[0:02] The time is 4 16 p.m. We have a

[0:07] quorum and the meeting has been duly posted. Good evening and

[0:12] welcome to the board briefing of the dallas independent school district board of trustees. We will forgo the

[0:17] pledge of allegiance and salute to the texas flag as we just did both moments ago. The

[0:22] following trustees are physically present or participating simultaneously by video conference. A quorum

[0:26] of the board is physically present at this location. Trustee for district 2 sarah

[0:30] weinberg, district 3 dan michke, district 4 prisma garcia, district 5 byron

[0:34] sanders, district 6 joyce foreman was here in his

[0:41] in the building, district 7 ben mackey, district 9 ed

[0:45] turner, dr. Stephanie elizalde, our superintendent of schools, joins us and I'm joe carrero, trustee for

[0:49] district 8 and board president. This meeting will be available simultaneously in english and spanish at dallasist.org.

[0:54] in order for the board to hold this meeting in an effective manner I want

[1:01] to let it be known that this meeting will be conducted in an orderly fashion and ask the public to abide by the rules outlined

[1:06] in board policy b.e.d. Local pertaining to public participation. It is a criminal offense

[1:11] for a person with the intent to prevent or disrupt a lawful meeting to substantially obstruct or interfere

[1:17] with the ordinary conduct of a meeting by physical action or verbal utterance and thereby

[1:21] curtail the exercise of others first amendment rights. Speakers are cautioned that what they say could violate the rights of others under the law

[1:26] of defamation or revocation of the law. If they are unsure of the legal effect

[1:30] of their remarks, they may want to seek legal advice prior to the utterance. Any person who becomes boisterous,

[1:35] disruptive, or fails to abide by the rules of this assembly while addressing the board or while attending this meeting

[1:39] shall be asked to leave. Failure to leave when requested to do so may result

[1:44] in the person being escorted from the meeting and subject to arrest. Trustees will now turn to agenda item 3. Public forum. Our agenda now

[1:48] calls for the public forum segment of our meeting. We will have speakers to non-agenda items. I am asking speakers

[1:53] to be mindful of children that are in attendance. Children and unwilling adult recipient members of the public

[1:57] in attendance at this meeting should not be exposed to lewd, filthy, vulgar, obscene, or explicit language from speakers. Speakers that

[2:02] insist on exposing the public to this language shall be asked to leave immediately.

[2:06] further, please be mindful of your fellow speakers and refrain from using the individual's name, name

[2:10] of the person, or name of the person. In order to include students' names and to address the board and not individual trustees,

[2:14] the district has adopted procedures to hear and address complaints about specific individuals, and it is recommended that speakers

[2:18] avail themselves of the grievance policy to seek relief via those procedures. Audience, I am asking not to engage in comment that will

[2:23] disrupt the meeting. The rules of order in the quorum will be enforced during the public comment period

[2:27] to ensure efficient meetings on lawful or disruptive conduct, including interrupting scheduled speakers, speaking at a turn, crossing

[2:32] out throat thought barriers, or interfering with the rights of others will not be tolerated. Each participant is legally

[2:37] responsible for the content and consequences of his or her own statements. Speakers, please be reminded

[2:41] that substitutions are not allowed. If you signed up to speak, you cannot speak on behalf of someone else. Speakers who fail to adhere to

[2:45] this rule will be interrupted and informed that your comments are out of order. Ms. Flores, will you please call the names of the speakers?

[3:14] good afternoon. I would like to remind the speakers that you have three minutes to speak. Will speakers robert

[3:19] ceccarelli and mike hook please come to the microphone?

[3:28] good afternoon, everybody. I gave you these sheets here. Take a look at the bottom. It says 24-25, the rankings

[3:34] of the schools.

[3:40] at the bottom there, when you start the first column, where it says woodrow

[3:45] wilson, everybody following that please? Woodrow wilson, this is the overall grades

[3:49] of the scores by children at risk. Woodrow wilson had a c, and now

[3:54] about five or six down. You see all those d's and f's? Everybody see it? Say yes or

[4:00] no, please. We know what we're talking about. Because you're not even paying attention, you don't deserve to be here. Really, you don't.

[4:06] okay? So he had six f's, this is 24, and he had about 14 d's

[4:12] for college overall score for the high schools. Go to the fourth column,

[4:17] student achievement. Go across, woodrow wilson, the fourth

[4:21] column, c, and go all the way down near the middle. You see

[4:26] all the d's and f's, starting with melina, the fourth column.

[4:31] you're not looking, please. Take a look, please, and give me my attention,

[4:38] please. You see all those f's. Okay? Now, college readiness. Seventh column. One, two,

[4:45] three, four, five, six, seven. Seventh column, go

[4:49] down the middle, f, and all those d's, and look at all those f's

[4:54] at the bottom. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten f's. College readiness.

[4:59] let me tell you something. Parents look at college readiness. Tea does not score

[5:04] college readiness at all. Now, also, with the tea, they

[5:09] do 70% progress or student achievement. Student achievement is not even

[5:13] included. It needs to be included. That's what the parents look for. That's how

[5:18] south oak cliff did so well, because of their progress. They got a c

[5:22] in student achievement. That should have been included in the final grade, and they did not do it.

[5:26] I don't think nobody knows how they score the high schools by tea,

[5:31] but I'm telling you right now, and the 30% is the education gap. I'm trying

[5:36] to understand what that means. Does that mean that the blacks did 10% better

[5:40] on the staar test, and the whites did 20%? Does that mean the blacks did minus 10%? I don't understand that.

[5:46] okay? Maybe you can explain to me, ms. Alzadre, what that means.

[5:50] all I'm saying to you is that they had the rankings on the left side

[5:56] of the schools. There were four of them last year got the

[6:01] bottom ten. Kimball is at the bottom, second straight year, ms. Foreman. Kimball and

[6:06] wilma hutchins. Wilma hutchins also. Okay?

[6:11] but this is a good guide for the parents to receive to see how they're doing. All

[6:17] right? Now, you can tell me what college readiness is, but it's very, very important. Without that,

[6:22] they're only going to have a high school diploma. Okay? Also, they also include

[6:26] military, right, for student achievement. Thank you, mr. Checker. Your

[6:31] time has expired. Mike hook, will you please come to the microphone? Mike hook,

[6:38] not present. Mr. President, this concludes our public forum. Thank you, trustees. We'll now

[6:43] turn to agenda item five, closed session. The board will retire

[6:47] to closed session pursuant to texas government code section 551 concerning the following

[6:51] sections. The board will retire to closed session. The public and staff are welcome to stay

[6:56] in the room or connected online while the board leaves the meeting to attend the closed session. The public portion

[7:01] of the meeting will resume after closed session. The board will retire to closed session pursuant to

[7:06] texas government code section 551 concerning any and all purposes permitted

[7:10] by the act, including but not limited to the following. Section 551.071 for private consultation

[7:15] with the attorney about pending or contemplated litigation or on a matter in which the duty of the attorney

[7:20] to the governmental body under the texas disciplinary rules of professional conduct of the state bar of texas

[7:24] clearly conflicts with this chapter. Section 551.072

[7:30] to deliberate the purchase, exchange, lease, sale, or value of real property.

[7:34] section 551.074 to deliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation,

[7:38] reassignment, duty, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee, including provisionary and term contract

[7:44] employees listed in the statutory items. And section 551.129 to consult

[7:49] with attorneys by use of telephone, videoconference, videoconference call, or communications

[7:53] over the internet in an open meeting and or closed meeting. Thank you.

[7:58] thank you. The time is 446 pm. And we are back

[8:08] in open session. 46 p.m. And we are back in open session the book the board took

[8:13] no action in closed session trustees will now turn to agenda item 6 a board policy

[8:18] a local instructional goals and objectives annual report superintendent. Thank you president carry on members of the board I'm gonna have chief

[8:23] hewitt powell along with deputy chief alvarenga and

[8:28] dr. Cheryl nevels come bring us

[8:32] this for a reminder this

[8:37] presentation usually was done by deputy superintendent

[8:41] brian lusk who is now superintendent in el paso isd so we now move those

[8:46] responsibilities chief hewitt powell has taken some of this

[8:50] on and as you all know some of the other responsibilities like athletics went to our

[8:54] chief academic officer now, we're chief academic athletic officer angie gaylord, so

[9:00] you've seen the presentation that discussion that we'll have

[9:05] this this afternoon you've seen all of these data before

[9:09] but you haven't seen them collectively and so this is I think maybe connected

[9:14] to yesterday's discussion and presentation where are you

[9:19] monitoring as a board policies? That are directly related to student outcomes or your goals

[9:25] and I would say this is one of those this is a local policy nonetheless related completely

[9:30] related to student academic achievement and so

[9:35] with that I am going to and I would like to I know we hear from some

[9:40] speakers I'm not sure speakers understand the rules of board meetings as we are not allowed

[9:47] to interact. It's just a public forum however, our team has actually we are interested

[9:52] in sometimes where data come from that are presented to this board children at risk

[9:57] defines college readiness in a very different way than the texas education agency does and

[10:03] so for this upcoming board update,

[10:07] I'll be sharing with you a side-by-side that chief hewitt powell's team along

[10:13] with I think I see mr. Cortez in here over there has helped us from

[10:18] assessment and accountability in his team so that you can understand and actually te8

[10:22] does evaluate college career military readiness and college

[10:28] readiness. They just do it in a different way and so we are comparing apples

[10:33] to lettuce because it's not even a fruit. It's very

[10:38] different. So this is not apples to oranges and we do want to share that because we are

[10:43] always interested and do want to make sure that our information to our public is

[10:48] transparent and and is accurate but it is the texas education agency who evaluates school

[10:53] districts so with that we'll get to a local e a local. Excuse me

[10:59] e a local. I'll turn that over to chief you a pile thank you.

