Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this work-study meeting of the Board of Trustees of Katy Independent School District to order.
Katy ISD · Work Study Meeting
Katy ISD Work Study Meeting, March 23, 2026
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In this meeting
The headings and the descriptions beneath them are the district’s own words, taken from its index of this recording.
- 0:06 to 0:30 1. Call to Order
- 0:30 to 1:16 2.Pledges of Allegiance
- 1:16 to 10:27 3.Public Comment
- 10:27 to 10:48 4.Closed Meeting
- 10:48 to 11:52 5.Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 11:52 to 28:57 6.1 Discuss and consider a resolution supporting the free exercise of religion in Katy ISD schools.
- 28:57 to 3:03:29 7.Reports
- 3:03:29 to 3:11:49 8.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of the January 2026 Financial Reports.
- 3:11:49 to 3:14:27 8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the March 2026 budget amendments.
- 3:14:27 to 3:16:41 8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Financial Audit Engagement Letter.
- 3:16:41 to 3:23:51 9. Consent Items
- 3:23:51 to 3:25:27 10. Information Items
- 3:25:27 to 3:25:39 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, March 23, 2026, and the time is 5.01 p.m.
Dr. Gorgorst, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to notice for this meeting?
I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of our Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting tonight.
Thank you. We will now move on to the Pledge of Allegiance and KDISD Police Officer Lister will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance tonight.
2.Pledges of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and indivisible
thank you do we have any scouts in the audience this evening
no we will move on to section 3.1 at this time the board of trustees will give members of the
3.Public Comment
the public an opportunity to speak in accordance with kdisd board policy bed local as defined by
board policy speakers who signed up by 2 p.m on monday march 23rd 2026 provided their information
are will be allowed to address the board speakers that fail to sign up in advance
with the required information will not be called to speak at the outset of public comment speakers
that properly signed up in advance will be called forward individually and allowed to address the
board on posted agenda topics only tonight speakers who signed up to speak on a posted
agenda item will be allowed three minutes to speak and if a speaker is not finished speaking within
the end of their three minutes the audio will turn off if speakers wish to share written material
with the board please provide 10 copies to the secretary for board services before the meeting
begins for board members the superintendent the chief communications officer and permanent record
if a speaker is not attempted to solve a matter administratively through proper channels as stated
in board policy, the presiding officer's designee shall advise the speaker to seek resolution
through the appropriate policy.
Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.074 and 551.0821, the board will
not permit the presentation of personally identifiable information regarding a student
and will not discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline,
or dismissal of a public officer or an employee to hear a complaint or charge against that officer
or complaint. Should a speaker wish to address one of these issues, they must do so through the
appropriate local grievance policies, FNG local, DGBA local, CKE local, or GF local. Our speakers
will be called forward in the order they signed up to speak. Tonight, our first speaker is Rachel
Justice followed by Jesus Nieto welcome good evening my name is Rachel Justice I
have been an employee of Katie ISD since 2002 and I am currently an ESL teacher
working with second graders when I first started my career in Katie ISD over two
decades ago we still had in-person convocations at the Merrill Center a
A theme repeated in those convocations over the years was how our work as teachers made the entire community of Katy stronger.
Katy was a place people moved to specifically for the great schools, and I believe our teachers have continued to make that true.
I have been proud to be a part of Katy ISD all these years.
Today, I am here to discuss my concerns about the staffing cuts being made across the district, specifically regarding the elementary ESL program.
program. My school has a large population of students receiving ESL services and we currently
have five experienced ESL teachers and a paraprofessional. That allows us to have one
teacher per grade in first through fifth grades. In addition to working in small groups and one-on-one
with ESL students in the classroom all day, we meet with teachers to determine what accommodations
specific students might need and then make the necessary changes to provide to the whole grade
level. Additionally, we provide support to the teachers in collecting and entering
data for students and communicating with parents. We plan TELPAS training for
students and teachers, then also schedule and administer state TELPAS testing. We
receive information from the Office of Other Languages to share with our campus.
After our campus staffing numbers came in, my team was told that the district is
reducing the number of ESL teachers per campus because we simply do not need the
the amount we currently have.
Our staff was told that this is being called right-sizing,
as opposed to downsizing.
Our school has 259 ESL students, over 40 of those
being at the beginner or intermediate level.
Students at the beginning level have very little or no ability
to understand English and respond.
Intermediate level students still
have significant struggles understanding and responding
in English.
These students need services such as translation,
accommodation, content clarifiers, visuals, pre-teaching of vocabulary, and simplified
instructions.
I work with many students who would be failing multiple subjects if not for these accommodations
and daily small group or one-on-one ESL instruction.
The truth is many of our ESL students won't get these services next year and their grades
and test scores will reflect that.
Unfortunately it appears that ESL isn't the only area where our students will get
less support.
I have been told that class sizes will likely be going up across the district.
I have heard that GT teacher positions will not be filled if a teacher retires or resigns.
I have heard that while more and more students are being identified as having dyslexia at my school and our teachers groups are full,
we will not be hiring any new providers of dyslexia
instruction. So today I am urging the board to reconsider the cuts being made that will directly impact the students across our district.
Thank you. Jesus Nieto followed by Caleb Smith-Silver.
the air.
Welcome. Hello, thank you. Good evening trustees. My name is Jesus Nieto. I'm a
community organizer, a proud KDISD resident, and most importantly son of a
teacher. I'm here tonight to send in solidarity with our educators and union members advocating
for livable wages and health care plans that work for people. Tonight you'll receive reports under
agenda item seven, specifically the health plan update and the 26-27 budget and staffing update.
I want to start off first regarding the health plan. Our educators, paraprofessionals,
and staff deserve affordable, accessible, and comprehensive health care. Too often we hear
from our educators and staff who are paying more out of pocket while receiving less coverage. That
is simply not sustainable. As a community, we want to see a health plan that prioritizes affordability,
lowers deductibles, and ensures that those who take care of our students can also take care of
themselves and their families. Second, on the budget and staffing update, this is about values.
A budget is more than numbers on the page. It reflects what we prioritize as a district. In our
community message is clear we must prioritize people as i continue to talk to community members
across the district i continue to listen to some of the same requests needed over and over again
competitive pay that helps recruit and retain high quality educators and staff
adequate staffing levels so that classrooms are not overcrowded and educators are not overworked
increased investment in student support services including counselors and mental health resources
resources, transparency in how funds are allocated, especially when difficult decisions are being
made.
We also want honest conversations about challenges ahead.
If there are trade-offs, the community deserves to understand them.
If there are gaps, we need to know how the district plans to address them without placing
the burden of our educators or compromising student outcomes.
At the end of the day, strong schools require strong support systems for both students and
staff we ask that you leave with transparency equity and commitment to putting people first
i look forward to the presentation and discussion to be had and the community is watching
we want to see solutions not blank statements thank you for your time
next is caleb smith silviero
Good evening. Good evening Board of Trustees. My name is Kayla Severio. I'm here to speak on
agenda item 6.1. As a recent KDISD graduate and with two brothers currently attending KDISD
schools, I'm here in support of this resolution. As the district considers the state required
action around a daily period for prayer or religious readings, I think it's important to
be clear about what this actually does. It protects students' rights to freely
exercise their beliefs, including prayer, without adding unnecessary restrictions.
KDSD already allows students to pray and express their faith voluntarily
in a way that's student-led and non-disruptive. That's something we should continue to support.
At the same time, I agree with the decision to not require a structured daily prayer period.
When you start defining a specific time or setting, you risk limiting when and how students
can actually practice their faith. Religious freedom works best when it's
truly voluntary, not something confined to a single moment in the day. This
resolution strikes that balance and protects students rights while keeping
our schools respectful and focused on learning. As someone who was recently in
these classrooms, I believe this is the right approach for our students. Thank
you. Thank you. This will conclude the open forum portion of our meeting. The
4.Closed Meeting
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.
The board will now reconvene in open meeting.
5.Reconvene from Closed Meeting
Today is Monday, March 23, 2026, and the time is 6.02 p.m.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's work-study meeting.
meeting. Each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Wednesday,
March 18th, 2026, and the board will receive information and recommendations from staff,
administration, and the superintendent on these agenda items tonight. Board members will be able
to ask questions, receive answers, and should be prepared to take action. The board has just
reconvened from closed meeting, and in accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code,
any action arising from discussions in the closed meeting must be taken in an open meeting.
And so for just to share with everybody action item 6.1 tonight work studies we normally do not take action
We had discussion on this item at the work study in February and
Missed adding it to the agenda in February to take a vote. And so tonight we will be taking action on this item that was discussed in
February and so board will now look at item 6.1 discuss and consider resolution supporting the free exercise of religion in KDIC school
6.1 Discuss and consider a resolution supporting the free exercise of religion in Katy ISD schools.
I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President, I would like to amend the draft resolution for this agenda item.
Mr. President, point of order.
Mrs. Kusella, just make the, you can't amend something that hasn't already been presented, right?
So someone would need to make the motion and then you amend the motion or you just mean to?
The motion isn't amended.
It's the attachment.
So I don't know how you want to deal with that.
You make the motion and then we have discussion.
In the discussion and then you can add the...
The motion stands.
It's not being changed.
It's the attachment that we're voting on.
So I just figured we could talk about the attachment.
You make the motion.
You're not amending a motion.
You're just asking for a...
I didn't say I'm amending the motion.
Correct.
I think she would like to make an amendment to the language.
Resolution.
Okay.
Shall I proceed?
You can make the motion as amended and then share the amendment.
How about that?
Okay.
So, let's see.
But the motion stands.
So, I don't, the motion doesn't change.
Technically, no one's made a motion yet.
You would be making the motion.
Unless you wanted someone to make the motion.
I move that the Board of Trustees discuss an amendment to the resolution.
resolution.
Second.
Thank you.
May I start the discussion?
Okay.
Okay.
So the, I just wanted to make a recommendation to the board that's another whereas point
that would be included, I think, right after the third from the bottom whereas, where it
It talks about the rights of students to engage in voluntary student-initiated, and it talks
about the Texas Education Code.
That after that whereas, I suggest we add the following, and it addresses the one minute
of silence that I believe we already are supposed to already be following that per the Education
Code.
Can you tell me where again on that?
sure so um to repeat i'm just recommending that we add a whereas statement to the resolution
which is um i guess i would say the third from the bottom i would put it in there
since we start talking about the education code there we could add another one so i'll read it um
so whereas excuse me let me get my glasses on whereas the texas education code section 25.082d
establishes a minute of silence in public schools when students may choose to reflect,
pray, meditate, or engage in any other silent activity.
And KDISD already complies with this each school day after the pledges.
That's the whereas I just would like to add.
In addition to under the now therefore be it resolved that, point number two,
would just to be clear i had the board directs the superintendent i would like to add communicate we
direct the superintendent to communicate this resolution to all classroom teachers and staff
and to continue ensuring the district practices the way it's written is that clear what i'm
trying to do there so to be clear the minute of silence if anyone's unfamiliar with that
When I was a sub, I witnessed that.
My daughter talks to me about that.
It's part of the beginning of every day in first period.
There's a minute of silence where nothing is supposed to be happening and it's supposed
to be silent.
So it's a great time to pray if you'd like to pray.
And then the pledges usually happen and the campus announcements.
Or no, the pledges are first, then the minute of silence, then the campus announcements.
So that's per code.
Mr. President, may I say something?
Ms. Champagne?
So I don't know where that minute of, I know about the minute.
I've been in schools many times and I've heard that.
I don't know where that falls, you know, what kind of policy that's in or if it's just part of.
It's in the Texas Education Code.
Okay.
But it's not, in my mind, it's not really about prayer.
I mean, it could be about prayer, but it's not necessarily about prayer.
It's a moment of silence for you to think about whatever you want to think.
So in my mind, it doesn't belong in the proclamation because this one is about freedom of religion,
which that moment of silence isn't necessarily about a religious thing.
Is there any?
I don't know.
Because I think that's a separate issue.
and to assume that everyone is praying during that minute so I was able to see
this see it specifically says during that it doesn't call them in their
prayer establishes a minute of silence in public schools when students may
choose to reflect pray meditate or engage in any other silent activity and
then acknowledges that the district already complies with that so I think it
I don't think it didn't call it a minute of prayer
Men in silence and then happens to mention pray along with reflect meditate or engage in a silent activity
May ask your clarification
You just said excuse me. I was already recognized I believe so so miss sham trustee champagne the other where there's many
I mean, this is the resolution we had last month. It's already talking about including prayer. We're having to respond to SB 11
that
11 right
10 no, I think it's 11
about prayer in schools
And and so our other whereas is the first one talks about a period of prayer prayer prayer is part of the vocabulary of this
resolution
Right, so so I feel like the minute of silence whereas but that's not a prayer
That's not... Yeah, it can be or cannot be.
I know, but why would you put something in there... I mean, I'm not that opposed to it.
I'm just trying to say it's not... I don't want you to assume or anyone to
assume that the minute of silence is necessarily prayer. Do you want me to read it again?
I heard you, but it doesn't... to me it doesn't go in here because it's not...
And everything I'm reading here says something about prayer.
Every one of these three we're asking says something about prayer or religion,
whereas that moment of silence is not about prayer.
Ms. Champaign, I see this added more as an education to the public
to let them know that this is something that happens.
Because I think there would be people who believe that nothing like this
is happening in our schools that the kids don't have an opportunity to pray
or meditate or reflect silently or engaged in a silent activity and so I
can see this being in in the resolution to say that because this exists we are
providing these opportunities that are already carrying out state law in our in
our campuses but I agree with miss gazelle here that I do think it I think
it's fine point of clarification there's no compulsion in that correct i'm just making sure
that i'm understanding this 100 clearly because i don't have it right in front of me there's no
compulsive compulsory language in what you're adding correct i'm what i'm actually quoting
is the law which is the texas education code which again i'll just make sure everyone hears that but
that students may choose to read quote reflect these are not my words reflect
pray meditate or engage in any other silent activity and it goes on to say as
long as it's not distracting mr. president I don't object to what mr.
Cosell is saying I think and I agree with you that our community probably
knows we do a minute of silence and that is you know what I use it for but I
don't have an objection to that I think it does say we already do that or if
they don't know we already do it that's included here I don't object to that
it's just hard that at the spur of the moment we're changing language and if I
like it's not written out.
So I don't, would it be possible to get that language
to the board secretary over there?
And does she already have it?
And could it, I don't know what the,
what I'm asking here, Mr. President.
So could it be reworded and could we come back
and vote on it in a minute when we can see it written out?
So and how it fits in, I don't object to it.
I just want to see it before we vote on it.
Can we do that?
Mr. Graham, what would that look like procedurally?
Would we be able to have you put that, drop that in there for us to see?
Yeah, as of right now, the only motion that's been made is a motion to discuss an amendment.
It's not actually to amend because there was no previous motion made.
If the Board would like, I can revise the resolution with this language and we can include
both copies to the board this week and take action on it next week and we're
within the timeline to we're already outside of the timeline on that but I
think we've shown our intent that we are discussing this and I don't I don't
think there's a stick that's agreeable to me I have a question please will both
of the proclamations be presented then the one the original one and we can't
We'll certainly present both that language to the board and we can take direction on which ones
Mr. President if I could continue I just wanted some clarification we talked about this over last month
And I just wanted to make sure they work
So there are and I bear with me I think this might be a little repetitive
I just want to make sure I understand that during the school day there are students who do leave a classroom to go pray
And I wanted to understand is that ever done during instructional time
Mr.. Gregor ski
Dr.. Orski yes, ma'am. I couldn't confirm that students do that currently
In my practice of 33 years, have I seen that happen before in public schools?
Yes.
But I am unaware of which specific school may have that happening for which religion
and whether or not it happens during instructional time.
I don't know that.
Okay.
And thank you very much.
