Noting that a quorum is present, I hereby call this regular meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Katy Independent School District to order.
Katy ISD · Regular Board Meeting
Katy ISD Regular Board Meeting, June 22, 2026
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- 0:00 to 1:48 1. Call to Order - Upon announcement by the presiding officer that a quorum is present, the meeting will be called to order. The presiding officer will verify that the meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted for the time and manner required by law.
- 1:48 to 9:27 3. Recognitions
- 9:27 to 45:10 4. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
- 45:10 to 45:30 5. Closed Meeting
- 45:30 to 46:11 6. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
- 46:11 to 1:03:59 7.1 Katy Council of PTAs Update.
- 1:03:59 to 1:54:10 7.2 Planning for Growth: Attendance Boundary Modification (ABM) for the 2027 - 2028 School Year
- 1:54:10 to 2:24:30 7.3 Academic Presentation - Innovation Spotlight: Raines Academy
- 2:24:30 to 2:34:36 7.4 Employee Benefits Update.
- 2:34:36 to 2:36:02 8. Consent Items
- 2:36:02 to 3:18:38 8.8 Consider Board approval of the breakfast and lunch meal price increase for the school year 2026 - 2027.
- 3:18:38 to 3:20:27 9. Information Items
- 3:20:27 to 3:20:36 10. Future Meetings
- 3:20:36 to 3:21:00 11. Closed Meeting
- 3:21:00 to 3:22:06 12. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
Full transcript
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1. Call to Order - Upon announcement by the presiding officer that a quorum is present, the meeting will be called to order. The presiding officer will verify that the meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted for the time and manner required by law.
Today is Monday, June 22, 2026, and the time is 5 p.m.
Dr. Gorgorski, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of Texas Open Meetings Act with regard to notice for this meeting?
Mr. Redmond, I do confirm we're in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act for our meeting tonight.
Thank you for the public to let you know
The storm that happened a couple weeks ago lightning and whatnot like we've got technology. That's not totally working yet. We're working on that
So when we vote will old-school with like hands tonight, so just to give everybody up
There's a couple little things that are happening differently
The internet our system with all our documents and stuff was a little bit slower today, so forgive us if there are some
some technological difficulties,
but our team has got things fixed as great
and as good as they can be.
So this is going to be a great meeting.
And large black wires.
And we've got wires hanging from places.
So we'll now move on to section two,
our pledges of allegiance.
Our KDIC police officer, Robert Lister,
will lead our pledges tonight.
I pledge 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.
I pledge allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to Texas, one state, under God, one indivisible.
3. Recognitions
I will now move on to section three of our agenda tonight,
recognitions with our presenter, Dr. Ken Gregorski.
Thank you, Mr. Redmond.
We've got a packed house today of all sorts of recognitions.
A lot of new principals stepping into roles here at the end of the school year
and one district-level position.
So let's see who we've got in the house today.
I'm going to start with our assistant superintendent for elementary school leadership
and support, Jamie Shipley.
Where's Jamie at?
Thank you, Jamie.
Glad to have you.
Jamie, who'd you bring out here with you tonight?
You got any folks?
I do.
Tonight, I have my husband, Kevin.
These are our girls.
And I'm the fourth grader.
I'm the seventh grader.
I'm the last.
And I'm the fourth grader.
Awesome.
That's a great name, right?
Yes.
Good stuff.
Well, thank you.
Alright, our new Morton Ranch High School principal, Tanya Hurd. Where's Tanya? There's Tanya.
Tanya's been a successful principal for many years with us. And Tanya, who'd you bring out here with you?
Awesome. Great. Alright.
right and mcdonald junior high aisha montanus where's aisha there she is right up front awesome
and did you bring some folks out with you tonight yes i did okay my father-in-law my husband mother
mother-in-law, my mom, my sister, two of my best friends,
and then my sorority, my family area little chapter over there.
So a lot of support. Awesome.
Thank you.
And Morton Ranch Junior High, Eric Smith. There's Eric.
Congratulations, Eric.
And you've got some folks with you.
I met your son he came up here and introduced himself that was awesome he
wants the job
I just wanted to say, this hearing has been amazing and made me really
and my colleagues are so awesome.
So I wanted to shout them out.
They're all my friends.
Awesome.
Good stuff.
Mr. President, I mean, Dr. Gorski.
Yes.
Mr. Smith, is it true that your sister's on Broadway?
Yes.
That's exciting.
Tell her I said hi.
She's on FaceTime.
Okay.
She took a break from Broadway just for us.
down here in Katy, Texas.
All right.
And from Robertson Elementary, Lindsay Jones.
Where's Lindsay?
There she is.
Lindsay, who did you bring out with you today?
awesome
at 16 years old did she drive the family out here tonight she did okay all right
you better well we'll leave it at that okay uh franz elementary carla sanchez
Oh.
Carly, you must be doing something right if you're getting those cheers.
But you got some folks.
So who do you got with you there?
So my wonderful husband and my father-in-law.
My son Alejandro and my son Gustavo both.
Awesome.
Awesome.
and Rhodes Elementary.
We're giving this to our staff who have paid by and title.
Awesome. Awesome.
I'm your welcome parent.
Okay. And Rhodes Elementary, Elizabeth Paz. Where's Elizabeth? There she is.
Okay.
Well, of all the folks in the room, I at least recognize the one guy sitting next to you there.
So, but go ahead. Who'd you bring out tonight?
night awesome thank you and then back filling Campbell Elementary over there
Kristen LaFollette where's Kristen
and she's welcome.
And Kristen, who do you have with you over there?
Awesome.
All right.
Well, I think that's it for tonight.
Hopefully I didn't miss anybody, but it's a large room.
And I guess by all this support,
everyone's going to let these principals work 24-7
for the next six or eight ten months to get where they need to be but it's it's
a tough job we appreciate you guys stepping into that role it's a really
hard job to be a school principal I've been there and we all know so thank you
for stepping up to those roles appreciate it congratulations
do we have any scouts in the audience tonight would you like to come share
share with us where what what troop you're in where you go to school what
what the badges you're working on if you want come right up here there's a
microphone we won't attack you don't worry so if you tell us your name what
school you go to what troop you're in and what your what badges you might be
working on right now my name is Devin Seely I am in troop 230 I got a McNeese
junior high and i'm here to work on my uh citizenship in the community and communication
merit badge all right what's your favorite badge you've worked on so far i really liked fishing
fishing it's a good it's a good choice it's a good choice
um i'm jude scribner i'm in troop 1288 i'm going into taylor and um i'm working on my communications
mayor badge awesome and what's your favorite badge you've done so far all right good option
thank y'all for being here tonight at this time the board of trustees will give members of the
4. Public Comment/Citizen Participation
public an opportunity to speak in accordance with our KD ISD board policy BED local as defined by
board policy speakers who signed up by 2 p.m. on Monday June 22nd 2026 will be allowed to address
the board a total of 30 minutes is allotted for open forum non agenda items with the time divided
evenly among speakers the maximum time allowed in the time they'll have tonight
is three minutes speakers who sign up to speak on posted I posted agenda items
will be allowed three minutes to speak and speakers who signed up to speak on
non agenda items will be limited to the first 20 speakers we don't have more
than 20 speakers so all eight of you will be able to speak tonight speakers
that signed signed up to speak on non agenda items will be allowed three
minutes to speak if a speaker is not done speaking at the end of their
allotted time the audio will turn off if speakers wish to share written material with the board
which we have already received we've provided 10 copies to the secretary of board services before
the meeting began for board members superintendent chief communications officer and permanent
permanent record if a speaker has not attempted to solve a matter administratively through proper
channels as stated in board policy the board's presiding officer's designee shall advise the
speaker to seek resolution through the appropriate policy. And 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 we will not discuss the appointment, employment,
evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee,
or to hear a complaint or charge against an officer or employee. Should a speaker wish to
address one of those issues and 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 we'll start with our agenda items tonight and our first speaker will be a michael abreu
followed by jennifer jesse michael
does not look like Michael's here going once going twice Jennifer Jesse
and then following Jennifer we'll have Jesus Nieto
good evening trustees and welcome to Nathan and Cicely and Jim welcome
Welcome.
My name is Jennifer Jesse.
I am an in-class support paraprofessional at Davidson Elementary and a KDISD parent.
Two years ago, Davidson Elementary had eight full-time in-class support paraprofessionals.
This year we had six.
This coming year we will have four.
The number of students needing support has not been cut in half.
The requirements for implementing IEPs, collecting academic and behavioral data, and maintaining
district compliance has not been cut in half yet the prayer professional staff
responsible for helping implement IEPs collect required student data and
support those efforts has been reduced by 50% when special education students
receive the support they need teachers are better able to teach and all
students benefit from a more productive learning environment I'm not arguing
that anyone should lose their job or be paid less everyone in this district
works hard however I want to highlight how far paraprofessional compensation
has fallen behind that of other district employees using Katie ISD staffing and
full-time employee salary data obtained through public information requests I
found that enrollment increased approximately 12% overall between 2021
and 2025 while district administration staffing increased approximately 59%
during that same period. According to KDISD full-time paraprofessional salary
report, I identified 2,453 school campus or school-based
paraprofessional positions including clerks, aides, and other campus-based
paraprofessionals roles. Of those, 2,430, approximately 99.1%,
earn less than $45,000 per year the average annual earnings for the these
school-based positions is approximately 27 thousand eight hundred and ninety
four dollars and the median is approximately twenty six thousand eight
hundred and ninety six dollars I appreciate the district's investment in
staffing my question is whether we are investing enough in the employees who
work directly with students every day what would it cost to bring paraprofessionals to a living
wage and how does that compare to other compensation priorities in the district
thank you and also i gave you this yellow sheet thank you very much for the time thank you
hey zeus
and our first speaker will be Mark Fury. Hey everybody, I'm loving the switch up. Okay,
it's kind of new. Good evening, President, Trustees, and Superintendent. Thank you for
the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Jesus Nieto, and I'm a community member of the
Katy ISD community here to speak on the consent agenda. Before I begin, I think the constituents
of Katy ISD deserve to hear as to why board members will be voting on certain things in the budget.
We should attempt to make this as transparent as possible.
I don't even think members of the community know that the budget is being discussed tonight.
Someone on this board should really pull agenda items 8.5, 8.6, 8.12, 8.13, and 8.16 through 18,
as these, in my opinion, are the ones that stakeholders in this room and out of this room will be watching tonight.
I'm here to respectfully ask the board to reconsider approving 8.6 increases to
student lunch meal prices for the 26-27 school year. I understand the district
faces rising costs for food labor, food labor, transportation and operations. I
recognize that this district and surrounding districts are not in the
predicament that you all want to be in. However, the burden should not fall on
families across this district, especially working-class families that can't
qualify for free and reduced lunch. Families outside of this building are facing higher
costs of housing, prices, groceries, insurance, child care, gas, the list goes on and on.
For many of these students, school lunch is not simply a convenience, it is a reliable source
of nutrition during the school day. Even what may seem like a small increase can add up significantly
over the course of a school year, especially for families with multiple children enrolling in K-DISD.
I did a rough estimate with the numbers that were provided and if you have two kids you're looking at around
$1,200 per school year and I'm pretty sure people in this room have more than two kids enrolled in the in the school district. I
respectfully ask the board to consider whether there are alternative solutions therefore before passing these costs on to families
This could include reviewing operational efficiencies pursuing additional grants or funding opportunities
evaluating vendor contracts, or using available fund balances where appropriate to help offset rising expenses.
At a minimum, I ask that the district fully explore every reasonable option before increasing meal prices.
KDISD flaunts around that they are known to put students first, however, disapproval would be the opposite of that.
Access to affordable, nutritious meals directly impacts student health, focus, academic performance, and overall well-being.
Keeping school meals affordable is an investment in student success and in the families who support the district every day.
Please delay or reconsider approval of the proposed lunch price increases
and to seek alternative solutions that protect both the district's financial stability and the affordability of student meals.
I thank each and every one of you for stepping up and leading, and like always, I'm always going to be here, so thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
Point of clarification, because this is an open forum, we're not allowed to have a discussion here, but I have a point of clarification.
The questions raised, all of those items were discussed in last Monday's meeting extensively.
And is that video available online for people to see, or is that part of the technology problem we're having?
We haven't had any problems with technology in terms of streaming or creating the board videos.
I haven't specifically looked.
I assume that one's up there from last week, but you're correct, Mrs. Fox,
that every item that we discussed that we put on the regular meeting consent agenda is an item we discussed
or had opportunity to discuss at the work study.
So it's all out there.
further clarification the work study is where those extensive discussions are
made so that when we do a consent agenda it that's why it's one vote because
we've had time to review it during this past week is correct is that correct yes
thank you all right our next speaker will be mark fury followed by a chance
he Davis thank you mr. chairman and thank you mr. superintendent all the
members of the board I'm mark fury I'm a new face to some I'm an old face to
to others, I previously served as Justice of the Peace in Precinct 5, the courthouse
over at Chimney Rock and Galveston.
All of the Katy area that's in Harris County is part of Constable JP Precinct 5.
You're served by one Constable, Terry Albritton, presently, and two Justices of the Peace,
one at Chimney Rock and Galveston and one on Clay Road just west of Highway 6.
I previously served you at Chimney Rock and Galveston and I'm presently the Republican
nominee to be the Justice of the Peace at Clay Road just west of Highway 6, which is
really the court that serves the Katy community. I have strong roots in Katy.
The first three of our six children were born to us when we lived in Katy. We
lived in Williamsburg just on North Mason Road, on North I-10. I was an
active member of the Greater Katy Area Chamber of Commerce and had the
privilege to serve on that board of directors along with a guy named Leonard
Merrill. I was a very young man at that time. I signed up to address you on the
topic of truancy. You know we live in a great world with wonderful opportunity
and yet sometimes it seems like never have there been so many young people
that don't have focus. A society is only as great as the care and attention it
gives to its weakest members. I'm passionate about helping our youth, each
of them, find that spark, connect with the light each carries within, so that they
can be whatever it is that their creator made them to be so they can serve the community
in whatever fulfilling way their creator made them to be.
And connecting with that spark that each carries within education and school attendance starts
to make a whole bunch of sense.
When I served at Chimney Rock, we had innovative programs and pioneered programs that were,
I would just say of a caliber that HISD decided to send all of its alternative campus truancy
cases to me.
And we were very successful at getting kids back attending school.
The forgotten children became discovered.
They came to find that spark.
They came to find in the context of their own blessings why education matters.
Back in that day, I handled truancy cases from HISD and ALEAF ISD, and my then colleague,
Judge Bill Yeoman, handled the cases from KDISD.
When I assumed the Clay Road bench after the general election in November, the KDISD truancy cases would fall to the court, where I would be the judge.
So I come before you to pledge collaboration, to strengthen the relationship between KDISD and the court,
to work aggressively and harmoniously with you all to get the youth of our
community back on track laws have changed in recent years the process of
truancy now is a two-stage process with the JP Court being on the important
second tier I pledge to work with you and to work with your staff to use that
second tier Mac to maximum advantage for the good of the of the children thank
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you for your time.
Our next speaker will be Chancey Davis, followed by Anna Schroeder.
Good evening, Trustees and Dr. Gagorski.
My name is Chancey Davis, and I'm here with Schools Beyond Screens Katie.
As a former KDISD teacher and parent of two current students,
Over the past two months, our group of parents, teachers, and community members have reviewed
research, collected hundreds of survey responses, met with the district leaders, and presented
a report for student technology use in the 2026-2027 school year that we are hopeful
is being considered for implementation.
Tonight, I will focus on one of the five questions our community is still asking.
asking, do one-to-one Chromebooks for students in grades three through eight and sending
them home daily improve student outcomes enough to justify the tradeoffs?
When I began teaching, we still used overhead projectors.
Then we transitioned to smart boards and individual devices.
But I embraced this change.
I researched educational technology, I led professional development and trainings and
even became my school's webmaster.
I then observed instructional time lost to technical problems.
Students pulled off tasks by games, inappropriate websites and other distractions.
But we moved forward because we believed at the time that more access would produce better educational outcomes.
However, new research and new recommendations have emerged.
The new evidence calls for intentional use and not constant access.
The U.S. Surgeon General's advisory now recommends that schools limit screen use to support a distraction-free teaching and make individually accessible devices available in a computer lab.
The American Academy of Pediatrics advises schools to set clear expectations for how and when school-issued devices are used,
and to ensure technology does not displace hands-on learning or social interaction.
Constant one-to-one access makes those boundaries harder.
harder. Several Texas districts have already put new policies into place for removing the
1 to 1 device model for the upcoming year. We ask KDISD for intentional use, not constant
access of 1 to 1 Chromebooks in grades 3 through 8, and to explore a model with classroom sets
that remain at school. This would preserve access for state testing, writing, research,
and digital literacy teaks this proposal gives teachers a practical way to
determine when devices are used and when they remain closed and not a read thank
you our next speaker will be an s writer
followed by Garrett children good evening my name is Anna Schroeder and
And I'm here tonight with Schools Beyond Screens KD.
