24 let's just call it 25 million dollars that has
increased a little bit since we last talked in fact we found out Friday the
way that the state's handling that three to twenty five hundred dollar and five
thousand dollar raised through correspondence that we got from TEA we
had to add for our grants the expenditures for the grants are now
reflected in the general fund per guidance that we received Friday morning from the agency.
So you're looking at about a $25 million deficit again.
Mr. Hines will speak to it briefly tonight on our financial statements.
We're still running under spending, if anything.
This is a backstop of our spend.
I don't think that as the year moves on we'll spend that budget.
It would be great if we did.
That means we would be fully staffed and we'd be doing everything that we would love to do
to support the children in this district but we will underspend and nobody spends
their entire budget and I'm confident that that's likely going to happen and
and we as we end the year next year it'll be close to break even if not a
surplus food service fund starting the year with 17.4 million in fund balance
I think that's a little conservative also with 52 million dollars in
expenditures and 61 million dollars in expenses um you're using a nine million dollar use of fund
balance and again we need to use that fund balance that probably won't happen we're going to try to
use as much as we can um we can't just go spin to spend but we're going to try to we're trying
to get that fund balance spent down as it is somewhat excessive debt service fund you're
looking at a 63 million dollar fund balance with 248 million dollars in revenue again that asahi
that additional state aid for homestead exemption is at 28.3 million dollars i kind of feel that's
conservative we still have a tool that's two tools and they're connecting uh they're calculating
different amounts this is the more conservative amount of the bunch and so we're sticking with
that until we can finally land on that um i do want to point out that the existing debt allotment
or instructional facilities allotments.
This district's not received any of those monies since 2016.
Those monies were started in 1999,
but the yields in which those pay state funds
towards new facilities and everything,
our district's not qualified since 2016.
Very, very, very, very few districts
qualify for that program now.
So when we build schools, we're building it all on our own, with the exception of the Asahi.
And again, the Asahi is to make up for the loss of taxes.
That 2% decrease in our tax base, part of that $28 million is to make up for that.
Expenditures, you're looking at $256 million in debt service expenditures.
That's principal and interest on bonds for use of fund balance.
Again, I think that's conservative of $8 million.
million. The good news is on that is we did sell a large percentage or $450 million worth of bonds
to ensure that we get a maximize our Asahi. And as long as we're paying on those bonds,
we will get additional state aid for homestead exemption. So we went out there and got aggressive
in order to make sure that we get that paid and our taxpayers get that paid for the life of it.
If that hadn't happened until after September 1, that Asahi number would have been a less number.
So forever. And now it's going to be maximized forever.
Summary of all funds, you're looking at $1.4 billion in all three budgeted funds and one point.
Let's call it $1.5 billion in total expenditures for use of fund balance of $42 million.
Again, those are all conservative and probably will not be near that for total ending fund balance of $395 million.
dollars very healthy fund balances across the board summary of all funds
looking at it from a function standpoint that's the that's the game plan if you
will of how we're going to attack this fiscal year from it and you can see the
priority is an instruction it should be you saw that one slide that shows that
easily but that's it by function and we'll bring budget amendments anytime we
We want to move some expense, even if it's $50 from 11 to 12 or 12 to 21.
We're going to bring it to you guys because we're required to because our game plan is changing.
But that's our expenses by fund and function.
What we're doing next.
We're gonna likely have budget amendments had we not found out Friday that it happened
This next Friday. We already would have already been able to needed to amend the budget property values change all the time
enrollments coming and spurts
Those two kind of things reflect
The need to do amendments will have some timing amendments in October meaning
Meaning we've ordered some things that maybe not come in by August 31st in this year's
budget.
They're not in next year's budget, but if we have to charge it to next year, we'll bring
those to you.
In timing amendments, they'll be in our fund balance when we receive our audit in January,
but there are some out there on the horizon.
They're not any big ones that I'm aware of at this time, but we will have timing amendments
in October.
TEA rulemaking and interpretations, again, we found out Friday how to handle those grants
and the salary increase for teachers this Friday.
So there's more of that out there as well,
and those may require a budget amendment.
They may not.
Closely monitor all expenditures.
We do that every day,
and especially monthly when we prepare our financial statements
to look at anything that could be out of the norm
and make sure everything is spending as we would expect it to be.
Prior year property value audits.
One kicks off on September 1.
Mr. Pawanka sent us an email last week.
He's waiting on something to clear, and when September 1 or August 31st reports are printed and ready,
he's going to pull those and start working on our 23 audit.
Did you say three or four?
I couldn't see it.
He's going to start working on that audit September 1, and that should bring some revenue,
of which when we find out what that is, we'll amend the budget like we did this last year.
we're gonna and we're gonna plan under current law as far as moving forward we
know what the budget formulas most of them are gonna look like for the 26-27
school year and that starts probably in a couple of weeks or about a month at
least we'll start working on that budget and doing the best we can to get get a
good budget that's good for the children in this district legislative session
There is a legislative session.
We had SINAI-DA Friday, and now today is a new second special session.
Is that going to do anything to the finances?
Who knows?
At this point, it doesn't look like it, but who knows?
There's where we are.
We're completed with that.
And with that, I'll be glad to answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you, Mr. Smith.
Board, any questions?
Mr. President.
Ms. Gazelle.
Thanks.
Thank you very much, Mr. Smith.
So I have a kind of high-level basic question, and please correct me,
but I remember when we did our own teacher pay raises,
we even went instead of the 2% you put forth, we went for a 3% that the board passed,
and that gave us a bigger deficit, and I thought it was around the same sort of amount,
25, 26, something like that, this time last year, roughly.
And we're here presented with the same sort of deficit, but the state paid for most of the pay raises for teachers.
So can you help speak to what really makes up that $25 million deficit in the operating budget?
Sure.
Well, the state did do the chunk of pay raises.
And let's back up and say, yes, the pay raise put us in the deficit hole.
Again, as you heard me a year ago or 13 months ago, I'm not going to lose sleep over that deficit because we'll likely underspend.
You see that underspending in the financial reports, and you have for the last 11 months.
But we're in a hole, nonetheless, on a budget standpoint.
When the legislature passed that and passed that raise on, we got a break on a largest portion.
They paid for a largest portion of the raise, but we still put across the board salary increase of 3%.
That is basically kept us to where we are.
We got a break, but we also didn't get, like I said, there's a step ladder coming out of the hole that we needed to get out of the hole.
It was a step ladder.
So we didn't get a whole lot of new money to dig ourselves out.
So we're basically we're able to give that raise off additional funds that we were able to get through House bill, too
But it wasn't enough to dig us out of the hole
It was just enough to get a raise and we're right back where we started. Okay, I just unfortunately sure I thought the
deficit would be less, you know just
Since we had so much assistant from the state assistance. I know we gave the 3% across
administration and
took care of everything everything being consistent assuming there was no salary
increase we would have come out ahead but with the salary increase and the
other inflationary pressures even though there's been a lot of reductions those
other inflationary things made up for some of that and unfortunately we just
didn't didn't get a lift like we we hoped okay and in my right the the 3%
that was given across the board to administrative and other non teacher
staff is that about 10 million I remember am I correct they did the cost
to the district want to say it's nine million so okay it was
Because 7.7 million.
Okay.
$7.7 million.
Okay, thank you.
And then one more question.
Do we ever look at, bear with me, a zero-based budgeting approach periodically to fine-tune the budget?
it we've not in my in my time here in katie that is something that we could do but we've not done
that um at my time in katie um i've read a lot of and i and i've got friends who've done it and
the arduous amount they're like we're kind of back right back where we thought we were because what
we needed through the zero base is right added right back up um so it's mixed bag on the feedback
back I've gotten, but we've not done that in our district. Or at least a good way to justify
where we're at. Yeah, and again,
89% is salary and benefits, and so would you be doing
all of that for 10% and really utilities
really can't. Mr. Veerling and his crew last week kind of talked
about the amount of big progress that they've made, and you take that
and the salaries out, you're not looking at a whole lot of money. It wouldn't be enough
enough money if you cut it all out to balance this budget.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Ms. Deming.
Okay.
So I just want to make sure.
So, like, in September 1st, 2024, our general fund balance was about $364 million, right?
And then we're going to start this year with $357 million, right?
And then if we spend everything in the budget, which I know you said you don't think we will,
we'll end with $332 million.
Okay.
Okay. So at what point do you start to get concerned?
Well, when it gets under 25%, we're still about 31%.
So we want to keep our fund balance at 25% of expenditures.
Anything once you go below that, yeah, you're starting to get concerned.
And I don't think we'll dip below 30% at all.
And in a growing district where you're growing $40, $50 million a year because of new staff,
because of new enrollment, your fund balance should grow.
And our fund balance is going to likely be positive. It's not going to be positive
You know to the tune of 15 20 30 million dollars like it needs to but from a growth standpoint
But it's going to grow we are going to add likely going to add to fund balance because of underspending the amended budgets
You'll see tonight reflects that revenue increases that we think are you know work?
Eleven and a half of 12ths of the revenue year is has been done
We know what our student numbers look like now and you're gonna see a pretty big increase in our revenue and our
Deficit no, we didn't reduce the expenditures in the final amended budget
But I think our deficits down to about six million dollars or five million dollars. I don't know exactly I should
But then you're gonna see that we're spending at least two percent under spending two percent on a billion dollars isn't to twenty million
So you take that into account you're looking at an increase in fund balance
And again, as I've mentioned before, management is going to try to take care of that health fund with some of that underspending, too.
Not all of it.
Obviously, we can't and won't do that, but we're going to try to keep both of them equally healthy.
Thank you.
Mr. President?
I have a question about enrollment, and maybe Dr. Gorgorzian can speak to this.
You know, we made public statements. It was 96,000 last year, and this year we're talking, you made statements about 97,000 enrollment, but our enrollment isn't 97,000 in our reports. It's 93,000. So what's going on?
Yeah, that's a good question when you look at the start of the year.
So usually when I'm speaking to the public about what our enrollment is, I'm usually
speaking about our projection.
I don't always just say, hey, we're projected to be, but our demographers, PASA, have projected
us to be over 97,000 students this year.
They've been projecting the district for, I don't know, 20 plus years, and they're never
known to be off.
So I usually take their figure and run with that.
So that's why I say 97,000 plus.
but historically on day one we never get all of our students so for example this
year on day one we were we were missing about 7,000 kids last year on day one I
think we were missing like 5,600 kids so there's a bunch in there now this going
from memory I don't have these committed but I think by we opened up on Wednesday
by Friday we had picked up almost 3,000 kids by Monday today I think we've
picked up 4,000 some of those kids I don't remember the figures exactly but
But not seeing those 7,000 on day one wasn't any bit of heartburn.
Generally, we will hit our mark, generally, not always, right after Labor Day.
And that's usually the number I'm looking at.
So I think a good metric for us is let's take a look where we are on Labor Day
because historically we're real close to our projection by then.
Last year, Chris, if you will refresh my memory if I get this wrong,
last year may have been the first year since I've been superintendent,
and maybe as long as you've been CFO, that we didn't hit our projection by snapshot in October.
Correct.
So every year by October on snapshot day, we hit our projection,
and then everything after that is in addition to beyond growth.