And so to continue, we don't have a practice of discriminating.
that's a strong word but only certain religions could leave to go pray to from
the classroom I wouldn't know that we shouldn't if certain faiths are allowed
to leave the classroom any faith and accommodations should be available to
any of them I mean right I'd like I guess I need further clarification on
that let me understand I want equal access correct to every religion any
child who feels the need to leave a classroom to go pray that every single
religion is allowed to do that are we are we yeah that's something I could not
confirm I can confirm that all of our principals who run our schools know not
not to discriminate against any religion.
That's a tenet everyone learns in their mid-management
master's program, school administration.
So I'm sure they all understand that,
but if you're asking me could that have happened somewhere
that somebody discriminated, I couldn't answer that.
Like that one religion got to do something
that somebody else didn't get to do, I have no idea.
Dr. Agorski, I am aware of some students
have requested from their campus principals accommodations for a certain
time of day certain time of the year to recognize their faith and I I am aware
that the principals do accommodate and work with them and sometimes it's not
necessary during the instructional day he's dr. cross mr. cross as an example
during the graduation ceremony I think you and a couple other principals
reached out we even accommodated during a graduation ceremony we make
accommodations they were making combinations whether it's an
instructional day I think they're very good at recognizing that and working
with the students and I want to clarify the reason why I'm asking is to make
sure the board doesn't need to work a little a little further to make sure if
that's a hard job for a principal to have to try to figure out or is there
something we need to add to our resolution to clarify just seeking input
put on that the board already has policies for students that talk about free exercise of
religion and non-discrimination statements so i don't assume any principal is is ignoring those
policies so i would assume every principal is respecting those policies to ensure they don't
discriminate against kids for any reason so per our policy then it should be clear that any student
who if they somehow need to leave the classroom to pray no matter what
religion they are they would be allowed we would have to if we don't
discriminate I wouldn't go that far to say that the policy says that the policy
just says don't discriminate but the policy does not have clarity to it that
says that if a student asks the principal for whatever accommodation that
that the principal automatically give them that accommodation during the instructional day.
The policy doesn't say that.
Okay.
Mr. President, and Mr. Graham, you can certainly correct me if I'm wrong.
I think part of what you looked at, what were the core tenets of the faith, right?
Like, did a specific religion, part of their core tenets, was it you're supposed to pray at a certain time
or a certain, you know, month or certain whatever it may be
versus was there flexibility with a different group.
And my understanding as a principal was that's one of the things we were looking at.
Even as far as dress, and back in the days when kids could not have facial hair,
you know, you might look at that and go, well, is that a religious thing?
And is it tied to a core tenet of their faith?
and if it was I believe we allowed it over the years and if it wasn't then we
didn't we said well you can't just say well well this is what I want to do
because I want to do it you know had to be had to be attached to that and mr.
Graham am i am i speaking out of turn with that or no you're you're correct
it's an individual basis based upon the religious practices practices of that
individual in their family all right so board the plan will be to come back
We'll add this to next week's agenda. We'll have both versions
To consider and have as an action item
Mr. President Fox meanwhile, we have a motion on the floor that needs action. Is that correct? Mr. Graham or can we get sorry?
Mr. President, I don't know if we need action or just
We've already discussed it. So I would assume that we've all
would vote yes for it but the motion was made and seconded to discuss a resolution supporting
the free exercise of religion in KDISD all in favor use the keypad to say that we have discussed
it we're not approving anything vote on your keypad all right in the motion to discuss this
resolution again passes we'll now move on to our report section of our meeting
7.Reports
tonight and our presenter Lance Nauman director of risk management will present
a health plan update to us good evening president Redmond dr. Gorski and board
of trustees pardon me here this morning or this evening rather to go over sort
of a semi-annual health plan update we're gonna look at this in three
different sections this evening. We're going to provide you a financial update, some health plan
basics, helping you understand what it means to be self-insured and the things that we come across,
and then how we support our plan members throughout the year.
This first slide is a representation of the historical performance of the plans dating back
to 2020 and you will see that in this slide you will begin to see that in 2020 we had a deficit of
point two million and it grew over time and our participation in those periods
has remained relatively stagnant at about 61 percent to 62 percent prior to
this we were at about 67 upwards to 68 percent but over the last four or five
years we have hovered around the 8,000 mark that's staff members participating
participating in the plan. On average, you'll always see on top of that, dependents and such, will be in the neighborhood. So total plan participants would be around 13,000 people. Also, take a look at this over time. The district contributes $385 PEPM per employee per month toward health care. During these years of deficits, you will see a represented what
that deficit per employee per month actually represents so the total participation contribution
over time is actually more than the 385 and we were not fully contributing or asking plan members
to pick up that delta that deficit that incurred over those over the over those years so that's
something very important to take a look at and i would make note that since i've been here i have
I have not seen any supporting documentation that the state has increased their $75 per month per employee to health care for our employees.
With that being said, the district plans that participate in TRS active care got a bolstering of capital to their plan to keep premiums from skyrocketing, as we have seen.
This slide shows you historical health fund cash position. When we were prior to
18-19 the plan was breaking even and we have a healthy fund balance in the
hearing the health plan and as you see over time that balance began to fall as
the district contributed more money to cover those deficits.
The next slide you'll see historical and medical pharmacy PEPM.
And this is basically looking at what it costs for the district per employee per month to
pay for medical and pharmacy over time.
And as you can see, that has hovered anywhere from $758 up to last year we went up to $852.
Okay, I'm sorry, it didn't roll forward, my apologies.
There we go.
And then below that you will see one of the tools that we've used to manage those costs in the medical and pharmacy plan
is our virtual program, which has grown exponentially over time.
Last year we had 23,000 visits utilizing that.
And I would remind you that that program is free to our employees
and their dependents.
That is something we put value in, and we've been able to defer costs
such as standalone ERs, emergency rooms, and urgent cares
for a lot of things such as your stiffly nose, whatever it may be
that can be handled virtually.
Large losses.
Let's talk about large losses.
One of the biggest financial impacts you will see to a health plan are large losses.
And in this exhibit, you will see that these losses are anything greater than $75,000 per incident.
So that's remained very fixed relative to our participation.
It follows form.
But in terms of impact to the plan, it is very significant, as you can see.
And it's a struggle with a lot of health plans.
And I will comment, I think later on in the presentation,
I believe that there was a spike over in the nation of like 29% in large losses.
And these losses primarily are things such as cancer, major open-heart surgeries, premature births, intensive care type situations.
That's what drives these big dollars.
And I broke that out by health plan, as you can see, over the last three years.
This slide I'm showing you now is important to look at in terms of what the district has
done in terms of increasing premiums we've had to increase.
If you'll recall some of the conversations we've had, we've tried to increase our, we
have to increase premium dollars, but we try to increase it to trend.
And trend is a fancy word for medical inflation.
So let's look at 2019 and 2020.
Playing your 2019, we actually reduced premiums.
And then we went into 2020.
We kept premiums flat.
And that was a conscious decision by the district and the board.
Note here is that we had four plans available for our staff members.
And what we found was these plans were beginning to kind of merge together, if you will.
There wasn't really much difference.
So as the health world changed, we tried to develop plans that mirrored what was going on.
As we know, the health plans now are consumer-driven,
and we developed the three plans that we have now for 21 through 26.
The POS-2, which is a very broad open network.
The Memorial Hermann ACO plan, which is a closed network for only Memorial Hermann providers and their facilities.
And then the high deductible health plan, which is a high deductible and allows employees virtually the ability to go and select from a broad network of physicians.
The high deductible health plan was the first time we introduced this to the district.
with an HSA, a health savings account. And the health savings account allowed
employees to put dollars pre-tax to offset claims within their deductible.
An important thing about the high deductible health plan with an HSA is
those funds maintain with, stay with the employee. So if Lance decides he's
going to participate in the high deductible and he contributes $100 a
month and he doesn't need that this year those funds roll over to the next year they don't
become dissolved so in the next year if lance decides he's going to contribute 200 it starts
increasing so you're it's and it's portable that's another interesting feature of that
as i was showing you those those plans that we had from 2019 it's important to see how
our employees have moved from a historical perspective from plan to plan to plan and over
time you will see that you see a migration from the POS to down through the Memorial Harmon ACO
and the high deductible plan because of the plans are becoming consumer driven and last year from 25
to 26 you'll look to the right we saw a significant migration down through to
the Memorial Hermann ACO and the high deductible health plan and again you
will see in the very bottom our participation rate is right at 61% what
have we been doing to try to save money for the health plan I think this is very
important to bring up. Two years ago we went out to the marketplace to look at
our ASO fee and an ASO fee covers the network that we basically attach to with
Aetna. They take care of our claims and pay our claims. They do
pre-authorization. They do all those sorts of things and we were able to
achieve significant savings year over year of roughly $981,000 from $3497 per employee per month
to $2475. That was a very very productive savings that we were able to pull back into the plan and
not have to pass those expenses on to the to the point. We did a comprehensive pharmacy review a
year ago and as a result the rebate will increase by an estimated based on prior
year participation in pharmacies and prescriptions that were written an
additional seven point eight million dollars benefit administration platform
one of the what this is is when employees go through open enrollment
they make life-changing events of marriage divorce ULEs qualified life
events through deductions they're able to do that electronically and go to a
call center we are able to defer that cost and that goes through our voluntary
benefit plan administrator so we we saved an additional per year a million
ninety two thousand dollars again based on participation so let's talk about
what it means to be self-insured in a health plan. The health plan for it, there's two basic
ways you can provide health insurance for your employees. You can provide a fully insured plan
or be self-insured. A fully insured plan is I pay a premium, it's trended, and there's a profit
margin built on top of that for an insurance company. Self-funded like we
are, we pay for those claims, those administration, all the services that we
provide come directly out of the GLF. We don't pay premiums to an insurance
company. There is no insurance company. Well your your benefit card might say
Aetna, there is no insurance. The only insurance that we purchase is stop-loss
insurance or individual stock loss for very high claims to
hedge our protection against those catastrophic events. And we hire a third party to administer,
which is Aetna, to process those claims, keep data for us, and things along that nature.
And another two little points I want to bring up too is, as we develop what we call our loss pick
for year to year to year, as I come to you in July and June every year and say, well this is where
where our estimated claims to be, those are based on our trend, our trend data, not some
national trend data that we get uploaded and get charged for.
We base it on our own claims history.
We do not have to pay, we don't pay a profit margin to an insurance company with that.
That saves significant dollars to the point.
Plan expense. What drives participants and plan performance? Hospitals. Within the Houston region,
we are seeing a lack of square footage dedicated to meet the demands of our regional health care
because Houston has seen growth. As you drive down Interstate 10, hospitals are trying to add
on in a rapid rate but they just cannot keep up. I think if you see the news here
lately I think I don't know if it's been finalized yet but Harris County
Commissioner's Court approved to take in part of Herman Park because of the
expanded needs of medical center. So it's it's all over. Providers presently in the
Houston market pressure exists in the availability and supply of providers.
Additionally, labor shortages exist in all aspects of labor supporting health care.
Everything from the person supplying the band aids and the food to the person in the hospital
to the surgeon.
There is a significant labor shortage.
This is also important to note.
Drug manufacturers.
The uncontrollable cost of pharmacy by drug manufacturers has rapidly grown over the last
several years.
For comparison, from plan year 2018 to plan year 25, a 47.8% increase in pharmacy expense has been seen.
Within the last, let's say, 10 years, we were seeing pharmacy spend as part of your plan was anywhere from 3% to 5% of your total spend.
It's now getting upwards in the neighborhood of the 18% to 20%, and that's driven by your specialty meds
and all these high-dollar drugs that are in the market,
and that's ever-changing.
Utilization and severity.
Frequency of services is directly driven
by the engagement of plan participants.
It's a function of availability of care.
Successing the care because of shortages in bed space
and professional is a challenge.
Sometimes specialty care can be three to six weeks out.
And when that happens, it impacts severity.
If a person needs care immediately, sometimes getting to see those specialists can be a challenge.
Many of the needs are now becoming more complex and costly to require
because intense care is driving the cost models upwards.
Inflation.
like any other product or service we're all seeing inflation it's real and some of the things that
impact health care or tariffs the uncertainty of tariffs in the marketplace provides upward
pressure on the cost of goods and those are your durable medical equipment everything from band-aids
to IV packs to you name it price of oil most durable medical products are influenced by the
price of oil. We live in a world of plastics. Generic medications, you may or
may not know this, but most generics are made overseas and their pricing is
subject to global pressures as well. You'll see a lot of your specialty meds
are made here in the US, which makes it very expensive, and then also in Europe
as well. Capital outlay. Hospital systems are faced with increased costs relating
relating to the access of care.
As I mentioned a few moments ago,
building more buildings is becoming more and more expensive
and as a plan, we have to,
we indirectly absorb those costs.
As we talked a few moments ago,
let's talk about large losses.
It's those losses that are $75,000 or greater
in a plan year.
As demographics change and shifting employment trends
within the market population, large health claims follow.
So as we become more urban and or suburban,
however you want to classify us,
those problems tend to grow with us as our population grows.
And I might add, too, we're living longer.
We're almost like mummies.
We keep staying alive, alive, and they keep pushing us down the road,
and that's part that also drives up that care.
catastrophic diseases drive large losses the longer and especially care is becoming more
and more expensive as I mentioned earlier across the nation large losses have increased at a tune
of about 29% for claims greater than 75,000 what are we doing for our employees plan participants
Participants are able to locate and identify network providers via a member portal to find
out the best in class.
For pharmacy, employees have the ability to create and manage their prescriptions via
the portal, outlining prescription history and fulfillment.
We also provide a KDISD benefit fair.
Usually the week before or sometimes during the week of open enrollment, we bring all
of our providers in our voluntary providers our health plan providers to
sit down with those specialties those specialty services so people can explain
to them what they may have coming in the future sit down with them what's what is
a hospital indemnity plan what is vision cover those things and we've seen that
to be very successful. One of the things we also do to support our participants, we have
on-site enrollment. We meet employees where they are. We also provide online enrollment.
We do provide on-site enrollment for our maintenance and operation team and transportation team,
as well as providing bilingual services to those locations as well, because we want to
make sure we reach out and get in touch with them. New employee orientation. Each year as new
employees roll through the district, we have a district department representative go through and
explain to new employees what to enroll, what to look for, when they will receive an email to enroll
and step by step and assist them in that regard. We also provide support for our employees with
qualified life events. These can be very tricky at times. Loss of coverage, marriage, birth, death,
and we've had some unique ones that are different given the size of our organization, but we always
try to work within the rules set forth and we always want to help the employees best we can.
This slide, I thought it important as well, some of the highlight things that we provide support to our employees.
Qualified life events, we send out staff emails, we have a dependent verification process, and if you'll recall what that is,
is if you're able to be on the plan when we make sure that you are qualified by
providing the documentation to support that enrollment. Life claims, long-term
and short-term disability claims, health plan and benefit appeals, and other
direct assistance. And in plan year 25, risk management reached out and
and assisted 6,144 inbound calls to help our employees navigate their health care.
And that's what I have for you this evening.
Thank you, Mr. Nauman.
Board, any questions?
Mr. President.
Mr. Cross.
Mr. Nauman, thank you so much.
I appreciate the presentation.
So just for so people can understand our folks in the district, our employees, we don't have an unlimited number of options like for plan providers.
Right. I mean, they're not they're not lining up out the door, if I understand it correctly.
We don't have like 50 that we can choose from. Or do we?
Well, we have three different plans. And within those plans, the POS2 has a broad network for employees to choose from, from providers.
From like with the POS to you could go to Memorial Hermann
Texas Children's
Methodist Memorial Hermann would be a co the ACO model which is within the ACO network of Memorial
Harmon and then the high deductible is a broad open access
Oh, I'm sorry. I did not I did not explain that very well. Sorry. I meant no no no you're good
I see what you mean. I meant like
You know like you when you said earlier we don't have an insurance company
that we just have a plan provider, like if we work with Aetna.
So when we're looking for a plan provider,
are there just loads of those folks sitting out there waiting to work with us?
I see your question now.