I have two kids attending a KD elementary school
where I also serve in different volunteer roles,
a part of the PTA board, and also part of the CAT team.
Our second question for the district is,
will KDISD implement age-appropriate grade level
screen time limits?
Last month, the U.S. Surgeon General published
an advisory warning on the harms of screen use.
According to the report, both schools and parents are responsible for reducing the role of screens
in the life of our nation's children.
It was recommended to keep the screen time under two hours per day total for ages 6 to 18.
team. It encourages schools to reduce or eliminate non-instructional device use
during the school day and to create more opportunities for face-to-face
interaction. As part of our survey last month, 72% of the respondents asked for
screen time caps by grade level. Our policy has proposed maximum limits for
screen use for each grade pre-k through grade 2 should have no routine use an
exemption may be made for keyboarding or typing instruction this I this suggestion
is aligned with the American Federation of teachers who have stated there should
be no screens for those kids in second grade or younger we are asking KDISD
to adopt specific grade level screen time limits for students in grades 3 to 12.
Clear district-wide guidelines will create consistency across classrooms and campuses
while providing a measurable framework for accountability.
Simply put, if the screen time is not measured, it cannot be effectively managed.
manage. Establishing and tracking this limit is the necessary first step towards
ensuring technology supporting learning without becoming the default mode of
instruction. We recognize that exemptions sometimes will be necessary. The proposed
policy includes a framework for addressing those exemptions like
substitute teaching, special assemblies, special needs based exemptions and
and other unique circumstances.
This concept is not novel.
Carroll ISD and Richardson ISD, two prominent districts
in the Dallas area, have published and implemented
daily screen time limits for all grades.
And the results in the start were outstanding.
Thank you for your time.
And I look forward to your feedback to my question.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Garrett Chilick,
followed by Kelly Mendez. Good evening my name is Garrett Shilich and I'm here
tonight with Schools Beyond Screens Katie. I'm the father of three children
attending Nottingham Country Elementary where I've also served as watchdog over
the last few years. Our third question tonight for the district is will Katy
ISD increase the use of physical books, printed materials, handwriting and paper
assignments. As part of our survey last month 78% of respondents asked for paper
materials to be the default for all reading instruction and assignments. That
same percentage asked to make multi-sensory learning a priority,
requesting that screens only be used for specific approved purposes and shall now
replace hands-on experiential learning. As a parent of a student with dyslexia,
this is personal for me. Through the services offered at NCE for dyslexia, my
daughter has thrived. With Chromebooks becoming the default next year as she
enters third grade, I am concerned about her regressing and believe it is critical for
her to be writing and reading physical material 100% of the time.
I know I am not alone.
Across our survey, we found that KDISD parents are concerned that foundational writing skills
are not developing.
Parents expressed concern that
students are not learning letter formation, spacing, or cursive.
Kids struggle to write complete sentences without autocorrect.
Spelling and grammar are worsening because typing tools compensate.
Many parents across grade levels link poor handwriting to weaker reading,
spelling, and retention.
These concerns are also backed by research and countless studies.
Quote, handwriting activates a broader network of brain regions involved in
motor, sensory, and cognitive processing.
Typing engages fewer neural circuits, resulting in more passive cognitive engagement.
Despite the advantages of typing in terms of speed and convenience, handwriting remains an important tool for learning and memory retention, particularly in educational contexts."
Additionally, for every 10 hours spent reading on paper, students' comprehension will be six to eight times greater than reading digitally.
There is a deeper processing and a clear advantage to reading on paper.
Our policy has proposed standards for screen use and instruction that makes
multi-sensory learning a priority with paper-based materials the default for
all instruction and assignments. Additionally, homework shall be designed
to be completed without screens wherever possible. Students should not be required
to access online platforms, websites, videos, or applications outside of school
hours except in limited clearly justified instructional circumstances.
other school districts across the country are announcing their changes
Lockhart ISD noted clearly in their new policy that there will be no substitute
for pen or pencil in their new technology framework thank you for your
time and I look forward to your feedback on my question thank you
Kelly Mendez followed by Emily Beckwith
I'm Kelly Mendez here tonight with schools beyond screens Katie our fourth
The fourth question is will the district prohibit generative AI in the classroom until it has been proven safe, effective, and developmentally appropriate by independent research?
To be clear, tonight I am talking about student-facing AI. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, AI tutors, and chatbots that students interact with directly.
As you know, this is an incredibly divided topic.
There are AI enthusiasts who believe these tools will transform education through tutoring and personalized learning.
There are also cognitive scientists, educators, and families who believe we are moving too quickly and do not yet understand the impact on critical thinking.
When experts are this divided, students should not become the experiment.
We have seen this before.
before. Students move, I'm sorry, schools moved quickly to embrace phones in the classroom,
then one-to-one Chromebooks. Years later, we are seeing growing evidence that more technology
does not always lead to better learning. If we are not careful, we will make the same mistake
with AI. The question is simple. Where is the proof? There are enormous financial incentives
also driving this conversation. AI companies, ed tech vendors, and consultants have significant
significant financial stake in seeing this become embedded through K-12 education.
That does not make them wrong, but when billions of dollars are at stake,
their claims should be scrutinized, not simply accepted. Supporters often argue that students
need AI because it is the future, but we don't hand car keys to eight-year-olds because they
may drive someday. If the district believes that students need AI literacy, then let's create an
age-appropriate course for older high school students teach students how AI is
being used in college the workplace and emerging careers teach them how these
systems work where they excel where they fail how they collect data and the
ethical questions surrounding their use give students the knowledge and
judgment to use these tools effectively as adults but that is very different
from handing a 10 12 or 14 year old a chat bot and allowing it to do the
thinking, writing, and problem solving for them. These tools are intentionally designed
to be easy to use. They do not require years of practice to learn.
What does take years to develop are literacy, critical thinking, and good judgment. Despite
the excitement around AI, there is no body of independent research demonstrating that it
it improves learning outcomes. If KDISD chooses to widely adopt it, it will be based on potential
of something, not the evidence of something. As a mom of three young boys, I am asking you to remove
student-facing AI until its benefits have been clearly proven to outweigh its costs. If we are
talking about children's developing brains, why would we move fast? Thank you. Our next speaker
will be Emily Beckwith followed by Meredith Seeley
well schools beyond screens Katie I am a former high school teacher here with
Katie I see and I will have two elementary age children here in Katie I
see this coming fall over the past ten years of teaching I've seen an increase
in the implementation of more and more technology in the classroom there came
a point when instead of using Chromebooks and technology as a
supplement with teacher or student-led instruction they became the focus of
instruction themselves I think this point came when Chromebooks went
one-to-one and teachers were forced to put almost everything they had on the
computer with very minimal use of paper though it was nice to not have to worry
about reserving Chromebook carts the reality of having to convert every
worksheet, homework, lab, quiz, and test to some sort of online platform became
frustrating and it isn't always the right choice for teachers or students.
Not only did I now have to think about how am I going to assess my students on
a topic, I now had to think of a way that I could put some assessment or
assignment online in some sort of fashion where students were not going to
cheat from either AI, Google, or each other. Converting activities and lessons online isn't
a one-time job either. Depending on the software I built my lesson in, that software may change
from year to year or wasn't available with KDISD the next year. On top of that, my students are
constantly finding new ways to cheat or get around GoGuardian guardrails. So many times going online
created a more time-consuming preparation in ensuring correct settings
and permissions were set in place. Inevitably, a handful of students
weren't allowed into something or were significantly delayed in accessing the
online assignment and many times whole classes weren't allowed for one reason
or another. Furthermore, putting many of my once
paper or manipulative activities online, my students became not as engaged. It was
it is easy for them to Google and toggle onto another tab
and open up their homework, YouTube games, March Madness
games.
And I have a question.
How many people here are on a different tab or their phone
and they're not focused on the screen or the speakers at hand?
So now as my job as a teacher was
to answer students' questions and make sure they're
understanding topics, it was now to constantly
monitor monitor every screen finally going one-to-one and forcing teachers to
put everything online has taken away autonomy and creativity for teachers
just like students all learn differently and have different needs teachers teach
at their best when using different tools let teachers use different tools and
And that includes Chromebooks or paper whenever the teacher deems.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Meredith Seeley, followed by Amy McBride.
Good evening.
My name is Meredith Seeley.
I'm here with Schools Beyond Screens Katie.
I have two children who will be attending a KDISD junior high this coming school year.
Our fifth and final question for the district is,
will KDISD switch from reactive block list internet filtering to proactive safe list internet filtering?
Today, students are not being adequately protected from inappropriate content on their school-issued Chromebooks.
While filters exist, many parents report their children have been exposed to graphic, obscene, or otherwise inappropriate material.
Proxy websites are shockingly common, bypassing district filters and providing access to content like YouTube, social media, and pornography.
In our survey of over 700 KDISD community members, over half of respondents reported significant concerns with the district's current web filtering system.
system.
The district's reactive approach addresses harmful content only after a student has been
exposed and an adult logs a website block request.
By then, the damage is done and countless other problematic sites remain accessible.
Are we really going to play whack-a-mole with our students' online safety?
The district relies on GoGuardian to help monitor student screens, but this places the
burden of internet filtering on teachers who should be focused on teaching its
use varies by classroom and some students have bypassed it making it an
unreliable solution for protecting students online KDISD invests
significant resources and protecting students physical safety on campus why
should their online safety be treated with any less urgency from a personal
perspective I logged 12 website block request tickets this spring the response
Response time varied from three days to over four weeks, averaging 17 days for completion.
In one case, it took three separate tickets and six weeks to get one single website blocked.
In other words, even after harmful content is discovered and reported, students continue
accessing it for weeks before action is taken.
Schools Beyond Screens, Katie, is proposing the district adopt a safe list filtering model,
allowing student access only to websites and applications that are explicitly
reviewed and approved by the district. This will proactively protect students
and support a more focused learning environment. Researchers, physicians,
educators, and parents are sounding the alarm about current technology practices.
Katy ISD cannot afford to ignore this. With more educational choices than ever
this will directly affect many families enrollment decisions this summer we urge
the board and district leadership to take action now for the 26-27 school
year with technology practices that support student learning health and
well-being thank you thank you our next speaker is Amy McBride good evening
trustees, Superintendent Gorgoreski, and community members. I'm a current KDISD
employee and a Texas AFT member. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
I come before you tonight not with a complaint but with a call to action, one
rooted in data law and most importantly the well-being of our most vulnerable
students. As you continue to develop the annual budget I urge you to prioritize
special education staffing and training. Industry guidance from the Council for
Exceptional Children and many state education agencies recommend that
monitoring caseloads for special education teachers remain manageable,
typically in the range of 12 to 18 students, and that teaching
responsibilities be structured accordingly. We are in many cases
significantly exceeding that threshold. Currently many of KDISD's elementary
special education resource and in-class support teachers are responsible for
monitoring 25 or more individual students each with a unique diagnosis, a
unique set of goals, and a unique legal document outlaying their specific rights
and needs. Their job is not only to monitor every, I am so sorry, every one of
them but also to teach a classroom of special education resource students or to provide
instruction and support in the general education classroom to students identified with special
education needs occasionally there is some overlap in these students but that is not guaranteed
and all of this while not being provided the minimum of 450 minutes of preparation and planning
time mandated by the state of Texas. That's the reality for many special
education teachers on our elementary campuses right now. Under IDEA, every
student receiving special education services is entitled to a free and
appropriate public education delivered through an individualized education
program or IEP. These are not suggestions, they are legally binding
documents and it's our teachers who are responsible for carrying them out. When a
single teacher is managing a caseload that exceeds 25 students sometimes up to
40 while simultaneously carrying a full teaching load something has to give and
what gives is time time to review data time to communicate with parents time to
communicate with general education teachers time to prepare for those IEP
meetings time to simply notice when a child is falling behind we are asking
our special education teachers to do the work of two people and we are setting
them up to fall short on both the consequences of this are real and
measurable for teachers the consequences are burnout attrition and ultimately
vacancies and in special thank you superintendent abortion mr. Evan thank
Thank you.
We heard from a few speakers tonight talking about technology and what's going on.
So I thought it important to let the board know where we're at on that.
I did meet with our board leadership in the last, I think it was a couple of weeks ago,
with our teaching and learning team to talk through some of the issues.
And I've asked our team to put together a presentation for the board,
which will be coming in July for you guys to hear a little bit about what's going on in KDISD
with technology and how we use that technology.
So just wanted trustees to know that we have met about that and we've examined that and that'll be coming at a future date
Thank you
This concludes the open forum portion of our meeting the board will now convene in closed meeting is authorized under section
5. Closed Meeting
Five five one zero zero one of the Texas government code for the following purposes
Texas government code five five one zero seven one five five one zero seven four and five five one one two nine
6. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
The board will now reconvene in open meeting.
Today is Monday, June 22, 2026, and the time is 6.31 p.m.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's regular board meeting.
Each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Tuesday, June 16, 2026.
The board will receive information and recommendations from staff, administration, and the superintendent on these agenda items at tonight's meeting.
Board members will be asked will be able to ask questions receive answers and should be prepared to take action.
The board has just reconvened from closed meeting in accordance with chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code.
Any action arising from discussions in the closed meeting must be taken in the open meeting.
7.1 Katy Council of PTAs Update.
First item tonight section 7 we will have our Katy Council of PTA's update and our presenter will be Ms.
Ms. Corinza Murdoch, our president of the Katy Council of PTAs.
Good evening, Superintendent Gregorski and board and president and our community members.
Thank you for staying and listening to me.
I'm going to hope and pray I can get through this in three minutes.
Tonight I'm going to bring our council report regarding all the things that KDISD Council of PTAs has done this year, along with our local PTAs.
We currently have 71 PTAs in our district, and we've been working closely to try to make sure we bring up our membership goals and stuff like that.
I'm going to highlight some of our mission and work.
Oh, thank you.
you oh boy no this is definitely not going to go in three minutes our mission as the texas pta is
to make sure every every child's potential is a reality by engaging and empowering families
and communities to advocate for all children when you ask why membership matters as you can see up
here we have many many ptas and our current council board member listed here and i am
outgoing as president this uh well i said july 1st you'll have a new council president
her name is kathleen brennan and i will serve as your first vp
the number here is is incorrect this is our membership highlights we have 28 866
66 PTA members currently. Sorry, I wrote it on the wrong page.
We are the number one council in Texas. Frisco said they were coming for us, but we beat them
again this year. So next year, make sure all your families and community members decide to join PTA.
This year our Voice for Every Child Platinum Award went to Schaefer Elementary.
This is showing you why our membership matters and all the different categories that we can
win under membership.
Sorry, my pages are not in order, I apologize.
When we're talking about membership, Katie also does a lot of awards for our PTA members
and all your local PTAs can earn all of these awards that are listed here.
And Council also won awards this year and will be recognized in July at the launch meeting
there in Grapevine, Texas.
Our awards are the Bronze Head Start Award, Advocacy Impact Award, Council on the Move Award, Silver Outstanding Program Engagement, Silver Shining Star Award, Spring Community Builder, and Bronze Voice for Every Child.
It takes a lot of work to get those, and that is done by us supporting all of your local PTAs.
We do a lot of programs and a lot of training.
If you wonder what council does, we offer a lot of leadership training.
Excuse me, my voice is really messed up today.
In the fall and spring, we offer officer training.
We have monthly president meetings launched in Dallas,
which is like over 3,000 PTA members that go and join.
Even our principals can go.
That helps them learn what PTA does and how they can help support it.
We have council board meetings, orientation,
monthly council webinars with Texas PTAs and local,
I'm sorry, with Texas PTA leaders,
executive board meetings, and council delegate meetings.
These are, some of them are 40.
And the programs that we support,
for one of these years, the Reflections Program.
And this year's theme was I belong.
We had over 130 entries advanced to the state level.
And we also celebrated a national level,
national level, oh my goodness,
national level honors, Scarlett Park,
who advanced all the way to,
national to all the way with her primary literature piece many roles in our classroom earning a
national merit of award and she we met with her at our last council delegate meeting and
she was a little second grader who made it all the way to national pta and i brought her little poem
if it's okay i'll read that real quick it says many roles in our classroom i eat rice and kimchi
Ishan eats naan and curry.
Luca loves pasta and pizza.
Mila likes tacos.
We all go to school.
We sit side by side.
We hear the morning announcements.
I can speak Korean.
Ishan writes in Hindi.
Luca sings songs in Italian.
Mila reads in Spanish.
We all play on the playground.
We run and play tag.
I do knock-knock jokes.
and we laugh together. We are like different candies in one mix. We are different, but we
are friends. We are many, but we belong together. As one, we stand together. And this was written
by a second grader. I mean, like, just the most precious thing. And then in the next year,
our program is going to be for the 26-27 Reflections theme, What My Culture Means to Me.
and we encourage our students to start planning their art now.
There's a lot of stuff that goes on through that.
And every year we host a Founders Day dinner,
and this is where we honor all of our lifetime and extended service award recipients.
So it's a long history of Founders Day, and as you can see from up here,
it started way back in 1897 with just a couple moms putting together a committee
to fight for drinking water, for clean drinking water in their schools and stuff like that.