So hopefully that helps a little bit with our numbers.
And you hit the nail on the head, Dr. Grzykowski.
$97,161 was the budget amount, and we hope to be there on October, the last Friday in October.
That's what we look at and we'll grow until that point. We'll grow all the way to May. Historically, we hit our maximum enrollment the last week of April, the first week of May. We'll grow all year long. Historically, we have anyway.
way and as what happens in our weird office up there is we don't even pay attention to it till
after Labor Day because you look at and you go oh my gosh but it we always start out slow and
finish fill it up real quick between now and Labor Day and we get real close to to that budgeted
enrollment amount and we just continue to slowly grow from that point forward thank you thank you
Thank you so much. I have just a question for you and I think that you will know the answer to this and I think it's good for the public to hear it because I have, I hear from people that are concerned about the federal government programs being cut.
And I think I saw something or resonated that that's kind of been taken away for this year. And could you just address that please so that everyone else can hear that also?
Sure, I'll try to remember. These won't be exact numbers, but please know that it's about $6.9 billion nationwide. On June 30th, we found out that it would not be distributed to education agencies across the country.
About 600 almost 700 million dollars of that was Texas about 7 million or just under 7 million dollars or about 6 million dollars was
Katie ISD
Since then I guess two or three weeks went by and they released some funds on a couple of those
Released the funding on a couple of those funds and then I guess a couple of weeks ago
Maybe three weeks ago now all of it was there
there so we don't expect those to be there moving forward after this next
year and we're not planning on it we're having to make some some some
adjustments to what we're doing in the services that we're providing because of
those loss of funds but we're able to get those for this this next year all
right thank you so much for explaining that because I do get that question a
lot I'm sure a lot of board members do and that gives us a little bit of time
to try to figure that out thank you mr president um mr dr gorgorski would you be willing or would
you be able to just send us your thoughts after the september first date when you look at the
enrollment and just tell us what you think about that and then of course i think we talk about it
in a board meeting in october right or if i'm remembering it correctly that benchmark date i
remember we talked about it from prior board meetings am i wrong okay i i don't remember
maybe it's been part of a budget presentation or i don't i don't think it was intentional no you're
i think now that i'm thinking about that we bring in passa every year around november december and
maybe that's where we've talked about it and they will be back this year to present to the board
okay yes so could you do you mind sending us your thoughts after labor you bet okay thank you and and
And let me add one more thing while we're here that I didn't hear mentioned tonight, but I heard the figures.
I think it's important to note that when the state passed House Bill 2 and the monies were distributed, some monies don't flow in this year.
And those are the special ed monies.
And, Chris, I don't remember if there was anything else that held back.
But there's a changing in the formulas.
It's formula-driven, so I don't know how that's going to impact.
But we didn't get all of our money this year.
So there should be some monies coming next year
Tied to special ed and then dr. G
I would also say that there's three or four items that are supposed to flow this year that to be quite honest with you
I don't and I haven't read anyway
Maybe my some of my team has have any idea how to predict I don't think we're talking big bucks
But there are several items in the permanent school or the foundation school
Program that that is in our template and it is it can be filled in to generate funds
but we don't know the numbers to fill in those rules have not come out yet and
with that said I'm gonna 89% of our monies in salary and benefits I want to
thank mr. Schuss and his team for the amount of work that they do on putting
this together this they do a great job for that doing right things for kids
we've got money in there for additional special ed units that that Brian worked
real hard with me on with he worked hard on it I didn't to get that in that's
It's been in there for a while.
And then, of course, Ms. Rios.
Ms. Rios is amazing to be able to wrap her arms around this.
There's a lot of people.
There's hundreds of people involved in this budget.
But she's the one that has to kind of curtail it all, and she does a great job.
And we're very blessed as a district to be able to have that happen.
So I wanted to add that.
More questions, Board?
Can I just?
Yes, ma'am.
Dr. Grzyworski, thank you for bringing that up about special ed.
I know we discussed that in our committee meeting, our finance committee meeting.
I think that's important for the public and the board to know so I appreciate you bringing that because I I had forgotten that
We will move on
Item 7.2 is a public hearing about the proposed budget and tax rate, but we do not have anyone signed up for that tonight
so we'll move on to
8.1 Discuss and consider SB12 Resolution.
Section 8 our discussion items
The first item is 8.1, discussion and consider of Senate Bill 12 resolution.
And so, Board, you've received a resolution, Senate Bill 12, and parent rights.
And so Dr. Grzyworski presented this to me this last week.
And hopefully everyone here knows that we do have a policy that we will not be in conflict with state laws,
that whether we have a policy or not we will follow state law and this year a
Senate bill 12 has been voted on and approved we don't quite have all the
wording right for the policies yet but what we do want to declare is that we
fully intend for everybody in this room and on our campuses to in our vendors to
to comply with Senate Bill 12.
And so we have this statement that we were bringing forward
just to make sure that everybody knows that
before we actually hit the policies.
And so it goes through and lays out
each of those points of the law
for our employees, for our contractors,
what parents can expect,
and then even end stating
that every district employee contractor
will receive a copy of this.
And so, yeah, we present it to the board
discussion mr. president this box how will this be made available to the
public to read because it's quite lengthy to read here but will that be
posted tomorrow morning or is it already there with board dogs we can move it to
the public part for board Doc's and then it would be for the board's consideration
we're voting on next week and if the board would like us to adopt the
resolution and send it out it would be sent out electronically to employees
after next Monday interestingly enough there is some new legislation not in
Senate bill 12 which requires resolutions of the board to be posted in
a public manner within seven days of the adoption of the resolution so you're not
adopting it tonight but that is provision that we will it's one of the
laws that we will be adopting policy for probably in October thank you mr.
Mr. President, I have a question specifically about number 18.
Okay.
This says, unless authorized by law,
no employee will provide health care services or medication to a student.
Don't students get medication at school all the time?
I would assume that would mean that, for example,
a nurse would be authorized to do that?
The nurse is authorized by law,
So that's why like a teacher can't give somebody
Yes, so there are certain health care professionals on the campus every one of Katie ISD schools
We have a registered nurse which is authorized to administer
prescription medication I will tell you that
one of the policies
Again, let's go to a different law. That's not Senate bill 12
But one of the policies that you will be seeing is whether or not we're going to allow
allow certain administrators or people on the campus to administer over-the-counter
medicines with parental permission, such as, hey, Johnny gets a heartburn, so he needs
to take Tums or he needs to take some sort of medication every day at noon.
So that will be something that will be coming before this board, again, probably in October.
I'm also thinking about coaches with those you know machines if you know a
student collapses it practice or something are they authorized by law
this sounds like no one can do it so I'm just wondering about that well I like a
defibrillator the defibrillator thank you
AEDs yeah whatever it's called I mean there are so many people trained for
that but i don't know authorized by law i wonder if this was clearly thought of i would have to
read the bill a little closer of what it really says in regards to that but i think that would
fall outside a medication i will tell you there there are provisions in the bill which talk about
emergency situations there are provisions in law which generally talk about emergency situations
life-threatening dangers things of that says conduct a medical procedure I just
want to make sure that our because you know following all the rules is
important if they read this rule I wouldn't I know this is the legislation
right so we don't want anyone to say you didn't follow this rule so I just wonder
if they've thought that through clearly because this this is not our language
correct correct okay mr. president this is public though right am I confused
here it's on public public and yeah for the board meeting so it's public right
now yeah correct so anyone can look at it right now thank you all right there
was a question about that yes I did ask thank you uh-huh sure the and this this
is a TASB written resolution as we did create this right and it is fairly
fairly good and detailed compared to what's in SB 12 from what I can tell um so I applaud that I I
just have to ask and maybe the master trustees up here could could answer uh but you know it
leads with uh Senate bill 12 from the 89th legislation relates to parental rights public
education diversity equity inclusion duties right and it talks about how
there shall be no DEI person identified or basically there shall be no DEI
functions in the school district and I needed to go back and look again at the
TASB statement of beliefs and their mission statement I mentioned this last
last year and now I notice that and the reason why I'm bringing this up for
anyone who didn't catch that last year but it does say as an organization the
way they will operate one of their nine core beliefs is we believe in and are
committed to supporting diversity equity and inclusion so this is in conflict to
me as you know TASB is an organization they also want to strive to eradicate
systemic racism and this just seems so out of touch and out of date
TASB and so when I went back to look last year it was just a quick internet
search TASB mission statement now it's password protected so I have two
questions why is it password protected now why can't everyone see that they are
a taxpayer funded lobbyist the taxpayer should know and two why is it still
there they wrote a great resolution no conflict with SB 12 was all about
eradicating dei so why is that still there so as the TASB director for region
4 and for this board I will tell you that the only way that can be removed is
by a vote of the delegates at the assembly at texedcon at the tasby delegate meeting that's
coming up in september so it will be changed at that time if the votes are taken no i mean it has
to be well yes they're the ones who have to be voted to be retained technically uh be against
the law is it a vote yes it's a vote by the delegates and um to keep in compliance with the
law of so just why is it password protected no i don't know that i'd like to know that
i don't i don't i didn't know that it was um can you find out for us i will why is it password
protected thank you it wasn't and now it is it was not last year so that means I
had to log in with my trustee credentials and a taxpayer cannot see
that and I take issue with that thank you okay thank you number 23 what does
that look like for Katie ISD number 23 says no student club authorized or
sponsored by the district may be based on sexual orientation or gender identity
you're saying how would that be how would that be carried out I think the
say losses that those clubs are not able to be sponsored or carried out in our
district anymore so in Katy ISD we have a that campuses have a process whereby
by student clubs are sponsored and approved.
Every student club has to have a sponsor,
has to have a staff member that's willing to serve
as a sponsor and then has to ultimately be approved
by the administration.
So because students are now also required
to get parental consent before they may participate,
you'll see that number 24.
So we're requiring any student that wants to sponsor a club
club to go ahead and get their parental consent.
And then if they can get a sponsor's consent, then it goes to the administrator.
Now we've had some substantial training with our administrators about gender identity and
sexual orientation clubs not being allowed.
And so what happens in those instances is that the administrator denies it.
There's actually, we've got a form, a checkbox on a form which says, hey, your student club
has been denied for the reasons of it doesn't meet both our legal local policy and the provisions of
Senate Bill 12. And so that's the process that we currently have in place. And of course,
those administrators, if they have questions about that, they've been instructed to contact
my office and we can have a conversation about it. Mr. President, in response to that, Mr. Graham,
I I would make a suggestion I
You could use the wording from SB 12
Relating to student clubs. It might be a little more explicit instead of just
Referring to SB 12 in the form to apply for the club
Can can we not say what the what the law it's one sentence? I?
Appreciate the feedback and administration make that determination. Okay, and and then what are we doing with existing?
existing gender sexuality clubs that exist today or they existed last year?
Again, so no club exists from year to year.
Every club has to go through the process of resubmitting annually.
So at this point in time, we don't have any clubs that are based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
So in the instance that a new club, even if it had existed in some form last year,
wants to be sponsored this year, it has to go through the approval process.
So I wouldn't say that it would be accurate to say that there's existing clubs.