[11:03] good afternoon president carry on superintendent and trustees before I begin I'm going

[11:08] to share this story want to stay in line with how dr. Lesk I'll stay true

[11:13] to his honor and share a story about a student and I wanted to share the story of naya

[11:17] rosetta she's a student at the townview school of education and she just recently

[11:23] completed an internship this past summer and also had an opportunity to share her experience

[11:28] with students at our recent career expo fair and she started the school of

[11:33] education she did an internship with dallas isd counseling

[11:38] services and now this this fall she will become a freshman

[11:44] at the university of the incarnate work at word

[11:48] to study pre optometry and so you're thinking how does she get there?

[11:52] and I think her story really reflects our goal to ensure that every students grad

[11:57] graduate with real pathways and that every student also have as an opportunity to sort

[12:01] of choose their own path based on the experiences and the opportunities that we give them

[12:07] next slide so I'm going to begin a brief summary

[12:12] of our ea local metrics before walking through each of these with a little bit more detail

[12:17] so overall the big takeaway, I think from this slide is that we can continue

[12:21] to see progress across all of our five ccm our metrics with increases in college and

[12:27] career readiness industry-based certifications post-secondary credentials financial aid in

[12:31] college enrollment our tsi readiness increased by eight percentage points representing

[12:37] 02,910 students for the class of 2024 meeting those college

[12:42] readiness benchmarks and this represents six hundred and forty more students than the

[12:47] prior year for industry-based certifications we had 42 percent

[12:51] of the class earn an ibc even under the increased state rigor and our level one and level two

[12:58] certs increased by more than 200 from the prior year

[13:04] for fasta and tasfa, we can see strong completion rates at 94% and our college enrollment

[13:09] increased to 52% and this means that four thousand four hundred

[13:14] and forty-two students enrolled in college immediately upon

[13:19] graduation and so all this together just means that more of our students are leaving dallas isd with opportunities

[13:23] to access both college and career readiness pathways next slide, please and so again,

[13:30] I'm just echo with dr. Elizalde stated and this just just to say

[13:34] with prior reports you've seen this before this particular metric key metric one

[13:39] represents our lagged data and this we're going to report

[13:43] on class of 2024, which is tied to our 2025 accountability data and below you'll also see the

[13:48] class of 2025 estimates and we'll receive that official data this summer during our

[13:54] 2026 accountability cycle so you'll see it below three points

[14:00] of reference class of 2023 2024 and 2025 for the class

[14:04] of 2024 we increased from 26 percent to 34 percent in each percentage point gain

[14:09] and again, this represents 600 more students meeting that

[14:13] benchmark for the class of the 2025 you can see maybe a

[14:17] slight decrease of a percentage point but I want

[14:21] to make sure that we look at this with important context if you look we can see that we

[14:27] actually tested 8,477 students in the class of 2024, but nine

[14:31] thousand and two hundred and eighty students in the class

[14:35] of 2025 which is an increase of 800 students and what we can also see is that we had more

[14:40] students reach our benchmark by 160 students and so this

[14:46] just tells us that even while we're expanding access we are also increasing more students

[14:52] who meet the benchmark I also like to highlight our positive trend for our african-american and

[14:57] our emerging bilingual students which reflects a progress across all of our student groups and just if you will

[15:03] take a look at the footnote and I know it's very tiny because I can barely see it

[15:07] with my reading glasses on but I will just say this that this metric is actually also aligned

[15:14] to our gpm 5.1 our prior gpm 5.1 and it was to ensure that

[15:20] we met this benchmark by 39 percent of our students by

[15:24] august 2025 and if we were in that benchmark actually included the college readiness

[15:30] coursework so if we were to take our tsi assessment data

[15:34] and that college readiness coursework and put it together we'd actually have exceeded

[15:39] that benchmark and met it at 70% of our students and far exceeding that particular

[15:45] target next we'll talk about our industry-based certification so this

[15:50] particular key metric again is also lag data and it's aligned to our former gpm 5.2

[15:56] with a target of 37 and we can see that we've landed at 42 for

[16:01] exceeding that particular target and so over the past

[16:05] three years you'll see in the 2025 estimate you can see sort

[16:10] of decreased numbers but again, I'll also provide some context

[16:14] in the past three years we've had some changes in how this particular metric is evaluated

[16:20] so in class of 2023 students can earn this this particular ccmr credit by taking a course

[16:28] with that it had an approved certification and they could

[16:33] pass that course they could receive it and then in 2024 they had to take the certification

[16:38] along with one additional course by 2025 we have to have two aligned courses

[16:43] plus within the same program of study and pass your certification meanwhile the

[16:49] certification courses that were approved by tea have shifted

[16:53] each year as well and so again, we can see continued progress if we were

[16:58] to apply those same metrics across all the years we would see improvement as well next

[17:03] slide key metric 3 and so for key metric 3 we can see

[17:08] that we had 741 students earned certification our original

[17:12] goal for g or target pardon me for this for gpm 5.3 was

[17:18] to earn 450 certificates certificates, pardon me level

[17:22] 1 and level 2 certificates by 2025 and you can see that this class far exceeded that goal

[17:28] and an increase also by 200 from the prior year and again

[17:33] just to remind you all and to provide some additional context level 1 certificates require

[17:39] 15 to 20 42 credit hours and level 2 certificates require 30 to 51 college credit hours

[17:45] and so I just want to also say that this work with increased and we can see

[17:49] positive trends even while the team worked to align these course sequences

[17:55] in the way that was meaningful for students so that we could transfer these college credits

[17:59] to four-year universities next

[18:03] slide okay, and again for a key metric

[18:07] for we can see that the class of 2025 achieved a 94%

[18:12] completion rate, which is exceptionally strong and we know that again this

[18:17] metric was also impacted by changes over the last few years notably the class of 2024 had a

[18:23] delayed rolled out in

[18:28] december. I think they rolled it out in december of 31st of that particular year

[18:34] in a full rollout in april and how they could complete their tasks on fafsa and so this past

[18:39] class of 2025 they had an opportunity to roll theirs out in december 1st but we know

[18:44] that there were changing timelines we had some opt-outs due to some national changes

[18:49] in in rules and in spite

[18:53] of that, we know that our counselors our schools had really tight systems. There was

[18:58] really proactive reaching we they made proactive opportunities to reach out

[19:03] to parents and to families and students and so with that we can see strong

[19:08] progress here and then for the final metric

[19:13] of the percent of our students who graduate week with post and enrolled in college

[19:18] immediately followed in their senior year. We can see the increased from 49 to

[19:24] 52 percent of our students and so across these student groups

[19:29] if you would just take a look below we can see a really positive entry and what our

[19:33] emergent bilingual students increasing by seven percentage points

[19:38] from 22 to 24 and then our african-american students increasing

[19:42] by five percentage points from the prior year now we know there are still some gaps and

[19:46] there's still some work to do but we can definitely see some positive progress here and we

[19:50] know one key driver of the the improvement in this work is the summer mail program

[19:56] that has been a key lever for for the team and for our students in dallas isd

[20:02] and we just think this overall it reflects a more an intentional system with helping

[20:07] to support our students and our next slide and so while we're

[20:11] seeing progress again I'll just restate that we know there's more work to do and these are some

[20:16] of the next steps that we'll see in the upcoming school year first. We'll see in an area

[20:21] of focus. We're awaiting some task the guidance regarding a

[20:26] local which will require us to include military readiness

[20:31] we are also going to bring forward some adjustments maybe to our level one and level two

[20:36] certificate certificates metric and in addition to that there

[20:42] will be some refinements and how this particular policy is reported to

[20:47] to the board and secondly, we will also continue to work

[20:51] on our adjustments to our curriculum for tsi we

[20:56] have really implemented some adaptive platforms to help our students and embedded

[21:01] curriculum daily embedded curriculum support and then finally, we'll continue our

[21:06] quarter monitoring of our ccm our metrics with along with ipc ibcs and our

[21:11] clear targets and with that we are prepared

[21:15] to take questions trustee

[21:21] weber great report so thorough. I have a few questions just

[21:28] clarifying questions one of the questions I have is

[21:34] related to the estimated 33% of kids meeting the tsi just

[21:39] clarifying that is does that include college bridge or not

[21:44] include college bridge? That does not include college bridge. Awesome. Okay, and then

[21:48] is that so it's both language and math, correct?

[21:52] so do you have the numbers of what percentage students?