So it goes way back when.
And so every year we keep their tradition and honor, special volunteers, and give them these awards.
Then we had our vendor fair.
Thank you for letting us do this in the school.
We held, let's see, 47 vendors.
and every year we invite all of our local PTA board members to come and meet with these vendors
and see what kind of programs they offer, T-shirt vending, all that kind of stuff.
And because we had 47 vendors this year, which is our largest of all time,
we may need a bigger room next year.
Please and thank you.
Advocacy is a huge part of what Texas PTA does.
Up here are just some of the programs that we offer from mental wellness all the way
to arts and education, cybersecurity, bullying.
And those are free programs that Texas PTA offers online and you can download those programs
for free.
So it's a big, huge task that we have trying to keep everybody educated and the safety of our children.
This year, we, last year, sorry, we went to the Capitol and met with representatives to share why vouchers are not a good plan for our public schools and to keep funding in the public schools.
amongst other things like star reform, teacher wages and retention, student safety, and other policies that impact KDIC students and families.
Our parent education and community programs that we held this year was our straight talk, Raising the AI Generation.
Texas PTA hosted a webinar and it was all focused on AI and everybody.
That's a very touchy subject and we all understand why, but this helped walk us through the pros
and cons of AI and council held the webinar.
and then we invited from the district our very own Jeremy Frazier, Eric Schwartz,
Jay Sonnenberg, and Ellen Adams. They joined us and talked with us about
what the district is doing to implement safety with AI, how to use it, and all the
measures that they feel like families should know going forward. We also had a
school safety update oh sorry i don't have that one and we had ms ms shea norris assistant director
of emergency management and reuben martinez and they were awesome they came in and showed
our volunteers and our council delegates all the safety measures that are being implemented in our
district and that was one of our programs was talking about the safety of the children and the
volunteers in the district and we also hosted a mental wellness program where we were honored
with the Catherine Vegans crisis management and intervention specialist who spoke on the many ways
KDISD is implementing strategies to help each student. I even heard that we have a puppy
puppy that goes around and visits the schools, which is absolutely awesome.
My daughter would be jealous.
She's graduated and she would have loved seeing this puppy.
We did healthy lifestyles where we talked with our nutrition specialist, Thao Vo and
Alexa Carrier.
And they came in and talked about how our school district selects food and all the behind
behind the scenes things that they do for our students and helping keep them healthy.
So that was one of our healthy lifestyles programs. We kind of talked about that.
Voter engagement, which is very important.
You would think that PTA is just parents and teachers, but we are big on making sure people are educated with voting and getting out there and actually voting.
And then volunteer hours, we had so, as you know, we have a lot of volunteers at our district, which is totally amazing and hopefully saves you all a little bit of cash.
Anything from, you know, cutting papers and all that fun stuff to our teacher luncheons and programs.
Been looking ahead for next year.
we plan to continue growing our membership and strength strengthening family engagement across
all campuses we will expand training and races resources for the next year of officers and deepen
collaboration between ptas the district and the community our next big advocacy thing is rally day
where we go to Austin for the 90th legislation session.
And we plan to strengthen our partnership across Katy
and the wider community.
In closing, because you probably all have done listening to me talk,
this is my last year as president for Katy Council,
and it has been an honor to serve our community
and you guys and work with you guys so closely.
I've got to see a lot of behind-the-scenes things
that have just been really educational,
and I wish that a lot of the other parents
could see how hard our district is working
for our children and our PTAs.
So, you know, I have five kids,
and only one left in school.
So he's at Taylor.
Thomas will probably get me for time.
No, same, same.
it but my husband and I purposely moved to KDISD because of the community
community and the education and the family feeling that was here even though
it was teeny tiny when we moved from North Carolina to here it has grown so
much but I still feel like we have such a huge closeness amongst our community
and family members and teachers and all I want to say thank you for letting me
serve and I appreciate everything you guys do.
am going to close because i'm sure that was way over three minutes thank you for your patience
you didn't have a three minute limit so oh so this is just to tease me and make me go fast
thank you thank you so much i appreciate you guys board do you have any questions
mr president mr shipley i just want to say thank you for your service to kdi
ice tea how many years have you served oh man my oldest started school in 1999
and i have been either a volunteer or on a pta board since then fantastic well it's it's people
just like you that make katie ice to you what it is so thank you thank you i appreciate you guys
hope everybody have a great night no no no oh no the champagne's not going to let you leave
thank you miss chris i want to also thank you for that and your presentation was awesome thank you
Yeah, I know that that took some work, and I hope that you are able to put that maybe on your own web page,
because the information that you have on there is really good.
And the way you started out, you know, with all your PTA things, it mimics what I've done.
The next thing would be, you know, school board, but whatever.
You do what you want.
But, I mean, that's what I did.
but you know I did some quick math and a million hours is a couple hundred
teachers and you know there's 80 campuses and so that's you know a few
teachers at each campus that the volunteers you know help to replace
actually so those hours are very important and the people that I'm always
amazed at how many people willingly you know dedicate their time to help our
students and our teachers there is something I was going to ask you oh I
love the advocacy in Austin and I love that you quoted dr. G on page 12 and
who's the next president Kathleen Brennan yes she's amazing okay
awesome amazing and you know we're gonna miss seeing you around but you know
Please continue.
Just because your child's going to graduate eventually doesn't mean you can be a mentor or something else.
Yeah, for sure.
I'll keep working.
Mr. President.
Ms. Fox.
Ms. Murdoch, sorry.
You're okay.
It's been a pleasure to hang out with you and watch you thrive.
And I've known you for years, and it's so nice.
and every time you come you have a wealth of information for us and your
leadership is strong and kind and powerful and positive and it's no wonder
that we're the largest in Texas because that is you can't just rest and be like
okay we're largest no because we're not the largest school district in Texas but
we are the largest with community volunteers and that's because of you and
and your board's leadership.
Both Mrs. Champagne and I served on Katie Council, right?
And so we understand all the extra work that is,
that it's like the PTA of all PTAs, overall PTAs,
to help be the model for them.
And I appreciate that very much.
And did you say you're going to be first vice president next
year?
I will be.
So you'll still be there to help mentor and all that.
And we love Kathleen Brennan.
She'll be great.
Oh, yeah, she's awesome.
so and thank you for always getting the information to our board secretary miss
Davies about how to join the PTAs in our adopted school group and you all new
trustees you'll get that list at the beginning of the school year and and so
that we can be a part of the organization too so I appreciate you so
much thank you I appreciate all of you thank you next we'll move on to item
7.2 Planning for Growth: Attendance Boundary Modification (ABM) for the 2027 - 2028 School Year
Item 7.2, planning for growth, attendance boundary modification for the 2027-2028 school year.
And our presenters are Mr. Ted Veerling, our chief operations officer, and Chris Poole, our chief data analyst for population and survey analysts.
All right.
Thank you very much, President Redmond.
Board members, Dr. Gorkorski.
I will put on my principal hat real quick, and I will echo what was said just now.
Our PTA volunteers, the former principal, couldn't have done it without them.
And they are a great source of employees later on when their kids graduate.
I hired many.
They do a great job for you.
So we're here tonight.
Click through here.
And board members.
We're here tonight to present an attendance boundary modification for Elementary 49.
That's the biggest piece of it.
We're currently building Elementary 49 in North Sunterra.
and that should help balance out the numbers that there are at our elementary schools in the
northwest quadrant as many of you know that it is a although the rest of the district may not be
growing as quickly the northwest quadrant is still growing like crazy out there and we're also going
to ask you to take a look at some minor adjustments to wolf elementary west memorial elementary which
will then do a little tweak at katie high may creek junior high as well as cinco ranch high
school and this is just kind of the process for those of you that are new to
this some of you may have seen this in previous board meetings and things like
that this is kind of the formal process that we always go through we work with
population survey analysts that's Chris pool and she'll introduce herself and
tell you a little bit more about pass here in a minute because you may not all
be familiar we present to the board in in June the year prior to the move
remember this is for the 2728 school year this is not the upcoming school
year this is for next year and then right after this board meeting tomorrow dr grooms's group in
communications will send out communications to the parents and the community that could be affected
by these attendance boundary modifications we get feedback from them over the next several months
dr grooms will come back and present in september she'll present that feedback to you guys
and then we'll come back to you in october to look for a final vote whether we adopt the
the presentation as given, or if you would like to make some changes, we take that to the October
board meeting. And then whatever changes we do, they would take effect in August of 2027.
So I'll let Ms. Poole introduce herself, and we'll start with Elementary 49.
Okay, thanks, Ted. Good evening, board members, Superintendent Grigorski. I know a lot of your
faces are familiar, but there are some new ones. And so my name is Chris Poole, and Ted mentioned
that Population and Survey Analysts is the firm that I'm with. We have done work like this for
KDISD since the mid to late 90s, and I believe that the first rezoning that I was involved with
was when we opened Cinco Ranch High School and did a little work in Cinco Ranch Junior High at
the same time. So we've been around for an awful lot of that growth, and you'll see us here for
for the zoning information.
And then also in the fall,
when we revise this report for the district,
we'll come and give a presentation about that.
But we are always available
and working with the administration,
answering questions and kicking things around.
So we will start with Elementary 49.
And this first shot slide just shows a little bit of a zoom
into that Northwest quadrant of the district
that Ted mentioned.
And what we're really after here
is looking at Youngblood Elementary
because Youngblood includes a big chunk of Sunterra and also Anniston and we
when we spoke in the fall here we had just found an article that referenced it
was a national article and it referenced some of the fastest growth master plan
communities in the country and it was only a handful of them like eight or ten
and it referenced both Sunterra and Anniston and Anniston has been doing
things like buying down interest rates and providing appliances and all these
these additional things and we actually have the person that does the demographic some of the
demographic work for Katie works in Waller and Sapphire and Royal and was speaking with them
here just a little while back and both of those are just still going and blowing and occupying
houses like crazy so that's why we are looking for relief for young blood via elementary 49
this shows the projected students that we have both resident students and once we look at what
what the net transfers in and out that have been occurring.
And we're seeing that for the fall of 26,
we would expect Youngblood to be operating at about 126% of capacity,
but really over by the fall of 27.
And so it's very, very good that this is coming online here for the fall of 27.
The next slide gives a little bit of a look at what we are proposing
for the attendance zone to be for that Sun Terra site.
And when we first started looking at drawing a zone for Sentara, we drew a very compact little zone.
And it included Sentara, that section of Sentara there that's in the north, you know, a lot of it goes across already.
And then it also included Anniston.
And the result there was that that school was relatively full immediately, even though it's a large footprint.
But it left Youngblood very, very small.
And Youngblood is designed to hold 1,030 students.
And so we knew that what we were going to have to do is leave, since the school sits in Sentara, that what we really needed to do was address potentially leaving Anniston in Youngblood to keep those numbers balanced a little bit better.
One other of the subdivisions that is of note sits there right sort of where it says Sentara North.
It's sort of a north-south sort of a subdivision there.
It's called Windward.
And it has about 275 students in it.
And out north, you can go over to Youngblood or out south down Pitt Road, you can go directly to the Sentara North zone.
And so we kicked around a lot of different options, and this was really ultimately the one that balanced both schools really well and leaves Anniston where it is.
And Wynwood really is kind of equidistant to both of the schools.
schools. So we felt like this was one that let Youngblood at a good numbers and that
Sentara North at Elementary 49 also with good numbers. And so when we're looking at which
subdivisions were actually moving to that new school to Elementary 49, this is the way
they break out by Lane-Dew-Stone. At 1D, we've got Northwest Katy and that's our moniker
for some land that is owned by a foreign investor. It's a big chunk of land and so we and we
can get absolutely no information about any plans that they may have and so we have built in some
projections for that area but we you know we'll have to continue to watch that but moving from
youngblood to 49 is some of that land when word that i've mentioned katie prairie estate which
is down sort of in the southern portion of that new attendant zone and then several sections of
santerra and then some individually owned parcels so this this is how they break out by land use
soon if in case you all want to do a little further study on your own in the future
so we'll go on and talk about wolf elementary most of the rest of these are small relatively minor
tweaks this is the sort of thing that occurs as a district is has at least portions of the district
that are built out or really stabilized and so a lot of times we see a lot of our clients need to
go in and balance things a little bit it just creates better utilization patterns throughout
out all of the schools in the district. These are the current attendance zones
for Wolfe and for Bear Creek and for Smalls and we're going to talk about
that area there in that red circle. That area is presently attending Wolfe.
They're driving all the way down and going to Wolfe there. And when we show
the projections for Wolfe and for Bear Creek, this has been coming on for Wolfe
for a while. There are a lot of little developments that I'll mention here in
just a second. So we're expecting Wolfe. Wolfe transfers a lot of students out
right now for bilingual programs but even once we're transferring those
students out we're still expecting wolf to exceed its capacity and really reach you know if we did
absolutely nothing even with those transfers gone potentially 130 or 40 percent of capacity by the
end of the projection period when you're looking at the numbers of students though that are coming
in it is small numbers you know we're looking at projected residents 565 wolf for the fall 729 so
for in in katie numbers those are relatively small numbers but the thing that's very important to
remember for Wolfe is that the capacity of Wolfe is only 405 students and so
when we're looking and talking about how small that would be in a facility that's
designed for a thousand and thirty when we're looking at some of these numbers
here and some of the changes that we're making it's really important to keep in
mind that that capacity figures 405 students for Wolfe Bear Creek capacity
of about 861 and we are projecting with the housing that is in that area for the
numbers there to gradually decline a little bit and so there is space for us to take lane use in
17 and 18 and move them to bear creek it's just across the highway from where the facility sits
and so you can see that bear creek would be in good shape and that wolf would be at about 342
students to start but remember that capacity that makes them 70 or 80 percent full in that in that
way um i i was asked what is in wolf you know why are we showing all of this additional growth it's
only a handful of lane you sons we've got left and but when we actually zoom in it's a lot of infill
and so we've got laneyson 39 has seven additional potential developments most of them are multi-family
and most of them have very very low ratios of students um laneyson 38 has three coming in laney
son 49 has three coming in also and so several of these are already in the planning stages such that
they have a market name and so they're really moving on down the road there are a few of them
that we are projecting to come on because that's what we have to do look at what's next door to
these developments and assume that those are likewise going to develop and so that is what
is left and driving a little bit of that growth you can see in 27 we'd be looking at about 342
students resident students in wolf and then still continuing to grow by 2031 to 483 students there
the next move that we're going to look at is at west memorial elementary
And this red circle here highlights, it shows the current attendance zones and then it highlights
the area that we're going to be looking at.
West Memorial isn't showing enormous numbers of growth, but it happens to also sit, we're
expecting it to be over capacity, and it happens to sit adjacent to Cimarron, which we are
expecting to continue to drop off a little bit as the developments in that area age.
And so what we're looking at doing is carving this little section of West Memorial out,
really kind of joining it to land you so in 42 there to Cimarron. And so what that area includes
is right now it includes a Falcon at Grand Harbor that's about 68 elementary students now. And then
it also has future Hudson Crossing, future Katie Gap, and then two other multifamily potential
parcels that are right in there mixed in all of that. And so we would expect them to likewise be
some sort of a likely to be multifamily development in the long run.
And then this next slide shows that we would also consider taking those students, but all
of those students are attending West Memorial Junior High, but there is a split there for
high school.
And so we were recommending that the students in that little area go from Katy High to Taylor
High and follow that sort of feeder pattern.
It's about 18 to 20 high school students in there right now.
But we are expecting some more growth to occur with all of those little developments that we would see coming in.
And it gets some more students out of Katy High.
Then with Maid Creek Junior High, we're going to be looking at this little area right here between Maid Creek and Cardiff.
And so you can see the numbers here with Maid Creek and with Cardiff.
Cardiff used to have a lot more students in it, but as those developments, as the residents in
those developments have aged in place, then we're seeing some declines there occurring.
Maid Creek, we're not really projecting to exceed its capacity, but it's awfully full,
and it's sitting right there next to Cardiff. And so isn't there something that we can do about that
to maybe balance those out a little bit better? So we're recommending moving land use zone 29A,
and what that does, you can see the numbers here for Cardiff and Maid Creek, that it really,
really balances them out nicely by moving that one lane you said they're both in schmalz elementary
made creek high school so it doesn't it shouldn't create any major sort of feeder issues and 29a is
the airport for one but then it's also barker's crossing and barker's branch and there are three
future developments that really are a long barker cypress there it's esperanza wild orchid radiance
living in prose at barker cypress and most of those i think are already under construction at
this point. And then the last move that we're looking at is for Cinco Ranch
right there. Cinco Ranch has continued to maintain a really strong level of
utilization, strong student enrollment, and there's one little area that we're
recommending here as a possibility to move to Tompkins. You can see that both
of them that we're expecting to ultimately flatten out a little bit but
that Cinco Ranch is more heavily utilized we're expecting here in the
next handful of years. And so this little area right here is Olympus Falcon Landing,
and it's about 60 or so high school students, both are Beck Junior High, and they really,
when they come out, they front that direction. It's more of a, it's a little bit better of a
transportation pattern for them. It doesn't break any of the feeder patterns. It's very
self-contained. It doesn't do any additional things, and it just gives a little tiny extra
a bit of balance there between the single and Tompkins.