Maybe the same students operationally, but it has to be approved every year.
Okay.
So you're saying technically right now there are no gender sexuality GSA clubs in KDISD?
That's correct.
But they could exist on Instagram because there is one.
Yeah, sure.
It's a single-branch GSA.
for students do not lose their First Amendment rights when they leave the
campus they have the opportunity to participate in clubs and use their
social media as they wish so long as it's not unlawful and it doesn't
disrupt the school environment we don't have any control or say over that sure
that makes sense but they can use a school name legally out there that might
be a conflict right with sb2 I'm not I'm not aware of the situation you're
referring to but if you'll prefer that to you superintendent of schools I'm
I'm certain that we can run that to ground for you.
Thank you.
I have a question.
Ms. Calhoun?
Do we have any record of how many GSA clubs we had last school year?
I'm certain that we know that every campus knows what clubs existed at their campus
because the campus principals had to approve that.
But again, we have 80-some-odd campuses,
so I don't have a number readily available for you.
I think that question was asked of your administration maybe today.
and that answer will be forthcoming to the board okay i wasn't aware that the question had already
been asked um i was just curious um okay so but it could be those clubs and this isn't just a gsa
club this could be any club that could be a club going from k through 12. so this is uh elementary
middle school and high school there can be any kind of club like if you wanted like i don't know
a galaxy club for fifth graders then you could potentially make that but you would still have
have to get permission from the parents and then from the administrator and then also having a
sponsor for that. Yeah, so we're much more restrictive at the elementary level on what
clubs we do and don't have. It's certainly nothing like what is in junior high and high school. So,
I mean, I could refer to our administrative team. Leslie, if you want to speak to that.
Yes, as far as elementary, when we review what the type of programs that elementary
participates in they're all teacher led where student club tends to be more
secondary because the student is the one that initiates it obtains the form what
type of club it is generally meets with the campus principal administrator and
then secures the club monitor and everything's very student led student
generated and the monitors there just for safety and to make sure the kids are
you know doing what they're supposed to do so elementary student led clubs are
They're not the norm.
It's all teacher-led.
Okay.
So that's just junior high and high school that we're looking at.
And I think kind of some of the reason that I can surmise that we're asking some of these questions is not to be 1984-style micromanagement.
It's more so that we have those sponsors of those clubs that if they have historically sponsored clubs that they know the boundaries that the state is imposing and that we're asking for to stay within compliance as well as parents are able to participate and they know where their rights are and where their authorities are by state law now.
And this resolution does I will agree with trustee Kosella. It does line these out really really well
And you know you have one through 25 that goes through everything that
SB12
Really outlines for them, so I like the way that it's done. I would encourage
Parents to take a look at this
Because this is available for them so for you to look through this and just to be aware of
of what your legislators gave you and codified into law.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Ms. Campan.
I would like just to make a statement.
There are 25 things that, as Mrs. Calhoun just stated,
but I can only see a few of them
that we weren't already doing,
which would be number 23, number 24, and number 11.
Am I, and I may be overlooking.
Okay.
So I am happy that, as far as I can tell, most of these things we already were doing.
Do you agree with that, Dr. Gorgorski?
Most of these things.
Yeah, I'd agree that most of those things are parts that are just embedded in our culture.
There are a few things that are new, like you said, but most of the stuff we're already in compliance and already do.
So I just want to say, for the record, number 11, because we've already talked about number 23 and 24 about the clubs,
But number 11 is that the board will hold board meetings outside typical work hours, which most of ours are already good
There's a couple times that we don't so that's new also
Thank you
Mr. President
I did was sent a tick tock from a
counselor talking about number two
I am a little worried about number two because they're saying you can't an
employee I guess the district cannot do any psychological treatment of a
parent's child with unless the law requires it so for life-saving care so I
just don't I'm just thinking maybe we should like what does that mean I the
way he was describing it in this tick tock dr. Gore scale price and it to you
so you can see it he he just said you know it could be very very extreme
depending on how it's interpreted or it could be very narrow I don't know so I
guess I wouldn't want I would want to know exactly what the state is expecting
there because I don't want to burden people with you know oh are you are you
doing okay today oh well that's checking on someone so and you don't I mean like
I don't want it to be where everybody's walking on eggshells so I guess maybe we
should look for some clarification in the tick tock I got sent it was pretty
pretty scary interpretation so maybe you could look into that along with the
legal department and see what we want to do and give clarification to our
employees we certainly do so as a reminder that one of the reasons we have
the resolution here is because the law has changed and we haven't had time to
work with our policy consultant and policies tied to each of these so once
Once we have a policy that is a legal policy, the board can adopt a local policy to match
that as long as it's not in conflict and that could be something that's helpful.
And then I'll remind everybody that we also internally have administrative regulations
which guide our policies and that provides a framework for how things should work.
So a little bit early to say how that will work for sure, but that's something that's
been part of our, I would say just our culture for a while.
You know what I mean?
as it reads, parent rights, including right to direct the moral and religious training
of the child, make their decisions, that's always been the parent right in KDISD.
Yeah, I'm talking about the psychological treatment, though, where it goes on to say,
make decisions concerning the child's education and consent to medical, psychiatric, and
psychological treatment of a parent's child. Now, I remember, like, I was always very careful about
saying oh your child might need to go see a psychologist I would not say that
as a teacher because then that leaves our district on the hook for that right
so I know I know I know that but I'm just worried about some of the hey how
are you doing today something that's maybe innocent being turned beings come
back to us and say nope that's wrong you can't do that you'll you'll you'll
understand when I send you what I'm talking about. I will say that both psychological or psychiatric
examination or test is defined in the law and psychological or psychiatric treatment
is also defined in the law and it also says that you may check on the child's well-being make kind
of the daily check-in without first getting parental consent that's actually elicited in the law.
Okay. Thank you.
Any other questions or discussion, Board?
There being none, we'll move on to...
Mr. Redman.
Oh, Mr. Fugate.
I would, I just, since we listed a few of the sections under here,
there are other sections in the one Ms. Champagne listed
that are going to look different operationally, I think.
Sections 8 and 9 are going to look a little different for us,
but again that that will be coming forward in the october updates thank you we'll now move on to
8.2 Discuss and consider Board Approval of the June 2025 Financial Reports.
discussion item 8.2 discuss and consider board approval of the june 2025 financial reports
presenter jamie hines assistant superintendent of finance
Good evening, President Redman, trustees, Dr. Krakowski.
Pursuant to board policy, you have before you our financial reports for the month of June.
These include our financial statements, our tax report,
as well as our construction report through the month of June along with our
summary of our check registers for the month of June as always our financial
statements contain our fund balance our expenditures our revenues as well as any
changes to fund balance for all of our major funds it also contains an analysis
of our expenditures by both function and object this month I'm not going to go
into very much depth with wheat with these because we're going to go into
final amended budget after this item but I did just want to bring to everyone's
attention what mr. Smith spoke to earlier and that's if you look at the
financial statement we are through eighty three point three percent of this
fiscal year that's the end of ten months and if you notice along the summary
every one of those by object is below that 83%.
And pretty significantly, if you look at our payroll costs,
our biggest expenditure, we're actually even lower
in the percentage through 10 months.
So we are showing a little bit more underspending
than what we saw last year.
So this is what we've been kind of speaking to
throughout the year, but again, it just kind of continues.
use. I do want to comment because I said all of those objects. There is one function that, well,
there's actually two. There's one function that is large enough to be brought forth, and that's
our transportation. Through June, that function is over 83 percent, but as you know, that's because
our transportation is taken up really in those first nine months. As the expenditures come in
over the next two months that number will come down remember this this report
is in arrears when we get to final amended in a little while that's
actually a little bit or that's up to date through the fiscal year I'd be
glad to take any questions about the financial reports mr. president
The first page of what do you call it financial statement report of that PDF and I just looked you know on the right
Prior year. I love that prior year today the percentages and like you said there's like significant
Underspending in three areas that popped out to me
And I just want to make sure I'm seeing this correctly, but like 6,200
Purchases purchase and contracted services is at 73 percent
is 80% last year.
6,300 supplies and materials is 76,
and it was 83 last year.
It's like a big swing to me.
And then 7,400 other operating expenses
is quite a big delta, 77% this year,
and they were at 90% last year.
Do you have any color to that?
Well, I will say you can focus in on those other functions.
They're so small compared to when you look at, when you really look at those payroll costs at $900 million versus everything else that's made up of that kind of 10%, like Mr. Smith was saying.
those extra few percent knowing that the summertime is when we're going to do a lot of our purchase and a lot of our contracted services when we have companies coming in and doing a lot of work over the summer.
We never assume that that 73% versus the 80% it was that last year is going to stay there because remember, this report still has two more months of activity that will be coming in.
And so it's lower.
And that's what I absolutely agree pretty substantially.
but a very small percentage of the 6100 payroll that's why I kind of focus on
that is is more money than all of those others so that's that's why I kind of
drill in on that but you're exactly right okay I respect that payrolls big
big dollars but those are very big swings on the other items that I just
mentioned compared to this time last year and I would expect that at June the
juncture of june when our we're almost done with our financial year it should be pretty tight
numbers but there's a big it's great it's under spending but it's just quite a bit and as i
mentioned in the budget presentation spending is a backstop and when when you have a legislative
session and you've been in the situation that our district's in management across the district kind
of watching it and uh and i think i think that's evidence of a lot of people watching it okay so so
So through the year, waiting for the legislature to make decisions, you think they were a little more cautious?
I think because it's talked about all the time, people are just a little more conscious on it and saying, hey, do I really need that?
That's strictly speculation on my part, but I've seen it before.
And when I see that, I would love to say, hey, let's do a zero-based budget.
Let's see, really, maybe we can tease those numbers better.
Um if we could do it this year, maybe we can do it next year
Thank you
Any other questions
Mr. Hines you've got 8.3 discuss and consider board approval for the proposed 2024 2025 final amended budget
8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the proposed 2024-2025 final amended budget.
Thank you
Um, so you have before you our final amended budget and this is for the 24 25 school year
So this is taking all of our expenses up to where we're at now for the 2024-2025 budget, and then essentially creating a projection for the rest of those expenses.
What we've done is leave our expenses where they're at.
So we've essentially left that underspending in the expenditure.
But we have adjusted the revenues, because now we know what our student numbers are.
we as of Friday we got the the last numbers on our values from the
comptroller so we we have a really really honed in number on exactly what
our program revenues are going to be so now we can see what our revenues are
going to be in and compare that with our expenditures our expenditures have not
changed from what you from the budget you saw last month but the revenues have
change so they've gone up significantly by about 20 million dollars and so that's reflected here
and so for general fund so if you look at the bottom of the general fund the 25 26 million
dollars that you are seeing as a deficit in the final amended budget has now come down to 7 million
because we've recognized that revenue now i want to focus on the actual expenditures which we have
have not touched. We haven't done anything with expenditures because we don't know how much we're
going to need over the next two months because we're still going to be collecting expenditures
all the way through October. And then we'll accrue those back into the fiscal year and we have to
make sure that we have enough budgeted in those functions to handle that. So we've left those
expenditures. At the end of us accruing all those expenditures back in, then we'll work with our
with our audit partners Whitley Penn, they'll come in and we'll develop the
act for our annual comprehensive financial report and that's what we'll
return in January with for your approval before we send that to the state. And so
that's this is the last look at the 24-25 budget until we get to January
when we when we come back. But I just wanted to focus or wanted you to focus
on the fact that we've brought that down already to seven million as Mr. Smith
said as I've been pointing out we do know that we're seeing and he cited a
1% around 2021 million dollar under spending so if you take that seven
million that we're at there's still under spending that's going to bring us
into the positive but we're gonna have to use a lot of that to to make our
health fund healthy and so we know that we're gonna take a portion of that but
But without saying a specific number, we are confident at this point that we are going to be adding to fund balance at the end of this fiscal year.