[21:57] past language past math yes, we do and for 2025 we have 46%

[22:07] of do you want it for 2025 or for 20 to 25? Okay for 2025 we have 40% of 46% of students who

[22:13] passed elar 42% passed math and

[22:18] then 33% passed both and if we

[22:22] were to say how many passed only elar it was 12.9 percent

[22:27] past elar 8.9 percent past math with a total of students

[22:33] passing one the other or both

[22:39] being a 55% thank you if I could add just a little color to that so if we take the 13%

[22:44] that passed elar but didn't pass math and the 9%

[22:49] that passed math but didn't pass elar we would able

[22:56] to actually add 21% 22% more of our students actually met part

[23:00] of this requirement and so these are thank you for asking

[23:05] us that question that that's that other area that we're going to continue to work on because when we can get those

[23:11] students to meet that other component and how far are they if they met the math now I just

[23:15] need to work on the elar we can you can see that if I get when we get that 22% over we're

[23:21] gonna see a really big jump from a 33 you'll be able

[23:26] to we'll be able to add 22 and then we'll be at 55. Those are realistic they're audacious,

[23:31] but they're realistic. We just have to keep and we're getting there each year. We are making

[23:36] improvement, but the team is really focused on making sure we we are able

[23:41] to find and identify what areas if I didn't do the elar what is

[23:46] it that I need to work on? Thank you, I think y'all forgot

[23:51] to start my clock oh, there it is, okay. Thank you okay, I

[23:56] just wanted to make sure I was on time okay, can you really quickly also talk about the

[24:01] 2025 being an estimate just the timing I just to reiterate

[24:06] yeah, so 2025 there's we have this estimate and it'll be a part of the 2026 accountability

[24:13] cycle so we'll get that data in in july and this summer

[24:17] summer final data this summer and then and then we'll see

[24:22] estimate data for 2026, but it won't be final for a really long time

[24:26] from now, right? But we'll get to see kind of what progress we're making yes, despite that, but it won't be official

[24:31] for tea and for accountability and for outcome dollars okay you

[24:37] mentioned military readiness and that you all are going to be kind

[24:41] of revising how you track that do we have the capability to know that number now?

[24:49] we you want to you want to answer it's a little complicated I'll ask I remember it's having the conversation

[24:54] that it's company we were supposed to get from the department of war. We were supposed

[24:59] to get the current number it has not been provided to us in the previous in the past we

[25:03] used to get what are called the dd for forms department of defense form

[25:08] for and then we used to get that physically, but then they switched it and said

[25:12] we're going to get it electronically and we have yet to get that so we're

[25:17] just that's a piece of data that we are hoping to get in in our anticipating. Okay,

[25:21] great and then I guess what tools I hear you talking about sort of the math is past

[25:26] that the language is passed and sort of what tools are you using to?

[25:30] to to help students understand what they need to do in order to accomplish their college and

[25:35] career readiness I can answer this, but I'd like for a dr. Nevels to answer because it's really complex. Go ahead

[25:42] comprehensive yeah, so first we do still use the texas

[25:48] college bridge tool in the college prep course and at the end of that course we do assess

[25:53] another adaptive tool is kaplan. And so we've used kaplan at multiple campuses

[25:59] and so that's one of the tools where that's coupled with face-to-face intervention

[26:04] for students we also have the edgenuity platform that is used

[26:09] and that's been used for multiple years we have college spring. So there are

[26:13] several tools that we're implementing with campuses. That's helpful what I think I didn't phrase it quite right is

[26:19] how do you all how do the campuses know? What tool do the campuses have to know you know that that

[26:24] tiffany and cheryl and sarah? Here ready not there ready,

[26:29] you know kind of their their multivariable equation that makes them ready

[26:33] for their next step thank you for the clarity so we do have a comprehensive dashboard a

[26:38] salesforce dashboard that we use and campuses can pull real-time data

[26:42] from students and so it talks to accuplacer so after students test we have real-time data

[26:47] campuses can go in and pull down student reports and they can see exactly where students

[26:52] are and and students kind of have an idea themselves their own agency as well to kind of

[26:56] know that they're making progress on their path great

[27:01] wait one last question and I

[27:06] had a question on the just clarifying

[27:10] on the emergent bilingual and

[27:15] hispanic in the venn diagram how can you give me those

[27:21] buckets of numbers of what percent

[27:25] of emergent bilingual or hispanic and what percent are not we would need

[27:32] to pull that data out from you because they can be double counted, okay, just

[27:37] in the trackers great. Yes, great all right. Thank you all

[27:41] so much just image good thank you for this report, it's very very encouraging let

[27:49] me also thank you for pointing out the raw numbers in a couple of situations and

[27:54] there was one that that that is actually not a focus

[27:58] of this metric but that really jumped out at me and that was the the number

[28:02] of total graduates so we had in the class of 2024 8,477

[28:14] in the class of 2025 9,280 that's a that's a pretty big jump and and I think

[28:19] congratulations are in order

[28:24] for that. Thank you and another another item that did jump out at me was in on the page 7 the

[28:30] percentage

[28:36] of graduates enrolled in college following their senior year of high school you know

[28:42] and and the african-american students are leading away on that on that metric so very

[28:47] proud of the progress progress there I did find it a little

[28:54] hard to follow the changes the trying to go apples

[28:59] to apples or apples to lettuce apples to giraffes

[29:03] whatever the analogy is and I'm just just wondering if you

[29:11] could provide additional detail like if the old rules were

[29:16] in place here's the what-if because right now it doesn't

[29:21] really show that we've made progress for anybody who's just

[29:25] picking this up. It just looks like we we went backwards or

[29:30] you can do it the what-if the other way, you know what if the new rules that applied

[29:34] in the prior year, but but I but I do think it is important for us to be transparent about

[29:41] we're how we're moving and and in this case, it looks like

[29:46] we're moving backwards when we're actually moving forward and I that's the kind of

[29:51] for me the worst of all worlds that we're moving forward and it looks

[29:56] like we're moving backwards without without the appendix for that so I do can applaud

[30:02] the progress going forward but I would like it to be more clear that we are going forward

[30:08] that when we change the rules that then gives the gives of

[30:13] gives a false impression I do I do want to respond though. I

[30:19] mean they're smiling because we had this conversation and we and actually assistant superintendent cortez attempted

[30:24] to have his team do the analytics because it is a multi-level change it affects

[30:30] every single student in different ways. So we actually couldn't do a apply

[30:38] the rules across the board. It was way more complex than what we thought so we'll get back together though to find another

[30:43] way because that's that's you're having the conversation they're looking at me because

[30:47] we had this conversation only you're talking. I was talking to them that day it's the same thing because obviously

[30:53] to your point trustee mitch gave that 59, right? That shows even

[30:57] on this key metric 2 and then it's like our actual for the 2425 is a 42. It's like wait,

[31:03] we went minus 17. No, we didn't go minus 17 there were a whole bunch of ibcs that counted

[31:09] towards that 59 that did not

[31:14] count when we ended up at the 42, so we'll try to figure

[31:19] out how to get you a more quantifiable number let me amend my request where it is

[31:24] reasonably easy to do so can

[31:29] you highlight it in a in a more visible way?

[31:34] even if the footnote is is bigger because because right now the way I the way I I

[31:38] looked at it at first it was like how did we fall backwards?

[31:43] and even though there was this really small print footnote down there I couldn't quite make make sense of it. And I I

[31:48] just think I just would hope we can clarify that a bit then

[31:56] on the texas success initiative this this is an area where

[32:02] funding is attached to to each to each student who achieves a

[32:10] tsi rating. Is that correct? And um, and I know it varies

[32:14] by by students or does it vary by district if it's an economically disadvantaged the

[32:21] dollars vary so if we have economically disadvantaged kids that attain the same the metric

[32:26] is the same but the dollars that are attached are based on demographic filters and

[32:36] just it's ballpark. What are those numbers? Does anybody haven't you know, is it like a

[32:40] thousand or fifteen hundred dollars? We have so yeah, you can answer

[32:46] so for economically disadvantaged,

[32:50] it's five thousand dollars and for non economically

[32:54] disadvantaged is three thousand and then for special education students. It's an additional four

[33:00] thousand okay, so not not insignificant so and and you

[33:08] can qualify for tsi if you earn

[33:12] an associate's degree

[33:16] correct. Okay. So I told you this question was coming so we

[33:22] did see and I want to thank communications for highlighting conrad high

[33:26] school we're a hundred and three graduating students

[33:32] earned an associate's degree. That was over 40% of the class I know I want to

[33:37] make sure everybody has heard that four times so but but what

[33:43] I was really really getting at on that is that that's that

[33:47] school is outperforming every other school and there are a

[33:52] couple that are kind of close molina and I think wt white and

[33:58] and then there are a lot that are not really very close and

[34:03] so, you know, my my question when I see that is okay there

[34:10] are some there's got to be some reason why that that is and it

[34:15] could be the kind of program that is is there that it's one

[34:20] that keeps kids interested and they want to stay the course or it could be things that the

[34:25] schools are doing like, you know extra counselors or more

[34:30] check-ins or better

[34:34] partnership opportunities. I don't I don't know what they are but I would just think that

[34:39] when you've got, you know, such a phenomenal result. I mean you think about dallas isd students

[34:45] and particularly in that feeder pattern with two-thirds

[34:50] of the kids not speaking english and over 90% of them being economically

[34:55] disadvantaged. That is an amazing story and you know, we we should

[35:01] like we always try to do I know this we try to find best practices wherever

[35:05] they are but here's a place where we've got something that

[35:10] is really going so well, and you know, so my question is why isn't everybody up there

[35:15] trying to figure out? What the secret sauce is and

[35:20] apply it in other schools? So I'm gonna begin this question, but really the work is dr.