And the final slide there is that we've worked very closely with PASA, the principals.
We've spoken to them as well, and we do believe this will provide some relief.
I will say, and it doesn't say it up there, but we take this stuff very seriously.
We know that people get very attached to their schools.
They love their schools.
They do.
And so we take all these moves very seriously, but we also want to make sure that we utilize
district facilities as best we can.
So we'll happy to answer any questions you have mr. President this box
Thank you for your presentation. It's always very interesting and first of all I just want to say
Thank you for paying attention to the small little pockets that could better utilize our facilities and also
best serve our families
So you're right. Mr. Verling people don't want to change
change. So my question is always going to be feeder patterns and I heard you, Dr. Poole, say many times this is the same feeder pattern, nothing changes. I didn't know if I heard that with the Cinco High School, like what junior high are they coming from? What does that one sound like? They go to Cinco Ranch Junior High. So they'll go with 68A and 68B, I think is right, Chris. They all go to Cinco Ranch Junior High as well and then on to Tompkins. So there's that, they'll be with a big bunch of
of kids that go on from junior high to high school. How many big bunch? 68a and b
they got it though she's gonna pull that number it's a lot of kiddos. Okay. It's
that area right by Kilpatrick so it's pretty big it's pretty big both those
areas pretty big. You know you know I'm I don't like that. Like oh I know you don't
like that that's why we that's why we look at it when we do that we look at
what where they're coming from and where they're going to I know that yes ma'am.
and when they named a single wrench junior high i was not very pro that either because then it feels
like those always go together and there was no way to guarantee that everyone at single wrench
junior high would go to cinco ranch high school but you know i got overruled on that name but
for that very reason right same with seven lakes junior high and seven lakes high school you can't
guarantee that those schools will always feed to each other but um it is a lot of kiddos 68a has
284 just i picked 20 28 so i flipped to 284 high school students and 68b 292. and then and the next
one what's what's the one called that you're moving uh that's olympus at falcon landing it's
got about 60. about 60 with about six 60 high school students so they would be going with that
big bunch okay any of that sound familiar to you mr. cross the areas yes
and for just a second I misunderstood miss pool and I thought she said back
and I was like okay cuz I was like oh that's that's gonna be some there'll be
some people are like wait a minute plus it'd be a really long ride it would be that's that's why i
was like i even wrote it on my notes it is completely okay i just uh when you said single
junior then i was like yeah you're right because we've i know the junior high has had kids feeding
off the tompkins for i don't know how long now but yeah quite a few years so i you know i know
So just like you said, anytime you change directions for the kids and which schools they're going to, there's always going to be folks that are worried about that or upset because they've, especially if you've gone that path with older children, it feels different.
I've sat through all those as a principal and and it's never fun but I
I do know that these folks do the best they can and we do have an obligation to
try to you know make sure things level out because you don't want one school
whether it's an elementary or high school you don't want one to be just
overloaded and because I also have been principals of school that were really
large and that impacts daily life and Mr. Verily, you know that really well too.
Two times over.
So I know, you know, we do want to make sure that to the best of our ability we do those
things.
But yeah, I mean, I don't disagree with you, Ms. Fox.
I just wondered if you were very familiar with the area, but I agree that that sounds
fine to me.
I get it.
Excuse me, Mr. President.
and I just jumped back into this discussion.
You know, not our fault it was named Cinco Ranch
and it's not going to Cinco Ranch.
My house was in a Cinco Ranch neighborhood,
and they wouldn't let my kid go to Cinco Ranch.
And my kid was really mad at me because she's like,
why do I have a mom on the school board?
I can't go to Cinco Ranch with my brother.
But she loved Seven Lakes, and it turned out great.
And the fact that in every situation that you talked about,
there is an excellent school going to an excellent school every single time and
neighborhoods so whether it was Bear Creek or Wolf right that still excellent
schools where they'll go that one made a lot of sense to me I always thought that
school that one driving all the way to wolf because Schmalz was so crowded for
so long I mean having sat here for so long I got a lot of history in this but
But those things, so I like that.
And then I think every other time you talked about it,
it sounded like feeder patterns were not going to be mixed up,
especially like the West Memorial one to Taylor.
Those boys and girls go to Taylor for the most part.
Is that correct?
And then the Cimarron, all of those felt like they would continue on with friends
when they went to the next level.
Yes, ma'am.
Again, the toughest thing to do is to keep elementary to junior high to high school the same.
What we really try to focus on doing is keeping junior high to high school
because when you get to junior high, you get in the organizations,
you get into your extracurricular stuff, and you get those real tight friendship connections,
and then we try to bring those on to high school.
And what we try to do, because we know that several folks have not liked that over the years,
is move a little tiny group of kids from junior high to high school
and not have them go with a big cohort.
It's not perfect in every way, and we've still got some work to do.
We want to do some things in some other spots in the district,
but that's what we try to do.
Okay.
And in an elementary, my last comment for this minute is
there isn't an elementary school that has like 15 or 20 kids going to a school
where everybody else in fifth grade is going, right?
We had that once at Creech.
It's like there were like 15 kids who went to make means when everybody was going to Beck.
I don't think we have to really drill down into it to figure that out.
These recommendations that you're making aren't that, I guess.
We're not, I mean, we've gone over and over again, you know,
and trying to be sure that everything is that situation.
I can't promise you that that's not someplace that hasn't slipped by over the last, you know, 25 years.
Or that's changed.
Oh, no, but of the changes that you're recommending.
The changes now, no.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes, because that's difficult too, right, when you're going all the way through elementary and you're not going to be a big bulldog.
It's hard.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
Board?
Yeah, Mr. President.
Mr. Davidson?
Thank you, Mr. Beerling, Ms. Poole.
Very helpful.
Clearly presented.
Just one quick question.
So I heard you describe that after the presentation this evening,
there would be a communication going out to the families that are being impacted by the potential changes.
I was just curious if you could describe maybe a little bit more, if you're a receiving family,
what they're going to receive and what opportunity they're going to have to provide feedback
and then how's that feedback kind of collected and used for final presentations?
Sure. There's a survey that goes out.
I wouldn't say it's extensive, but it's enough to get some really good data from families.
Dr. Grims, you want to talk to that a little bit?
Her group works with an outside company to do that.
Sure, absolutely.
So, trustees, beginning this week, those impacted families who could be potentially impacted by the Elementary 49 ABM
We'll receive a survey from the school district asking for their feedback and we take that
data, we report it out to the board at a meeting later on to inform your decision making.
To answer your question, Ms. Davidson, I'd...
Thank you.
Okay.
Mr. President, thank you for your presentation.
It's always nice to see you.
With your information, it's always so interesting.
I know you work really hard, but I just have a few little questions.
I know you've already delved into it, but just for the public to be aware.
First of all, I just want to make the comment that Mrs. Fox was talking about,
that 18 and 17 getting finally moved down to Wolf, I think that is so great
because it just always seems so weird to me that it was, you know,
so much closer to the other school, and yet they went, you know, by Bear Creek,
yet they came all the way down to Wolf.
So I love that.
I was noticing that as Mrs. Fox was alluding to, that, you know, McIlwain is divided between
Stockton and Nelson, but, you know, when you look at the things, it looks like just a little
bit, you know what I mean, but I don't know how many kids are impacted, even though on
the map it looks small, it may be a lot of kids, but it just looks...
Okay, where are they?
Amalkalane.
I think I'm talking about, is it 4G, 4F, 4E, all that?
Maybe I'm wrong.
You're concerned about the number of kids going for the split?
Yeah, it just looks like it's little, but it may be a lot.
Well, I will say this, though.
A little land use zone doesn't always mean a few number of kids.
It could be a really densely populated subdivision.
I know.
We have to go back and take a look at it.
That is one of the things, due in no small part to Ms. Fox,
that we always, for the last 15 years, I think,
has been sort of question number one when we're preparing all of this information,
is what does this do to the feeders?
And so I'd be surprised if we didn't address that at the time for the feeders of students.
but we'd have to go back and take a look at it. Well I mean I know that y'all are
just here's the bottom line you know you're doing the best that you can we
have schools with limited capacity and unfortunately sometimes it just doesn't
work out you know my kids went to Exley and then most of those kids and I think
they still do go to make means and a small amount of them go to Beck but it
is what it is it you know at the time you know when I was in when my kids were
in elementary school it seemed concerning to me you know especially the
oldest one but once it they went they didn't seem to really care that much
about it I mean I cared seemed like I cared more than than they cared you know
so I think sometimes you know we're imagining the worst you know and it ends
up not being the worst and so
I appreciate what you do.
And what is your time frame?
When are we trying to do this by?
So normally Dr. Grims will present the feedback and the data to you guys in September,
and then we would bring it to the board to vote in October.
It will be for the next week?
Yes, ma'am.
That would start in August of 27.
And then can you talk to us a little bit about the grandfathering in, if there is any?
Because I don't think you mentioned that,
I do think it's especially for the newer the new trustees and the general public so
Historically we have not grandfathered elementary and junior high kids
We have grandfathered high school kids
Especially when we're dealing with high schools that are already established as four-year high schools
This hack and I work very closely together when we start talking about
Moving high school kids because if you've already started at a high school or the high school already has a four-year
program, you know, then we're going to look at grandfathering a little differently than we would
if it was opening, let's say, Freeman High School, where we started with two grade levels.
They didn't have any place to put 11th and 12th graders, so they would stay at Pato. But
again, when you're talking about moving kids from Katie to Taylor or Taylor to Cinco or whatever it
is, then we're going to look a little closer at grandfathering kiddos. And if you've kind of
started there. So we have kind of, we have a procedure that we follow on that and it's worked
pretty well and it's given the kids an opportunity they've already that I've
already built up the you know the camaraderie of the school and and that
sort of thing as high school kids it allows them to stay under some certain
conditions we have not it's it's it's pretty cumbersome to do that yeah and
just a follow-up on you're saying about the change it is hard I agree my kiddos
have done it i've done it as a principal um but i will say that the principals are fantastic when
they welcome these kids in you know it's a comfort level thing it's just like moving your own home
you know it's hard at first and then it gets easy but our principals do an outstanding job of
welcoming new kids and families in uh and a few months later you know it it feels like old home
week there too so yeah miss taylor hi thank you mr president um i heard that you will survey the
families of um that are in the area for elementary 49 the santerra area do you do any um do you
probably need an opportunity for uh parents to provide input or feedback for um the other
proposals the other schools yes ma'am anybody that's affected by an attendance boundary
modification they are surveyed yes ma'am and what would the impact be because I
understand for the shift of some kiddos from wolf to Bear Creek or was it West
Memorial Elementary Cimarron there would be a change in their high school feeder
pattern mm-hmm was that the West Memorial Elementary one yes ma'am
because we're kind of carving out a little piece of a land use zone to put
it in 42 C and then that will impact numbers at Tompkins so those kiddos
instead of going to Katy they'll go to Tompkins no ma'am though instead of Katy
they'll go to Taylor High School which is consistent with that whole feeder
pattern in there they go Westmore elementary or Cimarron then Westmore
Hill junior high and then on to Taylor
for the other questions so question for you on you've got some projected
projected utilization rates. Do you ever go back and look at how accurate those were?
So meaning if you were to go pull this exact presentation from seven years ago and we said,
hey, we're projecting forward to now, how accurate was that? And you don't have to
answer that off the cuff. I'm just kind of curious how good the projections are.
I pulled this exact presentation from about three or four years ago to answer that question.
And so because I was looking at Youngblood, and I mentioned in a reference that Anniston and Sentara had these enormous numbers of homes that are being occupied.
And it doesn't change the number, the whole number of homes that will fit inside the land use zone, but it has changed how rapidly they're being developed, how rapidly those kiddos are showing up in Katy ISD.
And so I don't have the number, I don't think, from Youngblood.
Youngblood was different, and the school has been advanced because of the intense amount of growth in both of those.
Budney, from a little while back when I looked at the 2027 projection, it was seven students off.
McIlwain was about 50.
Cross was six.
So what you're saying is you're pretty accurate.
Well, those are the ones that I wrote down, of course.
You're talking whole numbers, not even percentages.
I was talking whole numbers from when I pulled the presentation because I wanted to know
myself, and I knew that Youngblood was different because we had talked about with the way that
the bond was approved and different things, and when does that school to relieve Youngblood
need to open?
And so it has been accelerated because of, like I say, this just massive amounts of growth
that we're even reading national articles about.
But then the other ones were pretty close.
What really caught my eye, what we're talking about is the decline in utilization rate in
Tompkins High School.
Right.
They're projected.
Right.
Right.
And so I would be curious to see, just as a snapshot, I'm a new board member, I would
be curious to see a snapshot of every single one of our schools, historical utilization
rate and projected.
Right.
Just where do we think, oh, this has nothing to do with what we're talking about in terms
of these schools that we're talking about that could be affected by an abm but i'm just curious
to see how we're utilizing our facilities today and where we think we will be let's say 10 years
from now so that's something you can provide as a follow-up right and and so in the fall you'll
you know get a copy of all of this and it's floating around for you guys right now and it
shows the 10-year projections for every single one of the schools in in the district we work at our
base level at a resident student number, how many kids live there.
That's important for rooftops, when we're counting rooftops and ratios of students per
home and it's important when we're making changes here for proximity, for transportation
purposes, how many kids live there.
But then there's also always a second line that looks at the number of kids that are
transferring in and out.
Presently, that changes a lot for various programs and things, so there's a second line
and so we really kind of have to look at both, but that is in here in the presentation.
When you are talking about looking at the amount of decline over time, we have talked in the past for some of these studies, we can look at that high school attendance zone, for example, and we have geocoded students, thanks to the district, of how many kids live in that zone that are 12th grade, all of the grades down.
And you can see a bulge of where those kids are and then much, much smaller grade levels behind them.
And so that's what's driving some of that.
Now in Cinco Ranch High School Zone, we are seeing a lot of people move in when the kids are in fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, that sort of thing.
But it has a bulge, too, of kiddos that are going to work through these larger cohorts that are going to work through the system.
And so that's the sort of thing that we'll be talking about in the fall.
That's very helpful.
And I've got one other question for you.
If you jump back to slide five in your presentation.
So going back to actually probably slide seven is probably a better one to look at.
Yeah, I'm not sure which one that is.
It's just the image of the recommended elementary ABM for Youngblood.
Okay, this one?
Yeah.
So is Youngblood, all that northern area, is that all undeveloped?
A lot of it is undeveloped, yes.
And you said there's a chunk of Sunterra that we don't, you have no idea what, there's an
international investor that's part of it?
In Sunterra, some of that tip-top part of the north is also some of that undeveloped,
it's an international owner.
Is there plans for additional elementary schools up there for us?
Yes, sir.
How many?
Well, it kind of depends.
This is the last...
And I know we've got...
There's authorizations.
I know.
I'm just like, do we have...
We'll have Lisa come up.
So, I'm just kidding.
So, Elementary 49 is the last one on the 23 bond?
Yes.
So, as it sits right now, we have no money for any more elementaries to be built.
However, Chris could probably tell you, we're thinking two, three more in the Northwest.
And it is dependent on growth.
And the question you asked, Mr. Tribbley, is a really good one because if you'd asked that question three or four years ago, it probably would have been a whole lot easier for us to say about utilization and all that kind of stuff.
And it's much, much harder now with all the different things that have come into play, whether it's a change in immigration or vouchers or whatever it is.
there's all these other things going on and it makes it that much harder to kind of predict the
future on these so we do think we're going to need some more elementaries in that area we just don't
necessarily know exactly how many although chris may tell you well i can't tell you an exact number
what i can tell you is that over the 10 years for them our primary scenario of growth for budney for
example the capacity there is 1386 and we're looking at a projection of 2263 in 10 years time
And so that right there tells you that almost a whole other elementary school a lot of your schools are a thousand a thousand thirty
And then that's been the footprint now for 15 or 18 years or so
And but a few of these have been built a little bit bigger
So we're looking at the you know large part of a whole nother school that would fit inside that zone
And then we're looking at young blood before it is affected by 49. We are looking at
during the 10 years and it will not be built out by then but during our 10-year
time frame it's about 3,400 students projected inside that young blood zone
now you know a big chunk of them will be taken off for 49 but we're gonna need
some other things too and I mentioned that that owner that is not from the US
we don't know what that's going to look like and so that's one of those things
we're constantly having to stay on top of and we monitor when those pieces of
land are sold to other people and um because when they buy them they typically this is a sit and
hold situation but at some point they're they're going to wise up and sell it and realize what they
can what they can make on it okay all right good info thank you so much sure under gorski yeah
let's revisit something that trustee taylor had asked about which was the survey i just want to
to make sure the board's clear on that we generally only survey the families
when we're opening up the new schools for those large portions the other
families that are impacted in what we call a mini adjustment or mini ABM or
something like that we don't do a full-on survey for those folks but they
can offer input through a dedicated website to go on and just share their
their feedback. Dr. Grooms, can you talk a little bit about your process to that?