Basically, for a district our size, when we went out two years ago,
I guess when we went out three years ago,
there's only four that really have the ability to do what we do.
And if you look over the timeline of the plan designs, that has shrunk even more.
And that's a struggle.
Just like accessing care at hospitals and providers,
the amount of players, if you will, in the space in which we operate have shrunk.
Sure, that makes sense.
I just wanted folks to understand it because I'll be honest
I didn't understand that for a long time that you know my mind. I'm like oh, we just have this not unlimited
But a large number of folks and why aren't we going out and picking from these 50 people you know?
another question
So each district as I understand it it's kind of unique in their world in other words if I were to compare us to a
neighboring district sci-fair for instance
When we're looking at our plan, we can't really, it's apples and oranges if I understand it correctly,
because if we, the prices we're going to get are based on the claims that we're filing.
Let's say for some reason, Cyfair just has, their employees have a fantastic year health-wise,
and they just don't really have to file that many claims.
Certainly no large loss claims.
But for Katie, we have tons of it.
then that's going to impact the prices we get do I understand that correctly
you're partially correct okay let me if you'll give me the opportunity to
expand on that you know in the TRS world they are regionally priced okay I think
they have 12 14 different regional pricing models that they have so they're
They're grouped into other TRS districts in Region 4.
So their experience, if they have a great year and I'm not going to call any other districts
out but ABC district has a horrible year, that's a fair could, will be underwritten
based on the whole group.
So the collection impacts everybody.
everybody. In our scenario, it's based on our losses, pure and simple. We underwrite
those losses and then we come to the point where this is our trend. This is what the
district wants to contribute. This is what we think premiums need to be.
Which is why I think a lot of small rural districts will go with TRS because they want
the numbers that benefits them from what I understand. Whereas if you're a large district,
districts have earned it, that it tends to work against you.
If I'm understanding that correctly.
You're correct.
And I think it's also important in this discussion to really think about that
while we probably have some of the best care available here with the medical
center here and all around us, the Houston market is probably the most
expensive place to get care in the state of Texas. Even though we see these
palatial buildings downtown and here in Katy, it's the most expensive. Okay, that's
that's good to know. I'll stop. Mr. President, thank you always for all the
information you have so much. I remember when we became self-funded because of,
you know we compared our what we could do to the TRS when we chose to be
self-funded it's because if you go into TRS and you didn't like it there was no
way out that has changed now correct so fair as TRS so that's the state system
if if you will so is it still we were so much cheaper than they were is that
that's still the case compared to the TRS, if we were to choose TRS now.
Yes, we are cheaper.
I don't want to use the term cheaper.
That sounds like our plan is cheap.
It's less expensive.
Do our premiums less expensive than it would be if we joined in the regional?
Because when we do that, when we do things on everything else,
we're going to go and we're going to buy school supplies.
Let's join a buy group.
If you're going to buy anything, milk, you buy a buy group,
and you get a better deal because of mass.
Would that be the case if Katie joined the other masses?
No, it would not.
How much difference is it?
It's not what it was.
We used to be like this much cheaper, less expensive.
Well, to answer your question as honestly as I can,
you know, TRS right now is waiting to see how much the state's going to bolster
underwriting deficit.
And they get that, but we don't.
You made a statement before I was going to say that.
So let's take some of that with us.
Mr. Nelman, I don't see how we can keep funding with the losses that we're seeing,
that we're $2 million and now $20 million, right?
So I don't, we could go back to all the charts if you want,
But it just seems like, so we are self-funded, meaning the staff contributions support the care,
and then therefore as the care gets more expensive because of the great losses
and the illnesses now are not getting less complicated but more,
and there are just more catastrophic illnesses,
I don't know that our employees can continue to even have health care with the rising cost,
and they haven't even been sick.
And that's the struggle that we're all, whether you're in the public sector or the private sector,
that is a struggle that everybody deals with.
And how much, you know, I try to use the analogy, it's kind of like making gumbo.
Are you going to put it in chicken and sausage, and how much are you going to put root?
right, and how thick you're going to make it.
And that's what you're doing, is you're making gumbo.
And it's difficult out there.
It really is.
And to be perfectly honest, the unexpected two things
to think about, one, we don't know how much the state will
or if they plan to contribute, can continue
to contribute like they have.
And then secondly is network interruption.
That is significant.
if you were to change, then you could have significant interruption of providers
that inadvertently drives up the cost in terms of like,
oh, well, I'm with Dr. Jones, and wait a minute, I switch.
Now I have to go back and repeat all those MRIs and all those CAT scans that I had
because of the change of plans.
That's always a significant cost driver when you think about this.
And I don't know what TRS right now is looking at in terms of needs,
but if they're looking at possibly double-digit premium increases this next year.
I know we have pulled every lever that we can to get our premium costs as low as we can.
I know that.
But they're unsustainable for our employees in many regards.
And then when you say interruption, we move to, forgive me, I'm speaking for the employees,
we move to HEB as the prescription, right?
Some of our employees don't live near an HEB.
Like they live in small communities, you know, they drive a long time because they want to be KDISD.
Thank you.
But they don't have an HEB.
And HEBs are not 24, there's not a 24-hour one.
So that has caused significant pain.
for our employees in some regards.
Well, part of the arrangement that we made for those
covers those, for instance, myself.
I live a long ways from here, very long ways.
There are planned participating pharmacies
that HEB will take those scripts.
So if, for instance, my son or daughter,
when they were in college, they're up at,
well, there's an HEB in College Station.
They're going to Timbuktu you, okay?
There are arrangements to cover those prescriptions
and even after hours.
So if, an example, if Lance gets out of the ER
at 11, 30, 12 o'clock at night
and I need to go to a pharmacy to get some medications,
it's covered.
So we have that.
There's like 60,000, I think,
is the number of participating pharmacies
within the network.
Is that something they can do once?
Like, I need my pharmacy to be Brookshire Brothers, and so you're going to cover that?
Or do I have to, every single time I need to go there, I have to submit it through HEB?
Is it paperwork?
It's on an exception basis.
I think when we looked at the heat map on, when we switched, I think, I'll have to go back and look at my notes,
but it was an excessive 95% of people that lived within two to three miles of an HEB.
And then we've got HEBs all over the district with schools.
But we do have that arrangement.
And if I'm on vacation, let's say I go to the beach, I develop this nasty rash,
I make a virtual call, and I'm in Destin, Florida,
I can go to a local pharmacy and it'd be handled.
And then submit your receipt and get reimbursed?
No, it would go through the pharmacy plan.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to close with this.
I just, I think I'd like to see a TRS comparison of what they're doing now.
You say they're going to go up to double digits.
Is that, are you sure?
That's the rumor on the street.
It's significant.
I just want to make sure that we are absolutely the lowest we can be.
Could we do something like a, it's not an audit, what's the thing, Dr. Gorski or Mr. President, that's like have somebody do a cost comparison?
We do that every, before I come to you like in July, we turn that stone over every year.
I know I've seen that.
We do that comparison.
And I'll be perfectly honest, one of the things that's a struggle with that is they usually don't announce their premiums until July 1st or June 3rd.
People don't have such a short window for their enrollment date.
So what their premiums will look like.
Mr. President, to piggyback on that, too,
I was reading not long ago that TRS had gone to more of a regional pricing model,
which said in high claim areas like Houston, Texas, that their premiums are going up
and that really what used to be kind of the cheaper model, everything I'm seeing doesn't suggest that anymore.
Not that I'm certainly open to looking at it for sure.
I mean, I think it's we could look but I it seems like it's maybe not going to be it's I don't know
I don't have a lot of
Putting a lot of faith in it. This will be the way to go
And I also wanted to say because this has been brought up a few times
Folks out in the community. They ask well, why can't teachers be on the state insurance?
Well, they're not considered state employees. They're hired. I had to figure this all out too
you're hired by your local school district so you're a local employee not a state one and so
you don't get the state insurance so that's a that have to be fixed at a whole different level
you know i i'll i'll add this and you bring up a really interesting point that two years ago
three years ago we used to have to compare our plan to the trs active care plan for compatibility
ability. Well, they changed it now. It's what's compared against the state. And when you look at
the richness of the state and you say ours, it makes you scratch your head. And the same question,
I mean, some of their plans are zero cost, but they're not funding that level to the state.
I know y'all struggle. We struggle with that, right? With the state funding for anything and
everything mr. president can I make one quick comment right there I would
venture to say that our state representatives are hired by local people
as well right like we're the ones who hired them and they get the premium they
get that good deal mr. champ where's Brett when I need him okay but mr.
president because he's probably watching me right now that's I'm gonna get that
tonight so anyway I have some questions please all right could you please go
back to the screen or the one where it showed the increase of the things and
the first one I remember was negative $28 and it was zero and then so we so
when we look at this when we see plus 20 plus 25 plus 14 plus 29 that's a
cumulative right that's that's year over year year after year so like if i added up 45 60 89
i mean it's like 122 or something 112 or something since 2021 increase correct correct okay first of
all i just wanted to clarify that because that's a that's a lot you know because what we're hearing
from teachers is and i'm not this isn't your fault or anything but their raises aren't that as much
as that some people you know if you're a i hate to bring the word up but i mean there's someone in
the audience here looking at me but if you're a para or or somebody like that you know 121 dollars
is pretty much um if you do three percent plus three percent but you know what i mean it's not
not $121 probably a month.
Something, if I may add this, something that we, I mean,
we look at each plan based on its activity, its claim activity.
And since I've been here, the POS-2, which was the Consumer Plus Choice
and even the Consumer Plus Limited back in the day,
those plans ran very, very hot.
They were always the loss leader.
We always lost money on those plans in terms of premium collected,
district contribution against claims. So in that exhibit you will see we kind of
had to we had to put some I guess premium pressure on those to bring
in to offset some of those claims expenses but as you'll see in the
Memorial Hermann they weren't quite as indicative except for the spouses and we had a
historical run where our spouses were causing a lot of our large losses. Okay
Okay, but let me, I got you, and I know I'm looking at the most expensive one,
which actually falls into one of my next things I'd like to say,
which is, you know, when I listen to people and their complaints about the insurance,
to me, I've actually talked to Dr. Gorgorz about this,
to me it falls into two different categories.
One is the expense of the plan.
That's one thing.
The other one is the coverage of the plan.
plan and and I just want to say this and I could be wrong and you you help me get it
right the the coverage of what the plan coverage covers isn't something that a district can
control so you can choose the different levels and then the different things are you know
different greater amounts of things are covered in the higher things but this is not a choice
that Katie I see is making to say oh if you're in the memorial Herman ACO then
we're going to dictate to you what can be covered within that let me explain a
little further help clarify just a little bit we have not excluded or
changed what is covered over the years we do and we haven't we haven't changed
changed, we haven't changed that. We have changed plan design and premiums over time
to pay for the increase in claims. Does that make sense?
It does and now I understand a little bit more because I didn't know that. This is something
I didn't know until you just said this. That we are actually deciding what is available
available in each of the plans and I understand the lower the plan is
This may be another conversation
But the lower the plan is obviously the lower the things are going to be offered not necessarily
No, I mean the lower the the less choices you're gonna have
Well, let's let's
Take a step back. The POS 2 is a broad network
The Memorial Harmon ACO is you have to stay within the Memorial Harmon plan of doctors.
The high deductible is a broad network of selection of providers that you can choose
from.
We haven't said that this is covered, this is not covered.
The only things like I said we've done is we've had to increase premiums over the years
since 21 or 22 to cover increase in trend, which is medical inflation, and move deductibles around here and there.
So that is, a lot of people get that confused of what's covered, what's not.
Year over year, we have to do a compatibility study against the Affordable Care Act,
and last year we were sitting at an 80 or 81 percent which is which is a good
plan and that isn't that is compared to the other districts in this area
comparable to what is being offered okay but for example I don't want to keep
going on in this but if you were at but I am going to say this if you're a
memorial Herman ACO and I have a little personal experience with this situation
situation. And I think when you're in a plan like that, but your doctor, so you didn't
know you were going to get in a car accident or have cancer or something like that. And
now, there's the number one doctor in the world, happens to be in Houston, but doesn't
work for Memorial. When you want to, now you're facing this traumatic life event and you want
this specialist but it's not a memorial
harm in one that that's what you have
you can't you either can't go to that
specialist or you go to the specialist
and you have some millionaire family
member that's going to fund it for you
that's that's that is correct and that's
what that's with any plan exactly with
any whether it's our plan their plan
either either or yawn it's that's right
Right.
That's the way things are.
No, and I understand that, and I know that's just an unfortunate thing, but what I want
to know is two things.
Well, three things.
When people say that they have to pay so much for their plan, I think sometimes that they're
comparing themselves to private industry, because in private industry, it's typically
typically more will be paid for by the employer.
And so you can't compare us to like BP, okay?
But I think that that must happen.
So what I would like to see, and you've done this before, a few years ago, a comparison
between districts and you showed like how much you take comparable districts
like Conroe or Cyphair or Fort Bend or whatever and you showed how much each of
those are paying toward their premium how much the average employee is is
is paying for their and it's really was good because when I saw that a couple
times I've seen that it made me feel good about that we're in line with with
everyone else it may still be terrible but it's we're not worse than other
people other districts and but the other thing I was going to say is you know I
would love it if we could do we're going to talk about staffing tonight but if we
could repurpose one of our HR people to be an insurance advocate person and just
that person's job is to explain it because insurance is very complicated as
we all know and to have someone there to kind of make help people make the right
decisions about their insurance and help them with their problems that they're
having you know whatever I mean it would be a full-time job and then so the other
people that are in HR have no idea how many people are in HR the other people in
HR when those questions come in that's not their job they can refer to that
person and then that person becomes a specialist in the insurance field and I
think that that would improve on customer service just my just my idea
but I'm just a person being up here but anyway just my idea thank you mr. president mr. gazelle
thank you so much so could I I didn't get this presentation ahead of time we don't have it loaded
onto our board Doc's I guess that was on purpose I don't know or timing perhaps we go back to the
the slide on the deficits per year?
Oh, is there a reason why we don't have the presentation loaded?
Yes, so I'd ask Mr. Nauman if we could have this in March.
I asked Mr. Nauman, and he did move it up for us for March
to discuss this along with the budget
because it is a big piece of the budget.
But when we lost that week at spring break, we weren't ready.
And so it wasn't ready at publication.
this week wasn't ready at publication when we came back from spring break so
we worked on this along with the budget and the staffing between mr. Schuss mr.
Smith mr. Nauman and I up until today I think yesterday I saw kind of final
final copy but we were still working on it as of today that's why I didn't get
loaded because I I would have liked to chewed on the numbers a little more and
then more prepared particularly with the staffing which is our next agenda item
Thank you for the answer.
The deficits, so the last five years, so, okay, 2020 was 2.7, 2021, 13.
So we've been in a double-digit deficit since 2021.
Okay, one, two, three, four, five.
And then a deficit in 2020.
So for me, you know, I'm just, I'm listening.
I don't hear anything different.
It's all the same.
It sounds the same to me as the presentation last year.
please correct me same problems you still have a deficit you still have you
know rising cost of oil etc that's life so nothing's different and so I just
would hope that we can think innovatively creatively somehow I don't
know the insurance industry is perhaps not so much but we are paying an
insurance consultant correct correct do is are we still paying him yes we are
okay and what what what benefit he was helping us he initially was brought on
so that we could evaluate the plans to keep and streamline could you explain
sure what we do and as I would explain a few minutes earlier is every year we
we will go back and we will underwrite this plan
and look at things that we can do to save money.
From the administrative piece,
I've said we've carved down as much as we can there,
but then what other options do we have that are in the marketplace?
And as I mentioned earlier,
it's becoming very constricted in the marketplace
what plans are being offered and available to our employees.
And I'll go back to the slide where we had the large losses.
That's significant.