[35:25] neville's and so I'll let her continue the answer without taking up too much time that you told me this question was

[35:31] coming and I went and asked the team and she said oh, but we are and she said not only,

[35:36] you know can we see the campuses that are doing extremely well because we've taken some

[35:40] of the things that we've learned from conrad we've been able to see gains and other campuses

[35:45] by 15 and 20 points because of the learning and so some of

[35:49] the learning includes the work that they do with their

[35:55] counselors and with the team on being really proactive on how they use their

[36:00] collaborative. So it's a really true a plc it's collaborative plc around the the

[36:04] in the data that they receive for students so when she'll talk about interventions in a quick second,

[36:09] they are really intentional about the interventions and how they use that data and so that's something you just

[36:14] heard. Dr. Novel speak to that. They have applied now across the system in addition just quickly that

[36:19] you know she said there's something that's really that you can see a campus is that

[36:23] are very successful and that is that p tech is a part of the entire culture so

[36:28] whether you're the coach the custodian whoever it is a part of the culture

[36:32] of the entire campus and it's not seen as sort of a program on the campus and so some of

[36:36] the learning that they've gotten from conrad whether it's culture whether it's how they

[36:41] use their collaborative time or how they respond to interventions are things that

[36:45] they're applying across the system for other campuses as well and

[36:50] you'll see that in our in the updates that they're doing especially this school year

[36:55] okay thank you. I it's just a phenomenal story and I think even with the attention that

[37:01] we've been giving it lately it's just so dallas isd for

[37:05] for the kids with the most challenges

[37:10] to have that kind of success and it's a it's a

[37:14] great story, and I hope we tell it more and I hope we figure out a way to replicate it

[37:19] across the district. Thank you alright next I have a trustee

[37:25] for me thank you just just a few questions, and I want to start

[37:30] with military readiness how do

[37:35] we have? The units on all of the high school campuses and middle

[37:40] school campuses or is it just on specific high school and do

[37:46] you mean the rotc classes the

[37:50] just yes, so we just heard

[37:54] from chief gaylord, it's all high school campuses. I don't know that it's across all

[37:59] middle school campuses so could could I ask

[38:03] for the campuses and the number of students that are enrolled

[38:08] in each one of those? Because I for me, I think

[38:13] that's extremely important in military readiness is a part of what we're supposed to be trying to do so I'd like

[38:19] to see those numbers please and

[38:40] on the second so on the

[38:45] certifications we had I'm trying to see how many students we had

[38:50] with certifications one second

[39:01] 50s pages here so I'm on page five the level one or level two

[39:07] and I see an increase in number of graduates. How many actual?

[39:14] students do we have in the

[39:23] the swim blank on the centers that we have the career

[39:31] institutes so we can answer that question are you are you

[39:35] referring to we have four career institutes we have three

[39:40] that are open three that are open. And so how many students

[39:44] do we have currently? We have about 6,000 about 6,000 current

[39:50] students but when I look

[39:55] at the classes 2025 we show nine thousand two hundred and eighty. So did we drop

[40:00] in number or? Those are the total number of graduates not a number

[40:05] of students. Okay career institute so we have a and this

[40:09] is for their year. It's for the class of 25. So it's

[40:13] last year. Yes, ma'am okay, so we had nine thousand two hundred and eighty,

[40:18] but now we have six thousand no, but those are two the six

[40:23] thousand are a subset of that number so not every student goes to a career institute,

[40:27] right? So we had last year nine thousand two hundred and eighty

[40:34] graduates and of those last year we maybe had around 800

[40:41] seniors 800 seniors of this nine thousand two hundred and

[40:45] eighty were of the ninety to eighty around 800 were

[40:50] at the career institute and they got a certification

[40:57] about seven hundred and about seven hundred forty one did yes, ma'am got a certification so can I can I just make an

[41:02] amendment to that so the level one and level two certificates

[41:06] are related to dual dual credit and could could be there but I

[41:10] think what we're mostly looking at our certifications which are on slide four for

[41:16] for the career institute so you can see how that can be confusing, right? Yeah, this is

[41:21] the way tea this is the way that they we were only putting

[41:26] it the way tea they have industry-based certifications which is one list and they give

[41:30] us credit for those when students are successful that's metric to trustee foreman

[41:35] on page four and those students are attending our career institutes some of those those

[41:42] of those students we have a good percentage that are

[41:46] earning iv c's through career institutes then on metric three which is on

[41:51] page five which is the one you started with these are a different type

[41:56] of certification it's a certificate and it has to be in conjunction with dallas

[42:02] college or another institution of higher ed but we mostly partner with

[42:06] dallas college and so it's in conjunction with getting associates these were the ones

[42:13] if you recall when we were doing some of the associates that weren't all transferring

[42:18] to to four-year degrees so some of these we don't always want

[42:23] students necessarily getting the associates degrees that are

[42:28] connected to these level one and level two because if they go to a four-year college, they

[42:32] lose those college hours don't transfer

[42:37] over I get that I get that but the reporting can be somewhat confusing when you are trying

[42:42] to break down actually what's happening particularly in specific areas.

[42:46] I do get you trying to report based

[42:51] on what tea is asking but I'm trying to understand exactly what we're doing in

[42:55] specific areas so that can be somewhat confusing and if you

[43:00] could break it down a little bit more for me

[43:04] we can we can sit with you so I can I want to make sure we get you what

[43:09] you're what how you're thinking so we can get it to you that way. Yes, ma'am.

[43:15] thank you trustee mackey. Yeah, first of all, congratulations I think if I

[43:20] looked at it correctly all of these wonderful red yellow green are green, right? Thank

[43:26] you for putting this back. Also, it's super helpful I know there's so much work that has

[43:31] gone in behind the scenes across all the campuses to do this and to see this kind of sustained

[43:36] growth over time. That's not easy to do. So kudos I'd love to keep up on the conversation

[43:44] on tsi since that's one that is only going to become more and

[43:50] more important as the state changes it's accountability

[43:55] metrics, etc and again, congratulations

[43:59] on this really strong growth trustee mitch can't kind of hit on some of one

[44:04] of my questions here do we have a range if we were to look at high school feeder patterns,

[44:08] for instance? What the highest like what's the range between the highest performing feeder

[44:12] pattern and the lowest performing feeder pattern? We can provide that information

[44:18] to you yeah, I'd be happy to provide that information to you, but I don't think it's going to

[44:22] be the highest performing feeder pattern we can provide that information to you. Yeah, I'd be really interested

[44:27] to see that. It seems like dan had already done his homework and found that out beforehand because I'd be really curious to have a deeper conversation

[44:32] around what are we learning from those higher performing feeder patterns that we are now extending?

[44:36] so I'm curious if we have thoughts about those but also what additional resources are we plugging in with our lower

[44:41] performing feeder patterns to help move them up because we know? It's not a difference in

[44:45] students. It's a difference in the support and the experience that they're getting I would

[44:50] really love for that conversation so I want to see if you have any thoughts on either of those what we have learned and are extending

[44:55] everywhere or to what we're doing to bring up the ones that are struggling

[44:59] the most so I can just say really quickly like we have one

[45:05] campus that has increased by

[45:10] 26 points percent 26% and dr. Nobles you just want to speak just on two things

[45:15] that we know that this particular campus did to make that increase that we learned

[45:20] from conrad. Can we call that campus out? Sure, james madison high school

[45:25] way to go 26% growth is huge. We'll take it and so that's one

[45:32] of the campuses that really is intentional about the use

[45:36] of data and that salesforce dashboard and using that to advise the students working

[45:41] with those students and also the dashboard they're using and then the adaptive platform

[45:47] that they're using with the students and so they have implemented those strategies with fidelity and so

[45:51] we've seen that growth over time so it sounds like in both of those and you can

[45:55] correct me if I'm wrong are less about the experiences that like the kids aren't

[46:00] necessarily receiving some different experience what they're getting is actually more intentional conversations

[46:05] from adults who are using these dashboards, correct? I would say it's the quality

[46:11] of the implementation of those resources,

[46:15] right because they're available to all the campuses but I think when the team was talking

[46:19] to me about madison it was the what you just described that intent like this is what this

[46:24] student needs and then there's a whole plan around making sure every student. Okay, so then this works better

[46:29] with this student so we're going to give them access to this and this is when they're going to do it like helping the

[46:34] student even ensure that the time with that adaptive particularly that adaptive software is part of this

[46:40] like how do I work this into the school day? How do I work this

[46:45] into ensuring that there's time after school if they're staying after school? So there was it wasn't a here's

[46:50] what you have go see if it works or it was it was the

[46:54] support I think those that's the word you use it is it is the support of the existing

[47:00] tools. I also think two things I think they've done the team has done this work. We have

[47:06] to remember. This is lag so I think we're going to see some some leveling up

[47:12] to trustee minsky's point and to your point I think we're going to see some leveling up trustee

[47:16] mackey because we have taken some of these observations and dr. Novel says led that work in

[47:21] with each of these campuses. I think we're going to see some of that I also think both what

[47:26] trustee minsky and yourself have pointed out the there are opportunities for us

[47:31] to be more intentional ourselves in how we do the range what is

[47:35] the highest performing and how do we ensure that we are actually move everybody up?