Yes, absolutely. So we inform all potentially impacted families of this presentation that was
provided this evening by administration. And then once the board takes a vote, makes a decision on
whether to move forward with this proposal, those families receive a letter from the district
notifying them of their new school address and any services they may be eligible for as a result of that change.
To talk a little bit more about that, Dr. Grooms, in the timeline, just to be sure.
Right.
If the board took action on the ABMs, we would take action in October of 26.
And then that official notification from the school district to the impacted families would be sent via postal mail and email in November.
For a change in school year of August?
For the upcoming school year, fall 2027.
Okay, so giving them about a good eight or ten months lead time into that.
That is correct.
Ms. Fox?
I'm sorry.
I'm going to change the subject.
So if God is.
Mr. President, I was going to ask Ms. Poole something about your information that you're going to show us in October.
I'm just just some things that people have been asking up here has made me think about.
So when we talk about I don't like to say that we lost sixteen hundred kids.
I like to say we really plateaued because like we just didn't grow, you know.
but does your information show the places that have if they are a deficit
you know from the you know because we can see it and we get our enrollment we
you know Mrs. Davies sends us an enrollment thing all the time and we can
we can see it but does your information show which schools lost 10 kids here 10
10 kids there you know what i mean it doesn't normally we normally we run that information
for ourselves to compare the actual number of resident students to the projected number of
resident students and sometimes it's because you had 15 extra second graders move in you know and
they're in an into an area where there are no homes being built or something like that
and then sometimes it is due to a difference of the number of homes that are being built
And sometimes it's due to a difference in the ratio of students per home.
And so that's what we're always trying to look at from our background sort of thing.
That doesn't normally make it into here because it's really down in the weeds.
We normally try to keep everything at the attendance zone level there,
except for the numbers of students projected by land use zone.
Ms. Fox.
So Mr. Shipley's question had me thinking through ups and downs of enrollment.
And so I don't know, Dr. Poole, if you will remember the numbers.
James Cross may be able to help with this too, sorry.
But Cinco Ranch High School was the biggest one when my son was there, 2002, 2006.
You know, it was bursting at the seams, 3,650 kids, that kind of thing.
and then I was like, where did all the people go?
Because then it got really small, right?
Because Seven Lakes opened, Tompkins opened, and that kind of thing.
And now it's big again.
And I'm like, well, what is happening here?
So I don't understand how those go, but the repopulation and how.
So when he's talking about utilization,
you can't always know that it's going to get really big
and then it's, you know, Creech did the same thing.
It got big and small and big and small as we went through those repopulations of neighborhoods as people...
Can you help with that?
Some of what has occurred there is we have backfilled into Taylor and into Cinco High School because of that, because of that sort of plateauing.
We have seen since COVID, we saw in 21, probably due to immigration and due to extremely low interest rates, we saw a massive uptick everywhere.
everywhere. And then now in all of the existing subdivisions, because we classify each one
of the subdivisions as either existing or active subdivisions, in other words, are they
adding more than just one or two little lots that are still sitting, you know, where somebody
bought them and is sitting on them. And so we look at the trends that have occurred in
the last year by primary elementary and secondary grade levels and things. And so I have not,
I don't think, I know, I have not worked for a client since this entire school year that has seen growth in the existing subdivisions because we think of interest rates.
Who's going to give up a 3 point whatever percent interest rate for a 6.75% interest rate?
We see an awful lot of students that we think are an awful lot of parents and families that are staying put, and it's occurring everywhere.
Now, those homes will turn at some point.
Life happens.
happens, people do have to sell and exchange those sorts of mortgage rates.
It's not happening large scale.
If we see a drop in interest rates, it's going to happen more, but they don't ever reach
the ratio of students per home that they had initially when they were brand new.
And so, you know, a lot of the subdivisions here, the, I think we saw an average at some
point back, oh gosh, I'm going to lie if I tell you what year it was, but we saw at one
point when we did a large average of around 0.8 students here district-wide
per single-family home and that number has declined and it has declined for
every single one of my clients. Friendship ISD it stayed the same I was
there a week ago but that's about it absolutely everybody else it has
declined this particular year and so but they even if some of them are 1.2
students especially in the southwest across Creek numbers are really crazy
high here a little while back but they will age and then you will see some
rebirth but it won't ever hit that 1.2 or that 1.0 again i guess i'm i'm just you know when when we
do the uil things and we're talking about competitions between schools and and enrollment
that cinco was largest again after it hadn't been for years and years and and i remember just kind
of being surprised by that because do you remember what the lowest enrollment was um we were i think
just got under 3,000 after being, you know, 32, 3300. Then we dropped down and we inched back up.
But the thing that changed for us was when we did the ABM with West Memorial and we got those
kiddos. Yeah, we got several kids. But hasn't it grown more since then? I think that was the
beginning because then we started getting all those kids feeding in each year. I don't remember
first year we get like a hundred kids in maybe that first group I can't remember
it's been several years yeah but then yeah and then but each year you know
that next eighth grade group would come in and so then you had freshmen
sophomores juniors and seniors and then the other thing I was gonna add thinking
about the excuse me the new build I know that buyers now are buyers builders are
buying down interest rates to try to get people to buy these homes and I think
that's probably right that that probably people are less likely to be selling
their home like you said if they're in it three or four percent interest to go
buy another one for six seven percent but but if you can get a new home you
know they're buying them down to like four four and a half something like that
and so that's I imagine that's probably the first place we'll see the growth is
is in that Northwest and and just a final thing as we have sat at this table
a long time and I've always thought okay time to shake the etch-a-sketch and
redraw the lines and balance everything and I think something like this happens
and it just it comes back and and it wanes and so we do do it in periodic you
you know, periodically through the times to balance things where we can, but it's just impossible to
know who's coming and who's not. And last year when we did not grow, I was dumbfounded by that.
And I guess you're seeing that across the state. Is that right?
The state of Texas lost 77,000 public school students last year.
Thousand.
We'll hit on those numbers again in the fall, but when it came to traditional ISDs,
it was something on the order, and the number's in front of me, of 88,000,
charter schools grew by 11,000.
And of those 77,000, I believe it was 61,
there was a decline in Hispanic student population
after kind of an average growth of around 20,000 students a year.
There was a decline of 61,000 Hispanic students.
So it hasn't touched every single one of our clients since August.
it has impacted an awful lot of the Houston area lines.
One clarifying question.
Mr. Veerling, regarding the grandfather clause, if a family of a high school student opted for that,
are they still eligible for bus service or is that no?
Generally no.
When we're talking about a four-year to four-year school, we do allow a kiddo to stay if they've started there,
but they would not receive bus service.
They would only receive bus service to the new campus.
Board, I would share many times more, as these recommendations are made,
they're operating by those principles of trying to keep cohorts together
and not split up families and not make changes if they're not significant.
And just as we're talking, I knew this was coming, right,
the idea that as we get closer and closer to build out, we only have a couple of options.
we have to provide educational opportunities for kids we can pass bonds
we can put in portables maybe create new programs and do ABMS right and so it
gets more and more not more more complicated but but as we grow and we
reach this being built out right we're responsible to be stewards with our tax
dollars and our kids and the buildings we already have and so most of these
little changes will probably happen a lot more during the time we're on the
board hopefully not a lot because we're looking as far forward as we can but we
can't we don't know the future and this just made me think like we've only got a
couple options right and make it make the best decision we can with the
information and like was shared presented tonight but then we do get
more feedback from our community have a chance to look at it again before we are
going to make a decision mr. president can I say one more champagne I just have
a you know to come back to the grandfather thing I had to hate to be
labor this but you know like if if it has something to do with you know your
kids are at a certain elementary school I'm not I'm not talking about anything
in particular really but there is certain elementary school you have
multiple kids and then you have one or two that have made it on to junior high
but something about this ABM has now changed with junior high they're going
to go to but they have two kids older and they have two kids left in
elementary school and the parents want the kids to be in the same junior high
and high school you know but something about this ABM may have changed
changed their projectory. Do you see what I'm saying? And so the older kids, I guess, would be
stay at where they were. I mean, do y'all ever think about those kind of things where
it might change within a family? We do. There are a million scenarios out there that, you know,
that we try to run through. And what we try to do is make a decision that we feel like will be best
for the whole having said that I know that there's families that deal with
you know transportation issues or or daycare issues or whatever it is or job
issue and things like that make it difficult so again that that's part of
the reason why we give them that full year to kind of you know to kind of
figure it out so that we're not dropping something on somebody a month before
school starts you know that would be very unfair I think for us to do that
any other questions board thank you very much for presentation we'll now move on
7.3 Academic Presentation - Innovation Spotlight: Raines Academy
to item 7.3 academic presentation innovation spotlight on Raines Academy
and our presenters will be Kelly Carrillo our principal at Raines Academy
and dr. Emily Craig our assistant superintendent for school leadership and
support hi good evening president redmond dr gorski and board of trustees um i'm not going
to speak to you for a long time because i have miss carilla here who is um the expert on all of
the things going on at rains but as you know over the course of this school year we have really
worked to make some adjustments on our what we now call our innovative complex to bring together a
variety of programs and so wanted to showcase some things going on at Raines
highlight some of the programs that are unique there as we go as well just to
share with you our Raines Academy creates innovative learning experiences
and provides unparalleled growth experience opportunities to inspire
students to create a better tomorrow and Raines is our hybrid campus with
with students attending for partial day.
Some of them can be there for longer periods of time,
but they have that flexible school day opportunity.
And a lot of the pieces that we are utilizing at RAINS
are pieces that we hope that our comprehensive campuses
at the high school level can also incorporate,
with some of that flexibility, virtual programming,
and things like that.
So a lot of it started here at RAINS
and has grown into being able to utilize those on our 10 comprehensive high school campuses as well.
And so I'll turn it over to Ms. Carrillo to talk a little bit about her team
and then some of the innovative programs that are available only at RAINS.
All right, good evening, Dr. Gagorski and board members.
It is a pleasure to be here tonight to talk a little bit about RAINS,
one of my campuses under the Innovative Pathways umbrella.
umbrella. This visual you've probably actually seen a few times. I feel like it's in quite a few
different slideshows. But in, I guess, what was it? December, I was named principal of innovative
pathways and transitioned into that. I had been the principal at Miller for five years prior to
that. So I know Miller in and out. I think this entire semester has been a learning process for
me getting to know the ins and outs of some of the different campuses. And that's really, I'll talk
more about rains than the others tonight but I love that Dr. Craig called me an
expert and I'm no expert yet but I will be hopefully give me a little bit more
time on all the things that are kind of under my umbrella that being said we've
got some associates it's a new model that we're putting in place on the
innovative complex for each of these campuses it would be a challenge to be
principal of four different campuses so I've got a really strong instructional
instructional team that's really helping with this. Throughout really, I guess, the latter part of the spring semester, this team, we worked at looking at what would roles and responsibilities be so that all of the important work gets done on the complex and not only gets done but moves forward as we're looking for what are the new innovative things that we can do and opportunities we can provide students.
students. Kind of going through some of the members of my, I guess, cabinet team, if you want to call
them, the associates, Jeff Karras, who's going to be at OAC. He has been an assistant principal at OAC,
so he brings that historical knowledge definitely to the practices, processes, all those types of
things, and he's a great person for me really to learn about OAC from. Tori Ray is the associate
at Legacy Virtual and over Raines Academy as well.
She was on the KVS, Old Katy Virtual School team
for three years prior to transferring into this position.
She's got that historical knowledge of the KVS
as we're moving to Legacy Virtual.
And then Eileen Paulus, you see her,
she's my associate principal over at Miller.
Eileen was actually a student, a teacher,
an assistant principal at Miller also
before transferring into this role.
She's got just historical knowledge of the campus.
We've worked together definitely for years that I've been at Miller as well.
So this team together, I could not do this work without them.
It's very important, I feel like, what we're doing out on the complex.
But just kind of wanted you to know a little bit about my team members that you'll see this year.
So Raines Academy is incredibly special.
Once again, this semester I've learned so, so much in my time at Raines.
I feel like I knew what happened until you're actually sitting in the seat really making those decisions, having those conversations.
but it's such a unique place.
I definitely encourage everybody throughout this school year,
I think there will be opportunities to visit all of the campuses at the Innovative Complex.
But just walking into our building, it's a unique building as well.
It's very open, bright, inviting.
We service students from all of the 10 high schools in Katy.
So that partnership with campuses is huge.
When students are actually applying to become students at Reigns Academy,
the home campus counselors are part of that process.
when we're looking at different students, all the way through then when we're hopefully graduating everybody from Raines Academy.
So we've got that connection. Definitely that's why all the logos are here for all of the high schools.
And we also have students who attend Miller and are also Raines students as well.
So that's why the Miller logo is on there.
You can see it's a little bit flexible, and we'll kind of go into that flexible schedule in a few slides later.
But it's just kind of like a community college almost feel.
That's what we're hoping that students feel a little bit of a different experience at
Raines because that's something they're looking for.
So student success by the numbers this school year for 25-26, which really summer school
is an extension of this school year, so we're not quite there.
But as of May when the spring semester ended, we had four
thousand six hundred seventy nine courses successfully completed by rain students and
i think that's an incredible number and if you know our students and if you've been in our building
it's an even bigger celebration and all of these leaves on these trees when you walk in
rains academy it's on a wall every student when they complete a course gets to write their name
and the course they completed on a leaf so these trees they start off as bear trees at the
beginning of the year and then just continue to be added on to throughout the year these are a
symbol you know of what we do and every leaf is a symbol of success for a student that maybe would
not have happened otherwise if they remained on home campus or maybe would have but we're
providing different opportunities for them this school year so far we've had 303 graduates as well
which once again you know you're looking at huge campuses in kdisd so this might seem like a small
number but the student success stories that reigns are incredible because I do
not believe these 303 students maybe would have graduated in a different
circumstance so really really big things we've got some very cool celebrations on
campuses every kid that graduates if they wish to have one they get to have a
clap out one of our counselors comes over the loudspeaker says their name
everybody comes out into the hallway and claps for the student which can be maybe
one of the first times they're successful potentially not but just
really get celebrated so it's a pretty special place to be to especially toward
the end of those semesters when we have so many graduates coming in this is just
kind of another picture of our Commons and this the flexible instructional
school day I think last week you heard a little bit about the flexible school day
and it's so important to our students because really it's meeting them where
they're at we have students in just a variety of life circumstances perhaps
they're supporting their family perhaps their parents you know themselves they
might be working and need to work more than just kind of a part-time job that
some of our other high school students have so they need that flexible option
for coming to school some are working late nights so coming in a little bit
later in the day is what works for them some of our students are wanting to go
to college early so they're wanting to graduate early we have just a variety of
experiences and student stories on our campus but that that flexible school day
just is hopefully something that engages them that potentially they would not be engaged in
school otherwise. So it's just, it's really huge for us. Moving into next year, like I said,
this semester has been such a semester of exploration. We're doing a couple little
changes to hopefully make things even a little bit more flexible for students, some more
transportation options, which our teams have worked together on, super excited about that for our kids
and then what that might mean for their success next year. So stay tuned. I'm hoping these
these numbers are even larger next year. A couple programs that we offer through
Raines Academy too are some of our career and technical education programs, which that fits
really nicely under my umbrella because that's been my work for the last really, I guess,
seven years in a different district in here. Love career and technical education. And so I'm going
to talk a little bit about the programs at Raines. This first one is our water operator licensing
program this was new to us this year I think some board members presented on
this actually recently too in the incredible partnership that we have with
Infra Mark if you don't know we are in a deficit of water operators in the state
of Texas we have places businesses such as Infra Mark that want to partner with
high school students and provide them job opportunities because we we need
people in these fields so this has been really great this year we had 31
students go through the program and you can see this one picture with the student shaking the
hand of one of the guys from Inframark. That was literally our signing day where students were
receiving job offers from Inframark. So this is not only you know just you're learning some great
skills to kind of move on to that next step like you were going into that next step right after
graduation. So really cool program. Our students got to take a lot of field trips. They had paid
internship experiences throughout the school year beginning in the fall
semester if they wanted to engage in that with InfraMark so it was really a
really great experience we're excited to continue to grow this program and as
principal of Miller I'm excited to look at this model and see what other
programs really at Miller and at Raines we can we can grow some of those
partnerships with our businesses to provide direct employment for our
students so really great program huge success and very excited to see where
this goes in the future a program of ours that i think has been highlighted quite a bit so i'm not
going to spend much time on it tonight is our cdl program where we offer students a class a cdl
license and a forklift operator just signed a po to get a forklift for the summer for our students
who are accessing the program this summer so that they can get that as well i know we've talked you
know in some different meetings about students and their job opportunities through this program and
And that's one of the things with the forklift operator.
We're trying to get students into jobs and give them skills that they need to get into that while maybe waiting to go into jobs with their CDL license.
This was also another great program.
Got to learn about this.
This is a picture I took actually at HCC graduation ceremony.
This was our first graduation ceremony to attend as KDISD.
We had 11 students who technically graduated from HCC with their license, and that was a pretty exciting moment.
So a new dual credit program that we're offering where students can get their real estate license and get dual credit through HCC.