Mr. President, that's excellent.
So the revenue.
I believe that's what we.
You expect.
Yes, ma'am.
That's fair.
So the revenue number here based on actual enrollment, is that what I heard, is firm.
So the revenue.
Yes, ma'am.
And again, there's enrollment and then there's ADA.
There's a lot of different formulas.
And our enrollment actually was a little slower to come this past year.
And then toward the end of the year, it kind of came on really well.
Some of that money, that $20 million additional in revenue,
is because our special ed numbers and our CTE numbers,
numbers, and I say numbers, they're really what we call ADA, which is kind of based on
all of that attendance that we've been able to increase over the past couple of years,
really helped out.
And so that was an additional about $5 million to the bottom line.
And I would say that interest is up as well.
It stayed up.
We thought it was going to go down and interest is up.
And I guess there was a point I was going to make and I can't remember it anymore.
To be in the black, $13 million roughly, you expect?
Well, again, by the time we use some of those funds to make sure that we make the health
fund healthy, we're going to have to spend some money to keep that in line.
We do expect it to be positive, but I wouldn't think anything near the $10 or $15 million
at this point.
Okay.
And what I was going to say is we are going to look at, continue to analyze our expenditures
this next week, and if something pops up, well, we don't, we know we're not going to
to spend the budget. We have underspending. But we don't want to spend or overspend one of those
small functions. And so what we're going to do between now and Monday is make sure we're set to
where we're not going to spend a function. If it looks like we are, we're going to probably
resubmit this document that would tweak that out a little bit. Just again,
move money from one function to another just to make sure we don't blow a function.
But again, underspending is the rally crowd, which we're all have been seeing. And it's going to
It's going to save this budget like I thought it would 12 months ago.
I also want to make sure we just touch on the other funds,
and there's the food service fund.
It's showing a deficiency of $8.7 million,
and that is down from the deficit that we were showing prior.
That's because we've worked with the food services department,
and they've really taken a look at their expected expenditures
over the next couple of months.
but they are still currently looking at about 8.7 we expect that to come down
because they have to make sure that they're they're keeping enough in there
and they have to order a lot of food to prepare for those first first few days
of school so they're really stocking up those kitchens so typically that's going
to come down by by two or three million so we expect that to end it's still
going to be a deficit but as mr. Smith said we've been working on spending down
that fund balance in that food service fund and then debt service currently
we're looking at 1.6 million dollar deficit really that came in at almost
zero it was 200,000 add to fund balance we just just now got back our arbitrage
liability that we had to add in and so that's a liability it's an accounting
thing that we have to put in there and so that brings that you know very close
to still very close to a zero on that and and we may have to adjust that
before next week but we're pretty confident with that number at this point and in addition to that
what mr heinz just said we also again sold bonds in july funded that was refunded on july the 20th
and so we had an interest payment that we paid monday on that new bond sale and that also added
to the expense i think we had amended the budget for that but that is also what threw us in the
deficit thank you and that's all i have for final amended but i'd be glad to answer any questions
Any more questions, Board?
All right.
8.4 Discuss and consider Board approval of a resolution to commit and assign fund balance.
We can move to discuss and consider Board approval of a resolution to commit and assign fund balance.
Okay.
This is housekeeping.
This is something that the Board does every year.
There's actually been no change other than the August 2025 instead of August 2024 last year.
But essentially this resolution is what we do to commit a portion of the fund balance to specific things.
And one is the health insurance plan, and it commits $5.5 million to that.
And the other is unanticipated expenditures or revenue loss, and it commits $10 million to that.
I think Mr. Smith has done a better job of explaining this in past years.
He says this is kind of like a family who takes a portion of their savings and says that we're going to put this $10,000 away just in case our air conditioner goes bad.
We don't have to use it, but if it goes bad, it's there and it's committed to that.
And so that's really what this does.
It's something we do, and it's required by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board for us to bring this to you and actually have action on it.
So this is a housekeeping piece, and I'm glad to answer any questions on it.
Any questions, Board?
There's no questions.
You did a great job.
Thank you.
Thank you.
8.5 Discuss and consider Board approval of the 2025-2026 State Compensatory Education funding and other End-of-Course Assessment funding budget, as required by House Bill 5.
We'll now move on to Item 8.5, discuss and consider Board approval of the 2025-2026 State Compensatory Education Funding and Other End-of-Course Assessment Funding Budget, as required by House Bill 5.
presenter Esperanza Rios, Director of Budget and Treasury. I think we've got
you for a couple of items. Two. Good evening Board President Redmond, Board of
Trustees, and Dr. Grygorski. Agenda item 8.5 pertains to the end of course
assessment funding as required by House Bill 5. The district identifies a special
project budget in the amount of $80,000 called student interventions. The special
The special project is included in the 2526 proposed budget, which you will see in agenda item 8.6, and is distributed by school leadership area assistant superintendents during the second semester to campuses, which are in need of additional funding for tutorials.
This agenda item documents the district's compliance with the requirement to budget funds for accelerated instruction related to satisfactory performance on the end of course assessment as required for graduation.
Any questions board mr. President champagne I would just like to say that that number seems low to me. So I think that
So good because in my mind like we don't have that many to worry about
I guess just in addition to that these that the funding that this is
the campuses are allocated at risk funding which is
based on
on, I wrote it down, high school is $6, junior high is $9, and elementary is $10 per at-risk
student, and then that is multiplied by their eco-disc percentage.
And so they're allocated that funding, but in their second semester, if they need additional
funding, then we take this funding and allocate it to them.
Any other questions, Board?
8.6 Discuss and consider Board approval of the proposed 2025-2026 Official Budget for Katy Independent School District.
All right, we'll now move on to Item 8.6, Discuss and Consider Board Approval of the
the proposed 2025-2026 official budget for the Katy Independent School District.
I'll just provide the highlights of the 2025-2026 proposed budget for the three funds, which
will be considered for approval by the board based on the information provided by Mr. Smith
earlier.
The 2025-2026 general fund revenues are budgeted at $1,128,720,787.
The 2526 proposed budget contains $1,150,584,181 in budget expenditures, which includes campus
and department non-salary operating expenditures and a majority of the expenditure budget related
to the district-wide salaries and benefits for new and existing staff, including the
compensation increase approved by the Board.
the General Operating Fund is anticipated to use $24,863,394 of fund balance for the 25-26 fiscal year.
The proposed food service budget revenues are budgeted at $51,981,752,
with anticipated expenditures of $51,184,484.
The 25-26 proposed budget includes compensation increases approved by the Board
and the Summer Feeding Program.
The Food Service Fund is anticipating to use $9,122,732 of fund balance for the 25-26 fiscal year.
The proposed debt service budget revenues are budgeted at $248,056,023
with anticipated expenditures of $256,388,095.
The 25-26 proposed budget includes the debt service principal and interest payments for outstanding debt,
which also includes the bond that was just sold.
The debt service fund is anticipated to reflect a decrease of fund balance of $8,322,072 for the 25-26 fiscal year.
Any questions?
Thank you.
That was a lot.
That's a lot of money.
Mr. President?
Ms. Champagne?
I just want to say, have you ever thought about being an auctioneer?
Might be good.
That was a lot.
I'm impressed.
Mr. President?
Ms. Gazelle.
I have a question about the tax rate, and maybe this is for someone else.
So like the notice of public meeting to discuss budget and proposed tax rate statement, the attachment there.
And just I understand we're proposing the same tax rate as last year.
That's already been stated.
but but in here in the middle here it talks about the comparison of proposed
rates last year's rates and it says okay last year's rate was one point one one
seven one oh then it goes and says the rate to maintain the same level of M&O
revenue and pay debt service is actually lower one point oh five nine two nine
but it says the proposed rate is going to be 1.11.
Why can't we propose a lower tax rate?
Okay, I can answer that.
It is comparing at the same level as last year.
Remember, the state came in and increased our funding significantly,
and so that roughly 10-cent difference is about $50 million if it were in taxes,
and that's about the additional monies that we got from the state of Texas through the funding formulas and so
That's what it would be if we were going to maintain the same level, but we're not maintaining the same level. We're getting additional
We're having to do additionally more
Misleading if you if you will it makes it look like we could lower and still do that
Absolutely would be it'd be a 50 million dollar yet. So because we got new money from the state of Texas
Okay, so maybe say it one more time for me and the public. Thank you. I didn't quite. Okay. Could you just
Either repeat it or say it differently
In order to raise that amount of money last year
It was 72 cents in order to raise the same amount of money this next year. It would be 63 cents, correct?
It's gone down because we got an additional 50 million ish
Dollars from the state of Texas and when that is worked through there, it would press that rate down
down because it's looking at last year's rate the rate to maintain the same level of services
it would push it down but we're not maintaining the same level of services because the state
through House Bill 2 gave us additional funds and those additional funds are the difference
I wish we could sit there and say oh we can do the exact same thing we did last year pay for
for all those new raises and everything that we've done
or that the state's done for us
and dropped the tax rate 10 cents,
but that's unfortunately not the case.
It looks like it here, but it is not the case.
It's to maintain the same level of services
that we provided in the 24-25 budget.
Last year? Last year.
Okay, because people ask about that.
And when you look at this, it doesn't make sense.
So I just, I wanted to ask that
and hear your words I'll probably replay it yeah I hope I was able to clarify it
I know that when we were putting that together that jumped out to the staff
and we're like
I kind of expected it to go down.
I didn't know it would go down 10 cents.
But again, if you look at it just from a, we got about $50 million-ish new money from the state.
Most of that was given to rain salaries, right?
But if, you know, 10 cents at our tax base is about $50 million.
Okay.
Ms. Fox.
I think you just answered my question.
but I'm with Mrs. Cuzela on the trying to dissect what you're saying because you're so smart.
So the $50 million that new money from the state was mostly about teacher raises.
Is that correct?
The vast majority of it, over $30 million was for teacher salaries, yes.
And they talked about compressing the tax rate as well.
Is that what happened?
Why did the tax rate went down, but they gave us more money to keep the services the same?
Let me read what that says.
It says the rate, last year's rate was $0.72.
The rate to maintain the same level of maintenance and operations as last year is $0.63.
What is that?
Nine cent difference.
That's the same level.
Well, we're not providing the same level as required by House Bill 2.
We're giving a monster raise to teachers in the district.
That raises that level back up.
Okay?
So that's the same level as last year.
But unfortunately, moving forward, or fortunately, actually fortunately, we're not trying to maintain the same level as last year.