And, you know, if I had a crystal ball that I could predict how many cancer patients we're going to have,
I say that with all respect and humility to those individuals.
but that's that's a struggle all my peers and my speaking with my peers is
they're experiencing the same thing it's it's just health care I think I've been
doing this a long time and I think this is the last two or three years has just
been I don't know what word to use it's just very difficult very dark well I
mean and for me this is a crystal ball if you will that we're gonna see another
deficit if we keep doing the same thing I mean it's been five years of deficit
or five years of double-digit deficit so I would predict we'd have another
deficit next year if we're gonna keep the same plan here and the way we
operate our program the so one example there's a two teacher family they just
said you know we're shopping outside the district trying to find something better
that's cheaper or perhaps better coverage for the money spent so it is our consultant that
we're paying looking at what they're looking at we are we we look i mean you should be right
right and we do we look at i mean and you know everybody thinks well i'm going to go to
healthcare.gov, I mean, that's expensive.
That, providers are leaving that.
It's difficult all over the marketplace.
And I would, you know, I would say this with a bit of caution,
is if it's cheap, people shop healthcare,
they look at the premium, and they think, oh, well, it's cheap.
because that impacts their paycheck, right?
Right.
I mean, how many times do we go to the grocery store
and we just go grab a gallon of milk, right?
We don't look at store brand or the name brand.
We just grab it because we're in a hurry.
And quite frankly, I will say this.
We are very customer service sensitive to our employees
if in terms of appeals after open enrollment we work with our they might
know that I can afford this I have got this we work with those employees to
we're just not a hard fast so we try to educate our people as best we can so
here are the options and we make it available for you know I I know you you
work hard for us just in the same breath they do talk about cost and coverage I
i think they're they're more than uh just a few that are intelligent in that way so i don't think
you were insulting them but there's coverage and costs that go together and that for sure you have
to look at both and they are and they're looking outside of our district and i'd like to know what
they're finding and it'd be great to be able to talk to them and i think we brought this up last
year about focus groups perhaps I know there's pros and cons to that but it
might be the right time to do that since we're we're at a I see a crossroads of
trying to figure out something different to do more brains on it the better and
to talk to the frontline people and their experiences is the HSA plan or the
health health savings account that's what I call it I think you call that
Is that available, is that bucket, if you will, available in any plan someone chooses?
Just the high deductible.
Just the high deductible.
And that's not a Katie rule, that's an IRS rule.
IRS rule.
Because just one idea, and perhaps we could handle it differently, I have no idea,
but if somehow there's just no way to change any of this,
wouldn't it be nice to be able to somehow figure out a way financially to put something in that account?
Good question where that come from, but cut something else because this is something that's been a an issue for our staff for a long time.
And that they could use that towards these high costs that we're not able to pull down for them.
It's just I'm trying to I want to think creatively and perhaps entertain that idea.
I think that's it.
I appreciate you. Thank you. Mr president.
Ms. Simi? Thank you Mr. Nalman. I just had a question. I'm sorry I really you know we just
got this so I haven't had time to figure out why but the thing that really has gotten my attention
is there's a 40 plus percent jump in the deficit between 2024 and 2025. Can you help me understand
where that's coming from? Claims and particularly pharmacy, specialty meds.
Specialty meds have gone through the roof just astronomically. I would say a
majority of that is a lot of claim frequency maybe just at or below the 75
level $75,000 level but a vast majority of that is pharmacy okay because correct
me if I'm wrong but last year we changed to the HEB pharmacy model we were hoping
to save quite a bit that didn't work out I guess we're just we're just two months
into that okay and we're already starting to see some positive things
for that. Okay. Two months into it? Really? We're only two months into the HEB? Oh it
started January 1. January 1. I'm sorry I didn't hear you. Okay. Okay so you're saying is it
mostly claims or is it mostly pharmacy? I would say it's mainly pharmacy. Okay. And
that was and and that was the reason we did such a hard look at when we went up
to the marketplace. And that's why that drove the change to HEB on January 1st.
Okay. Thank you. Mr. President, Mr. Nelman, my understanding is that the
employees do not know there's an alternative to HEB. So how have you
communicated that to them? When we rolled the program out, we outlined that. To the
best of my knowledge we outline that to the to the employees that we have
another 60,000 plus pharmacies available okay if it's after if it's after hours
if it's there's not an HEB nearby or there's not an HEB pharmacy which could
be if they're in Three Rivers Texas I guess Belleville Belleville yes I don't
know Chapel Hill I don't know where they're driving from but wherever it
could be yes mm-hmm what and and what's the is there a circumference like you
have to be within two if you're within two or three miles of an HUB you have to
go there if it's more than five I think we have it set up within like seven or
eight miles okay so can we communicate that one more we can communicate more
and better but I did pull up our FAQ that went out with the pharmacy plan and
and it does address that out of the area,
that there are 60,000 pharmacies in the RXTRA Advantage,
and to find a pharmacy near you or get directions,
they give a website to use online and a pharmacy search tool.
But that may not be something somebody remembered,
and when you need a pharmacy, you don't always remember to go back to FAQ.
But we could do some more communication on that.
Okay, just a quick communicate would be great.
Okay.
And Mr. President, again, that's why my idea about the insurance advocate would be good
because if they're not going to know to look at the fact, they call at the FAQ and they call.
Anyway.
Oh, man.
Don't put John O'Leary on that.
Call the advocate.
Hi, it's Sally.
Let me, we do have an advocate in the risk management department.
We have, actually we have three that work with our employees and answer questions,
and we vet those questions and get them to the right appropriate person within Aetna,
and we have a dedicated Aetna person that's our customer service representative.
We do have that going for us.
It might need some fine-tuning based on feedback I'm getting.
Mr. President, I apologize.
May I?
I have a question.
Mrs. Mary?
Sorry, Mrs. Cuzela.
When you said put something in the HSA account,
you mean the district contributes something to HSA for the people who use it?
And how many of our employees use any of the insurance percentage?
The HSA has about a 35% to 37% participation rate.
Okay.
It's about 3,000 people.
Okay.
So I disagree with that.
I wouldn't want to take district money and give it to a few people.
When we do it, I like to spread it out so everyone has the same benefit to that.
I understand what you're saying.
That would help.
But there are fewer and fewer people participating.
And so.
It would be for everybody if we were to do something differently.
Correct.
Something different.
We need to do something different.
Essentially, our decision to run a deficit is almost exactly the same thing.
because we're putting it in a fund that's going to cover it,
but we just are not committed to funding it.
So there is an opportunity where we don't have a deficit, right?
The decision going to self-funded is that we are not committing those funds
to pay premiums that are not used,
and if those premiums are not used, we keep the money.
But since COVID, that increase in putting health care off and pharmacy,
to see that increase has meant that we are spending that money now although
there is the opportunity that we don't spend as much if we were to just
increase our contributions so if we if we increase our contributions per
employee per month we are guaranteed to spend that money and it will be maximum
but the way we're doing it now at least the initial plan was that we may not
have to spend that money right wrong on the understanding there you're right on
And so so now it's almost as if we are donating into that fund that should benefit everybody
It's not direct like a direct savings to the employee it bring it could bring down a cost perhaps maybe right
But it's not a direct like an HSA account like if we plop $200 and everybody's HSA account. That's something
We need to figure out where that would come from and everybody would need one
is what I'm talking about.
Just a point of clarification,
it would only be those that are enrolled in a highly deductible health insurance.
Well, I'd like to think creatively and not just do that.
I'm trying to figure out out-of-the-box thinking here as the board.
What can we do?
Maybe it's not called that IRS HSA account.
term but something else to where it directly affects the employee in a good way and and they
get a share of that mr nolan have we looked at anything like a like a 125 cafeteria plan or
anything like that that might provide some different resources or options before we we look
at every option available when i when i come to you we've vetted we turn over every stone it's
we don't i'm gonna call it the sally effect same as last year we don't do that we look at every
available option to us and we're in that's a continuous process throughout
the year we just we're looking at some options right now that we may or may not
do but we're looking at every possible way that we can help our employees fight
these costs and you know we have a bucket and only has so much in it that
the district can spend and what can we do to provide the best care possible for
our employees. Mr. President, one last clarifying question. How much are we
required to contribute and how much does the district contribute to every person
who enrolls in? The minimum is $225 and the district contributes $385. $385, okay.
So we already contribute extra toward their cost. Okay, and Mr.
Mr. President, I would like to have a comparison of our plan with TRS just to look at, please.
That would be based off last year's numbers, right?
Right.
We'll have it next year's.
Right.
Any other questions, Board?
I had a clarifying question.
It's just something.
Go ahead.
So on the specialty claims you were talking about with those pharmacy claims,
that's where you're seeing the largest jump when you're comparing that deficit.
Did I understood that correctly?
So those specialty claims, what does that entail exactly?
What is a specialty claim?
Could you define that?
Specialty claim or specialty meds?
Either one.
Okay.
Both.
Both.
Okay.
Let's take large losses.
I can't be almost speaking in generalities because of HIPAA.
I don't want to single anybody out.
But large losses are usually driven by premature babies, cancer,
Musculoskeletal like operating backs, complicated surgeries, and then also in that group, complications
that result from that.
And there are some medications that are used during those high cost claims that are astronomical.
It would blow your mind.
And I can't tell you what the drug is because it would single out right would be
But they're significant and that's very very important to think about
specialty meds
are those things that
I'm gonna call after Saturday morning drugs that we all see advertised when you're drinking your coffee
Manjaro the ozempics the and things like that that can run anywhere from ten to twelve thousand dollars a year
for treatment, and they're very, very expensive.
It's an epidemic, and it's because of big pharma.
Mr. President, just one more thing.
Yes, sir.
Just for clarification as well, because I'll hear folks say,
you know, I went to the doctor, and I said,
well, how much is it if it's self-pay?
and you know they go oh wait it's this much cheaper that the insurance that's
not something we control right that is correct something to think about that is
is and I'm just gonna say providers in general is let me follow it follow up on
that that's you mainly see that in your your primary care physicians like your
urgent care your primary care docs they go I'll give you a discount right
The thing about it is those claims don't hit the person's deductible or out-of-pocket maximum.
So they're carrying more of the burden of those expenses on their shoulders when they don't do that.
Now, recently we did a really kind of, this is how we've approached it.
There's really like go the ER right there's three basic charges
Generally speaking. I'll give you scenarios. There's the work comp piece
There's the private pay and then there's insurance
Workers comp piece is set by statute. This is what the law says we are obligated to pay and you have the insurance which is either
retina United Blue Cross
Sigma and then you have out the door
We just recently did a study and we picked a few CPT codes, which are the diagnosis codes,
and there isn't that much of a difference in the out-the-door calls.
Any other questions, Board?
Mr. President, one last thing.
I just want to thank the Board members here and Mr. Nauman and everyone who's working as hard as we can,
uncovering every rock asking every question diving deep we've been doing
this for an hour because we care we hear you that this is expensive we all are
experiencing in our personal lives as well and I just I just I'm concerned
that people who promise if I were there I'd be I'd be driving those costs down
or whatever that looks like because if we could do it we would every year we've been for the last
three years we have been biting at every tiny piece of something we can do to drive costs down
and we'll continue to do that this board is not immune to the cost we hear you what you're
what you tell us when you call us when you email us we hear you and we're doing everything we can
and we will keep working toward that if there were a better less expensive
quality decision we would make it choice if we had a different choice we would
make it and we're working as hard as we can for you just want you to know thank
you we'll now move on to 7.2 our 2026 2027 budget and staffing update and our
presenter Chris Smith our chief financial officer mr. Brian shots our
chief HR officer good evening president Redmond dr. Gorski and trustees um Wow
Wow. Chapter 2 of not a good book, the budget update. Now, I'm not going to talk numbers,
bottom line numbers, but I am going to refer back to the presentation we saw at some point,
if I remember during this. But last month, or in February, we talked about our long-term
debt plan and checked that off of the budget. You'll see that again in July,
July, but not until then. Tonight we're going to focus on the maintenance and operations fund,
primarily because we're doing staffing, and staffing drives 89 percent of our budget,
our general operating fund budget. But to set the stage, we're dealing with flat enrollment.
As we know, it's well documented that we're 1,800 students less than what we budgeted last year,
and we're budgeting next year for even less students, about 295 less
students next year. So we're staffing up to that. And even next year, the following year,
right now, our demographer, those projections would stay relatively flat. The days of growing,
like we have been growing so much, is maybe behind us. School safety, we're putting more
in school safety now than we have in the past. A lot of that's because of grants that we've
received from the state and they have increased their funding although you'll
see in a slide they're not near they have not increased the funding near
enough to cover a cost that Katie ISD does to provide the school safety things
that we provide property tax exemptions those are wonderful for taxpayers
especially homeowners we have all seen maybe not a lower bill but one that's
not increasing without those homestead exemptions but those are very difficult
to manage from the all the way from from every entities level the county appraisal districts
the tax assessor collectors offices school finance offices across the state the Texas
Education Agency the Texas Comptroller's Property Tax Division are all struggling with implementing
these property tax exemptions and I've got some good news on a couple of slides of one of the
the fallouts from the struggles that all of those different entities are struggling with.
But I'll mention that here in a little while.
And education savings accounts for vouchers, we don't know what that's going to impact.
That's still, you know, a mystery.
But, again, we are showing less enrollment next year than we have right now.
And then special education, you know, it continues to grow.
We're down 1,800 kids, but we're now up to almost 20% in our special ed population.
Now, there is revenue that comes with special ed population through the state funding formulas,
but also there's an expense involved to the district.
I want to focus on this slide, and this is the root of the problem that we've been discussing for over the last hour,
and it's the static funding.
static funding. They did increase the basic allotment from $6,160, $6,160, and they put in
a full $55 to $6,215. That's the primary fuel that runs the state funding formulas, whether
you're in Lubbock or the Valley or Houston, Texas, $6,215 is what you get as part of the basic
alignment adjusted the golden penny yield it's static it's going to be
static until it states changed by state law these are the two things that drive
the revenue budget or the vast vast vast majority of the revenue budget for this
district in any district and until those can be controlled it's going to be tough
managing expenses that especially those that are related to inflation ie medical
inflation, salary increases, fuel increases, et cetera.
Those are tough when you're on a static income.
A lot of business can go do things that can increase their price.
When we decrease something from an expense standpoint, we decrease services for kids.
But we can't increase our price.
Enrollment increase.
This is the what I mentioned last year. We only budgeted an increase of 524 students
I'm gonna read this because I can't remember it any longer
But prior to the 2526 school year we averaged two thousand five hundred thirty eight student increases year over year on average
two thousand five hundred thirty eight students over those five years and
said differently
Over those five years we grew twelve thousand six hundred and eighty eight students
and that first year of that window the 2021 school year was in the heat of covid and we only saw a
753 student increase but over the and in this and in the year prior to this the 24 25 school year
we only saw a 1440 student increase so with a 753 increase and a 1440 increase we still saw
that to that 12,688 student increase or 2538 student a year increase that's not
happening any longer we talked about that a lot we're 1587 students less than
we budgeted for that's a Hempstead I looked it up that's a Hempstead ISD we
We budgeted for a Hempstead ISD growth, or 524 student growth,
but we were a Hempstead ISD less in our enrollment projection,
a whole district less than what we had had.
And we thought it was conservative.
Eight months ago, I would have swore that was a conservative number.
Next year, on the far right column,
you see that we are still budgeting a less students than we have now at 295
students less than we have now I'm in this using for the general fund an equal
taxable value percentage because now that we are flat enrollment I think the
next slide that you're going to see will make a little more sense if we're not
projecting property value growth and then new facilities we're not opening
any new schools this year. That's a break. First time in a long time we haven't
opened a new school during the summertime. And tax revenue, again, you're
seeing the same number. There's a little tweak in there because of things that we
know like penalties and interest that that may change, but that's a flat
number to show that flat number that I showed you on the previous slide. State
State funding is down $9 million.
Why is it down $9 million?
Well, you're down 300 students.
300 students times the basic allotment times the type of students is a number, but it's not a huge number.
The largest number of our reduction is because of the fast growth allotment.
We are dinged in our fast growth allotment because of this surprise year to the tune of a little over $5 million.