So really incredible.
Can't wait to see this grow.
It is a program that was offered historically virtually, but next year we're moving it face-to-face,
And I'm very excited about that too, you know to have some of the conversations they can have in class
I think it's going to be really really great for this program teachers very excited as well
All right, and our next one that's coming for the 26-27 school year this is kind of being
Housed under the construction trades umbrella, which that program is growing to that's been in existence at Miller for this will be its fourth year
But the underground utilities program is very similar to what we have with Inframark.
This is going to be a partnership with USIC, which I believe that stands for United States Infrastructure Company.
And so they are really the call before you dig.
Okay, so we're looking at locating underground utilities.
Yet again, kind of going back to that Inframark conversation, we are in need across the nation for people who specialize in this.
And so that's once again why this company is wanting to give our students paid internships throughout the end of the fall and into the spring.
And then we'll offer some of them jobs as well, you know, right after graduation.
So excited to see what this program has to offer and to see it grow throughout the years.
So also given giving jobs to students right away.
way. Also kind of under our umbrella, not directly related to Raines, but some of the Raines staff is
on a longer contract and we really do stand up all of secondary summer school under the Raines
umbrella. We do hire some teachers and things like that, but these are the different summer school or
summer options for students. We've got our high school virtual original credit and that's offered
through Legacy Virtual High School. We have credit and course recovery that is housed at Raines. Our
our teachers are that are doing that. It's credit recovery for high school, course recovery for
junior high. The REINS and Senior Success Program, that's for some of our students at REINS choose to
continue their classes in the summer. Some choose to not. They would like to take their summer off,
but we have some of our REINS kiddos and then some seniors that were not able to graduate from
their comprehensive high school campuses who join us in the summer. We've got ESL Enrichment,
which is actually being housed at OAC right now. Math Bridge, it's a junior high math program that's
housed at Raines, Wright Camp housed at Miller. It's a one-week program that
ended, that was the first week of summer school, House Bill 1416, which just
started last year. That's for a junior high, eighth grade students who are not
successful in their STAAR Test and need those House Bill hours. And then we've
also had some students retake EOCs and then we've had some TSIA testing support
out of Miller. So these are just the variety of things that are going on
right now in the innovative complex throughout this summer. Just for some
It's helping students get over the hump, maybe graduate then in our early fall graduation.
And for others, it's maybe recovering some credit that they potentially lost or gaining credit and getting ahead.
So that's kind of just a quick overview of what we've got going on and really kind of a little bit about RAINS.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Board, any questions?
Ms. Champagne.
Okay.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Ms. Carrillo, thank you very much for your presentation.
I have something kind of interesting to say, and then I do have a question.
So I was just at a family reunion, and I didn't realize that one of my first cousin's child,
who is 38 years old, actually was one of the first classes of kids who graduated from Reigns.
Oh, wow.
And he, you know, obviously is a 38-year-old adult male now.
You know, he's grown up, he has a family and all that,
but he had a lot of good things to say about Reigns and that's kind of impressive for
you know I'm sure it's like 100 times even better now you know but it was good that he had
you know he was having some kind of troubles in high school and he found the place to be at Reigns
and ended up graduating and all that so I just thought that was really interesting but my
question is I always kind of wonder this especially with Reigns um and with Miller that as a person
who myself had to work work through going to college and you know both
degrees I had to work and support myself basically do y'all ever do anything you
know kind of counseling with students maybe through HCC or something about
getting some kind of certification so that you could support yourself so maybe
this is not your full-time thing or your forever thing but it's something that
you could do while in college. I hear so many students say, I can't afford to go to school.
But with some of these certifications, I'm not saying they'll pay for the whole thing,
but it would help them, you know, maybe where they could go part-time or they could figure out a way
to work and support themselves while they're getting their degree. Do y'all have any kind of
counseling or anything that y'all do with that? Yes, I would say really not
only Miller, like our counselor, all of the different recruitment events we do
throughout the year, kind of the information we have published, but even
home campus counselors. They're really very well aware of the
certifications that we offer. It's funny, I actually brought our book that we
provide to all of them with all of our programs. It's got our certifications,
information about that, and many of our students, that's exactly what they're
are doing. I'm thinking one of our programs in particular, clinical rotations. Students can get
their EKG and PCT certifications. A lot of our students do plan to go to college, but they might
be using those while in college to pay their way. So exactly what you said, I do think we're kind of
a little bit of a jumping point. Some of our students are going directly into those fields.
That's what they want to do. Others, that's a jumping point for a different career maybe that
they want to pursue. We have a few students definitely every year in our cosmetology program
who are using that license while they're pursuing a business degree or you know
something else too but that really gives them something where they're making more
money maybe than some of the other students who are their age in college
and then can pursue whatever it is that they wish to so we absolutely do as well
as all home campus counselors okay so that let me just this is the last thing
I say that that is very encouraging to me because I always want you know
students to know that okay you know college is expensive and you may still
owe some money at the end of it but along the way there's something that you
might could do to help support yourself a little bit at least pay for your rent
and buy your food and you know things like that while you're going through
school so that's encouraging to know that y'all are y'all are talking to kids
like that about that instead of just saying well forget it you know because I
kind of always see this as like you know in my mind every time i hear you know you know career
or college to me it's it's not necessarily just career or college it may be career and college
that might be a you know for me that's that that's how it was for me career and college at the same
time so miss champaign that was one of the um graduates of the water operator program uh it was
It was cool to be at the graduation ceremony when they actually handed them job offers.
And one of the students didn't take the job offer because this is going to college to
be an environmental engineer, but is walking in already being licensed as a water operator.
And when she was on her college visit, they heard that they kind of were like, oh, snap,
this girl knows what she's talking about and is able to serve as an intern because InfraMark
is in Oklahoma, I believe where she's going to be and is able to have an internship up
there if she wanted to to help while she's going through those classes mr.
president miss Fox miss Cruella you know this is my favorite I've lots of
favorite but it's absolutely my favorite and I love that it's called the
innovative pathway complex now because all of those buildings are intertwined
and all the things that you all are doing there and it's just thrilling to
be there every time and you know i my my favorite favorite is to encourage the culinary students
you know by tasting their things and coming for lunch as often as possible with all my friends
so you know because i believe in the students and i want them to be successful but we presented at
that we presented two sessions on two back-to-back weekends,
one in Fort Worth and one in San Antonio,
to school boards and superintendents around the state.
And during this presentation, the room was mostly full,
and everybody would have their cameras up,
and they'd be taking pictures of every slide
and asking all these great questions of the programs that we have and how did
you do that and you don't have to be mega large like we are to have success
there's a especially that water program because there if you have water in your
city you're gonna need a water operator you if you have a water tower you're
gonna need right it was just they they were shocked that this our very first
year to do it i bel if my statistics are correct 19 students 15 of them got job offers four of them
were choosing the college path like like mr redmond said and 14 of the 15 took the job offers
and they are making cold hard cash immediately and the advancement in that program if you stay
10 years you're making 150 to 200 thousand dollars as a as a class a big
water operator was called and it just it just you know start off here and you
just grow as an 18 year old high school graduate not not Community College not
associate degree high school graduate and you have programs like that all
kinds of things this electrical one is going to be very much like that and my
My understanding is with that partnership that if a student also has a CDL, they can drive the truck that takes the crews out to lay the lines of all that.
It's just adding on and adding on and adding on to each other.
And there's something for everyone.
And I love that we are focusing on students' success when they leave our buildings and when they leave us and move on.
And I love that you're thinking of ways that we can do partnerships with many of the other programs that are in the building where your office is in the Miller building, which is fascinating to tour.
So I love it so much.
The people who made the presentations, I was there to do the introductions.
and then people the other districts from around the state from small to large
they asked the most interesting questions there were lines formed around
dr. Gorg or ski and and others who were giving the presentations and asking all
the information and exchanging ideas and emails to us asking for more information
and we're here to help you help all students so to be able to share that I'm
just so grateful for the district for for doing that for for us and you know
to be able to share those kinds of things my question for you is will I
mean so we're going from a principal at each place to now you can do it it's
cruelly just do it all but I love how the umbrella is there and then your
associate principals and i know those people they're incredible where will are you going to
keep your office in the miller building like you have now and well actually this entire semester
i've had two offices and so i've just walked back and forth but i do plan to office yes out of miller
next year we've come up with kind of a structure on each of the campuses where i if i forget a
folder it's not a big deal you know right now it's what am i taking to and from each office so um
Yeah, that's what we'll do next year.
Okay, so one is at Raines and one is at?
It has been.
However, that office will be needed at Raines, and so I do plan to office out of Miller.
Okay.
In a walkie-talkie situation or something.
Oh, yes.
Yep.
We're active on that complex, moving around.
Get your steps in every day because it's a big place.
It is.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Mr. Davidson.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'd just like to point out, I think, a really nice connection between the last
two presentations.
You know, we heard from Ms. Cole and Mr. Vierling about a number of projects and expansion
that's happening, you know, both kind of in undeveloped areas and then, you know, some
of our more kind of internal district pockets too.
and you look at what this team and what you described,
Ms. Grilla, the training our students are getting
to run public water supply, infrastructure, real estate,
they're learning how to locate subsurface utilities,
and you're gonna have to run utilities
out to all of that new development.
and you know I knew right now we're sitting within the city of Katy limits
and here in the city of Katy for past 18 months or so I think it's been you know
if if you're here you've heard a lot of noise about fiber optic cables being cut
over and over and over again so training up our young people to be able to help
these crews who are putting a backhoe in the ground I think is incredible and the
list just goes on and on so you know you didn't have to convince me that there
was market demand but I think you know having these two presentations back-to-back
really underscores it. Mr. President may I add one more thing I did want for
everyone to know that when we're when we used the water operator program as the
the case study, we highlighted lots of programs,
and then we did the case study on this brand-new water operator program.
The fact that it came from a community member who's working in that mud world,
the municipal utility district, is that what it stands for?
Look at me.
And she brought the idea because of her connection to Inframark.
And when we met with them, they're like, and, you know, it's like,
We're all really busy. We can't ask them to do one more thing, you know, like teaching and learning
Could you just create a new a new curriculum for us? And could you do no they had the curriculum?
We were able to align it with the teaks
They brought the
transportation they provided work steel-toed boots for our kids and the transportation and the teacher and
The labs they took them to the water plants. Even dr
Dr. Caskey went and looked them all over.
And it's just incredible that our private partners, private and public partnerships,
want to come together, and they need workers.
Because for every five people who retire, which is that age that we're all retiring,
there are only two to replace them.
And so they need an influx of young people who can stay in the business a long time.
And it was just a perfect pairing.
and for it to be so incredibly successful, and I think it's probably doubled in size.
I believe my understanding is it's doubling in size for next year, and it's just one of the things.
So what we're doing here is changing, changing everything for everybody, not just these people,
these boys and girls, which I believe we're changing their family trees by giving them an avenue
to a full-fledged career that can be very successful in a few years.
and we're also providing much-needed services to our community.
It's just so beautiful.
Absolutely agreed, and that is one thing, I guess, since we are here too.
Any private businesses who do have a need that connects with any of our programs,
I would say at Miller or Raines,
we're very open for discussions about creating some sort of pipeline for our students
because we ultimately want them to be active members of our communities and be employed.
So yeah, that is that is always an option.
Especially when they bring along the funding and the people and curriculum and all those things.
Yes, of course. Yes.
Mr. Shipley.
Thank you for your presentation.
I see this program as obviously very innovative for the kids in our district.
district, but I would venture to guess that 20 years from now we might look back at this
as the beginning of how public education has changed.
I have long said that when I was in high school, not that long ago, that was a joke, if you
want to pick that up, that it was kind of, at least from my perspective, the career path
in life was go to college get a degree and that's how you'll be successful and
I think that was what has been told to a lot of kids for a very long time and for
some that has worked for a lot that work but maybe maybe not for all and so this
type of program what Miller offered what all these different things offer I think
is gonna be something we look back on as something that's really cool I think
that a lot of districts will look to us as an innovative district for a number
of reasons I think this is one of them so I think what you've got in your hands
It's gonna be fun to watch grow over over many many years. So yeah Congrats
Any more questions
Thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you very much
7.4 Employee Benefits Update.
We'll now move on to I'm 7.4 and fully benefits update and our presenter is Brian Schuss our chief human resources officer
Good evening president Remmen members of the board. Dr. Gorski
Actually, Dr. Korkorsky and I have been talking about this for a couple of months, given a
benefits update.
At some point we thought June was good.
We're going to be bringing you the full detail for approval in July, so we thought June was
a good time to do that.
I do want to say this is a brief, very high-level update, but we will have quite a bit more
detail for you in July.
The significance of employment benefits.
We all know how significant it is for an organization.
And these two statements, I mean, they're very common sense, obvious statements,
but I think two very important statements and sometimes obvious stuff you kind of, you know, got to say out loud.
And I think this is an important time for that.
We do want our employees and our trustees to know, because we know what's on our employees' mind and our trustees' mind,
that we do understand that employee benefits play a vital role in supporting the overall well-being of them and their families.
families. And also, well-designed benefit plans, it's so obvious and so important how
much they help organizations recruit and retain the best. And we say we want to hire and retain
the best, and employee benefits are a huge piece of that puzzle in being able to do that.
Exceptional service and support. Health care, the whole landscape, very complex. We know
that and so I think one of our goals needs to be to make benefits easier to
understand easier to access easier to navigate and how do you do that that's
excellent customer service mr. Nauman and his team they do a great job but I
think also kind of being in a constant state of self-reflection and okay what
what is something that we can improve upon do more of do better and and that
starts with exceptional customer service and some things that we've started doing
already increasing communication outlets expanding access to benefits information
and resources through our website but something that I really want to talk
about is the the district developed AI assistance what dr. Alana and his team
and mr. Frazier's with us this evening what they are developing in these AI
agents and the one for employee health benefits went into testing this morning
it's phenomenal and if nothing more than that's just a personal statement I mean
I'd put it up against any organization what they are what they are building and
creating is just is fantastic mr. Nauman was on vacation and he came
back last week and it had gotten to a point where dr. Alani was ready for okay
okay let's let's show off this agent a little bit and and lance was just was floored and and i think
i our our employees are going to love it it's so interactive it's not it's not what you think about
in in what we deal with in our daily lives and i can't wait for everybody to to access it and try
it out because it is it is really something uh just phenomenal um so what are we doing right now
so exploring uh opportunities and options uh working with our consultants baldwin group they
They are fantastic.
I've spent many, many hours with them over the past couple of months talking to them about what do we want for our benefits in the 2027 plan year.
And, yes, we're in June.
And, you know, a couple of months ago we're talking about next January.
But that's how that process works.
And just saying again that the health care landscape is complex and things really do take quite a bit of time.
but we've told them look we want to expand our voluntary benefits for our
employees and in any way that's possible at giving our employees more options so
important and an example in doing that we're currently evaluating additional
dental and vision plan options you know you talk about voluntary benefits dental
and vision those are those are pretty big ones you know you hear about dental
a lot here about vision a lot but exploring those plan options it's going
to provide more flexibility for our employees it's also going to provide
greater network access which is which is going to be huge and I think really
really welcomed about that by our employees but not just Dental Envision
I mean we're looking at all the voluntary offerings across the board and
they are they are currently in the mark in the market for those and they are
providing some really positive information back to us and excited what
we're going to show you there next month also exploring additional health plan
options for our employees you know that's something that we know our
employees have asked for, have asked us to look at, and we've asked our
consultants to do just that. So we're turning over every stone really in what
we might be able to accomplish for our employees here within the next month. And
in what we've heard back from our consultants, I will say, I shouldn't say
this, cautiously optimistic about what we're going to be able to, what we're
going to be able to accomplish and I'm excited about that. So preparing for the
2027 plan benefits year again starting January 1 and I like this for the
statement at the top, KDSD has the obligation to ensure that an
employee health plan operates effectively, efficiently and with a high
standard of service for our staff. As I've said we are currently evaluating
all proposals and pricing for the 2027 plan year. Our review
process is focused on ensuring competitive benefits, but we still got to make sound
financial decisions for the district. And all these recommendations will be presented to the
board in July, so next month. And always based on employee needs, fiscal responsibility, and
long-term plan sustainability. I think all those are important, but long-term plan sustainability,
very important. You know, we can't make an adjustment or a change that might be welcomed,
that might just be a flash in the pan, and then it hurts our plan long-term. So we've got to look at
all of that and we are doing that and our consultants are a big big piece of
that and they'll be here with us over here with us next month so that's where
we are again I know not a whole lot of detail but just wanted our trustees to
understand where we are in the process and what you can expect next month
that's all I have board before asking questions was Sharon we asked
administration to make a presentational and know kind of what's in the works
There aren't any numbers.
Can they go into lots of detail?
No.
Can you ask questions?
Absolutely.
But there may be a lot of answers that are, I don't know that yet.
I can't share that or wait until next month.
But that being said, what questions do we have?
Mr. President, this is not a question.
I received what you just said.
This is just more a request as you prepare the presentation for next month.
I would love to when possible see
Comps from other plans just to show like where we compare. I know some people said well, why don't we do is it a TRS?