We've upped the bar.
The state of Texas through House Bill 2 upped the bar.
Thank you.
I hope that helped.
Board, any other questions?
Thank you.
8.7 Discuss and consider Board Approval of the claims administration by Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) Risk Management Fund for workers compensation claims.
We'll now move to 8.7, discuss and consider board approval of the claims administration by Texas Association of School Boards Risk Management Fund for workers compensation claims.
Presenter, Lance Nauman, Director of Risk Management.
Good evening, President Redman, Dr. Gowarski, and Board of Trustees.
Board policy CRE legal states that a district shall extend workers' compensation benefits to its employees by entering into interlocal agreements with other political subdivisions providing self-insurance.
Administrative services for the KDISD Self-Funded Workers' Compensation Program have been performed by the TASB Risk Management Fund through an interlocal service agreement since 2006.
The scope of service of this agreement has not changed for the renewal period beginning September 1, 2025 and ending on August 31, 2026.
Claim handling fees for the renewal period will be $175 for medical only claims and $875
per indemnity claim, which is flat when compared to the prior period.
Both claim types represent a life of claim pricing model.
Expenditures for these services are based on claim frequency with an estimated annual
cost of $268,000.
The cost is budgeted and paid for from an internal service fund for workers' compensation as authorized through CRE Legal.
It is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves the Claims and Administration Program by TASB Risk Management Fund for the period 9-1-25 through 8-31-26.
Questions or discussion, Board?
no questions thank you all right we'll move on to item 8.8 discuss and consider board approval
8.8 Discuss and consider Board approval of the delivery method for the new Opportunity Awareness Center facility.
of the delivery method update for the opportunity awareness center facility
presenter lisa cassman executive directors director of facilities planning and construction
you get to hang out with us for about three all right
good evening president redmond trustees and dr gorgorski i have three items for your consideration
This evening the first is the recommendation of the construction delivery for the new OAC facility at the June 23rd board meeting
Ms. Hack presented an update to the strategic plan result 2-3 personalized learning and experiences and innovations
One of the planning considerations was to relocate the OAC to allow for the expansion of the Miller Career Center
In order to move forward with this plan for the complex the construction of the new LLC facility
Needs to commence to be ready for a fall 2027 opening
Any questions or discussion board?
Mr. President, I'd just like to make a comment.
I think this is so exciting, and it's kind of being a little bit, to me, understated right now,
but it's so exciting that we can do this because it means a lot of really great things for the building that it's currently in.
So I'm sure we'll have more discussion about that as time goes on.
Thank you.
Ms. Gazelle?
same thing but or different but same subject same subject the next one is for the architect
to bring on board to help them design the facility oh were you gonna introduce that
separately I have questions more so for 8.9 it sounds like okay move on it's the second
8.9 Discuss and consider Board approval to award a contract for design services necessary for a new Opportunity Awareness Center facility.
item is to retain the design services of VLK architects for this project okay thank you yes
Thank you. Yes, I did. So I was a little surprised to see this. Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was more of a floated idea last month. This isn't technically for you, but all of a sudden here we are and we're approving expenditure to plan for it. Is there something I'm missing or was this always intended, Dr. Krakowski?
Yeah, it was part of a long-range plan that we've been talking about and what we would
do to resolve the problem at Miller Career with overcrowding and wait lists, et cetera.
So part of our plan would be, as the board is aware, right now that building is occupied
by the DAP, the discipline side, and the BTP.
First step of that was to get BTP out of that building, which is going to be when we open Merchant's Way.
So they will transition out when Merchant's Way is open.
Second part of that would be to find a new facility.
The timing was really good for us on this one because the legislature just came through with a handful of really promising laws this time
regarding school discipline da peas virtual instruction to where we think we
can build a smaller building than what is currently occupied it would be very
focused we can change our DEA program da EP program to be some in-person some
hybrid some virtual and scale that building back a whole bunch and reduce
reduce costs associated with it. At the same time, we would turn around once we can get that
building open and get those kids out of a DAP that we could begin planning and evaluating the
current building and possibly look at that on a 2027 bond to expand Miller Career. I'd put it
this way. It's a long-range plan and it's a big goal being that we're already overcrowded at
Miller career currently we have wait lists we have new program expansion that
we've been trying to do we've got a lot of great ideas miss champagne brought up
a good point when she referenced the 60 by 30 this focus on CTE in Texas is big
and when we hit 115,000 kids one day will never fit in the current Miller
career so this is a response to all of that for long-range planning so let's
kind of give you a little bit more background of why we're moving towards
that direction okay let me let me make sure I understand I heard you correctly
so we're trying to meet a need of overcrowding at the Miller Career Center
so we're going to let them take over the OAC existing building is the idea
roughly and then we're we're here approving a plan to build a brand new
building smaller for the OAC because of change in law I wouldn't there's I mean
I thought the OAC was overcrowded yeah I wouldn't put it that way and describe it
that way two things in there one is let's say we had a new building for a
DAP and those kids were out Miller couldn't immediately just move into
to there because that space isn't designed for those.
So it would take some significant dollars to go in there,
and we'd have to evaluate it, and we'd have to look at it
and look at a long-range plan on that like we do with bond committees
and projects and really evaluate what would go in there in the future
and what does that look like.
So I don't want to mislead the board to think if the building was open tomorrow,
we'd move Miller in because it's not ready for that.
It would take some significant changes internally and maybe externally. I don't know
That would be for an architect to kind of give us a better idea once we decide what we do
The second part is yes, we would need a new building for a DAP
We believe it could be much smaller
There are things that we believe we can do that are very different than the DAP right now
For example, if you go in to that building now, you're gonna find a gymnasium. You're gonna find a cafeteria. You're gonna find a library
We don't need those things. We can scale all those back, but I can't not have a DAP at all.
By law, we have to have one that we send some kids to.
And so but there are like I said, the timing was good.
We like the plan we were looking at. And then with some of the changes in the law gives us a little bit more flexibility.
okay thank you and then you you also said something about a bond 2027 for
adding on to this new building that we are you're proposing here yes so as part
of our long-range planning Katie ISD has historically always going out for a bond
every three or four years for long-range planning so I don't want to mislead the
board that I'm looking at a 27 bond just for this this would become part of
everything else we would look at our growth we would look at our demographers
do we need any new buildings where would those buildings go where are we at on
our long-range facilities plan of renovations and which buildings need
that's all part of that bond process but after much discussion we also have
technology and bonds and a few other things probably that I'm forgetting but
after a discussion with our team internally we think 2027 is probably the
most appropriate time to bring another bond to our school community okay and and but specific here i
keep saying i say oac you say da ep but yeah we're talking the same thing we are um why the timing
then if you know 2027 is around the corner why are we why and you're not sure about miller really
moving to this the current oac now why why are we doing this right now why why wouldn't we wait
Yeah. Why wait till 2027 to even make a decision or start building it?
Because I think we'll be behind the eight ball. As you heard from the project
parameters, if I remember Ms. Cassman, you said we if we were to make a decision on
this now we're looking at building something and it being ready to be
opened in 2027. If we go out for a bond in 2027 then I have to still build this
one while I'm getting a bond and decide it just so we're just trying to do it
it kind of earlier to just be prepared could you say this is like a phase one you're proposing here
and then the bond might be a phase two bill that's a reasonable way to put that sure okay
and thank you very much um the last question i think is the interest income it just it doesn't
give an amount can you talk to that it says the to fund this plan for this uh phase one oac if i
may say it says interest income from bond proceeds with no dollar amount
yes we so two steps to this and that's why they're in that order because the first step is does the
board want to do this let me put my glasses on make sure i'm looking at it so that's 8.8 and if
the board said if we were voting on these items one at a time and you said yes we want to do this
then we bring an architect to the board if you said no on 8 8 there's no sense in bringing the
architect so once we have an architect on board and we design it we can bring back a cost
which we would then approve later i mean yes always uh okay so you're just being i guess
you're just being informative that we're going to go pull interest income from bonds to pay for this
detailed expense if we approve it will be up for a vote later that's pretty much how that would work
If at any time the board looked at the project parameters, let's say we did hire VOK, if the board wanted to do that, they bring in this plan, they give you a cost estimate, they show you what it is, and the board said, you know what, we don't want to do that.
Then the board just not approved the project.
Okay.
And we're not out of cost.
We'd be out of cost for the architect.
Anything else, Ms. Kasper?
Time.
Architect, probably some surveying and geotech.
Labor time, I guess.
Hours.
That's why the hourly rates were given I guess. Yeah, but you did we have a fixed will have the 6%
Will leave you estimate at the time. So whatever work they've done we would just pay them to that
Thank you, I personally like to hear this built a little out a little more from you maybe through
What could I help build out a little bit better for the board on this one? Um, just numbers
Why now why phase one two
i don't think i could answer that any differently than i did um the the plan would be like i said
to to build this now so then if we were to take it um but but that's a whole future plan on a lot
of things we do here if the board is satisfied with miller career as the size and and shape it
is right now and the programming that's fine too if that's the way the board would like to do that
and we just run with what we have out there.
This is giving the board an opportunity to forward think,
what could we really do to meet the needs of the kids in 2027, 28, 29, and beyond,
because we're only going to grow.
I've got no reason not to believe the numbers from PASA,
who says at some point we're going to be 115,000 kids.
I guess the way I would say it is everything we do in KD is a plan,
And it's a long-range plan of future possibilities of what could be in Katy so I get yeah
I'm not disputing the Miller numbers. I get that but perhaps like why why are we?
Looking to the current oac to move Miller there. Why not build on to Miller?
Why was that decision made no space we built on the Miller as much as we can land wise we could yeah
Yeah, we could.
I guess, Lisa, you tell me.
We could take over the Rhodes Stadium parking lot and go that way.
Partially get some pipelines going through the parking lot so you couldn't do directly adjacent to it.
I feel you've built out and maxed out that footprint.
Yes.
The current Miller.
Okay.
That helps me.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Another option on there, if the board wanted to consider it, we can leave OAC where it is.
I mean, here's just another option.
We've considered it.
on 2027 just put a brand new Miller Career Center somewhere in the district
we don't have land I don't think for it we'd have to find but we could build you
know I mean a Miller Career Center that's triple the size to accommodate
everybody but we've put a significant amount of money into our current Miller
Career Center with upgrades and facilities and restructures and
everything so that really wasn't a best plan for us so we're looking for
something on that property to where we could do that mr president so dr gorski i appreciate the
vision um as we have to look out and get prepared for all of those those kiddos coming and the fact
that we have a space on the what is the east side of road stadium correct uh there used to be a great
big pile of dirt there we called it mcelwain mountains right and it's leveled now and we
We don't need it for parking.
So to put 16, I believe you said 16 classrooms for the new OAC facility
and without the library, without the gym, with a modified, I'm guessing,
a modified food service like they have at Raines High School where they come in, right?
They don't need a full kitchen, all of those things.
Is that what you're thinking?
That's our plan.
My vision goes when you see rains and how effective that is.
And we have the land.
We don't have to buy land.
It's right there on the shared property.
I was the lone screamer, dig my heels in.
We don't need the stadiums next door to each other.
That's a terrible idea.
Oh, shared services, easier.