[47:39] I don't know that I certainly have to say I have not been that

[47:44] intentional with our team and saying this is what I think I want to see next so it's an

[47:49] opportunity for us yeah, so dive. Thank you for that so diving down that I

[47:53] think I really appreciated the conversation around so if we have 33% of students that are met in

[47:58] both is our prediction here and there are 22% I think we said that are met in one and not the

[48:03] other I would love to understand and maybe we don't have this answer yeah,

[48:07] but this is where I'd love to get this conversation to go is if I'm a student who has met in english but not in math

[48:12] what looks different in my day than someone who is met in math and not in english

[48:17] versus someone who is not met in either? Do we have any particular

[48:22] strategies or different ways that we are plugging in with the students based on their individualized need

[48:27] this year we did implement some piloting programs and so we

[48:31] worked with the principals there was a tool we used mastery prep and so we did some

[48:36] in day school intervention or during the day school intervention and so we targeted

[48:41] students to your point who were met in one area and not the other and

[48:45] so if I'm john I'm at an elar then what we did was we work with the principal to bring in

[48:49] and train teachers do intervention do like a blitz day work with

[48:55] those students let them know where they were what their needs were and then do targeted

[49:00] intervention and then testing and so we saw some significant growth

[49:04] with doing that we did that with approximately six or seven

[49:08] campuses just as a start to see if it was worth scaling

[49:15] for next year thank you, I'll be curious to see how that goes and what we do there I

[49:19] know that part of this is of course we want to make sure kids feel comfortable

[49:23] with the format there is some kind of blitz and test prep and that will always be the case

[49:27] for these type of exams don't have don't have to go any further than the lawyers

[49:32] on this board who studied a lot more for lsat in the days leading up to the lsat than in their

[49:37] college? I think there's nothing wrong with that but also I know fundamentally we also are

[49:42] teaching these skills in algebra 2 and some of the others so what work are we doing

[49:46] to embed and align the work in our actual core courses to this and have we thought about? You know, do we do anything

[49:51] with like tsi fits best with algebra 2 hence we have our algebra 2 students or anything like that about how

[49:56] we're embedding these same skills and aligning them within the core courses well,

[50:04] that also was another strategy and this is really exciting for me because we're seeing so much growth this year

[50:08] but we did a partner with academic services and so they did embed strategies

[50:13] for the teachers in english 1 2 & 3 algebra 1 geometry and

[50:19] algebra 2 for teachers and students so that is real-time

[50:25] direct instruction support for students during those classes and so there's also

[50:30] growth there because then at the end of algebra 2 and english 3 and we're able to

[50:35] assess students as juniors and sophomores now in an ideal world,

[50:40] we're not there yet, but we're getting there taking the information. Dr neville's just

[50:45] did the work that academic services did to align curriculum really the next

[50:51] thing is to get how many students do I have that need

[50:57] the elar? Which teacher has the highest

[51:01] performance and how do I make sure that those students just like we started doing at the elementary of using our

[51:07] highest performing teachers? With our students who needed them the most we need to be able to do that

[51:13] of course, you're a former high school principal so, you know when I say the master schedule sounds like that's something we

[51:17] could do and you know that at a high school trustee mackey to do that is far more

[51:23] complex, but that's the next area so that when you would ask

[51:27] that question, we'd say not only here's the plan for stephanie but here are the teachers that these students

[51:32] have and then how we're monitoring that that's incredible if we can go thank

[51:38] you for that. I mean,

[51:42] it's exciting to see this growth one more technical question here on the top we're

[51:50] talking about the year in which we're looking at the data but that is you're

[51:56] saying it's lagged by a year for the class I'm not sure what class of 2024 is referring to

[52:01] on this side, but maybe key metric class of 2024 and then so on and so forth

[52:06] but am I accurately thinking about this to say our 2025 26 estimate is actually the class

[52:11] of 25 estimate correct. So class of 25 will be the 25 26

[52:17] accountability year, right? I would just encourage us also,

[52:22] I'm sure we also even though this year is not done I would love to see when we do this to look

[52:27] at what we think is happening for class of 2026 knowing full well that we are not

[52:31] like it's not gonna be right but it'll probably be a minimum because I think you know all

[52:35] of these kids every single kid on this page is long gone but it'd be really interesting

[52:40] to see where we're at with the kids currently here because we can they do dr. Nevels and

[52:45] chief you apollo do do have that they're monitoring that. Yes, sir I would love

[52:49] to see that on this as well. So if that's possible, but that's just a thought how

[52:55] do our class of 2026 look that if we're monitoring that do we

[52:59] have any idea yeah, it's exciting dr. Nevels is your work. You want

[53:06] to share it? She said okay she right now

[53:10] we're in the window of testing so we just started the window of like about a week ago and alright

[53:15] at this point this class is at 38.4 percent met thirty

[53:20] eight point six or thirty eight point four percent met thirty eight point four percent met

[53:24] that's amazing. Congratulations. That's still

[53:28] with a number of months to go all right, well that's ten

[53:36] minutes so I will yeah, yeah trustee sanders yield just a

[53:43] few quick questions because a lot's been covered already one

[53:48] yeah, and we could put this for the tracker I would like to see just how each individual

[53:54] high school squares up with across all of these domains

[53:58] that would just be great of course deeply interested in

[54:06] in my district and I feel like my colleagues probably feel the same so the other is I know it

[54:11] wasn't the point, but I'm also very interested in and it's been a long time since we've talked about just

[54:16] graduation rates because they you know that we've been doing pretty good,

[54:21] but that's a big jump so so what what do we credit to the total graduate number going up

[54:26] that much? Well, I don't think it's any

[54:30] one thing I think it's a multi-factor one you have to go back to where these

[54:37] students were going back to kovat and so there is if you will a certain amount

[54:42] of students that kind of left the system and then came back to a system so you get a bubble the second one is as we do

[54:47] better with students, then we may be keeping some students instead of them going, you

[54:53] know, especially students that start

[54:57] off with us so there has been a and then thirdly there was a bubble in this grade level so

[55:02] if you track this group of students there has been there was like a statewide there was

[55:08] this kind of a larger number and then you have students

[55:13] particularly their freshman year who are unsuccessful,

[55:20] that's the area as you all know that we're all so focused on is ensuring because if you don't

[55:26] have a great freshman year we have we it makes it very very difficult for students

[55:31] to ever get caught up that we still have a large percentage

[55:36] of students that we need to continue to support and

[55:40] improving that this particular number is also indicative of the fact that we were able

[55:44] to recover them so we might have a larger number of fifth year graduates if you will,

[55:49] okay yeah but we were able to capture them and so it's a little of this a little

[55:54] of this and a little of this got it okay, good.

[55:59] we'll keep the little of all those things going the

[56:04] the last question I have is is me just getting up to speed

[56:09] can you give me an example of? What what is

[56:14] in ibc that wouldn't qualify for outcomes based funding

[56:18] what's an example of that? So we have like osha 10 which all of our freshmen take and

[56:23] that is not on the a through f list okay, but that's a certification they take so

[56:28] what it would not count it's not on the a through f list got anything that's on the a

[56:33] through f list does count for accountability and for

[56:37] outcomes based funding and how to in that list is control of the state is there a

[56:42] potential especially if we have like a number of kids doing it what what could put that

[56:46] on the state list eventually? So they were on two-year cycle. So that's where businesses get together

[56:51] and they say hey, we want this on the ibc list currently there's 500 certifications. We're in a five-year cycle

[56:57] from 25 to 2030 we have version four of this list, but every

[57:01] year we can get one or two in there as the as ta opens

[57:06] that up they can make those recommendations what's our agent?

[57:11] what's I guess dallas isds agency in doing that? Does it have to be

[57:15] like a ground swell of a bunch of different isds or do we have the opportunity if we see? This is really hidden for us

[57:20] can we advocate for that? Absolutely we can advocate for it okay and then you said

[57:24] it's only like one or two a year and then there's a big review at the end

[57:29] of so they they are now in five-year cycles because before they were changing every

[57:33] two years got it and they were putting a hundred on taking a hundred off and

[57:37] that's what was throwing us and you can see where that causes problems because kids are in a four-year plan yeah,

[57:43] but if you change what we put you on for two years and now you change it now,

[57:47] that's no longer counting right. Well now what do I do? Yeah, and so they heard quite a

[57:52] bit of feedback from a few of us I'm not saying it was me and in that process we ended up

[57:59] then they gave us now what makes more sense which is a five-year review so that that

[58:04] way we have kids in a path yeah, rather than having

[58:08] to change mid-cycle. Are we seeing? Just you know doesn't have

[58:14] to be a scientific assessment, but are we seeing that there's

[58:18] potentially qualifying ibcs that aren't on the list, but that our kids really are

[58:24] taken to or we have a number of children that are doing it that

[58:29] would that we're targeting for addition so we're currently

[58:33] making sure that students receive an a through f certification, but

[58:37] they receive multiple they don't just receive one right they'll receive two and three

[58:42] as certifications come up and we're working with industry partners and they say hey we really want this one we can go

[58:47] ahead and do it because they already met accountability but then what we can do is we can

[58:51] say to the state. Hey, this one is regional this is a very good certification. We want to put this on the list and we

[58:56] can get businesses to advocate as well okay. All right. Got it. I I'm just

[59:01] deeply curious about that one. So I'll probably pull you aside and

[59:06] pick your brain, but got a couple no, but thank you. Thank you. Those are my

[59:12] questions trustees further

[59:16] questions okay trustees,

[59:21] you know further questions, thank you all for the presentation trustees

[59:26] will now turn to agenda item 7a the superintendents report including budget update superintendent thank you

[59:31] president carry on members of the board our deputy superintendent ed ramos and our

[59:36] chief of human capital management robert abel or coming up and

[59:42] we're going to as you know, we'll as we've developed to

[59:47] this point we still have quite a bit of work to do but as we're building for the

[59:52] 25 26 we'll talk first about the 25 26 give you an overview as well as some

[59:56] highlights of the budget development for the 2627 school year and

[1:00:01] of course then at that point we'll take some questions so and remember that

[1:00:06] for the budget, it's a to read so we'll be doing some

[1:00:11] discussion today and then it will be back before a board vote in may. So

[1:00:16] this particular item you will not be voting on the budget in april this will not be a

[1:00:21] vote until the may 9th meeting and with that I'll turn it

[1:00:27] over to deputy superintendent ramos good evening president carry on superintendent

[1:00:32] elizalde members of the board wanted to go over the budget specifically where we are

[1:00:37] with the 25 26 budget and what we are looking at for the 26

[1:00:42] 27 budget specifically next slide looking

[1:00:48] at what we adopted for the current budget. We

[1:00:53] adopted a 91 million dollar deficit. And so where are we projecting to end the year?