I suspect they may be a little bit more expensive for what I'm hearing
But I think it'll be good for people to see that
As well as I think it'd be really interesting to see the information on what you're presenting
Comparatively to what was provided last year. So year-over-year just to see the difference
And we'll say Mr. Nauman and I were talking before the board meeting and TRS released their rates and they went up 11.5% to 12.5% premium wide.
So that's pretty significant.
People need to see it.
Oh, no, no, no.
I agree with you.
Mr. Shipley?
So I know our health care options are not the same as if you were running a corporation in this state.
I think kind of echoing on Mrs. Taylor's comments, it would be helpful for me to see comparatively to what other districts are offering as well.
But what I said at the outset was maybe there's not a ton of options.
Maybe there's only a small handful that districts have, and therefore there's not a whole lot to compare.
But again, when looking at kind of where we fall relative to our neighboring districts or our competing districts,
me thinking about teachers and where our staff where they might go how does health care and
benefits in kdi's do you compare to what a sci fair or for ben or whatever whoever we're competing
with i think that'd be helpful to see as well yes sir uh we do and we will show that um because i i
completely agree that uh that that's important to see because you i mean you can you see we see it
on social media well it's it's it's better here it's worse there and i think just having a black
black and white comparison from a benefit standpoint,
from a compensation standpoint,
which we saw at the work study a week ago.
I think all that's very, very helpful.
Yes, and sometimes with healthcare it is hard
because it is hard to actually get a true
kind of apples to apples comparison
because there's so many things you can do
with tweaking benefits, making benefits richer,
lessening benefits for cost purposes,
but no, we will show those comparisons.
Thank you.
Ms. Huppain.
I think there is one thing that we can say,
but correct me if I'm wrong because I'm not going to put anyone,
but I've heard that we are going to have a new person, a new position
that will be like the benefits advocacy person.
Is that right?
Well, with Dr. Gorski, we have discussed that.
Okay.
That's not something that has really come to fruition just yet,
Yes, it is something that we are looking at.
But I do think that that would be good,
even if we can't do anything about the insurance,
is that, you know, to have like a person to talk to about it
and kind of work you through the kinks of things.
So hopefully that could be something we could do one day.
Any other comments, questions, board?
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
8. Consent Items
We'll now move on to our consent agenda.
A consent agenda shall include items that were discussed and considered at the previous
work study board meeting, as well as items of a reoccurring nature.
The board is furnished with background material for each item and the consent agenda items
are grouped together into one action item.
All items are acted upon by one vote without separate discussion unless a board member
requests that an item be withdrawn for individual consideration from BE legal and BE local.
So are there any items board members would like to remove from the consent agenda tonight?
Mr. President, this is where I make a motion.
You would just tell me the number you would want.
I would like to have item 8.8, approval of breakfast and lunch, meal price increase for
26-27 school year, pulled from the consent agenda, please.
All right.
Any other items to remove, Board?
And then I'll entertain a motion.
Mr. President, Mr. President, I move that the Board of Trustees approves the consent
agenda for items 8.1 through 8.2 one except for item 8.8 which has been
removed from the consent agenda all right it has been moved and seconded
that the Board of Trustees approves the consent agenda for items 8.1 through 8.2
one except for item 8.8 which has been removed from the consent agenda you know
we're voting by hand tonight we'll now proceed to vote all those in favor raise
Raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
The motion passes 7-0.
8.8 Consider Board approval of the breakfast and lunch meal price increase for the school year 2026 - 2027.
Now we'll move on to Item 8.8, consider board approval of the breakfast and lunch meal price increase for the school year 26-27.
Go for it, board.
What questions do we have or what would you like to discuss?
I understand that the reasoning behind us raising the rates, which we have not raised in the last 10, I believe 10 to 12 years, is to match to have an equitable pricing structure that's required through the federal financial compliance framework.
It's something that the federal government requires that we cannot have the government paying for meals more than what cash paying families are paying, correct?
Is that okay?
Okay.
And, Board, we have Ms. Alexa Carrier here, our Executive Director of Nutrition and Food Services, to fill us in and answer any more questions we have.
Thank you for joining us for another wonderful Monday evening.
I'm sure this is what you were looking forward to.
I just really want to understand what kind of hardship this is creating for our families that are on that bubble, that don't quite meet the threshold for free and reduced lunch.
However, having any kind of increase in a meal is going to challenge them financially
to make sure their children are fed.
Have we looked into what those numbers look like and what the cost is at?
That's my first question, so I'll let you start there.
First of all, the actual cost of it, I don't have the numbers.
We can probably pull that for you if you want an estimation on it.
I will say that it is always a concern for those that we consider in that bubble that
aren't quite a free student or reduced but they are on the bubble between the two we do take a
lot of measures in order that if we see during that grace period at the beginning of the year
that they are they were previously you know free or reduced we're reaching out in our department
making sure that we connect with those students so that we can try to get them through that grace
period and get them on to an application beforehand so we do quite a bit of effort on our
end because we do know that there's a lot of reasons why people don't fill out an application,
right? Especially now for a lot of various reasons. And so because of that, we can see
those numbers. We can see the trends of students that were on the program and then they fall
off. Another part of what we look at is that we have a direct certification list that comes
in several times a month. So we can see, especially at the beginning of the year, if we have those
students that have fallen off that list those are kind of targeted and because
we know either they've lost a benefit somehow or you know which means they
were directly certified and now there still could be in that area or that
bubble that we now need to reach out to get them to that as far as what it looks
like as far as a hardship you know it is an increase on what they have to pay per
meal there's no doubt we're looking at breakfast and lunch and nobody wants
even myself, wants to put any type of hardship on any student or family.
But we do have to make it equitable. I can go back, I can try to give you an estimate
of what that might look like, and I can do that if y'all want us to.
But as far as the number right now, I don't have that for you.
Understood. I would love to understand that so I can make an informed decision for both.
Are you wanting the actual number of estimated students that might affect?
I would.
Okay.
Okay.
The next question I have is, is this for compliance for the 26-27 school year that we're doing
this or is this to meet compliance for the 27-28 school year?
So are we doing this proactively?
In a way we are.
So the PLE, the paid equity, is something that we have to evaluate every year.
We're required to.
What happens is that they do re, and it was in the narrative that you saw as well,
the government votes to say whether or not they're going to allow districts that have a fund balance
to not have to do the paid lunch equity, right?
And so right now we have a fund balance there, and so we're not required to.
But we have not increased prices for so long because we've had that fund balance there.
And part of why this came about and why the discussion started is because we have a tremendous food, 21% food cost, right, that has increased over.
We have expenditures that are dealing with payroll, all of these things that have compounded our expenditure and where we're not making up that equity between the paid and then the free and reduced price meal.
And over time, that has dwindled that fund balance.
If we ever get to a zero fund balance, we will be required to make it more equitable
in a larger amount.
And so this is a proactive approach to try to do something in a stepped out manner so
that we can get to that point.
And also a proactive approach in trying to slow down that loss of that fund balance as
well.
Because in the long run, if we don't have a fund balance and we're not able to produce
produce enough revenue to cover expenditures, then it is something that would impact the
GeoLAF because we're a federally funded program.
And so in a sense, hopefully that answers, but that's what we're looking at as far as
looking at that proactive approach.
So I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.
So this is something that's evaluated yearly.
However, currently right now, we do have money.
We do have money in our funds, so we're okay for now.
However, we anticipate we will not always have this.
Hence the increase in funding.
I'm curious if we were to not raise the rates and say 27, 28, we end up with a zero balance
which then would require us to pay, what would that amount be?
What do we anticipate or estimate what that amount would be in terms of the impact on
GOF?
That would depend on the PLE that comes out in the following year.
So it is, it's something that, it's a document that's produced.
We put, it's a formulas that are based on our fund balance and then the reimbursement
rates at the time.
So they look at what the free reimbursement rates are in comparison to what we are charging
our paid students and then that formula is dictated from there.
So it's not, you're not able to do an estimate based on historical data?
Like the formula changes that much from year to year?
Right now, our paid lunch equity, which should be about a $4.06.
sixth sense. They will not require us to increase that much. It'll be a percentage of what we have
to increase at that time. And so I can give you an estimate again if you would like me to. I can
look back. So I just, I don't want to give you a number in this moment, right, without using that
tool so that you get a really good estimate. And last question, because I'm sure some of my
of trustees and I have questions. Is there a world where we can at the very least
half the increase where we do half the increase this year, make sure we are
communicating very well with parents saying that you know please expect an
increase next year because our memories get short. Therefore maybe just kind of
easing in transitioning the price hike a little bit more. 50 cents you know for
lunch doesn't sound like that big of a deal but we had one of our public one of
our speakers today so it's 1200 a year for parents and for some parents that could be pretty
significant um i would love to see what that might look like okay as a possible option as well and
yes we can um because we're not required to right again it's a more of a proactive approach so that
we don't impact a hardship a huge hardship at one time right we're looking at it over time um then
we're not required to but and so we could step it out if that is something that's more comfortable
for our district.
Thank you.
And I, in no way, I don't, I hope you don't think we're being too hard on you.
It's just, things like food for kids is such a sensitive topic.
If they don't eat, they can't learn.
I take it very seriously.
I really do.
It's not something that I would want to bring to the table that we would have to do because
it is children.
It's sometimes their only meal to have in school.
But we do, we are a federally funded program and we do have to maintain our fund balance.
We have to, in order for us not to impact the GOF.
And so I'm always looking at the financial side of it.
We've got to maintain that and make sure that we're equitable and that we can sustain our program over time.
That's what the goal is.
And I do want to add, if anything was to impact the GOF, I would be okay with food impacting the GOF.
So I think that's also something we should be looking at as well.
Mr. President.
Ms. Chapman.
I really respect what Mrs. Taylor said because I do have a big heart for the food insecurities that we have in our community.
I'm sure that most people would agree with me with that.
But what I do want to say is I just want everyone to know that there are a lot of our schools that have the free and reduced for everyone.
you know and I don't and I just want to state that that not every school is
going to do you know some kids are free and reduced and some kids have to pay I
don't know how many do you know how many schools that is that everyone gets the
free and reduced it's like around 30 years 33 okay that's 33 out of our 79
campuses so that's pretty significant and then I just want to reiterate I know
I already stated this last week but I don't think I don't think everyone
listens to our board members and I don't think everybody particularly listens to
me but maybe somebody else will hear this that I want everyone to know that
this summer and last summer and the summer before and probably next summer
there are satellite campuses that give breakfast and lunch to any child 0 to
18 years old in the community they don't they don't even card you to see you know
if you're showing up you're going to get a meal and you have to eat it there I
found out you have to eat it there and I think I was told that the parents or
whoever else is with the child can eat also but they would they would just pay
so I just hope that if you are someone or you're in a family you know someone
that has a child or children that need help this summer to look on the website
or look at our KDIC Facebook page and find out where that is and go and go get
some food for those kiddos and I'm just so appreciative of our district for
doing that and I really appreciate all that the food services people do I know
that this is we all do appreciate we're not saying that we don't but you know
we're just trying to we're just trying to help you know all the people so anyway
I appreciate you mrs. Taylor for bringing it up president mr. cross just
doing a little math just thinking about like per kid it looks like and this is
just an estimate you know it's it's not scientific but if it's 50 cents a day
and five days a week 36 weeks of a school year approximately that that told
up to be about $90 a year per kid so if you had if you have two kids that's
somewhere probably between 180 and $200 a year increase just I just throw those
numbers out that was 50 cents for lunch in 25 minutes for breakfast yeah mr.
Mr. President, I know we heard a number during open comments,
and that number did seem high, so I was doing the same things.
Mr. Cross, and with lunch and breakfast, I was coming up more 130 total all in per kid.
Yeah, you're right.
You're right.
I forgot about breakfast, so that's 130 per kid, right, is what you're saying?
Yeah, so for the year.
I mean, I'm not disagreeing with what anybody has said, right?
Like when you're struggling financially, I mean, you know, a lot of people you could
say $130 to and that wouldn't be a lot of money, but many people, that's a lot of money
to think about because they're, you know, they're scraping by month to month.
So I just, I was trying to come up with a number for context, not for, it's not a judgment
or anything, just to like, because when I heard $1,200 too, I was like, I don't know
I wasn't even, you know, putting pen to paper on that.
Technology people, pen to paper.
Okay, I'm lying.
I use my phone.
But I was the same way.
I was like, man, that sounds like $200.
You know, so anyway, still it's money,
and if we can save people money to the best of our ability,
yet, you know, try to be the best stewards of the money that, you know,
taxpayers provide to us then I think that's what we want to do but I just I
want to throw the number out there mainly so it gave us all context of what
we were looking at I appreciate trustee cross the back of the envelope math and
if the amount is that insignificant and I think we should be having a
conversation on maybe how we can cover that with general funds I know that's
like 130 times you know x number of students you know um but i mean that still is an impact and i
just have it gives me the ick i'm sorry um to think about us having to um create a hardship
for our families when it's related to food you know we charge for a lot of other things um you
know food should not be um uh something that um we should be you know having to like charge extra
or additional for the fans and i understand the compliance that we have to meet um but yeah i'm
very challenged by it uh mr mr redmond so um i just want to say i i you know that that money
is is important obviously to everyone but um i i care where i was going with it but i i just
i know that that's important to everyone and i just want any knowledge but if there is a way i i
I understand we're going to take a vote tonight.
But the thing is that we can always bring this back up again.
Whether this vote passes or not passes, I don't know that.
But, you know, regardless of that, this can be put on the agenda again at a later time.
You know, if you provide the information that Mrs. Taylor was asking for, we have to vote tonight, you know.
And so.
Ms. Fox?
Mr. Shipley was before me.
Oh, Mr. Shipley, thank you.
So, yeah, first and foremost, I echo the comments of my other trustees up here.
Food hardship, it's front and center.
So I'm going to put that out there before I ask my next question.
My next question is, do we have any reason to believe that an increase in the cost of a meal
would cause a decline in enrollment for KDISD?
Enrollment or participation in that?
kids showing up to school?
I don't have an absolute,
but I wouldn't think their ability to show up
would be to be like-
I'm asking the question from the standpoint of
if I'm a high school kid
and I can afford a meal at school today,
and I know we're talking about a small change
in the overall cost,
but if that small change impacts my ability,
now it's not worth it to me anymore,
do I stop coming?
Well, as an assumption, it's a hypothetical.
Yeah, it is a hypothetical, and I'm thinking about it as a principal and also thinking about it in this role.
Families always have the option of bringing lunch from home if there's an option that's less expensive than what the school offers.
first. I guess I would really go back to, we have a bigger issue with families just putting in the
application than we do not being accepted. If you really want the truth, whether I'm sitting in this
chair, whether I was in the principal's chair, and I know I was at Seven Lakes and Beckendorf, but
I'm telling you, there's plenty of folks in those zones too that need some help. Sure. And it was
more of a struggle for us to get people to apply because of whether it's pride or whatever it is,
right that they don't that they don't feel even after Harvey I remember after Harvey and we had
all those people in those communities who lost everything I mean their cars their homes Mr.
Cross you can say that you were there too and and and we would we would make contact with people
and say hey we've got this available you can take it nope I'm not going to do that that that needs
to go for families that really need it so I guess what I would say is kind of summing that up is I
I think the struggle really for us is how can we reach out to more families so that they will apply so that they do qualify?
I'm sure there are a number of families out there that could be negatively impacted by this because they don't meet the eligibility for a free or reduced lunch, but they are getting dinged on this thing.
And that's tough.
I don't know that we'll really know that number for sure.
But as far as kids coming to school, I don't think so.
Mr. President, I seem to understand that we will have to do a vote today, but I just want to express.
I don't know if I would love it if there was an option at the very least to move this vote to our next meeting where we would give staff an opportunity to provide more information on understanding what the impact this may be on families, as well as, you know, other opportunities and how we could like a do an incremental adjustment of the pricing from one year to the next.
also if there are opportunities where this cause could possibly be found
within general operating funds I feel that I could be a better decision-maker
make a decision if I have that information available and we held the
boat off until next month I don't know if that's a possibility mr. president
have questions thank you for the presentation so my understanding is we
we have, what did you say, 33 campuses that's 100% free and reduced.
Is that CEP?
Is that what it's called?
They're CEP campus, but we do not claim them at 100% free and reduced.
So they're either free or paid,
depending on the percentage that's dictated on our direct certified students.
So we are that community eligibility provision is based on a community,
and so we have cycles that we go through,
and our current cycle which we have one more year on has specific percentages
that were pulled back in 22-23 that told us at that point in time those children
were categorically free so that means that they were tied to some governmental
programs SNAP Medicaid free TANF something that said they were at that
eligibility that number tells us that's the percentage of free students compared
compared to the whole enrollment of that school.
And then at that point, it's folded to this formula.
We have a factor that's applied to it, and it tells us then,
out of that whole population of that school, this percentage we claim at a free rate.
And this percentage we claim at a paid rate.
There's no longer a reduced rate in there.
So depending on the campus and how they're grouped,
there's 33 campuses, so it's pretty technical.
it tells us then how we claim them.