The police come in, they share services and getting people in or out.
We have our cleaning crews that it's back and forth and all of the people who service those areas
That shared service saved us a ton of money and it works very well
So lesson learned I was wrong and I wanted to I'd love to take credit for that
But I didn't think it was a good idea
So I now know
This is really a great idea to have Miller on one side of the street and an expansion of Miller with entirely different programs
I have vision for so many programs as you and dr. Caskey and
And with Hack No, I'm constantly like, oh, what if, what if?
And so I'm excited about what might happen,
but we don't know how much money that will take to change that building
that now houses OAC and was previously Rains.
So until we know what programs are the future,
like we're doing that water program now, and it's jobs are ready immediately,
CDL, jobs are ready, real estate.
We're doing things that are so innovative that other school districts are not doing, and we're getting children ready to be contributing members and income producing.
I was like, oh, my kids, income producing. I'm successful right as a mom.
So those kinds of things, and what will it look like in just two or three years?
There will be new programs, and I know the state is very devoted to that as well.
So I think this is a vision and ready to keep Katie on that cutting edge of what can we do.
So while I appreciate Mrs. Cosella's questions, I understand kind of the vision here and where we're going and how productive this can be to be across the street from each other and have one principal kind of overseeing both and less administration, more room for kids to be successful.
and we're already you know expanding the Shaw Center on that area we're using
every inch of room we have so I appreciate this very much and I love the
idea of making OAC like construction and and using that space mr. president the
champagne so we we had a presentation I can't really remember exactly when it
was a few months ago with Mr. Merriman was here and then Dr. Coffey and they
they had a really cute do you remember that a really cute map and it showed how
all the things could be across the street from each other and so it's kind
of talking about what but we had an actual exhibit of that and it was
awesome but about the the forward thinking and doing things right now it
kind of makes it since I've been on the board I've noticed that yeah it takes
two or three years to build things so for example merchants way you know when do we start talking
about merchants way and now it's it's been i don't know two years at least and there's already a
building there and so it's not even we didn't even have to build a building we just had to
get the building ready and just that in itself took two years so i think we have to start now
because otherwise you wait for the bond in 2027 and it might be 2030, you know, before anybody can do anything and by that time will be way too big.
So I agree and I think this is a great KDIC.
Mr. President.
Ms. Simi.
Do we know how we came up with BLK Architects using them?
One of our standard architects in the district.
So we brought them on board to work on that just from one of our pool architects.
Okay.
why did we choose them over the other others they've worked in our PDA rooms
our project hike our elementary schools so they've got a variety experience in
all different programs any more questions we'll move on to 8.10
8.10 Discuss and consider Board approval of the delivery method update for Junior High School #19.
discussing consider board approval of the delivery method update for junior
high school number 19 yes when we first brought this project we had a listed as
csp competitive seal proposal like all our green fields but uh we've got some challenges we believe
with the developers as you know grange is still working on that site and this will allow us to get
started on procuring materials and work with their schedule in our schedule so we can open this in
2028.
Any questions?
All right, no questions.
We'll move on to 8.11, discuss and consider board approval of nominating candidates to
8.11 Discuss and consider Board approval of nominating candidates to fill an unexpected vacancy on the Board of Directors for the Harris Central Appraisal District.
fill an unexpected vacancy on the board of directors for the Harris Central Appraisal
District.
presenter Jamie Ise. Surprise assistant superintendent of finance.
Good evening President Redmond, trustees and superintendent Grigorski. Tonight you
have before you something that that I have never brought before. This is an
actual position that has been created because of a vacancy at Harris Central
Appraisal District not Harris County Appraisal District anymore but this is a
a nomination for a single person if you would like to to be able to be in the
running for selection for this vacancy the vacancy runs through the end of 2027 december 31st 2027
and it is for a miss cassandra bandy who has resigned her position
you won't be able to vote on this position it will all of the candidates who are put forth to the cad
will actually go before the board of directors and then the board of
directors will do the election for this or do the selection for this so this is
something if if you're interested in doing you can discuss it tonight and
give us a name or in the past we've also you've provided names to dr. Gorg or
ski throughout the week but we do need to take action on this at the board
meeting next Monday night in order to meet the deadline to get it to the CAD
had based on the resolution that they've asked for.
Thank you.
Board, any questions?
Mr. President, we did receive a biography and an interest
letter from Jonathan Cowan.
I think it's Cowan Cohen.
He did serve on this board before.
And then when the new, my understanding
is when the new lines were drawn,
I'm not sure I'm using the words correctly,
but I use my hands very well for describing things as you can tell.
He's from
He's from a Mudd district, I believe, and they just don't have enough votes to automatically put someone there.
So he has served on this board before. He was very effective. They liked him very much and
he's willing to serve again, and so I
recommend we and we only provide a nomination.
they will vote and decide based on the nominations but this one would be well
received as my understanding so I think my recommendation would be to recommend
Jonathan Cowan it's his previous experience and would be able to hop
right in your comments mr. president I have a call in to an elected member on
them on the board just to get their input and they did talk to me a little
bit about this mr. Jonathan but there might be some other names or other
people we might consider that I would I would bring to the board if I got more
information if you would bring that to me before the next meeting we'll make
sure before the agenda gets posted yes mr. president I also spoke to a director
on the board and that was my information is from that person thank you miss Fox
all right well now any other discussion or comment board we'll move into 8.1 to
8.12 Discuss and consider CW Local Policy.
discuss and consider CW local policy so board you've received an updated version
of proposed CW local obviously discussed it this past semester at some point what
What we did was took the, what seemed to be the items that there was consensus on moving forward on,
and left the things that were causing disagreement.
And so that's what you have in front of you.
Some of those key points discussed were that the committee would be larger,
that we would define a quorum at a larger group, more parents would be involved,
that people would have access to the material for a longer amount of time to be able to look at.
We discussed and defined more that it was a simple majority,
so when it came to voting, what was happening there.
And then for one of the other high points was we, not high points,
but changes that we discussed was for naming of individual facilities.
We've talked a lot about budget and when that would happen,
and so it's it's proposed that that's the board would uh could consider it in the summer before
a budget's made provide opportunity for each of the schools if they wanted to name a particular
facility inside their building they could actually make a big deal about it and whether it's
recognizing that person that's being named after playing something so i'll take any questions or
discussion the just add to that policy committee met worked over that shared
thoughts concerned what was presented last time where we're at now made some
other small changes so correct
mr. president thank thank you for that summary I'll just add a couple of things
that I didn't hear you mention,
but we did take out a significant portion
of what the board was considering
back in February of 2024,
just so that everyone understands
that we are taking out the part about
if someone chooses,
who's in the name for a run,
or was nominated to have something named after them
and then chooses to run for the board,
that we are taking that part out and in to be clear I also since we were on this
topic to be very clear when the board was considering that it was never to
take away any decisions that had already been made the the essence and the
thought with that is to make sure the district is seen in a good light that
someone who's a candidate in an election that we're naming something after uh it not be seen as a
favoritism i guess i think i had used the word electioneering which is incorrect technically
so i just
make sure people know that that is completely out of this version of the policy um and uh to clarify
the uh the new naming committee is now from nine people to now 11 and it includes a katie
improvement council member which is something the district appoints if i'm not mistaken takes
volunteers or appoints and that a one namesake would be part of the committee do you think that's
an improvement they want to be involved in this they understand that naming is
important and we should not we should take it seriously and have enough time
to prepare those things are reflected in this policy and that the superintendent
is to chair the committee the naming committee not the president of the board
So that's it. That's a change here
Wanted to add that and we did the committee did discuss in more detail for
Say there were several namesakes or several people in the improvement committee that wanted to be on the committee
How it would be randomly chosen whether that was you know, whoever had volunteered names out of a hat or random number generator or something?
Along those lines, but we did discuss
us that it would be a random selection of those volunteers.
Questions?
Mr. President, so also removed from here is the minimum being retired five years before
someone can be nominated and the thing about family members.
Right.
So the difference is we started, this policy started with what our current adopted policy
is and then changes were made so miss gazelle was mentioned those other things were removed they were
not put back in so this is what what the changes were is what our current adopted policy is as it
is now plus the items we've added here and I mentioned those two things because they did they
were a bit of a hot topic and wanted to make sure that everyone knew that those things were put in
and even the policy committee from last time removed them when they saw that the
impact of that was not what they intended so this looks good when we have
I don't know how many namesakes we have but when we have fun oh no 30 50
whatever they are why only one I think the idea was that yes come anyone to
participate and select one of them as a board we can increase that they can
always come to the open forum or the public forum for the the school naming
to speak to be in this with their knowledge and input is so valuable and
they come from all you know you've got Amy Campbell and you have Roosevelt
Alexander right so you just have this breadth and depth of people who know
deep history and who know the younger things and I just think we could have
more you know could have more than one because and they've worked when they get
together I always expect them to be best friends and they're like oh where did
you work oh I didn't know oh did you know this person and they find people
they know but they really don't know each other as well as I expect that I'm
like oh y'all are best friends no they never even worked in the same areas of
of the school district.
And so watching that, their relationships form
is very cool and they just have a lot of different
perspectives and experiences and I'd like to see it
be more than one, maybe two, at least two, I think.
So I recommend at least two.
I like six parents and I also like that a minimum of six
is a quorum.
I like that, I think that gives you more.
and so that would mean that Dr. Grooms is going to have to really do the quick,
have a meeting if they don't show up, have time for another re-meeting.
When Mrs. Cuzela and I were on that one, it was like there was not time to reconvene
when the parents who said they were coming didn't come
because we had to make a decision on Monday at the board meeting.
so I so that dr. grooms means you're probably gonna have to get them on there
quick and have time you know to have time to redo if you need to but I like I
like the changes you have made here only with that one recommendation mr.
president and and to be clear the policy committee did not meet to edit this
policy I took issue with that I did not like that approach I've already
communicated that so to be clear this was not driven by the committee the
committee met on this draft and gave input but it was not edited I believe it
came from mr. Graham's office so I want to mention that I don't like to work
with like that personally we are the board and this is our one of our main
functions that aside the other very important change here is that will help
things move along is the decision-making will be a simple majority okay and and
there will be when a name is removed it will be removed okay when a vote is
taken in around the name will be gone and we will move forward and I'm really
appreciate that but that's there mr. president
yeah please address some of that so it says simple majority but then again they
could also vote to take a revote correct like we discussed in our committee
meeting the if the if the committee wants to vote and the majority votes to
change their mind and put a name back in okay so be it but that's not what
happened that went down and that's an improvement we're making okay so what
that wasn't part of the policy before but now it is so now if they want to
change your mind they can vote to do that to change your mind but also when
When we were in that committee meeting, and I've never been in the policy committee,
so at the very end of the meeting I said, is this the same as it was?
You know, is this committee the same as it was when you met last year?
And you said yes.
So I said, okay, it's the same.
So I know, but you just said that this is different because,
so I've never been in the policy committee meeting, so I don't know.
No.
So you said that you didn't like it because Mr. Graham, I guess, had done this.
And so that's why I was asking you that question that day.
Okay.
And I said, is this the same as it was?
And you said, yes, it is.
Okay.