[1:00:59] we are pretty close to where we had projected our local tax collections one point almost

[1:01:04] one point forty eight million dollar local tax collections

[1:01:09] we have taken a hit with our state revenue that includes

[1:01:14] lower than projected enrollment numbers and as well as we took

[1:01:18] a hit with our whole harmless revenue estimates we received a

[1:01:24] memo from the texas education agency letting us know that

[1:01:28] there were some adjustments to the calculations and so in

[1:01:34] overall state revenue estimates they came in at 58 million dollars lower than projected

[1:01:40] so that has taken a hit with our revenue overall

[1:01:46] federal estimates are 17 million below estimates as well we have

[1:01:51] done a pretty good job in controlling our overall payroll cost during the year with vacancies as they have occurred

[1:01:57] throughout the year as well as with the lower

[1:02:01] in enrollment numbers we have also reduced our overall fts in the district and so we have

[1:02:06] controlled our overall payroll costs overall as a district and

[1:02:12] so we are projecting despite the lower revenue estimates we

[1:02:17] are and have made a real good effort with controlling expenditures

[1:02:22] and so we still project to come in within our overall projected deficit currently at

[1:02:28] ninety point eight million dollars and so we still have three months left to go

[1:02:34] in the year and so our goal is still to come in below that ninety point eight million. So

[1:02:39] we are still looking at reducing expenditures within april may and june and so if

[1:02:44] you go to the next slide every year we project a budget and you can see the past three

[1:02:51] years. We projected deficit budgets in the district we

[1:02:56] historically do our best to control our expenditures as a district and we have ended the

[1:03:02] year better than projected as soon as last year the 2425

[1:03:06] school year we did end with a 68 million dollar deficit

[1:03:11] compared to the 187 million dollar deficit we projected so

[1:03:18] again ending the 25 26 school year we are projecting to end the year with a deficit but not as high as the 91

[1:03:24] million dollar deficit so we are there is work to do

[1:03:30] with our overall deficit but again, we hope to end the year better than what we

[1:03:35] projected despite the challenges that we have faced with lower enrollment and the

[1:03:40] whole harmless hit that we have taken from some adjustments

[1:03:48] with the calculations as a district we also are committed to continuing to invest

[1:03:54] in programs within the district these are programs that we know impact

[1:04:00] our students and do bring in some achievements for our students and those are

[1:04:05] specifically in the areas of career and technology we spend forty five point four

[1:04:10] million in that area early learning twenty three point four million college and career

[1:04:15] readiness 21.9 million district school initiative 17.9 million

[1:04:21] and high quality tutoring 13 million. So this is part

[1:04:26] of our return on investment data quality that we look at as part

[1:04:33] of our budgeting process. And so we are continuing to look at these numbers as we look at our budget and some of the

[1:04:38] challenges that we face as a school district total

[1:04:45] compensation raises being proposed for dallas isd staff for next year total around

[1:04:50] fifty six point four million dollars that is for all staff the largest chunk of that is

[1:04:55] thirty seven and a half million dollar in teacher compensation ranges with the majority

[1:04:59] of that going to be offset by the expansion of the the teacher incentive allotment

[1:05:04] teachers will receive the under this proposal will receive the greater of the tei level change

[1:05:09] so if they move up a level on ti a change to the comp level of the ti if

[1:05:14] they maintain the same level or a two percent of the pay range if those two

[1:05:18] don't apply a vast majority of people are going to be in those top two categories it's only a few handful

[1:05:23] of people who fall in that bottom category other excellence initiatives are

[1:05:28] going to be proposed for 3.8 million dollars in raises that's going to include our edi

[1:05:35] our pei and her a pei and for the first time our school counselor excellence initiative

[1:05:40] or sci as well dallas isd as part of this proposal. We want

[1:05:44] to maintain our commitment to our support staff and we're going to propose

[1:05:48] to increase our dallas isd minimum wage from seventeen dollars to

[1:05:52] seventeen fifty dollar or seventeen fifty per hour this will help us maintain our

[1:05:58] regional lead as far as we can tell we're the highest paying school district on minimum wage also want to

[1:06:03] highlight that even though that is our minimum wage a vast majority of our employees are well

[1:06:07] above that that is just for entry level for a couple positions so majority

[1:06:12] of people are already making above that but we want to go ahead and move that minimum wage up as our commitment to

[1:06:16] our support staff and the awesome work they do for us and then pay for the additional compression

[1:06:21] for those other hourly employees as well the district is also recommending increase

[1:06:26] to our instructional support staff two and three as our teacher salaries have raised

[1:06:31] instructional support two and three are generally going to be positions that are either tied

[1:06:35] or marketed or banded to those teacher salaries so as teacher salaries have went up

[1:06:40] we need to make sure we keep them competitive some of the people that are

[1:06:44] in that group are going to be your media specialists your nurses your counselors your lss

[1:06:49] p's and your slp's as well those employees in this proposal would get somewhere

[1:06:54] around a 3.8 to 4.2 percent increase just depending on where they lie within those

[1:06:58] different pay grades and then other staff would receive 2% if they're not

[1:07:03] in those specific groups. Next slide this slide contains our

[1:07:08] proposed tei compensation levels as you can see each

[1:07:12] level increases about $3,000 some keynotes we want to

[1:07:16] mention is our proficient one compensation salary floor would be $78,000 so all proficient

[1:07:21] one and higher teachers make at least $78,000 as base salary and base salary for our master

[1:07:26] teachers would be a hundred and three thousand so a good good

[1:07:30] point of note is that if you're a master teacher at a pte and you get that pte stipend you

[1:07:35] have a hundred and sixteen thousand dollar base salary as a teacher at a pte campus

[1:07:39] prior to any bilingual stipends or esl stipends or special education stipends, etc and

[1:07:45] once again we mentioned earlier about the teachers will receive

[1:07:50] the greater of the tei change a tei compensation change or a 2% of the salary range as well if

[1:07:55] that applies to them on the right side, you'll see our new teacher or proposed new

[1:07:59] teacher hiring schedule so we're very excited about that a zero-year teacher coming in. I

[1:08:06] would start off at $68,000 and as I typed this presentation up, I realized that's slightly

[1:08:10] higher than the twenty six five that I started at so I'm very happy that we've made some

[1:08:14] progress since I joined the classroom anyway next slide

[1:08:20] this is just some estimates on some various employee groups we usually get questions about so

[1:08:25] that just gives the the average salary increase predicted for those those individuals as you

[1:08:30] can see all teachers on tei would be around somewhere around a five percent average

[1:08:36] if you're progressing one or two you would average around four and a half percent if you don't move

[1:08:41] to the proficient one or higher proficient one and higher would average around five point two percent our teacher assistants

[1:08:46] they will land somewhere around three point eight percent due

[1:08:50] to that compression of that 1750 overall our food service

[1:08:54] employees, for example, they would also be impacted if the 1750 per hour move is approved

[1:08:59] and that would move them up to around two point seven or two point eight percent raise instead of two percent

[1:09:05] for board approved and the same thing applies for our maintenance and transportation

[1:09:10] as well and I think another group we mentioned earlier was the counselors and media specialists ls sp's and those

[1:09:15] groups and nurses they'd be around three three point eight to four point two percent as

[1:09:22] well. Next slide as we continue to dive into our expenditures we wanted to give the board a picture of

[1:09:28] what districts are facing statewide the tasbo the texas association of school

[1:09:32] business officials recently did a survey for school districts and the districts responding.