The fast growth allotment that we received, a little over $30 million, is down by $5 million.
And when you calculate the Tier 2 effect of that, basically our enrichment pennies effect of that loss of $5 million,
we're down about $8 million because of the fast growth allotment being reduced.
So now you're seeing from one year to the next about $9 million less state funding.
I will say that on March the 13th, we received a letter going back to those homestead exemptions and the frozen values on residences, etc., that the state is handling them differently now than they have the last couple of years.
And that's going to help us out.
The initial look was about $10 million a year in this 25-26 budget.
budget. So if assuming we don't find a bust in that and right now so far in a week's been a week
that we've been here has gone by and we have not found one, we're going to be amending the budget
in April about nine, about $10 million to reflect the good news that we received from that letter
from the agency that we received on March 13th. Better news than that is next year that will
carry forward and we should see about a 10 million dollar increase than the number that you see there
again didn't put it in this presentation because we hadn't run all the traps
but want to disclose that it does look promising at this point and we will as far as
unless something drastic happens we're going to be amending this year's budget by about 10 million
dollars you have a 29 million dollar deficit 10 million dollars bring that down to 19 million
dollars to have a deficit but as mr. Hines points out every month we've are
having under spending to that so I think that it's very safe to say that we will
be not adding a lot to our fund balance but we'll be adding to our fund balance
at the end of this year so again when you've heard me say that I'm not going
to lose sleep when we I know of things like fun but I didn't know about the 10
million but I know of things like we'd have typically under spending under the
The budget is a backstop.
We never have 100% employment all year round,
and then we also don't spend the money if it's in the budget,
and, oh, well, I've got money left over.
Let me go spend it.
That's not the practice in this district,
and all of those budgets with all those decisions add up to quite a bit of underspending.
And so I'm confident to say that when you're presenting your audit in April,
I'm sorry, in January of next year,
that there will be not a deficit use or a use of fund balance.
It will be a small increase.
And on top of that, and I hesitate saying this
because I found out about late this morning,
and I haven't had a chance to talk to Dr. Grigorski,
but we did file a property value audit in 2023.
I mentioned that to this board,
and that was mailed to the comptroller's office in January.
We did receive word today that they have accepted that audit.
We're going through the numbers, but that's going to yield some additional cash this year.
It was cash that would technically have been earned in the 2023-24 school year, but we filed those audits annually, and that's a good thing.
And that will be a tool that we'll use, along with underspending, to cover the deficit in the health fund.
There will be.
You're right, whoever.
I don't remember if it was Amy or Ms. Cuzela said that.
um earlier um that we are going to have a deficit this next year in our health fund and the first
two months we've spent a lot of cash um by the way we're spending 226 or 238 000 a day to to pay for
health claims 238 000 a day is what is what if you do the math on that uh what we're spending uh for
that health plan i just thought i'd add that but uh so we're we'll use that under spending and that
property value ought to cover this next year's deficit that TRS take
contribution that's level throughout we won't we won't raise that kind of money
from a revenue standpoint this year because we didn't staff up and same with
we won't we get that revenue but we won't spend it either that's a complete
wash so if I put that number at a hundred million dollars or a zero the
bottom line to the districts gonna stay the same and that's why I point that out
in blue because it doesn't at this phase doesn't really matter the good good is
this district is in a very good financial position we have according to
schools first we you know we score very well on that but we have about a 34%
fund balance that's well over 90 days which is the minimum and we have a good
fund balance and it's so we don't have to do draconian things like have a
knee-jerk reaction to being down 1900 kids we were able to continue and manage
through without panicking and panicking would only hurt learning and so we were
able to do that and it's working its way out but if we did not we're not in a
good financial position districts I do know of do have to panic and they have
to turn fast and that's that can't be good for kids we got the property value
I just mentioned that, that's good.
Attendance rate is up.
We've been working on attendance rates and that is up,
even though our enrollment's down,
we still want kids to come to school so they can learn.
And then we do, it does ease the burden of being less,
having less students than we budgeted.
And a declining tax burden,
the increase in homestead exemptions
and the compressed tax rates that the state has done
has been very beneficial to our taxpayers and that's a good thing. The
bad? Flat enrollment, declining enrollment if you will, very small declining
enrollment but declining enrollment nonetheless. That's a paradigm shift for
KDISD. I bet it's been 50 years or longer since we saw a decline in enrollment. Who
knows? Being the fastest growing school district in the state for for sure the
the last 23 years. Um, that's just wow. Um, but it's enrollment across this
country. It's declining. It's not just not just Katie ISD. It's the across
the country. I want to make sure I make that clear. Uh, allotment caps. We
still work under allotment cats. One of the things that I um, is the fast
growth allotment, you know, that could be worth $8 million more a year if it
weren't on an allotment cap. Basically what the state says is we're gonna
to spend 110 million dollars a year on the fast growth allotment and if the 110 million dollars
isn't far that doesn't go far enough they compress it and they prorate everybody down
and so we've been prorated down the last several years as far as i can remember because they don't
put enough money towards that and then as we've heard before char's and comp ed uh so the char's
allotment continues to go down and i didn't point that out on the previous slide but our federal
funding is a very small percentage and it is continuing to be whittled away.
The ugly is stagnant revenue. Everything that we do that's stagnant is tough because of
inflation and it makes that stagnant revenue that much tougher. And the only thing you can do is
manage, as Dr. Grigorski and his cabinet have done, to manage through trying to level up with
with our enrollment being down because we can't do anything to affect our
revenue it's just it's all driven based on the number and types of students that
we have program costs versus state funding allocation I add this in here
because that's another good thing I forgot to mention for next year the
Texas Education Agency has been tasked to come up with some additional funding
for special education. The initial blush is it could be around about a two and a half million
dollar gain for us. Not a huge gain, but two and a half million dollars I'll take.
The agency is later next month supposed to release the rules of that where we can learn
about it and figure out and make an estimate about what that gain will be for us. There will
will be some districts across the state as I understand it that may lose money
and I don't think we'll be one but there may be some districts that will lose
because of the way those formulas are adjusted it's hard to come up with
something that benefits everybody in the state of Texas it's just hard we're too
diverse and so we may gain and some district may lose when that special
education additional monies come out we just don't know yet but I put that up
there to show that our revenue continues to exceed uh uh to to fall behind the expense we're required
to spend those monies by law um on those students and so the local what little amount we could work
with that may code towards oh we'd like to put it towards insurance premiums we're putting it
towards the shortfalls of the state funding formulas on how they fund special ed and that
also goes for the state and security allotment you can see the revenues in the green and it did
It increased because of this last section slightly,
but the expenses that this district has been committed for for many years far out exceed the revenue.
And the transportation allotment, same thing.
Additional grade at Freeman High School.
We're not opening a new school, as I mentioned earlier, but we are adding the 12th grade.
There will be some expenses associated with that.
District-wide enrollment is flat.
that. We are making a correction in staffing, and that's, again, driven off the state funding
formulas and the fact that we have less students than we planned for, an entire Hempstead ISD less
than we had planned for. And you have to adjust that because we hired up to have those kids and
they weren't here. And so we are making those management decisions. And again, that's the
the first time in a long or probably my lifetime that we've had to make those
decisions because we're falling short on our enrollment enrollment demographic
types. Again, we're, let's just call it flat or maybe slightly declining moving
forward. But especially continues to rise. We don't know what bilingual
students uh and that population is going to do. We don't know what mostly
mostly kindergarten, kindergarten is down statewide, nationwide, because the birth rates
are down. And we've seen a couple of years of that now, and we expect another year to work its way
through. So we're going to lose a very large senior class, maybe the largest we've ever had,
and we're going to gain a smaller kindergarten class this year. Happens every year. We lose a
class, gain a class. But that gain is smaller than we've had in the past because of the birth rates.
We're building this budget like we always have, just with not as many students or not student growth year over year.
Normally, we're adding 200 or 300 teachers every year.
We're not needing to do that this year.
We're not having any growth projection.
But we're still building the budget to the same formulas that Mr. Schuss and his team have done a fantastic job with over the years.
And we're still probably going to spend about 89% on payroll.
89, 90% is what we would typically spend on payroll.
Let's talk about this. This is some analysis of PEIMS, Public Education Information Management System of Texas, and this is the student-teacher ratios that are on average in our district and some of our neighboring districts.
And you can see that over time we've done more as far as that ratio is coming down, and we're adding more teachers than we are students over time.
It's relatively consistent, but it is a downward trend, and it has dipped to about 13.7.
And we are the, I don't want to say richest because that sounds bad, but we do have the most teachers when it comes to the number of students.
we're staffing up with teachers more so than our neighboring districts and that's a great thing for education that's probably what makes Katie Katie.
And then our number of staff per student also is going down. You can see we're a little tighter than we were here when it comes to teachers.
Remember, that's where the bulk of our employees are.
By far, 60, 70% of our employees are teachers.
And so you're looking at some of our neighboring districts, we're down to seven staff members
to, seven teachers per every one staff member.
That includes bus drivers, administrators, principals, et cetera, nurses.
We're down to seven, but we're a lot tighter with our neighboring districts.
In other words, we are putting our bodies in teachers, not in other staff.
And you're going to see that reflected on our next slide a lot.
Actually, not our next slide.
The next slide that I'm going to talk about.
I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Schuss.
All right.
Well, good evening.
As Mr. Smith has alluded to, this is going to be a much different staffing year than
KDISD has seen in many, many years.
That's also the reason that my part of the presentation is embedded within the budget
presentation and not a separate item for approval.
Typically in this board meeting we do have that item for approval where we're asking
for additional staff members of 200, 300, 400 staff members.
has a significant impact on the budget, a budget increase,
so therefore we've come to the board for approval.
What we're going to talk about shortly is actually we're going to have a net reduction in positions this year.
So we'll get to that in a second.
This slide, the board, for the most part, has seen many times.
One thing that's missing from the slide that's our timeline is talking about our job fair.
We did determine that it was unnecessary to hold a job fair this year
when we're going to have a net reduction of staff and also knowing the complexity of the
excess enrollment balancing process, we decided that that wasn't going to be necessary.
That doesn't mean that
in the future in the next few months we determined that we need to have a targeted job fair say for
special education something like that that we could do that but it wasn't necessary to hold
one just yet until we're complete with this process so since we aren't we weren't um didn't
have those deadlines you know coming up to the job fair and up to a board approval item we did
significantly lengthen the excess enrollment balancing process typically that process would
have been completed like last Thursday last Thursday Friday before the job fair
but knowing that it was going to be more complex this year we did extend that where
really we're just getting going with that process the principals got us all of their information
from their campus the deadline was last Friday now it's in our hands and we're going to start
working through that process and run that process through through through mid-May and and actually
that helps and I'm glad we took the opportunity to do that this year because it is a stressful
process and typically it is a very short timeline and in mr. cross can get a
little bit but it's typically a very short timeline to get all that
information and get that process complete and being able to take that
opportunity to lengthen it helps alleviate that stress from the campus
but also from from employees as well if I'm a campus principal you know I have a
couple of employees that because of my enrollment are slated to leave my campus
and move on to another campus.
Well, extending this through mid-May,
if I get some resignations over the next few weeks,
those employees might not have to leave my campus.
So it helps for many reasons, lengthening that process.
And we're going to get through it.
And one thing that I'll say, and I'm
going to say a couple of times, but as a part of that,
all, and I want to make this strong point,
all of our current employees, employees
that are going to be with the district for the 26-27 school
school year, will have a position with KDISD.
So and I'll bring that up again in a little bit.
So a complex staffing year.
The board's been made aware of some program changes, the emergent bilingual program change,
changes with the Opportunity Awareness Center.
In addition to that, at the secondary level, we increased the student to teacher ratio
from 24 and 25 to 1.
If you remember a couple of years ago, they were 23 and 24 to 1.
We upped them by a half.
So we went 23 and a half and 24 and a half didn't do anything last year
We left it alone, but then as planned we
Next year we will move to 24 and 25 to 1 that also will add teachers to that excess
Enrollment balancing process. So again another reason that it was good and lengthening that process
So what it all boils down to this year is a net staff reduction of 106 positions
Now, that's a lot, but it also, okay, okay, is it that complicated that it's 106 positions?
Well, you have to think about it this way.
It's not as simple as looking at a staffing summary and saying, okay, we have a reduction
here, we've got two reductions here, another reduction here, that's four reductions, and
it just adds up to 106.
There are a lot of moving pieces and parts in this, and you've got, you know, so we'll
have a lot of reductions over here, some additions over here, staff, you know, movement of staff
with the excess process and through that whole through all of that the
culmination of that process is a net reduction of 106 positions but all of
these will be realized through vacancies through attrition and through excess and
again you know any teachers that are moving through this excess process we
have this process every single year this year it's going to be a little bigger
but we have this process every single year again any teacher moving through
through that process.
Any campus member that will be with us
in the 26-27 school year will have a position
with KDISD next year.
So going back to, again, the excess process
and staffing in general, as opposed to having
that process complete by this board meeting,
we are still really in the meat of that process.
And Dr. Gorski and I talked about this,
and we thought, well, but let's go ahead
and do our staffing presentation in March.
That's when the board is it's typical for the board to get the presentation in March. Let's go ahead and update
everyone on where we are at this March board meeting and
That's where we currently sit with staffing. I know mr.
Smith has I think of just a few more slides and then we'll we'll be here for questions
Just as a reminder and I won't harp on this, we have a very low administrative
cost ratio. I've seen it. I'm not a big social media guy but I've seen it. You
got too many people in the ESC. We do have people that staff in this building but
we do have a low administrative cost ratio. We're ahead of the snake if you
will. We've got to have a payroll department. We've got to have an
accounting department, we got to have a legal department, etc. We kind of
changed places with CyFair. We're both very big districts. We have
economies of scale on our side and we have big campuses. That helps with that
administrative cost ratio, but we're consistently lower. You could double our
administrative costs and still not be the highest on the list and I think
that's indicative to the to that um and then this slide is i stumbled upon this dea publishes this
report every year uh and they they do it a little differently because of chapter 40 uh because of uh
robin hood districts and so they peel off a couple of these this one ties to our audit i put both of
these out on our website one that ties to our audit our annual comprehensive financial report
that you approved in February.
So those expenses and those percentages tied to that.
And then TEA will publish a different one that won't include that one on the right,
the intergovernmental charges, because of Chapter 41,
our property wealthy districts.
They leave that off because it skews the numbers so much.
But we publish them both on our website.
But I just want to point out that on this, and I know it's very small
and you can't see it, but, again, it's on our website.
In 2015-16, 10 years ago, we spent 63.7% of our money, of our expenditures.
Those are not budgeted numbers.
Those are actual audited expenses at 63.7% in instruction.
And this last year, we spent 65.5%, so an increase of, what, a couple of percentage points.
And you can see, going back to that slide where we looked at our student-teacher ratio, as our student-teacher ratio became lower, all the way down to 13.7, of course, we're putting more money in instruction.
That's the student-teacher ratio.
And so as that gets richer, more money is spent on instruction.
But that's out there for everything.
and and you know in curriculum and staff development for example 1.4 percent ten
years ago is still 1.4 percent lists last year school leadership 5.6 percent
of our budget was actually spent not budgeted actually spent on you mr. cross
at 5.6 percent and it's still 5.6 percent this last year administration 1.8
percent 1.9 percent it's ebbed and flowed but it's the same percentage by and large
transportation well let me go health services 0.9 1.1 guidance and counseling 4.1 up to 5.3 over
those last 10 years we're putting the money where the money needs to be is my point uh thanks to uh
Mr. Fuchs and Mr. Veerling and their staff,
plant maintenance and operations, 9.7%.
It's actually gone down to 8.3%.
Because of that reduction, it's enabled us to put that money
into the classroom, into the salaries,
because of our staffing levels
and the ratios that our HR department have gone by
for so many years consistently, it goes to instruction.