So there's only two.
There's either a paid, so for lunch that's 53 cents,
we get reimbursement for a paid child at those campuses,
versus when we look at lunch, we get 429, that percentage of free.
So there's a discrepancy between those two, obviously.
So they're not all free and reduced, right?
So they have a percentage.
So is there a percentage of, see if I understand, percentage of students determined to be free
that the entire campus is free?
Everyone at the, 100% of the campus can eat for free.
No, we do not have, they all eat for free.
Yes, they all eat for free.
We claim them at different eligibility.
But no student or family pays.
right everyone eats without pain that's that's what yes yes ma'am I'm sorry I'm
you code whatever you want families how what they all they all eat for free at a
CEP campus so no kid they go through the line they get their meal no eligibility
it's just that when they come through then they're pulled to an element
eligibility that we claim so it's not it is not because 100% of those families
filed the application none of them can at a CEP campus there are no
no applications that are filed. Once they are declared a CEP campus, then those children
that are enrolled there are qualified underneath that provision.
Ms. Hamm.
Ms. So the applications that we're hoping for families that have challenges are at other
campuses and we're hoping more of those will apply.
Ms. They're non-CEP.
Okay. When you have a CEP campus, 100% of children eat without money from families,
what kind of trend do you see in the a la carte aisle or a la carte choices there?
What do you, so my understanding is, do you see much a la carte?
So not as much. So definitely our CEP campuses, different demographics,
and we're all offered the same a la carte sales, same items, same menus.
So there's no difference between all of our schools.
But if there is a difference in income based on that campus,
then they are going to probably buy less, in other words.
And so that is where you might see a trend difference,
depending on what that community's income is.
right so so my understanding is that when you have a CEP campus you see
children purchasing in a la carte aisle because they have they bring cash and
then they buy extra things there is that right so it's not like they only eat
that and nothing else right they have a choice I have choice we try to keep
things as equal as possible across all of our campuses we offer in the same
menus same a la carte like everything is the same and then is the choice of the
child and the parent to then purchase to do what they want to do.
Right.
And so once a campus has been identified as CEP, my understanding is you see an increase
in the a la carte purchases.
I wouldn't say necessarily and well, no, not you would think because they're not paying
for their meal, they may be buying more, but that's not necessarily true.
So when we when those CEP campuses were qualified, we tend they were looked at like
Like, um...
that DC percentage, so the directly certified.
So in order for us to get enough funding for a CEP campus,
you want a higher percentage of free directly certified students
because then when we pull those percentages,
it allows us to have more kids claiming at a free rate, if that makes sense.
So you would think if they're not paying for meals, they may purchase more,
but it's not necessarily true because our CEP campuses,
many times have a demographic that is a lower income overall.
So just because they're a CEP does not mean that they're going to purchase more.
It really tends to be the opposite.
They're purchasing meals at our non-CEP campuses, and they're buying all the cars.
Does that answer your question?
It doesn't match the information I was given, so I get it.
Okay, so how many years since an increase?
So we've had, we have not had an increase. I'm just looking here to make sure I
give you the right dates. Breakfast since 2014-15, elementary lunch has not
increased since 14-15, secondary since 16-17. And we all know that the price of
food has certainly increased during that time. Just in the past five years you
know part of the exhibits were to show you kind of the previous. We just started
the new rfp this year for our grocery bid and so we can look at line by line and we had a 21
increase in the past five years just in food cost alone that doesn't include disposables
any type of you know any other paper goods things like that and some of the pardon me for the word
grant i don't know if that's it but the the whatever it is for milk yes so you know when
When COVID came about, we got a lot of extra funding, and it made it perceive as though we had a very large fund balance because these grants came in because there was a need at that time.
And so it was justified to have the need.
However, the grants were not intended to be sustainable.
They were not going to last forever.
They came in for a particular need to help at that time to get people through that time in school districts, and then now they've gone away.
So one of the grants completely paid for almost three years all of our milk, which is three million dollars a year
But it no longer exists. We've asked but the federal government
There's no grants at this time or even on the table that are coming back
We hope because that helps offset that food cost that 21% increase
But right now there's not we're always looking for grants, but currently there's not any available
So no increase in 12-ish years for increase in prices of lunches or breakfast in 12-ish years.
And we're proposing a 50% increase in lunches.
50 cents.
50 cents.
50 cents.
50 cents.
I said no, no.
Oh, so it's not like 50%.
I'm tired.
50 cents.
No, I have 50 cents.
and 25 cents in breakfast.
And we lost a $3 million grant for milk.
And there's something else, maybe vegetables or something.
Okay.
I don't have, I don't, I agree with Mrs. Taylor.
I don't want this to be a hardship on families.
families, 33 campuses are the CEP campuses is my understanding.
So I'm wondering if the ones who would be the most challenged are, or the ones that
are not at that level, but go to schools where they have the benefits.
I'm not sure that this is quite the hardship.
I don't need more time to decide, I guess that's what I'm saying.
Mr. President, may I ask this question?
Ms. CEPI?
I never really thought about this before, but at those CEPI campuses,
kids, do they still have accounts, right?
and so they can still buy their a la carte things on their badge.
Oh yes, yes.
Because they probably have...
Every child that comes through whether or not it's CEP or not, they have to use their
badge because we look for their special diets, allergies, you know, everything under the
Sun Plus, they have their accounts because we do have to track that for eligibility purposes.
I mean, we still have to track it.
The reason why I'm getting at this is because that means that the, because even way back
in the olden days, you know, my kids were there, I could look and see what my kids were
spending at the school.
And so if their parent doesn't want their child, you know, to, you can't prevent them
in the, you know, you can't prevent them before they do it.
But like my, I had a kid, one of my kids was buying double lunches for like a month before
I realized he was.
I'm like, what happened to the money?
anyway but parents do have the ability to limit their a la carte or whatever
and I'm sure that that they probably would if they have limited income I'm
just making that statement but the other question I have is if if we postpone the
vote I'm just set I'm just throwing it out there when does this decision need
to be made by in time for school to start you know yeah I would say for
communications to go out to parents and we also put this in the student handbook
you know pricing and everything so that's and I guess the urgency we do put
that pricing it's posted but yes to start the new school year well I think the I think what our
thought was bringing into the to the June board meeting would be that it
would give everybody enough time to kind of digest this thing right and kind of
understand what what we were what we were looking at for the next school year
rather than having only a month, but clearly the decision is up to the board
and we'll do whatever we need to do to either communicate it or support families in the process.
I just wanted to say, if I could, all of this is a moving target
because the federal government does things, the state does things,
people move in and out of Medicaid, levels of support from the federal government
and the state government changes, it makes it really difficult to figure all this stuff out.
The benefit of what Alexa was saying is that we have had a fund balance, and then we had some
grants. And I know you remember Mr. Smith talking to you guys about this huge fund balance that
food service has, but it shows you how fast things can change overnight when the grants go away,
and there's nothing new to supplant it. In addition to that, you've got a perfect storm of costs over
over the last few years, the paid lunch equity piece.
We could have brought you something several years ago about paid lunch equity,
but we wouldn't have done that.
We'd have looked stupid because we had $30-whatever-it-was-a-million.
So it's sort of a perfect storm of things, and it is unfortunate,
and it does give us the ick, too, even bringing it to you guys
because we know that, again, at the heart of it,
there's nobody that's more supportive of kids eating than these ladies.
I can promise you that.
And gentlemen.
And then again, myself included as a former principal. So it does hurt. It is hard. But something's got to give, whether it's meal price increase or the GOF. But we really just can't count on the federal government or the state government to jump in here and help us out anytime soon.
And again, that whole, you know, you're talking about CEP and direct certification, those numbers are not what they were several years ago because of legislation and things like that.
So that's not a forever thing either.
So we just have to, we've got to be ready to support families no matter what we end up doing, right?
Thank you so very much for that, Mr. Verling.
I just want to make sure that we're not making decisions based on assumptions, assumptions on my end, assumption on other people's end, on what people can and cannot afford, as well as not making a, I don't think we should be making a decision without seeing possible alternatives.
What are some other, you know, be it incremental increase, be it, you know, what's possible to be covered by a GOF, you know, that would be, I think that would help.
I think that would make us better decision makers.
So I just want to double down on that.
I think we all care about kids and making sure that they're fed
We also should have all the information that we need to make the best decision
so watching the
Fund balance going back from 2019 and now we're started off about seven million
Or six million we built up to to twenty six thirty million and then over the past three years
Down four million down six million down eight million and now we're tracking down to one more year and then we we don't have
a year's worth of operating expenditures.
We're finally kind of under what the federal government says we're allowed to have in a
fund balance, which over the past couple of years, we were trying to spend that down.
Mr. Verling, you referred to.
Can you help me understand the paid lunch equity?
In the report, it kind of said that we had some options.
We can apply for a grant or we can raise our prices.
If we don't raise our prices, then that, in my understanding, then what the federal government, excuse me, is refunding us or paying us for those meals drops significantly?
They won't match that free version anymore?
It all comes at a paid lunch version?
Or how does that change some of the funding that comes in for those?
Let me know if I've answered this correctly for you.
But so because we're federally funded and that means that you know we sign when we went into
Doing national school lunch program national breakfast program
That means that the school district decided that if we were not to break even each year right then the district is
Responsible for bringing that fund to zero so what happens is that if we dwindle right that fund balance down in the 28
29 school year and we go into the negative then all that means is that you the district the
the GOF has to bring it back to zero every year.
The reimbursement rates will not change.
We will still get the reimbursement rates,
but if we do not, we still go into the negative side,
then the district is responsible for that,
and that's where the GOF comes into play.
Which we will be in at 28-29 if we don't make changes now.
And did I see the CPEs going away in another year or two
or something along those lines?
So, you know, CEP, we are in the middle of our cycle.
We have one more year in this current cycle.
The last time was the 22-23 school year.
In March, well, every March we have to reevaluate our numbers.
We have to report them.
And so we've been tracking it.
This March we looked at our numbers again.
And on average we have OAC as a standalone site.
And then we have two other groups because they came in at different times into this CEP program.
And based on those numbers, we're looking at if we were in a year's time continuous
CEP, we would take a 10% less kids right now that would be directly certified.
We would have a drop in that percentage of 10%, which means again, if you drop that free,
right that directly certified, then that means we get to claim less kids at that free rate.
We get less reimbursement.
And so just by, if we were to look at the numbers this March, right, we suspect that that dip is going to happen again next, in this fall, again with Medicaid and SNAP.
We're going to see another dip.
But in March, that means that if we were to carry on CEP, we would take a loss, an automatic loss of $2 million, just a direct loss, because of that drop in that percentage.
Because we would lose so much reimbursement because the free is reduced.
The CEP is a concern.
It's a concern across the nation with a lot of school districts right now because Medicaid,
SNAP benefits, everything has declined tremendously.
No fault of ours, right?
We are at the mercy of what's happening, but that is the reality.
So anytime that we get to claim less free reimbursement, remember that's 53 cents in
comparison to 469.
So for every paid kid at a CEP campus, we only get 53 cents.
Right?
That has to, then we have to think of all the cost that we're trying to produce a meal
in comparison to 469.
That's where that paid lunch equity comes into play.
Why they want it to come closer together so that you're not utilizing the funds that you
got for free kids to compensate for what you took the loss of the paid.
And so, yes, CEP is on the forefront.
We have another year to look at it.
It's early right now for us to say,
because we still have another year for that benefit.
But again, community eligibility provision
is based on the community need.
At that time, that need was there.
So it's something definitely that we're going to have to keep an eye on
moving forward.
And need is determined by those federal programs. Need is not determined by actual need, right?
You could poll a group of people right now and say, how are you doing? Are you able to pay for this, that, or the other?
Those kinds of things. That doesn't come into play. It's only those specific programs that qualify you.
Categorically free.
They qualify, yeah.
They're directly certified by the government.
That's why it's tied to then that reduction in SNAP, Medicaid-free, all of those programs.
That's why it's really moving forward and planning, at least on our part, really robust
at those people that could come off of those programs, targeting those, finding the applications,
finding the families because they're going to have to fill out the applications no matter
no matter what you know and um no matter what school they're at and then as far as what happens
to cep campuses as well um moving forward thank you
mr shively just so i'm clear so if if we were to delay this by a month from an operational
standpoint what would that do to you so um with this increase we would get an additional two
million dollars in revenue which is roughly what the loss that we take i guess what what i'm saying
is if we if we just if we were to wait on this decision for a month um nothing right now we need
to know before we have to then release that to families again the thought was to give them some
ample notice right just don't spring it right before school starts um was why we wanted to
bring it to the table now but it will not do anything as far as compliance for
my federal program that's not the issue at this point. So if we were to announce it now
there's a six week gosh six weeks until school starts seven weeks so if we did
it right now there's seven weeks notice if we wait until July there's three
weeks notice and the entire team here is a month behind putting all the
that information together communicating it and they can't really create it if
they don't know what our decision is are we voting on the increase as put in
front of us it's a yes now the proposed recommended action reads says it is
recommended that the Board of Trustees approves an increase in the breakfast
meal price from 125 to 150 for the 2026 2027 school year is also recommended to
increase lunch prices by 50 cents at all levels raising elementary lunch prices
from 225 to 275 in junior high and high school lunch prices from 275 to 325 for
the 2026 2027 school year as that is the recommended motion tonight we have the
ability to amend
Or you could do another amendment just to delay it to post-mortem.
Give families three weeks?
I'm just kidding. I'm not saying that I would do that, but I'm saying those are different.
If there was no motion made, then that would be delaying it.
But if there was a motion made, it could be as recommended.
It could be changed.
changed. Those are options. Mr. President. Ms. Fox. My computer isn't working so I don't have the language in front of me. So I move to accept the recommendation for meal price increases as recommended by the administration.
administration
So as as read it is recommended that the Board of Trustees approves an increase in the breakfast meal price from 125 to
150 for the 2026 2027 school year
It's also recommended to increase lunch prices by 50 cents at all levels
raising elementary lunch prices from 225 to 275 in junior high and high school lunch prices from
275 to 325 for the 2026 2027 school year. I have a motion to have a second
Second.
Second.
All right.
It has been motioned, been moved, and seconded for what I just read,
the 125 to 150 for breakfast for the 2026-27 school year
and lunch prices by 50 cents at all levels,
so from elementary from 225 to 275, junior high from 275 to 325,
beginning in the 2026-27 school year.
We will proceed to vote by show hands. Aye. All in favor, raise your hand. One, two, three, four. All against. Same sign. Three. So the motion passes four to three. And we'll move on.
9. Information Items
Items nine, informational items. Recap a board member request for information. Mr. Secretary, did we capture any requests from the board?
I believe so. I think we had a request for like the ABM campus utilization rates, historical and future, what we anticipate.
And if I've not gotten that correct, please, somebody, feel free to correct me on that request.
Ms. Poole mentioned that that would come when they do the, or there would be a version of that when she presents in October.
Oh, okay. Is that?
Did I understand that correctly?
Ms. Taylor, was that your request, and is that okay?
No, that wasn't.
Mr. Shipley.
Oh, was that your request?
Oh, I'm so sorry.
Is that okay, Mr. Shipley?
It's fantastic.
Okay.
Well, then scratch that request.
She did share that she's looked at that before,
and that's part of the next presentation they'll bring.
In November.
She'll present in November.
Okay.
Gotcha.
That's good.
Okay.
Okay. The only other thing I have is just, I'm not sure if this is a request for information now or just when the presentation happens,
but to have the comps of the health plans for the area districts at the presentation in July.
Correct. As well as year-over-year difference and benefits provided last year versus what they're recommending for this year.
and then clear comps when possible on other plan packages like TRS.
Okay.
All right.
Any other requests for information?
10. Future Meetings
That's all I have.
Great.
Our future board work-study meeting is on July 20th, 2026,
and the regular board meeting will be on Monday, July 27th.
11. Closed Meeting
The board will now convene in closed meeting as authorized under Section 551.001
0-0-1 of the Texas government code for the following purposes Texas government code 5 5 1 0 8 2 1 and 5 5 1 0
7 4 is necessary for everyone to please clear the room as the board will convene and close meeting in this room
12. Reconvene from Closed Meeting
The board will now reconvene an open meeting today is Monday, June 22nd
2026 and the time is 9 46 p.m
The board heard a level 3 FNG grievance 25073 pursuant to Katy Independent School District policy FNG legal and FNG local regarding parent-student grievances in closed meeting.
In accordance with Chapter 551 of the Texas Government Code, any action regarding this matter must be taken in open meeting.
Do I have a motion on the level 3 FNG grievance?
Mr. President.
Ms. Champaign.
I move that the Board of Trustees denies the level 3 FNG grievance and FNG 25-073, thereby upholding the decision of the level 1 and level 2 hearing officer.
It's been moved and seconded. We will now proceed to vote. All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
And the motion passes 7-0.
There being no further business before the board, this meeting is adjourned.
The time is 9.47 p.m.
Official documents
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
The motions and votes for this meeting have not been recorded here yet. Whether any were taken is not stated either way. The agenda and the recording above are the primary sources.