[1:09:38] this is basically some of the data that they responded with 31%

[1:09:43] of districts are concerned about are not concerned about cash flow

[1:09:48] over the next three years, which means that almost 69 percent

[1:09:52] of districts are looking at their cash flow over the next three years 52%

[1:09:57] of districts are anticipating salary increases, but they are funding them

[1:10:02] through budget cuts for the next fiscal year 69

[1:10:06] almost 70 percent of districts anticipate making budget cuts for the 26 27 school year

[1:10:12] similar to what we are looking at as a district and the top three challenges that school

[1:10:17] districts are facing in the state deficit budgets lack

[1:10:21] of resources declining enrollment and aging facilities. So that sounds

[1:10:27] familiar in dallas isd that is what districts are facing throughout the state of texas

[1:10:33] next slide so as we look at next year's budget some of the assumptions that we are

[1:10:37] looking at we're looking at a taxable value growth of four point seventy four point

[1:10:42] five percent projected enrollment of one hundred and thirty two thousand five thirty

[1:10:46] three projected tax rate of night nine point nine eight

[1:10:51] eight seven three five that is with the assumption of increasing the debt service tax

[1:10:56] rate by one penny that also includes a projected tax rate

[1:11:01] for next year lower than our current tax rate our recapture

[1:11:07] actually that estimate has been

[1:11:12] re estimated at 80 million versus 110 that you currently see up there and then the starting teacher salary

[1:11:17] $68,000 and minimum hourly rate

[1:11:24] of 1750 we are going to begin having community budget meetings throughout the

[1:11:28] district they will begin starting if you go

[1:11:33] to the next slide may 6 may 7th, may 11th, may 12th and

[1:11:38] may 13th the locations will be at the career institute south

[1:11:42] career institute north the environmental center our resource center west and we

[1:11:47] will also have a virtual meeting will it open it up

[1:11:52] to questions?

[1:11:57] trustee michigan well, thank you for this report it does look like we have some some big

[1:12:02] challenges again this year I wanted to ask a question about the hold harmless provision and

[1:12:09] I've looked at that myself and it is unbelievably complicated

[1:12:17] and I know the comptroller's office and the tea have changed

[1:12:24] those computations on several occasions since the

[1:12:29] school funding legislation passed last year and I think

[1:12:34] conceptually what the hold harmless?

[1:12:39] provision is intended to make districts whole

[1:12:44] for the increase in the exemption for senior

[1:12:49] citizens right so that if that house did not have the senior

[1:12:55] citizen exemption home senior citizen homestead exemption

[1:12:59] on it there would be a certain level of taxes paid on it. But because it has that exemption

[1:13:05] and the state increased that exemption the districts can't

[1:13:10] get less local revenue and the state is supposed to replace

[1:13:14] that revenue under this hold harmless legislation so my

[1:13:18] question is since that calculation is so

[1:13:23] byzantine is are we at a point where we have the final? Calculation of how much the

[1:13:29] state is is going to make good make us whole or is this

[1:13:34] something where the calculations are still in flux and there's some hope that

[1:13:39] maybe we can arrive on a number that was more in line with what everyone's

[1:13:44] expectations were so we have a current estimate based

[1:13:51] on the revised data assumptions and so right now we are

[1:13:56] expecting to receive an estimated 23 million dollars

[1:14:00] in whole harmless revenue from the revised calculations

[1:14:05] and at one point we were anticipating an estimated 70

[1:14:09] million. Okay. Yeah, that's a big so I assume the team is is

[1:14:14] working to appeal that whether informally or formally to to see if if that that number can

[1:14:20] move right that I said, I I'm not a professional

[1:14:26] in that area, but if the calculation just didn't seem seem like it was let's just say

[1:14:32] I've made a lot of calls okay over the last 10 days and

[1:14:40] we're working on it. Thank you another question, I it may be

[1:14:45] too early to know if the compensation changes that are

[1:14:52] being proposed here still keep us on the high end of the market do you have a

[1:14:58] feel for that at this point? Yes, so what we did is we took

[1:15:03] the the compensation team in hcm took all the surrounding markets and they aged their

[1:15:08] their current salaries by two to three percent. We do believe that's going to lead us as a

[1:15:12] keep us as a market leader though yes, sir. I will say I cut text

[1:15:16] from three superintendents they wanted to know they said

[1:15:21] there's no way they're going to be able to take our teachers now and I

[1:15:26] said, that's correct. You cannot take our teachers yeah, and and then I guess that this

[1:15:33] might have to be developed a little bit further when we see what what our reserves actually

[1:15:37] turn out to be but what what do

[1:15:42] we anticipate? That our reserves will be if we

[1:15:47] adopt a budget along the lines of what's suggested here so based

[1:15:51] on our current reserves, we will still meet our local fund balance policy of the three months of reserves

[1:15:56] and and we still have at least two assuming we do

[1:16:01] nothing with our deficit budgets that we project we still have two years that we

[1:16:06] can sustain the current deficits that we are projecting

[1:16:11] okay, and then I just say this for anybody in the public is listening

[1:16:17] to that to us when we go for the bond when we have the

[1:16:22] bond election and if it does pass there will be an infusion

[1:16:26] or of authority anyway to spend money on the school buildings

[1:16:32] but that money cannot be used to spend on workforce and and

[1:16:41] so in one sense, we're dealing with the aging facilities through the bond program

[1:16:46] but we still are suffering from the operational side where the

[1:16:53] state has not made districts whole when you look

[1:16:58] at the package of funding for inflation that was that was

[1:17:03] very high so we did get an adjustment but in the aggregate

[1:17:08] the adjustment did not cover the inflation in our operating expenses

[1:17:14] that's correct. Thank you.

[1:17:18] that's all trustee form thank you, just a few questions and

[1:17:23] so we've adopted a deficit

[1:17:28] budget for the last three years,

[1:17:32] correct? Yes, and are we proposing another deficit

[1:17:36] budget? We will propose a deficit budget for 26 27. Yes

[1:17:41] okay, is it going to be anywhere near the deficit budget that we have this year?

[1:17:47] yes, it would be close

[1:17:51] to an estimated 90 some million

[1:17:56] dollars okay, and so throughout the state or the

[1:18:01] largest school districts proposing deficit budgets

[1:18:05] at the same rate. We are so currently there are I would say

[1:18:10] the majority of school districts in the state of texas are proposing deficit budgets based

[1:18:16] on the tasbo survey that we recently saw and so the way I

[1:18:22] guess that we come up with the additional monies is through the fund balance

[1:18:28] to balance it out, correct, correct so how much do we currently have in the fund

[1:18:34] balance and how much is assigned and how much is unassigned?

[1:18:38] currently in a unassigned fund balance. We have six hundred

[1:18:43] and thirty five million in assigned fund balance. I believe it's two hundred and

[1:18:51] thirty nine million and on the

[1:18:59] teachers robert, so are we keeping the same number

[1:19:03] of teachers. I've noticed that when I started out it was about ten thousand. We have

[1:19:08] about ninety four hundred. Are we projecting fewer teachers?

[1:19:13] yes, ma'am are our teachers and are generated by students so as we went through our spring

[1:19:17] budget process the number of teachers would have been reduced for next year versus this year

[1:19:22] so, how many do we have this year? I think it's around ninety four hundred maybe a

[1:19:26] little bit off and I can get a firm number and how many would we be projecting

[1:19:31] in this budget? I would need to go back and pull that day, but I can get that in there

[1:19:35] at the tracker for sure could you could you please get that for me and?

[1:19:49] I'm on page okay, it's three of the presentation and I'm

[1:19:55] looking at the difference in

[1:20:01] 2022 2023 and then the budget versus actual dollar amounts.

[1:20:07] why is why are the dollar amounts actual smaller than the budgeted amount?

[1:20:13] so the budgeted amounts is what we at the beginning of the year projected when we

[1:20:19] adopted the budget as we go through the year as a district we do our best

[1:20:24] to control our expenditures and so when we end the year because we have vacancies and

[1:20:29] payroll we try to control our contracted costs our supply

[1:20:34] costs we end the year better than what we projected and so

[1:20:38] that's where you see our expenditures come in lower than what we had projected

[1:20:43] at the beginning of the year now I'm on page four and we

[1:20:48] have all of these wonderful programs are they still being funded at

[1:20:54] the same amount that we funded them at this year based on this this projection?

[1:21:00] so I would have to look at the historical data what this slide is showing is that

[1:21:05] we are committed to continuing to invest in these programs as a district

[1:21:10] but it would be good to understand what we've been invested previously and if

[1:21:14] we're talking about upping the dollar specifically looking at the fact that we'll have fewer

[1:21:19] students I can get that information for you. Please. Thank you so much and I'd also

[1:21:27] like to have robert that same information on counselors, I

[1:21:32] know at one point we did increase the number of counselors that we have we had

[1:21:38] so it'll be interesting to see that same number

[1:21:43] on counselors okay, I can get that for you. Thank you. Thank

[1:21:48] you so much trustee mackey thank you all so much and thank you for your diligent work here if

[1:21:53] you can go back to slide three real fast just a few clarifying questions. I mean this I mean

[1:22:02] it shows the thoughtfulness for what you all have done this work to budget conservatively

[1:22:07] and then show up better than where we've been at each of these by large amounts to

[1:22:12] am I right to assume that? Obviously, we're in the 24 25

[1:22:16] or 25 26 school year now we don't have the actual for the end of the year but if we had this line for

[1:22:22] 25 26 it would read that 91 million dollars on the left-hand side and now we're

[1:22:26] tracking to get to around 90 million dollars still, right? That's correct. Okay that makes

[1:22:31] a lot of sense and can I say something to that? We weren't

[1:22:35] tracking we were tracking to be left thank you,

[1:22:39] it looked like it was we were tracking to be about 20 or so

[1:22:45] before the state changed its rules. That's correct. Got it I'll say just from my

[1:22:50] perspective and I appreciate your diligence looking at this and I know we have we have a

[1:22:55] fund balance above best practices, which is about that three months it's not a terrible thing

[1:22:59] but I would also note that like just from my own personal perspective that money is here to educate kids and we just saw

[1:23:04] from their last presentation while we're making great momentum we have more work to do and so I would personally be

[1:23:09] in favor of making sure that that money goes to moving the outcomes for kids though just also from

[1:23:14] my own personal perspective if that were to start to be projected to drop below three months I would have a

[1:23:19] very different take on that but we're not there and so I just want to give you and you dr I think we should be utilizing

[1:23:24] that to impact our system in the best way possible that you

[1:23:28] all see I'd love to know and if you can go a few more slides to the staff thank you.