And so that's the one that gave.
over those expenses. And I think you can look at every function on there, and it's amazingly
consistent because it goes back to 90% of our staffing, or of our expenditures are in staffing,
and we follow the same formulas that HR has. And we've done that, and you can see it in actual
audited expenses. And so I encourage anybody that wants to question where we spend our money and
et cetera, et cetera, to look at those consistent trends. And I think that's, I think it's pretty
good and I would also argue that 65 and a half percent in instruction is if not
the highest in the state one of the handful of highest in the state I've
seen those go as low as 50 percent spent in the classroom directly in the
classroom and we're at 65 and a half percent future property values that's
not going to affect the general fund much again it's a it's a teeter-totter
values go up state funding goes down values go down state funding goes up
when it comes to the general fund it's very important in our I&S fund but we're
not talking about that tonight property value impact again only changes state
and local ratio increase in the homestead exempt exemption has been a
challenge for all those entities I mentioned earlier from the county
appraisal districts all the way to TEA it's been a challenge it's starting to
to finally settle. But I think there's still going to be a couple more, a couple more years,
at least another year until that stuff shakes out, until they put it back on the ballot and
increase that exemption again. But I think CADS and the property, the comptroller are starting
to figure out how to best manage those big changes. Increased tax compression, that's going
to continue as far as the state funding formulas go, but that's going to depend on maintenance and
operations on taxable value growth. Enrollment growth and special populations growth are going
to be key. We don't have a crystal ball. We use PASA. PASA's done a wonderful job
over the last umpteen years. We've had misses high or low, but they were small misses high or low
over the years. This was an anomaly year that we're in currently, and we're, again, budgeting
very conservatively and what I think may be another dip, small dip, let's hope.
And state funding formulas, as long as those are stagnant and or capped, it's going to be very hard
to find additional monies to spend. Luckily, again, we've consistently had underspending,
and we've used that underspending wisely over time to try to keep things going, like the health fund
as the biggest biggest one and that's through march um mr shuss and i'll be glad to answer
any questions that you may have thank you board any questions mr mr president champagne um there
thank you mr smith that's a mr shush that's a lot and i know you're you're thinking that this
is not going to be good questions but my my first question is very easy there's a there's a chart
that you showed and you know we don't we don't have it so I can't tell you what
page is on because you're in control of the which which time it's the chart
where it shows the number of the ratio of students to teachers and you know I'm
really impressed with this and I know it may change because of what's gonna you
know what we're doing now trying to change our staffing and all that but I
I think this should be on our website too somewhere because, you know, we get people
that complain about the class size ratios and all this.
And I realize that this isn't like every class is like this.
But overall, that's such a good ratio.
I think that that should be kind of bragged about and commended, honestly.
And again, I think that can be seen in that percentage slide where 65 and a half percent
of what we spend is in the classroom.
Well, that's true, but for other people this is more clear, you know.
But for people like you who understand 65 percent and all that is, and that little bitty
writing.
But I wanted to say something real quick about the potential growth in the Miller by, you
you know, opening up the OAC building and having more Miller kids.
Dr. Gregorcy provided us some information,
and I knew that the number was high.
I just didn't realize it was this high.
But there's 927 kids who are eligible,
who signed up to be a Miller,
who are eligible to be a Miller but are on a waiting list.
And I think most of us realize, I don't know if the public does,
but the school districts get paid some amount of money, and I don't know the formula, but
for certifications that kids earn.
Isn't this correct?
So when we have more kids in those programs earning more certifications, that's a way
of us getting some money back.
Is that correct?
correct? Okay. So, I see some positive potential things happening, you know, not
maybe next year, but the following year with the opening of, I don't know, I'm not
putting it, I don't know what the timeline is, but whenever it opens and
more kids can be in that, then that's going to be very positive for us, you
know, not just, it's positive obviously for the children who are going to get
the certification get to go out and have careers and all that but it's also going to be positive
for us financially that's all i wanted to say and in addition on special populations like that
cte is one that is adjusted at that basic allotment so that's 6215 dollars per student
you earn more on a cte student just like you do a special ed student etc so that's just another
point to your right I remember seeing all this before when I was in my
leadership has me class and um and I don't have the formula memorized but I
do know that you'd get more money for the CT click kids and then also for
every time they earn a certification so I think that the move to make the OAC I
know this is really isn't in the topic that we're talking about but it is part
of the budget to move the oac and to open up miller more is going to be um very beneficial to us
thank you mr president mr cross um kind of uh clarification and then
i if you'll indulge me maybe a moment or two of commentary um clarification because i know this
I keep hearing this out in the, among our folks, right-sizing, and it's, you know, unintentionally
rubbing people the wrong way.
And I guess I just wanted to say that, you know, when that word is being used, it is
being used in a formula kind of way, not in a judgmental or, like, value-added kind of
way.
So when you hear that term, I know it, again, some people are like, well, it doesn't feel
right because it never feels right when you have to make cuts ever and I've sat
through that over the years in this district and when we've had to do that
and and no matter what the program is even the smallest reduction is always
felt somebody very recently said something to the effect of I'm going to
get it wrong but that decisions at the top way heaviest at the bottom meaning
and and I say that to mean all the way from the state to the teacher so the
teachers bear the weight of decisions that are made in Austin from this dice
from the administration and so here's where my commentary is coming in it's
frustrating from a standpoint of just public school funding you mentioned
several things and in this flat line and we really are we're kind of living on
fixed income here and it's it's super frustrating looking at data it would
take about $1,300 from what I've gathered per student if you were going
to increase the basic allotment just to get back to 2019 numbers I did a little
bit of math on that and i'm sure it's going to be wrong but if we got 1300 per kid if i did it even
anywhere close to correct that'd be over 120 million dollars for this district and if i'm
way off on that you could tell me mr smith and be like no that's not even close but but if i if my
math was correct um and i look at that and i go wow 120 million dollars we could do some good with
that I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have to be sitting here talking about possibly
reducing some areas that we we genuinely don't want to do right like I would I
would tell you that dr. Gorg or ski he and I have talked and I don't ever feel
like guess what we get it we get to get cut staff mr. veerling I were sitting
around talking the other day in an event and I said yeah you remember those days
as principals when you're like gosh I hope we lose some teachers this year
because that never happened.
So I say that to say it's not an indictment on our folks
because we're trying to do everything possible
to keep the money going where it needs to go.
And you're right, that's in the classroom.
But I also always want to make our folks understand,
or not understand, let our folks know that we don't forget
that if there's any cuts whatsoever,
it is always felt on some level.
And yes, nobody's losing a job,
but somebody may have to go to another school
that they may live two minutes from their current school
and have to drive 30 minutes across town now.
Is that doable?
Of course it's doable.
Does it impact somebody's life?
Of course it does.
So I just I say that with the idea that you know I'm frustrated with the fact
that that we are a premier district in this state. I mean I'm telling you when I
lived in West Texas years ago we knew about KDISD. It's why we moved here and
so the fact that you know a district like this we have to struggle in some
sense because of the lack of dollars it's just it's really frustrating and
the folks that are our teachers and staff members and paras out there who
are doing the work in the classroom there at the end of the day they're the
ones that have to have to pay the price for that whatever that looks like and
I'm not saying we're not working hard to make sure that our folks have support
and we're doing what we can to help them but it's the reality of the world they
live in too because I think about things that 20 years ago I would have told you
as a principal that when teachers if you had more than five say special education
students in a classroom that'd be kind of unheard of that is not the case
anymore because we can't it's not again it's not like dr. Gregor's people hey I
I just think we should just not worry about special education students.
But what I'm saying is when you have limited dollars
or when you have flat income, or I like your term,
it sounds much nicer, static income or stagnant revenue,
then there's an impact on that.
And I guess, you know, I'll wrap this up,
but I just wanted our folks out there to understand
that we get it too, that we're not blind to or impervious to, you know, the fact that
all these things are great, and I'm proud of it as well, and I'm proud of the work that
you've done, Mr. Smith, over the years.
I've known you for a long time, and the fact that we have managed to stay ahead of this
curve is really admirable.
So hats off to you and the team, to our leadership.
I just want to always remember that, you know, those folks that are doing the work every day,
that we always want to be mindful of any time we're doing something up here that really is,
I love the quote, that the weight is heaviest in that classroom on the teacher with the kids.
So that's it.
That's my commentary for the evening, and I'll stop.
Mr. President.
Mr. Queen.
So I've known for a while that we are feeling financial pressures.
However, it breaks my heart that the first place we discuss addressing these financial pressures is to right-size our teachers.
And I get that the temptation is there because that's 89% of our budget.
it however um it would be nice to see a creative way of looking at other areas before we just
always go to our teachers and and i do have a letter from a client a friend a community member
and a teacher in our district and i want to read it to the board dear kdisd board members this
letter is written from the heart of many elementary music classrooms within cadia independent school
district. Every day behind the doors of our music rooms something extraordinary
happens. A child who rarely speaks finds the courage to sing. A student who
struggles academically discovers confidence while keeping a steady beat. A
classroom of diverse backgrounds learns to breathe together, listen to one
another, and create harmony not just in music but in community. Elementary music
Music is not an extra. It is not a reward. It is not a filler time in a schedule. It is belonging.
It is identity. It is discipline wrapped in joy. It is a safe space where mistakes are welcomed
and growth is celebrated. For many children, music class is a brightest part of their day.
It is where they feel successful. It is where they are seen. It is where they realize they have a
voice and that their voice matters but these quiet miracles require support they require
instructional time that is protected class sizes that are manageable instruct instruments that are
playable and professional development allows teachers to give their very best they require
the district level commitment that recognizes music as a foundational is as foundational to
the development of the whole child. When elementary music programs are weakened, children lose more
than performance or concerts. They lose opportunities to build confidence, empathy,
teamwork, focus, and resilience. They lose the foundation that strengthens our secondary fine
arts programs. And I think we saw the benefit of that a few months ago. Yeah, we're still doing
this. They lose a powerful tool that supports literacy, mathematics, that is
true as a former math teacher I concur that is absolutely true, social emotional
growth and community connection. The echoes of what happens in elementary
music classrooms carries far beyond the school walls. They shape future leaders,
creators and compassionate citizens. Please continue to protect and
and strengthen elementary music education across KDISD.
Preserve access, preserve time,
preserve the space where children discover
who they are through the sound and through song.
The future of our community
is sitting in the classrooms right now.
What is protected today will resonate for decades.
With hope and deep respect,
the elementary music educators of KDISD.
That's all.
all well I hope y'all will take that into consideration because this is
important this is this speaks for a lot of teachers mr. president thank you
trustee Tami for sharing that I do respect and I'm glad to hear that from
the teacher I think that touches on you know something that I think the public
and perhaps staff also perhaps might struggle with when we say you know when
our revenue is stagnant or being cut a family a household when that happens you
know there are you go into debt that's one choice but the other choice is to
cut expenses and it would be nice to be able to show the diligent effort in
different ways where we're cutting administrative expense and we're not
touching the classroom just you know in a way to answer to these concerns so
it's always like you said we're looking at staffing versus first where can we
cut what is there any and I realize it's you keep saying we have 10% to play with
but what can we is there anything is there any diligent effort that's being
You talked about zero-based budgeting.
Perhaps that's where you're starting?
That's where we're starting, and that process is still happening.
Again, I didn't show expenditures out there.
We're trying to look at everything we can.
Right now, all special projects and baseline increases are being zero-based.
Okay.
And I want to point out that some of the things that we've done, you can see in there, maintenance and operations was down 2%.
Our second largest of that 90% of the, behind 90% of our second largest expenditures, utilities.
That's what was reduced is by being able to reduce our utility expenses and run our schools more energy efficiently.
That's a reduction that we've had to do, and you can see it get more increased these last few years.
But some of the things that keep that we've done over the years are every
departments reduced that they reduced everything they can know because they
have to be able to order tests that are used across the district that's what
departments do they have to pay the utility bills etc we've reduced it we've
done things like put in GPS in our vehicles so we can make sure that our
vehicles are running the most efficient that they can to keep expenses down
since our third largest expenses fuel I actually saw fourth largest expenses
fuel behind software we are consolidating and continue to review our
software budget the third largest expense we're looking at that kind of
stuff ad nauseam and we have and we continue to do so all the way to where
like you mentioned we this year we went didn't just look at what we could reduce
we went in zero based it and worked it work up right yeah and for the public
perhaps it doesn't understand what zero based budget means but there you start from ground zero
and and you add what do i need to spend uh the coming year which is basic budgeting um so
it's kind of a relook at how much we spend so hopefully um we can always speak to that when we're
talking about these things and showing the diligent effort that hopefully is happening
and cutting expenses wherever we can.
And one thing that I would like to point out on that is,
as we've reduced expenses, by looking at those budgets
and by decreasing things, that's offset
when you give a 1% salary increase
and you spend $8 million to deliver a 1% salary increase.
All that cutting and all that work is just goes.
And so that's another ailment of working under stagnation
revenue is we're doing this board is doing what they can to our for our
employees and so when you reduce expenses and work really hard at
reducing expenses and then you do something because you need to the
employees are facing that as well and I'm appreciative of this board for doing
that over the years and you're doing it in an environment that you're on fixed
income and so we're trudging through that by trying to keep our expenses as
best we can control as best we can yeah thank you um i had just one other question i don't
have the presentation
I wished I had it before tonight.
But the slide on the ratio, students per teacher and students per staff, could you?
So students per staff member here, we're saying Katie is seven students per staff member,
seven to one, right?
And it was basically 14, I think.
But that usually doesn't translate to people.
That seems quite odd because a typical classroom is
Whatever 28 could be even higher depending on the grade. So how are we getting the?
14 to 1 are we including?
How does that work?
You're including instructors or teachers that are not assigned to a classroom right so so they are they're not in a classroom like
You're the one we all picture they go from classroom to classroom or from student to student working throughout the district or throughout their campus
right so that that is not a
evaluation of how
Operationally we run for a math teacher an English teacher a science teacher the majority of teachers
Is that a fair statement? Just I don't want it to be misrepresented that we actually have a 14 to 1 student ratio
show classroom student to teacher right it's not in the classroom there's a
state law it was at 22 to 1 and elementary level and and we try to staff
at that and so that's better that's not as rich as 14 to 1 I see your point but
again there there are also teachers on that campus that that are going in and
that they're a teacher they just don't have that very typical classroom I just
wanted to clarify that number that it's really not representative of how a classroom operates
for a classroom teacher just it's more because sometimes we have teachers who they have too many
kids in their class so for us to say we have 14 to 1 ratio is a little especially for a secondary
it's not yeah realistic for secondary when there's not a law but i mean i'm just clarifying i'm not
criticizing you i'm just clarifying for anyone looking at that number i think don wanted to
or excuse me trustee champagne one you wanted to advertise that but that's not
a how should we be looking at that number I guess are you looking again
it's compared to apples to apples with the other districts so we are still
better than that and I would think so they all if you look at the other
districts too they're not gonna have less than eight kids per teacher is less
than 14 kids per teacher as well yeah so that's just some it's just a ratio that
you're used to always hitting because we look at that across other districts or
And that's why I put the second slide in there with total staff because it
But of course that
Trying to clear it up a little bit
Thank you for the presentation I have a lot of little points here but to speak to
To Mrs. Cozzella's point, that used to always be my thing too.
But it's because of special ed teachers, life skill teachers,
all of the dyslexia, all of that factors into it,
and it's a statewide thing.
And even on the, whatever those things are,
I pull mine up on Texas Tribune.
When you're looking to move to a new place, what's teacher-staff ratio?
They all look like that.
So there are lots of teachers who have 30 students or 28 in a high school, but overall, that's how many of them.
That's how they come to that.