When you asked that question, I thought you were referring to the way the policy meeting
and how it felt and looked and what.
Well, I mean, like, is this the way we always do things?
Yeah.
But anyway, now you're saying that it isn't.
Document-wise, no.
Okay.
So I was unclear to that.
that. Anyway, the other thing I'd like to say about the makeup of the of the naming advisory
is I'm just going to have to disagree a little bit with Mrs. Fox about this because
if you first of all, you know, if you add too many namesakes, then that's going to outweigh,
you know, the parents and not outweigh, but, you know, dilute, dilute the expression of the
the parents in my mind I think it's good to have the input of a name II of
someone but I don't I don't feel the need to have to also how many people are
here and it's good to have the odd number two I would just like to say mr.
president let's go I actually agree with trustee champagne on this while I
appreciate all of the things that our namesakes do to help give a rich culture
and to Katie. This is unique to Katie for naming these facilities or schools in the ways that we do.
This is a pretty unique thing that we do here. I do agree that having two namesakes on that committee
I think does give a little bit more weight to the namesakes decision, not necessarily the community
members decision. Not that they're not community members because they absolutely are, but you want
your community members sitting on that naming committee you want your community
members to feel the freedom and kind of the security to say what they want to
say in those meetings and if they feel as if that there is even a slight
pressure whether it's intended or not from someone who already is a namesake
and then you have a double like you have two different namesakes they do have
some weight to throw around whether or not they're doing it with intention it
It does give a little bit of pressure to that.
I like the one because a namesake who's already there can speak to kind of what the role of a namesake is.
Like, hey, this is what we do.
This is kind of what an expectation is, an unsaid expectation.
This is what this looks like for us.
And I think that gives a little bit more depth to what this would be.
But I do agree, one, it's good.
I think that that's a good adjustment to this.
I think to kind of
kind of
Stacks the deck a little bit if there were
If that were to come across that way to our community members, which we don't want them to feel that way
Thank you, mr. President
Go first. Yeah, I agree with miss champagne as well. I think an odd number is important to have
Mr. President, no one can guarantee there will be an odd number who shows up.
I like an odd number as well.
The reason I even recommend namesakes, first of all, you don't know namesakes if you think anyone would give pressure.
They're just going to be like, oh, I don't want to.
What namesakes are there to do is say, I know that person.
I know their personality.
I know their family.
Right.
The thing, when we were on the namesake committee last year, there were 10 or 11 names.
I knew all of them well enough.
I knew them all except one.
And so, like, I know their style and what they would look like and how their leadership would be and how they would be, like, what they would do, how excited, you know, the energy level.
I knew the namesakes from both of the schools.
They were coming from Youngblood and Fowden.
Is that correct?
Yes.
And so, like I knew...
Robertson.
Robertson and Fowden.
So I know them, and I know, like, what these boys and girls and parents already expect
and what they get with, you know, how that all works.
I'm just giving you like input from people who know maybe the people on the list and I love new parents
Getting to have buy-in to this
But those parents have lived here ten minutes. They don't know anyone. They don't know
Anybody on the list they're looking at a dry piece of paper and trying to make a decision based on activities
They've been involved in without you know kind of knowing
they could name six could talk about what a namesake does but mostly I'm thinking they
could give some input on who they are what their depth is what contributions they've made rather
than that's kind of what I'm thinking and I I think one puts too much pressure on a namesake
that when they leave there I think they would there would be too much pressure on them to be
be like sorry I didn't know what to say and I didn't get and the two namesakes
could say it was such a great process and the parents were wonderful and I
think they would have support for each other I'd like to make a point of
clarification I am I actually specifically said that I am NOT saying
that the namesakes would intentionally do that I specifically said that what I
said is it would be maybe unintended pressure and when you go into that
meeting and you're already there with an administrator with Dr. Grooms there in
place of the superintendent and then you're with two board members and now
you're with let's see another namesake and I mean we continue to add this up
and then what a parent may walk into that room with if you've never done
anything like this before is oh I really don't know what I'm doing here but you
you wanted to be a part of the process, but the process is a little bit more in-depth than maybe
you would think that this process would be, then you want them, again, to feel the security and,
hey, this is an open kind of discussion and we're all kind of going back and forth.
You don't want them to feel pressured to go one way or the other from someone who would already
maybe have a predisposed opinion. Again, I'm not saying, clarify again, I am not saying that our
namesakes would put undue influence over the situation any more than, you know, our board
members maybe they do. But what I would look into is, again, giving them the freedom to be in there
and feel unencumbered by that and feel the freedom to speak.
And noted that we do give them now seven days to review these massive packets.
So when we went into this naming committee process, you actually weren't given seven days.
You were just expected to go through mountains of data in a very short amount of time.
Now with the extended amount of time that a community member would have to kind of pour through that,
I think you can make a more educated decision on where you feel like what would best represent your section of the community.
And I think that that's a good thing.
I think that the seven days of looking over everything, that's great.
So just that clarification, I am not saying that a namesake would put, they would go in there intentionally to put pressure.
what the weight that they carry even if they're not intending to put pressure on that especially
when you have two there may sway a vote in a way that not that it shouldn't but that somebody
wouldn't feel the freedom to speak and to cast a vote in a way that they would actually want to
you thank you mr. Redmond I just want to clarify a couple things just so every
trustee is well informed about the policy I heard trustee Cozzella talk
about the policy and policy development how this came about and how it got to
the policy committee and so forth so I do want to explain to everyone that I'll
take ownership of that that it's not uncommon that our teams put policies
together and that we bring them to the board for consideration so that's what
happened here so let me shed a little more light on that so we do have a
transportation center that needs to get named soon not immediate but that's
that's on our list because we are opening one up here in about probably
about two weeks as soon as it's ready so this is this policy was talked about in
the spring and then it got tabled and it kind of sat there for a while so what I
did was I took our current policy went back and reviewed the board's discussion
on the new policy or proposed new policy that was tabled I tried to take
everything out of that meeting I could find that I saw a general agreement on
about changing some things that I heard tonight let's change the amount of time
somebody has let's increase the number of members let's get more parents
involved let's make sure we have a consensus let's make sure we have so all
All of those things, and I sat with Dr. Grooms, who worked on it with me, who is an expert in this and does a fantastic job leading the committee.
And part of that is in there, and our current policy says superintendent or designee, and I always designate Dr. Grooms to do that.
And she always does a wonderful job, and we come up with a good name.
So I did want the board to have some information on that, that these recommendations that came forward,
and then the policy committee wanted to take a look at it from the recommendations I had made.
but what I'm hearing from the dais I think I've kind of hit a really good
home run on this one that everything I'm here and you guys like are the things
that we did agree on at that time there's just a few things didn't get in
there where there was disagreement from the board okay okay dr. Gorgorzky
appreciate your statement but I do think it should always be led by the board and
And if we have a policy committee that the board, and we do, the policy committee didn't go anywhere, I would prefer you going forward to confer with the policy committee when you want to come up with another draft of a policy.
I think that's, I don't agree with that step.
That's an interesting concept.
It's never been used before in KDISD policy development.
So I would just say this.
I've been bringing I've been bringing policies
Administrative driven policies to this board since I've been superintendent for six years
Nobody has ever said please superintendent do not ever bring us another policy
We want all new policies to be developed by the policy committee
I would love to have feedback from all trustees right here if that's the way we want to practice moving forward
forward because I have a stack of policies coming in October and if the policy committee
is going to be the one fixing all those policies, we can certainly give it to everybody to do,
but we've never developed a policy like that before.
Well, let's clarify because I don't agree.
Last two years we've had a policy committee, board committees was new to this board two
years ago.
So that's correct.
but two years most recently that's the way we operated the the board helped
develop the policy drafts we and you were in those meetings together we
worked together and that's where I feel it wasn't done well we were not together
I did not meet with the policy committee Don Champagne and I and mr. Redmond did
not meet with you or I didn't I'll speak for myself in drafting this draft so I
I prefer going forward that I am privy to that.
Let me clarify.
We did have the ability to change things.
Absolutely.
I mean, there was a proposed policy.
It's a change in how we operated the last two years.
It's not a change because I want to clarify one very important part of what we're discussing.
These are policies I bring to the board for consideration that are administrative driven.
They are policies that my team either works on or I work on with my team and then we bring
them to board for consideration.
The policies for which you speak of are board driven policies.
All the policies, let me be clear, every policy that the policy committee brought to this
board for consideration were trustee driven policy changes, not the administration.
There's a huge difference in the two.
Okay, I hear your point. I hear your point and I can see that distinction, but I counter.
We worked on this policy a lot. The board policy committee worked on CW, granted it's administrative
in nature, a lot last year and we, you, you, I mean that's the way we worked. It wasn't just you.
We worked together with you. So I think that's the rub for me.
I think that's not accurate at all.
The original naming, we had a policy, original naming CW local.
The policy that this board brought forward for consideration that divided this board the entire night for the better part of probably two hours,
that was not a policy that I contributed to write or build or bring forward.
That was a policy written by three trustees, separate and apart.
I received that policy on the day of a policy committee meeting about an hour before the meeting and said, this is the policy we've created.
So, no, I didn't agree with that policy.
I thought there were many things in there that were very divisive, and that came out in our discussion.
SO WHAT DID I DO TO TRY TO PULL OUR BOARD TOGETHER WAS TO GO BACK, WATCH THAT MEETING,
PICK MANY THINGS FOR WHICH I THOUGHT WE ALL AGREED ON AND WOULD PULL THIS BOARD TOGETHER
AND PROPOSE THOSE CHANGES TO THE BOARD.
AND THAT'S WHY I SAY I HAVEN'T HEARD ONE DISAGREEMENT OF WHAT I PUT IN THE POLICY WE PROPOSED.
NOW, I'VE HEARD SOME DISAGREEMENT ABOUT ADDING TO IT.
AND IF THE BOARD WANTS TO ADD TO IT, THAT'S FANTASTIC.
IT'S YOUR POLICY.
add anything you want to it but everything that I proposed I've heard
agreement on unless there's something in there that we don't agree on and let's
talk about what that is so I can tell you why I put it in there or why I did
but that's how we've been developing policies in this district this gazelle
what I hear is more your frustration with me that I did not bring this to us
earlier perhaps I had no idea I'm a board member I'm on the policy committee
And I didn't get this draft till the last minute and I don't appreciate that you received it before the July meeting
And then we pulled it because you asked us not to which I appreciate so we could work on it as a committee
And then we looked at it together
Correct, but but right if if July had gone forward
I would have no idea that this policy had been worked on and that that's the problem
Maybe you weren't privy to that. Dr. Gregor ski
And yeah, there are things that are excluded out of here that were taken out.
And I would have liked to have seen the red line with the version that was on BoardDocs,
the latest version, which was February 24th.
This wasn't.
But I've done the work to figure out the delta.
And at the end of the day, that didn't have the votes.
Correct.
Technically, it was tabled.
So I understand.
But it was out there on BoardDocs that was available to you.
Can I make two comments?