I really wish we could put some of these things, like Mrs. Champagne said, like these two slides specifically with a 65.5% of our budget goes to the classroom.
room. I think that's very important for everyone to know. And I've said this before, but it bears
repeating. When I, I'm not exactly sure what the number was, Mr. Smith, you probably remember to
the nth degree, but when I came to this dais, the amount we spent on staff was 82 to 85 percent,
somewhere in there, and it has been creeping up and up. To be at 90% doesn't leave much room
to cut when we, you know, and we cut everywhere we can to give an increase, just like you said,
$8 million is a 1% raise, and we always try to do at least three if we can, and so, you know,
we're talking 24 million dollars and you can't cut 24 million dollars out of the 10 that's left
we have done that many times and i have this written down the electricity utilities we get
rebates we join co-ops where we can to shop in mass bulk like a costco and we cut buses
one year. It was awful
to trim back on our bus routes. Instead of
door-to-door, we did half a mile and one mile.
It's still such the fourth largest expense.
We're delivering
quality education and services to our
families. Buses is a huge part of that.
I'm not I'm not suggesting to cut any of this it's just as people look at our
budget and what we're trying to do here I just want to make some of these clear
I really like these two slides where you show our low are 14 to 13 point seven to
one teacher-student ratio and the fact that we have more when you go to this
next slide and the numbers the graph gets tighter because we put more to
campus than we do in the admin building and when we're all hearing are they
cutting up there at that admin building well we're really mean already at the
bottom the lowest in the state with Saphir and I tell people to give them a
perspective when they're on a campus when you get too many when you get over the limit in elementary
more than 22 to one you get another teacher in another classroom when you get too big at
over a thousand in a school you get whole school you get a principal a counselor a nurse all the
things and when you get bigger at the admin building from 38 000 students when i moved here
until 95 000 we still have one superintendent one cfo one hr right you don't get bigger here it
might get some helpers but we don't have huge administration costs the way it happens in the
the at the at the classroom which is where it matters that's the backbone right our teachers
are educators and giving them what they need to be there so i'm just trying to help here with
people who are asking me questions i know if they have questions others do it's why my monologue here
i also want to say 106 positions net reduction is that right mr shush so overall from what we
have now until next year there's going to be 106 less over over the 14 000 plus employees that we
have 100 okay so the pain that it sounds like 106 out of 14 000 plus is not going to be a horrible
pain the pain they're feeling but staff are nervous because they don't know what their next
assignment is and just like you said just bear with us because we want you to
be as close to where you are now we want you to be as happy as you can be we're
looking to see mr. cross knows this your people at your campus didn't tell you
they were leaving maybe till right near the end of school and so you don't want
to say okay where am I gonna be where can you be well you're across just like
you said across town but oh now i have an opening but you can't come back because someone else
already took the you know those are the things so bear with us because we there you have a place
you have a job you have a place and you belong and we have been well known to have a rich staff a rich
world-class education model in our campuses and maybe we had five specialists one per grade level
but in with cuts and cuts and cuts and no funding from the top like you said mr cross
no extra funding from the state we have to make decisions and and we have to trim that some
so that we can no longer afford it.
Is that fair?
Not that richness.
We will still serve students well.
I know that.
I've watched it happen.
And they're not cuts.
They're adjustments.
We are not cutting anyone.
We are making adjustments to our staffing models
the way we did with instructional coaches.
As hard as that was, it was an expensive model because we could afford it when we put it into place, and it served us well, and yet it's still serving us well even at the trimmed back model.
So we have, I'm confident that we're still going to deliver the world-class instruction we've always had, and I want people to know that we hear you.
and I our family moved so many times we lived in six countries in 12 years I
know how hard it is to not know where your next place is going to be and
living in limbo and wondering is so anxiety ridden sometimes but there is a
place it's going to be great and we're going to work through it together so and
And we're here to listen.
Mr. President?
Ms. Champagne?
That was nicely said.
Thank you.
I have a couple questions, too.
I just remembered these questions.
But I just wanted to start out by saying that, you know,
I echo exactly what you were saying earlier.
And you didn't say it.
You said it very nicely.
But the point is, is that basically we didn't get paid the way we should have from the state.
and I think Mr. Cross also touched on that.
And that's what the problem is.
We don't want to have to cut anything,
and a lot of what I hear about is ESL,
but this is leading to one of my questions,
and I forgot to ask it earlier because I've been asked,
somebody approached me yesterday with this.
Why is it being cut when it's federally funded?
So I try to explain in my most basic way I could
that this isn't completely federally funded.
Could you please address that for us about the ESL program?
The vast majority of the expenses associated with that program,
just like special ed, come from the general fund.
That's what I told them.
The vast majority.
We do get grants, and they're not part of the general fund.
They're not part of that general fund revenue.
Title III grants, et cetera,
but those are not near to the level of the amount of spend
that we have in the general fund.
Okay.
And we go with special ed as an example.
That's a misconception because actually the people who asked me that yesterday
were ESL teachers, and they think they're being funded by the federal government,
by the federal.
Some may be.
Some may be, but it's a very small percentage as a whole based on the general fund.
All right.
And then one last thing.
I looked up at the Texas Comptroller and they said in Katy area there were 4,340 people
who applied for vouchers.
And what I would be curious to know, because it didn't say this on that fact sheet that
I was looking at, do you know, does anyone know the percentage of those kids who are
are private school homeschool public like how many of those are public school kids that's what
i really want to know so the last stat i had we have about approximately 5 000 kids who live in
our 181 square miles that don't attend kdisd now those students would be lumped into anything
private school home school charter school or something in between or no school maybe i don't
So that doesn't surprise me, that stat, that there could have been 3,000 or 4,000 applications from the Katy area for an ESA.
And it wouldn't surprise me if every one of those was not a public school student.
But even at the raw data that was out there right now, and this is as of early March,
The application window for ESA was supposed to close, the parent application window, on March 17th, and they extended that until the end of March.
So that will close on the last day.
So I'm sure we'll see new data at the end of March of who has applied for ESAs across the state.
But as of early March, of all the applications they received, less than 1% of those applications were from public school children in Texas.
So, if we extrapolate that out, maybe, possibly, we could guess that of all the applicants
so far in KDISD, 1% of those.
Possibly, and that's just a wild guess.
I don't know.
But it could be the same thing, like I said.
If I've got 5,000 kids who live in KDISD that don't attend KDISD, but they live in our boundaries,
100% of those applications for an ESA may have been from those kids.
I just simply don't know yet.
So we would like, when all the dust settles,
superintendents all across the state have asked for this,
that we would like to know exactly,
and I don't think it's a hard thing to ask the,
we'd ask the comptroller,
but the program is really run through a third party named Odyssey.
They have the account.
They're the ones collecting all the information.
could they just simply tell us how many applications came from KDIC, which they would know, like you said,
there was a number out there of 3,000 or 4,000 at one time, and how many of those are current public school kids.
And they should be able to tell us that, because the applicant, I'm sure that would be on the application, you know, I would guess,
you know what I mean, whether or not the student is currently being served in public, private, home school, or no school, or whatever.
So I think one day we'll have that information and it'll be a whole lot closer, but I don't know.
When I saw that original data, seeing that only 1% across the state of public school children were applying for ESAs,
it kind of made me feel really good about what we do in public school and the fact that most of our parents,
and probably, I don't know, I'd go out on a limb and say it, 99% of our families in Katy love Katy ISD.
I think they really do.
and that's the way they come here as a destination district and be part of our schools and do that.
But right now, anyone who says they know that data,
it's kind of just a speculation based off of a few data points that are out there.
And they're not all the same.
Correct, yes.
So you have to remember that, too.
Of the families who would apply for an ESA, remember that.
The priority, according to the state standard on ESAs, is to special needs and high-poverty kids.
So who knows what type of family has applied in terms of what kind of special needs or not and what type of tax bracket that family may be in.
And if they get accepted by the school they apply to?
Correct.
Yes, then they'd have to make application at a later time.
They don't have to do that right now.
They can apply and be awarded a voucher or ESA account and pick a school later.
Mr. Smith, are you able to go back to the slide where you showed the difference between,
I think it was security, special education, and transportation, and what the state funds
and what we spend?
It was the bar graph.
So if someone were to be facetious, they would say, I just solved our budget problem.
and just spend the money on what the state funds.
But we don't do that.
Why don't we just change all these to be what the state has funded?
Good question.
That's maybe a theoretical question.
I don't know.
As a procession of an answer, you'd be up to your ears in crocodiles
with the special education students.
They're going to be meeting the needs that they have.
Our schools would be not safe.
and we every kid almost every child would be walking to school so in a
simple in our budget process we're making strategic decisions based on the
values of our community on how to fund things and that yes we're gonna take
care of our special populations we're gonna make sure kids are safe we're
gonna give them to and from school and there's a whole thousand other decisions
we make but when I saw that I was like I can do the quick math special ed this
year they gave us 20 million dollars less than we spend on it and
transportation is I mean it's a bar graph and there's not clear lines but 30
million like that's those are big numbers I don't know I I'm not I'm not
advocating we do that I just when those numbers are there those are some of the
things that make me question like well how do we get how do we get the funding
to make up for those things because many of those things katie does go above and beyond because
that's what makes katie special uh but a lot of those are things that are required and honestly
just we know they're the right thing to do you know any other questions board mr president one
more thing i just want to say i agree completely with mrs timmy's letter the music education of
of elementary students is foundational and fundamental
for their learning because music,
children who learn music do understand math better,
they're better at science, they're better at everything.
And it's so important to have
at least some music understanding and a music base
for when you go into the world.
Because the thing we all can agree on is music, right?
All the way through until your last breath,
music is the thing that connects with us spiritually, emotionally, academically.
So if we're having to make changes, music education should not be where we don't staff well.
Because for a child to go to music once every 10 or 11 school days, that's just wrong.
I don't know mrs. Timmy I don't think it said in there how often they go but I
know in some schools it's every 10 or 11 days that they get to music I don't know
if that stat is accurate of how often they rotate through the specials we've
got 48 elementary schools so it's gonna be different but I can reassure the
board this you know I mean when it comes to fine arts yeah our fine arts are
fantastic but we haven't made any changes to our fine arts programs not at
elementary and not at secondary the same standards that have been in place that
that allocate staff to fine arts have probably been in place for 10 or more 15
years I don't know they've been certainly in place since I've been in
Katy back here in 2017 when I came back to Katy so nothing has changed with that
just like some of the other things I heard earlier tonight not from the board
but that were communicated like elimination of GT programs I heard that
was spoken about there's no changes to the GT program secondary or elementary I
heard something about higher class sizes mr. Schuss spoke to that briefly but I
would say that's a very minimal thing in secondary you know I mean a stair step
up of 0.5 per class that's helping us and I know people don't like that word
right size but when you saw the trend line of the number of students per
per teacher going down, can we get back to maybe the middle of that?
I'm not saying in the beginning of the graph where we were here,
but now we're here.
Can we get back to the median in there somewhere?
And that's what we were talking about by coming up.
So, like, when you talk .5 kid per secondary class, okay,
high school they teach six out of seven periods, or six of seven we call it.
Okay, that's three kids a day.
I know it's extra.
I'm not trying to be light on that it's three more kids,
but I don't want people thinking like,
holy smokes, class sizes just went up in secondary schools
by three, four, five, six kids per class period.
It's just .5, okay?
So that's three kids a day for a secondary teacher in high school.
But that's trying to get that number back in there.
But all the other things, like you're saying, same standards.
We're not reducing any of that.
But may I ask a clarifying question then?
because I know that principals have the autonomy to choose where they put their, you know,
they can have so many P.E.
So, you know, music, art, and P.E. are their specials.
And so where they put them, music is usually the place they take from first
because art teachers have to be so hands-on.
You need a lot more bodies to help kindergartners do glue and paper and write.
Right, sticky things.
So I understand that.
So music tends to be the one, and I have been in campuses that said,
I see children once every 9, 10, 11 days.
On rotation.
I don't know if it's like that.
Maybe it was a very big school, but they just dropped below the 850 maybe.
But I'm just asking that if we're, maybe that's a principal decision.
And I don't know if there would be a standard we could set from the from the campus
No, sorry from the district level that says
Music should have a standard on that. So I'd have to get mr. Shuss
To explain the standards a little bit more closely for elementary specials
If that's what we're talking about just element secondary those are allocated by fine art program those are by orchestra
orchestra, band, it's all formula driven, the number of kids in your band drives the number of directors.
But when it comes to fine arts and elementary, that's just a staffing standard.
Does a principal get the choice to say, I get three specials or five specials,
and I want two in music and I want one in art and two in PE?
So they control where they place those.
Okay. Yeah, talk a little bit about that, Mr. Schuss.
PE is a standard. It's a separate standard.
But when it comes to fine arts, I think it's at three.
Yeah, it's at three.
They choose, they do choose music or art.
So music or art are combined as fine arts within that standard.
Okay.
So if what I'm hearing from the board,
if the board wants to give me some direction on that
and some of what you would prefer that standard to be in this district if you get three if if we
want to make it a standard for music versus art we can we can do that and then it just the principal
wouldn't have that autonomy over those two specials in fine arts between art and music
they're fine arts but then it would mean they'd only go to art every 10 days i'd like to see what
But how often is the rotation into music and art?
Okay.
Because PE would, is every other day?
It has to be every day now because Lois Colcourse said it has to be every day.
PE is allocated minutes in elementary by a state standard.
So we have to meet that state standard of PE minutes for elementary kids.
Could we see maybe a rotation to see how often that is?
We can have one of our.
It may have been an anomaly at the couple of places I was, but.
Yep.
We can get that.
Mr. President.
Ms. Champagne.
May I please say this?
So I kind of got into this several years ago with a school,
with someone who lost a fine arts teacher.
And so I kind of knew about this,
and I don't think that that's changed, the numbers.
But when I was doing some research back then,
and it could be different, but there was a school district.
I won't name the school district,
and they may not be doing it anymore.
but they guaranteed to didn't matter the number of kids it was two music teachers
her elementary school and two art teachers her elementary school because
the school I was dealing with was trying to help their numbers had reduced and I
think it was only like 10 kids under if it was 850 that's act like it so it's
like 10 or 15 kids under that and they lost a whole teacher because they had
had four and then they lost a whole teacher so that music teacher made it a
good point to me she goes well I used to see let's say was 900 kids I used to see
450 kids but now because I lost a music teacher I see 840 kids you know and and
And she had to cut all kinds of things out of her.
She couldn't do the musicals anymore.
She couldn't do things.
Let me get that data from our assistant supes,
and I'll get you the staffing standards as well for elementary.
You can see that in relationship to that.
If it's a priority for the board,
I can just take feedback from the trustees and from the board.
If the priority is to invest more in one thing over another in this district,
then just give me that feedback of where we should prioritize what we have.
Dr. Gorgorski, I would never intend to tell you how to do a really great job,
but I do want to ask the question and see what that looks like
and then talk through what our expectations are as a district
and where we think the importance in their foundational years.
And so if that sounds like I was telling you, that's not my intent.
But I would like to see, and if we're going to add a teacher to every school,
that's 48 people.
I don't.
That's expensive.
But a lot of them will not have 900 students.
So we'll see.
We'll see.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening.
One last thing.
Ms. Champagne.
I just want to actually thank Ms. Timmy for reading that letter
because this is what sparked all of this.
And, you know, I really appreciate it.
That was a good letter.
Any other questions, Ward?
Thank you all.
I'd like to take a minute and just to everybody in the room,
and I know it sounds kind of bleak.
insurance costs are flying through the roof.
For six years, Mr. Smith has tried to be creative
in the ways that he showed us how school funding
has changed with cups of water and stools.
I'm sure he had a bunch of other ideas that didn't work out.
But I know the people in this room,
I know the people in our classrooms, on our campuses,
is people who keep our our buildings running or school safe put it this way
if you don't dole just short story in this isn't to say Katy high school
football
amazing, but if I have a chance to say that as a former Katie Tiger, I will.
Coming out of a program that taught that you win and going to a college program that was amazing,
Rice University was great. We were playing against Tom Brady at Michigan Stadium,
and I had an assistant coach look at me and the entire group and said, guys, we just have to get
through this game and not have anybody else get hurt. And the expectation in my mind that broke
and saddened me that we were playing a game that we one of my assistant coaches
thought we were gonna didn't think there was a chance we could win and there were
some amazing players were playing against we probably didn't have a chance
to win but like for for that for someone to be on the team that thinks that way
that was just shattering to me and so I tell you that story because what what I
was raised with and taught and trained to believe here in KDISD was that it
didn't matter what the score said there were games in the Astrodome when they
actually played games in the Astrodome we're down by two or three touchdowns
when we came back by getting an onside and doing all kinds of crazy stuff like
you were taught growing up in this district that you you always can win and
And so I share that because for the past, I mean, my entire life being here in KDIC, but for the seven years on this board, in a situation like this, if I could pick a team of people that are going to be able to figure out how to work without the funding coming from the state, that are going to be able to how to figure out when new rules and laws are being thrown at us and just things look bleak, it's the people sitting around this dais, it's the people in the back of this room, it's the people in our classrooms.
because KDIC has people who don't think like,
I may have been surrounded with a few people in college,
but think like it doesn't matter how many scores we're behind,
we're going to be able to make this happen.
And so I ask that you indulge that sports analogy for me
because that's what I see when I look around this room,
whether it's someone in curriculum instruction
or someone doing assessment or someone that's worried
and just like how do we make sure we save electricity, right?
How do we serve food in the best way?
And so I want to share that as we move on from this tonight is you may be sitting there going, nothing's ever going to change.
You may be sitting there not knowing, like, there's no hope.
And I've got to believe there is.
And the reason I believe that is because not because of anything happening outside of our district, but because of the people that are a part of it.
And so I just challenge you, like, let's make that happen.
and that's that's why I continue to serve on this board is because I believe that that can't happen
and so as we move through this tonight I think we spent most of the time we're going to be
discussing there might be some things to talk about but um coach johnson would have had this
this statement right when excellence becomes a tradition greatness has no limits and that
doesn't just apply again to k high school I'm sorry it I think it applies to kdi steve so
So, and all our districts, absolutely, all our districts, but it's a lesson we can all learn.
That's good.
So, with that, Mr. Hines, we move on to 8.1, discuss and consider board approval of the January 2026 finance reports.
8.1 Discuss and consider Board approval of the January 2026 Financial Reports.
All right.
President Redman, trustees, and Dr. Zalorski, you have before you our financial reports for the month of January,
including our financial statements, our construction report, and our tax report through the month of January.
as well as our check register and our donation report for the month of January.
You've heard a lot about finance tonight, so I won't get into a lot of details.
I'll be glad to answer any questions.
But we're through, as of these financial statements, we're through five-twelfths,
five months of our fiscal year, and that essentially is 41.7%.
So just real briefly, I'm going to run through on revenues.
We're a little bit behind where we were this past year, and I'll talk about that in just a moment.
On expenditures, if you look kind of all the way down the object level on those,
you're going to see that we are below where we were last year as of this time.
And this goes back to what Mr. Smith said earlier tonight.
night we are in a very good financial position this year as of right now we
are under spending even more so than we were last year as of right now which is
a good thing because we have a bigger deficit than we had this past year that
40% for payroll which is the one we really pay attention to if you were to
extend that out of decimal you'd see that's actually lower than the 40% we
were at last year so we are we are looking better just quickly drilling
Just drilling down in just to make sure that we hit all the details on that. If you move on to the functional level, you'll see that there are only two functions as of the end of January that were above that 41.7%. And you've got security and monitoring services and then data processing services.
And we've spoken about Function 53 data processing services.
That's those technology contracts.
They're working their way back.
Now they're within a few percentage points for the next month or two.
That one will even itself out.
And that's normal because we have the contracts and we pay those up front.
Going back to security and monitoring, you all have already approved a budget amendment to do a functional alignment for that function.
So this next month you'll see that that's in alignment.
So anyway, everything is looking very good there.
Real briefly, we can talk about the construction report if you've got any questions.
Those additional projects that you approved for TERS have been added for the LMC and the ESC,
and those are both included in this report.
I'm going to go to the tax report and talk a little bit about I told you the revenues were a little under where we were expecting them to be.
That's the the because of our collection rate this year.
And this goes back again to what Mr. Smith was talking about when he discussed those homestead exemptions and how they impact the tax collectors, the appraisal districts, the comptroller, school districts, everybody who's working with those taxes.
And because we had an additional homestead exemption that came on this year, that meant the tax statements went out a little bit later.
And so our tax collections are lower.
and if you look at the bottom we're at around 85 we were at 85 percent of our tax collections last
year as of this time this year we're at about 82 between 81 and 82 percent um we've already seen
the tax reports since since this remember this is in arrears as of the the end of january um that's
already catching up so just just that's just because the statements go out a little later
We collect a little a little later, but that is cleaning itself up throughout the next month and a half
Other than that, I don't have any other items, but I'd be glad to answer any questions
Any questions for mr. President? So, thank you. Mr. Hines
you mentioned under spinning last year resulted in
Savings and that this year we expect maybe even more perhaps based on mr. Smith's
I do expect we're going to see significant underspending at the end of the year.
I don't see anything that's going to make that track any other direction.
And then we've got some good news from the audit as well as from the controller or from TEA this week.
I think all in all what that means is we are going to pull by the end, by the time all of this actually processes through, we will be able to pull out.
But I don't think we're going to be adding a lot back to fund balance because we do have a big health plan to prop up. You saw the number there. And so we'll make sure we do that and then make sure that it's healthy for the next year if necessary.
Okay, okay. Because I was curious if you had the figure of underspending last year resulted in how much savings at the end of the financial year.
I don't remember exactly what we added to fund balance.
I don't agree either.
I'd be glad to get that information.
I don't have an ACFA with me right now, but there's a schedule in there that shows the final budget and the final expenditures and the delta.
And it would be on the bottom line of that.
I just don't have that with me.
Around 11.
I looked back at it.
Around 11 million.
Yes, ma'am.
Okay.
I mean, that's pretty big.
So we expect to see.
I realize net-net, it's not going to look like that.
But if we have about 11 million under spending perhaps if we're gonna for tracking this or even better
That's what I think I heard you say we I don't know where we're gonna be yet
I don't want to start pontificating because we still need to make sure everything kind of comes in the way it does
But I do want to add that remember this past year and this was this even started with the last budget year
We did not even though we added back a little bit to the fund balance
we did not increase our percentage of fund balance because remember the state even though we didn't
get additional funding outside of salaries all of those twenty five hundred and five thousand dollar
raises that the state provided to all of our teachers increased our expenditure significantly
and so even adding a little bit back to fund balance doesn't bring us up to the same percentage
level so you have to look at it from a percentage and so we are still dropping
in fund balance even though we're adding some back that's not what I'm asking
okay what I would like to know is the if we're tracking the same as far as
underspending compared to last year is really what I want to know that's it and
I'll look at the big yes we are we are tracking very similarly did you say
we're tracking better though that's what I thought I heard a little bit but then
we don't know what expenses are gonna be we still have seven months that's why I
I wanted to jump on that if that's the case, and I wanted to know the figure, but I'll be quiet.
Thank you.
The Opportunity Awareness Center on the construction report, I don't know what I'm missing, but where did that come from?
What is that?
Am I forgetting something?
It says, sorry, miscellaneous cap, and it says we've spent, I don't know, only six, I guess that's $16,000, I'm assuming?
some tiny project I just didn't know what that was and that the projects to
have 292 5 probably design services looking at information on the that's the
design contract that we approved okay that's what that is thank you any other
questions support thank you mr. Hines thank you we'll now move on to 8.2
8.2 Discuss and consider Board approval of the March 2026 budget amendments.
discussing consider board approval of the March 2026 budget amendments our
presenter will be miss Esperanza Rios or directory of budget and Treasury good
Good evening, Board President Redman, Board of Trustees, and Dr. Gagorski.
Tonight for the general fund, we present budget amendments, which are all direct functional offsets.
These functional offsets include staff development, repairs, substitutes, supplies, mileage, postage, technology, and software.
The approval of these amendments will result in no impact to the general operating fund balance.
The capital operating budget will amend funding for the chiller replacement at Taylor High
School Auditorium, which will be covered from the 2023 Proposition C authorization savings.
We are presenting an amendment for McRoberts Elementary renovation, which will be covered
from the 2023 bond authorization savings.
Both these amendments were approved at the February board meeting, and this will result
and no change to the capital projects fund balance.
Mr. President.
Ms. Grisela.
Thank you.
I'm glad nothing's affecting the general fund,
but looking at these gives a great feel for how money is spent.
And I looked at the amendment number 11.
I don't know if someone here, not you, perhaps Ms. Hack,
could speak to the $5,000 for the need for additional technology accessories
for administration.
administration?
So that campus has outdated equipment and so they're repurposing, they're doing to buy
I'm sorry, administration uses like iPads
when they're doing several different things around so they can take them walking around the campus and so there's a need to buy some of
those items that are related to administration.
Administration at the campus or here in this building? No, at the campus. So the APs and the principals at that campus.
Okay, whose budget is it then? If it's, I don't know, it just said that it was an administrative reclass.
Right, so it's going from function 23 is campus administration. That's what that function is for.
It's for a specific campus.
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Any other questions, board?
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We'll now move on to item 8.3, discuss and consider board approval for the financial audit engagement letter.
8.3 Discuss and consider Board approval of the Financial Audit Engagement Letter.
and our presenter will be Chris Smith, our Chief Financial Officer.
All right.
Good evening again.
We do this every other year.
here. Per section 44.00A, the education code requires each school district to get an annual
audit. You had your auditors come in here, Whitley Penn, Lupe Garcia, Mr. Lupe Garcia,
the partner at that firm, gave the report in January to the board. They started in May
of 2025 and worked with their interim audit looking at our internal controls
etc they came in and audited our financial statements throughout the fall
and gave you that report in January like
they have to they're required to do annually we are requiring required to
get an engagement for them for these next two years and that engagement is
is 99 500 i've mentioned this to the board before we do our own report our accounting staff is
skilled enough to do their own report that 180 page document that you may have received in hard
copy or is out on the web we we do that ourselves and they review it on our behalf but not all school
districts do that on their they have they prepare the report so we actually get a good purchase
especially with being a 95,000 students and so you have that contract in front
of you and it would be my recommendation that you move forward with that contract
because that engagement are they will be boots on the ground in May thank you
board leaving questions no questions thank you very much mr. Smith well now
Now, we have a consent item.
9. Consent Items
Consider board approval of acquisition of new library books.
Does anyone want to pull that for discussion?
Yes, Mr. President, I'd like to pull that.
All right.
I didn't see that that was consent.
Is this, is the list right now that we get,
so this is the list of books that we get every month
that librarians put in I guess to request new books how is this prepared
and like who is preparing this list this goes through our district board policy
on selection of library materials librarians make the choices they put
them on the list it goes through the district we have two library
coordinators who review that list and then that list is an ongoing list that I
provide trustees weekly with that link because with our new process now that
the board has to approve purchases it'll just be a standing item on our agenda
every month to approve new library book purchases and this is the February list
yes 30 unless there's a rare occasion that no librarian submits a new purchase
which I've never seen that before so they bought books throughout the year
and they just put them on the list for the board to review okay and who so the
And right now, the part of the vetting before it comes to the board is what I'd like to know.
That's the part that all of our librarians have been trained and know what the board policy is for the purchase of books.
They know what the state law is, and then they make those selections based upon what is acceptable to purchase.
Is there anyone in administration who's overlooking this anymore?
Mrs. Hack, is there anyone beyond our two library coordinators who work on that list and review the purchase?
No, not the new book titles, because the 30-day dashboard reflects all books that would be purchased that would be new to inventory.
Therefore, the librarians, at the point that they put them on the list, they have internally reviewed them and or read them.
They're recommended to read in certain Dewey catalog sections.
collections, and then our library program coordinators, they review them as well while
they're living on the dashboard for 30 days. Titles, things like that. Maybe have conversations
with the librarians if there's questions, but there's a lot of eyes on them, and they sit for
30 days for the community input. We monitor that, and then at the last day of the month,
it's pulled down, and then that's when you share it with the board, Dr. Gorski.
Ms. Hack, do you know, roughly, I don't mean to put you on the spot if you don't,
These books go up on the website for 30 days for community input.
We've been doing that for a long time.
Years, I think.
How much input have we received on those this year?
As far as comments?
Comments from parents about new library selections.
I do believe right now the current books that we have up the March list,
we did receive a comment, but it was actually the person,
from the person that was hoping that a family member that wrote the book
that we would consider it and the why behind it it was very nice that's the
only comment but we have not been receiving comments on the books okay
thank you very much there's just there's two titles that I think are concerning
just put it through something a chat I did chat GPT with your file to see what
pulls up there's a book called campus killer by it's about Ted Bundy and it's
graphic detailed descriptions of how he murdered his victims this is for junior
high sexual violence descriptions of sexual assault assault detailed so that
needs to be looked at and then there's the guy the guy she was interested in
wasn't a guy at all this is a gender presents explicit gender identity which
which is against the law in our policy.
That was just, I mean, simple to do.
Just to help me understand,
are you requesting a formal review of those titles?
What would you like us to do?
Here I would be requesting to amend this approval
without those two titles.
I would consider this almost as a comment on the book.
So generally what we do is once we receive comments
or concerns about it, we pull them
and we do a full review before they're purchased
so they would be placed on tent so ms hack you can take care of that this week and pull those
two off for further review absolutely okay okay and thank you very much i just want to highlight
though that that should be have already been done that's what i'm i'm trusting the district to have
done that they're obvious titles so i i don't know where the disconnect was and that's why i'm asking
what hands did this go through because those are very too very obvious i mean i didn't spend much
time at all and why that wasn't caught I'm trying to figure out well and that's
something I will look into thank you but just just to be fair we don't know if
the books do or do not meet the standard other than what the librarian
recommended and our library coordinators reviewed the list and approved those
books could be within the standard could be we don't know okay is what we're just
make an assumption they are not at this point but we'll take a second look at them and see if they
are and i'd like to know the follow-up please you bet um president i would like to add a book to
that list as well i just kind of looked through it because i noticed as well the ted bundy book
is what caught my attention uh originally when i was just kind of perusing through this um so
So I figured, all right, well, if there's one, then I guess I'll keep looking.
And Sabertooth, a novel in verse, is another book that I think might need another look at.
I was more concerned because when I was looking through, again, the Ted Bundy book is recommended for junior high.
So I started just kind of looking through junior high books.
and that seems to be where several of these books were.
I understand that we don't,
I haven't read the entire Ted Bundy book,
but I have a difficult time reconciling
why an 11 to 13 year old, maybe 14 year old,
would need to know in graphic detail
anything about the Ted Bundy murders.
murders. I'm a little confused by that. So thank you for looking at that and reevaluating
what that looks like as well as the other folks that were mentioned.
Any other questions, comments board? All right, we'll move on to I'm send point one donated
10. Information Items
items to Katie and Finn School District. We've received the list and 10.2 Miss Secretary,
Madam Secretary, have we captured any requests from the board?
What I found, what I think we have is comparison of the health plans between districts,
comparison of the health plan that we have to TRS, what it would cost,
and also Ms. Fox asked to look at the rotations of the fine arts in the elementary school.
And what I was wondering is, does she want to do we want to see that per campus?
Because every campus is going to be different.
The rotation will be different.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Ms. Guzel.
Just on 10.1, I just want to give a shout out.
This is the only opportunity to do that to the individual donors.
donors, many individual donors who donated the Ten Commandments posters to over 6,200
classrooms, I believe.
Every single KDIC classroom has one and I think that's quite amazing, the broad support.
And big thank you to each and every one of them who donated.
And then I had a, I'd like to know a follow-up information about the Alexander Elementary
security guard who was reassigned, if I could get background on that and why he was reassigned
to a different school there are many parents uh concerned about that and there was a petition
going around it's on social media thank you all right the next regular board meeting will
11. Future Meetings
be on monday march 30th 2026. there being no further business before the board this
This meeting is adjourned and the time is 9.17 p.m.
Official documents
Motions and votes
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