Go ahead.
willing to move forward that i want to make sure we understand back on the namesake discussion
i certainly respect them i don't want to over state that but in this in these naming committees
most of these parents they don't even know what a namesake is okay so they're walking in and they're
they're they're kind of blindsided because we've got trustees ms fox talking about all these people
in these packets she knows them all she's already already well equipped but our parents aren't most
of them have no idea who we're talking about or what a namesake is so i agree with one uh and
also just want to state that we don't have to name a school after a person okay it's in our policy
and it says i have to name a school after a person okay it's in our policy and it says a facility or
or a portion of the facility may be named for a person, yes,
in honor of a historic event or place, a subdivision or geographic area, or a major donor.
So we're spending a lot of energy, and they are special.
But it's not the only way to name a school.
Mr. President?
Ms. Seaman.
I'm just looking confused.
Can someone help me?
Because I'm not on the policy committee, and I have never been.
But who all wrote the F.A. policy?
policy because I remember you guys didn't want to vote for not allowing boys to restrict
boys from being in girls' restrooms because it was poorly written.
So I'm just curious who wrote that policy.
Was that the policy committee?
Because according to Dr. Gorgorski, he said he's always written all the administrative
policies, but yet it wasn't written well.
So I don't know.
It's pretty clear that that was the committee that wrote that.
Yeah, I want to clarify that.
any policy that I bring forward I've been part of or my team has been part of
and but there have been a handful of policies that have been pre-written by
the policy committee and provided to me mr. Graham might be able to provide a
little bit more insight on that and I can but that's different than what you
said just to be missing you said you brought you've written the boards never
operated where policy committees written in my where am I confused if that's what
What I said, then I don't know if I miscommunicated it.
Any administrative-related policy, something the administration,
when I say the administration, I'm going to include myself, rest of this room,
any policy that I would like to see changed based on the decisions of my administration,
I bring those forward to the board for consideration and for adoption
with the red line changes in those.
That's how I've been doing it for six years as superintendent.
Then we created board policy committee under the previous president.
The policy committee then started developing policies themselves,
and they met without me and developed policies,
or they worked with an outside attorney to develop a policy.
policy. Then they brought those to me to bring those to the board for consideration.
So do you consider the FAA policy administrative policy?
Let me back up. I'm not talking about an administrative policy. I'm talking about an administrative
decision on a policy. So an administrative driven policy. They're all administrative
policies. So yes, FAA was written to my understanding by a third party attorney.
We're trustee driven with a third party attorney.
That was not my policy either.
It wasn't brought to me and I wasn't, I didn't get input into that.
But I guess my issue is just a few minutes ago you said the board has never, you've never
operated in six years as a superintendent where trustees have brought policies to you,
but that's different than what happened with Ev A, right?
Right?
I remember, excuse me, Mr. Dr. Gorgorski,
I remember you saying for the most part administrative-driven policies
is what you have done, and it's what we've done at this table many times,
and we all discuss, all seven of us.
There was never.
But you did say trustee-driven policies came from the policy committee,
and you weren't part of the discussion.
You were part of the here it is, what do you think?
Correct.
You did say trustee-driven.
So let's move back to we're discussing CW local policies.
well i think it's a little relevant because we're talking about cw local we're talking about who
wrote it and where the where the revisions have come from and this is a little bit different than
what we did in the policy committee and i do remember sitting in meetings in our policy
meetings and we would have these discussions about what what works what doesn't work and there there
were discussions we had counsel with us that would kind of give us his input and i thought dr
groborski was in some of those meetings i don't think he was maybe he wasn't in all of them it's
It's been a hot minute, and summer's been here, and whatever.
Maybe my memory's not serving me well.
But I do remember it being a table of the policy committee, and we sat in our executive room, and we had these back and forths about what we thought as the drivers of it as the policy committee and the board members with added, I don't know.
We were asking for input from you, Dr. Gagorski, and council when we brought the policy drafts to you to get it ready for the board discussion in the open meeting, work-study meeting for discussion.
But we didn't ever sit and just have, like, we weren't here.
We didn't sit and just have regular conversations back and forth with each other just privately.
Like, when we did this, we did this together.
Now we would talk via email, which everything was open for open records because we were trying to abide by our
Laws to make sure that we were staying within that law of how we were communicating with one another
But there wasn't anything that we were doing that was
secret. We were having these discussions together as a team. Yeah. Dr. Gabor, if I may, let me just clarify. I want to clarify the role of council, which may clarify some of this, some of the entirety of this. The policies that were drafted by the former board president that were led by Mr. Perez, he drafted those in consultation either with policy members or with outside council without consulting the superintendent of schools and without consulting my office. We were
We were only given copies of those drafts an hour before those meetings where we were
then asked to provide our input.
And oftentimes we, oftentimes then we brought in the boards outside council at the time
so that he could explain the changes that he made.
But I think the main driver of what we're talking about here is that we have policies,
most every policy in this district is driven by a change.
It's a change that either a board member says, hey, I want to make this change.
How can we consider this and they tasked the superintendent and the policy team to look at it?
It's been in my almost decade here. That's how that's worked or the administration says
Recognition recognizes a deficit or something we need to fix. Let me give you an example the top ten graduates, right?
Now the board wouldn't know the process for that
You wouldn't know internally what what may or may not need to change on that
that. So that's an administrative driven policy, which then we put in and the board has an
opportunity to weigh in on it. So I'm just saying we have in the past, traditionally, if even if
it's a board member driven prior to the prior to the policy committee that Mr. Perez chair prior
to prior to those three policies, which he then brought forward, if a board member had a question
or concern or several trustees, they would task the superintendent to say, hey, can you look at
this for us and here's what our thinking is and then the superintendent would
task his team to say is this viable is this not viable so it's not that we've
never had board member driven changes we've had plenty of those but they've
always gone through the process of trustees not drafting the policy they've
gone through the process of let's task our administration to do that because
they understand the day-to-day operations of the school and the nuances
that perhaps we as trustees or perhaps as outside counsel that doesn't know the
district won't know mr president may i please add to this yes mr champaign so
i always think about when i was a new trustee and all that there's always once a year or so
when we get all these new policies and they're all they're pages and pages and pages and i remember
learning when i was a new trustee that we're supposed to be making new policies but i look
at all those i'm like i can't make all those new policies there's like a hundred of them you know
and there's do y'all know what I'm talking about is it so we can't the
policy committee couldn't possibly develop all those hundreds I mean
sometimes there's a hundred pages or more of policies so I understand the
whole gist of you know the administrative driven and the trustee
driven and all that yes mr. Perez did develop those those committees and but
But this is new leadership now.
This is a new board makeup.
And so if you're going to ask my opinion for how I would like the policy.
So when we met in the policy committee meeting, we were allowed to give input.
We did change some things.
I noticed that you listened to what Ms. Cuzela and I had to say.
Actually, Ms. Cuzela gave some good input about the summer and all that.
And so that was changed.
I like personally I like having a strong format a strong beginning and then we can build from there
That was developed I guess by mr. Graham or his team or whoever so I'm not a lawyer and I
Don't necessarily want to pay an outside attorney. We have our in-house attorney who can
Do this for us and so
Yes for two years you're right. There was a different a different kind of a policy committee
I'm one of the people on the policy committee. There's only three of us and as one of the members of that committee
At least for this year
I like the way that this was presented and that's having the opportunity to change it if we wanted to
Thank You miss champagne
The thing I would add to is we spend an hour and a half discussing this in public about the changes
We wanted and everybody had a chance to talk about so a policy from scratch
Could be an entirely different process
But one that had been worked on was brought in public.
We did discuss many times.
That's why I may have viewed it differently.
Miss gazelle.
So any more items that we need to discuss about CW local before Mr. President, Miss Fox.
I I just want to say for the last time publicly that I am so offended Mrs. Cuzela by your
misrepresentation of what happened in our naming committee you've done it online you've done it in
social media you've done it from this table that meeting went the way every other meeting any every
other naming committee has ever gone that i've been a part of it's a consensus building it is
not vote be done it's everybody taking information and then someone's saying something and someone
else saying oh I hadn't considered that people's minds were changed in there
they were they were they were back because of information they got because
of information received based on information shared and then someone
would say oh hadn't considered that that would be cool but what about this and
And every person in that room offered information and influenced people.
And that's what it's about.
It's the consensus.
It's talking.
That's why namesakes would have great input on whatever, one of them, two of them, whatever.
But you all insulting namesakes by your putting that first naming, changing so much of that because for whatever your intention was.
I'm sorry, you'll have to detail that.
Who is insulting namesakes and exactly what are you talking about?
The last, the February one.
Yeah.
Yeah, where namesakes got quite a bit of representation.
Yes, someone offered a certain version of what went down, which was incorrect.
And I talked to a lot of them to make sure they got the right information.
So I think there was a lot of misunderstanding.
understanding so even if it if it wasn't you can't say someone was insulting them
you can't do that policy written and brought was insulting to them because their family members
wouldn't be able to work in the district they'd have to be retired five years I said nothing to
any of them because it was an active agenda item and I didn't discuss it they watch board meetings
we're going to it but your misrepresentation of me and of that
committee needs to end because it's false so may I respond very briefly I
add in the committee just to be very clear the naming committee we are given
a packet we read the packet there were only two parents in attendance you and I
miss Fox miss grooms took a vote we voted for our top doc excuse me dr.
grooms we voted for our top three names were eliminated through that process
after discussion they were eliminated then they were allowed to be put back in
and that happened and that is what this one changing my policy we there wasn't
it I do not agree when a name is eliminated we should move forward as a
committee and honor that vote and that's what this improved policy does and I
9. Consent Items
And I want to move forward.
Thank you, Ms. Cuzela.
All right.
We will now move on to the consent items, number nine.
Board, remember, this will be a new section of the agenda.
On their items that are repetitive in nature that we're not necessarily going to discuss, you can pull it.
So if there is one of these items, 9.1, 2, or 3, that you would like to pull and discuss, please let us know.
Otherwise, we'll keep trucking.
10. Information Items
All right.
No items being requested to be pulled.
We look at item number 10, information items.
The certification of anticipated tax collection rates was received.
The 2026 appraisal district budgets were provided to the board.
The donated items list has been received.
And Madam Secretary, have we captured any requests from the board?
Yes, there is a few things.
I'm not sure if Ms. Calhoun wants this or not, but she mentioned the number of the GSA
clubs from last year.
Do you still want that one, Ms. Calhoun?
Ms. If it's readily available.
If not, I'm not going to worry about it.
It can't exist anyway.
So just it was more for clarification for the sponsors of the clubs that they were getting
the correct information going forward.
But council has already said that they are so I don't really think that you don't really you don't need no
I don't think it's real okay, and then the miss Cuzela says something about the TASB
Password and it why that's protected
Why is the TASB mission statement and statement of beliefs now a password protected?
site, okay, then
you
I can't remember if it was Ms. Cheney or Ms. Cuzela said that the thoughts about the enrollment numbers being.
September 1st and October.
Yeah, after Labor Day.
And then one more.
It was the grade levels.
Yeah, the assessments, the grades.
Star ratings by campus.
11. Future Meetings
Correct.
Yes.
And I think that's all.
All right.
Thank you.
you. We'll have our regular board meeting on Monday, August 25th. It's next week. And there
be no further business before the board. This meeting is adjourned. The time is 9 33 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.