[1:23:34] again. You all have been committed to this for a long time about making sure that we are a

[1:23:38] market pay leader across the board. I'm surprised we didn't see the dan slide

[1:23:42] in here directly but as you noted you always hear from certain groups, of

[1:23:47] course as this was being presented I heard it from a couple other groups that said what about us is my assumption

[1:23:52] that is every employee category reflected in the increases this year.

[1:23:58] yeah, the raises will be for all employees. We just picked some and then so I got a couple that I'll ask I see

[1:24:03] like counselors on here nurses where would they fall in this today campus support

[1:24:08] essential staff. Yeah, and nurses are going to be the campus support, but they're gonna be that

[1:24:13] instructional support two and three moves so they'll get somewhere between a three and a half to four point two based upon that

[1:24:19] compression okay, and then what about librarians, where do they

[1:24:23] fit in this? They're also going to be on the instructional support two and three so they're going

[1:24:27] to get the somewhere around the three point eight to four point two for our media specialist you

[1:24:31] gotcha and then like physical therapists or whatnot and I'll need to check physical therapists.

[1:24:36] gotcha. All right thank you for that. And then if you can go to the teacher slide,

[1:24:41] I think it was the next one. I know the legislation changed

[1:24:45] quite substantially the state tia previously, I think most

[1:24:49] districts were only certifying up to about 33% of teachers but they added a fourth designation and up to 50% of teachers do we

[1:24:54] have any sense of how that will impact us and how much more we would likely earn from the tia

[1:24:58] allotment based on? Our system yeah, generally I

[1:25:05] would say a conservative estimate is is that we're around 28 million dollars a

[1:25:09] year now plus or minus it fluctuates a little bit with teacher turnover and moves within the different attendance

[1:25:14] zones we're we're anticipating at least a forty four fifty four million dollar total

[1:25:18] increase with the new tia allotment so if we go back one slide then

[1:25:23] one way to think about is fifty six million thirty seven point five of which is for teachers

[1:25:28] roughly some twenty twenty five million is likely from an additional increase

[1:25:33] from the state tia as well. Yeah, correct I mean that's a good point too is that the tia

[1:25:37] is covering a lot of the raises but remember in dallas isd even though the law

[1:25:41] allows us to keep 10% for administrative costs in dallas isd not only do we not

[1:25:46] spend any of that money on central staff administrative support, but we actually put in some

[1:25:51] of our own money as well for our teacher rates so we go above we go. Well, it looks like if we're getting 25

[1:25:55] million more and we're going 37 million. That's a we're

[1:26:03] almost doubling it thank you for that. That's super helpful. And then my last question is on if we go sorry go back to

[1:26:07] slide four I think it was the different initiatives and dallas isd has been a leader in this for a long time I

[1:26:12] assume is there any way and you might not have it now? I would love to see I know we do a return on

[1:26:18] investment analysis I'm my assumption as we probably have roi analyses broken out in each of these categories

[1:26:23] for different things will the board be able to see that before we consider the budget in may?

[1:26:30] we have plans to bring it in may wonderful, thank you all so much and I appreciate this

[1:26:35] presentation and if I can say myself one small tracker the physical therapists are also instructional support two and

[1:26:40] three so they'll be the three point eight four point two no tracker needed trustee sanders just a couple

[1:26:47] of questions and I apologize in advance. I have to leave a

[1:26:54] little bit early today, but one quick question

[1:26:59] on the high quality tutoring remind me this is the strategy

[1:27:04] moving forward this is the work

[1:27:09] that's going to be happening in after school or is it going to be happening in school

[1:27:14] settings? The high quality it can

[1:27:18] actually be both okay, so there's some high quality tutoring that goes on within

[1:27:23] the school day and then there's some that's going on, you know

[1:27:28] after the school day. So it's a it's a variety okay, great

[1:27:35] recapture the recapture change can you remind I know?

[1:27:43] it's from 110 to 80 I believe correct. Can you explain just in?

[1:27:48] layman's terms that difference so recapture is basically

[1:27:53] determined by the estimated enrollment and property value

[1:27:58] growth so you plug those two numbers and that determines basically your recapture got it

[1:28:03] so basically the recapture difference is in the declining enrollment primarily,

[1:28:07] correct? Well, I I want to clarify and

[1:28:12] correct me if I'm misunderstanding it's also a

[1:28:19] function of the tax compression though because our property values then because we have

[1:28:24] homestead exemptions then the values of the properties while they're going up on our rolls

[1:28:30] they're going we're getting less credit for those because of the growth because so when

[1:28:34] student enrollment goes up yeah, and property values if student enrollment goes

[1:28:40] down and property values go up your recapture is going

[1:28:45] in the wrong direction. You're gonna have to pay more money so we had over the state

[1:28:50] overestimated which is also though now hitting us on the other side

[1:28:54] on the hold harmless because then they did not make us whole so we lost dollars on our

[1:28:59] property values. So yeah, okay. We're gonna save some on the recapture

[1:29:05] but they then took it away from us and then some on the

[1:29:10] hold harmless side so there's so many and every single school

[1:29:14] district gets affected differently because the school funding laws are so convoluted

[1:29:20] it does not hit every but if you're this if x

[1:29:25] but y then z but if y but not z then x I mean it is it's really hard for all of us

[1:29:31] because we'll sit and go well how come this district this and we're this it's very difficult

[1:29:36] for us to even run calculations and models and it's getting harder the which kind

[1:29:41] of brings me to my point I'm gonna step on the soapbox for a little bit

[1:29:46] I know we don't have throngs of people out here in the crowd to hear but you know kudos and congrats to all

[1:29:54] the efficiencies that we're finding all of the systems that we have everything that we're doing but the entire state is

[1:30:03] on an unsustainable pathway for education we are in a

[1:30:09] world where we keep saying move to texas come to texas be in

[1:30:14] texas grow live raise your kids

[1:30:19] in texas and most of the large

[1:30:24] school districts and a lot of the smaller ones are running deficit budgets right now

[1:30:28] for multiple years running and we're gonna you know, we're

[1:30:33] gonna do the work we're gonna we're gonna nitpick we're gonna be six sigma certified folks

[1:30:38] who will get in there and try and find all of the efficiencies that we can

[1:30:43] find but we have got to get some help and we're gonna need to rally the broader troops

[1:30:49] the community needs to know about what we're dealing with because while they might not be

[1:30:55] here to pay attention to this part if tough decisions have to be made that affect

[1:31:01] them and their communities and their families and their kids everybody's gonna be up

[1:31:06] in arms, but the conversations and the ire is not going

[1:31:12] to be directed to where it needs to be directed and we have got to get people at the state

[1:31:17] to help us. I know we are advocates for that, but there's got to be a bigger pie

[1:31:23] of folks that are pushing for increased funding and when we

[1:31:27] got the update that we got during our training yesterday that there's no appetite

[1:31:33] presently to increase education funding

[1:31:42] that's insane, that's crazy and we can't stand

[1:31:46] for it so you're sitting at the table right now. So

[1:31:50] that's why I'm talking to you. But also I'm talking to our broader community we

[1:31:55] have got to fix this. This is not a sustainable pathway and they're asking us

[1:32:02] to perform miracles and at the same time some of those

[1:32:06] same voices that don't want to fund us will then take a swipe at public education saying why

[1:32:11] aren't you doing your? Job it's because we're starving

[1:32:17] no further questions truth

[1:32:26] occurred well, I wouldn't gonna make a speech but now I want to make a speech now I do want

[1:32:30] to just follow up on that frustration it's what I've talked about from this ds for a long time now I get

[1:32:35] constituents all the time who want to go white. Why do you not have any more money? My property taxes keep going up

[1:32:40] and up and up I don't understand and that's because no matter how much your property taxes go up the amount

[1:32:45] of money we're allowed to spend per student is set explicitly by the state so if your values

[1:32:51] go up, but we're only allowed to spend the same amount. Where's all that extra going?

[1:32:56] what's going back to the state who puts less and less dollars into public education every

[1:33:00] year and then every time we go to legislative session we have to go beg the legislature to

[1:33:04] let us keep the property tax dollars that the public thinks are going to public education

[1:33:09] when they're not and it's just extremely frustrating to go have to beg and then they come

[1:33:13] and say well, we gave you a several billion dollars last session well, that's that's

[1:33:18] several billion dollars of the money you essentially kept us held held from us and

[1:33:22] you only gave us part of it back and now we're stuck so anyway,

[1:33:26] now I'm I would almost went to the whole meeting without talking now. I got frustrated

[1:33:31] so I couldn't help it. Um, okay speaking of frustrations on the

[1:33:36] hold harmless adjustment were were we originally provided an

[1:33:44] estimate by tea of what home harmless was going to be? Yes, and did we have that

[1:33:49] number in hand at the time we created our budget?

[1:33:53] yes, and so we adopted a budget with a set of assumptions that the state told us we could rely

[1:33:58] on is that correct? Yeah, and the state is now I'm

[1:34:03] trying to find another phrase other than pull the rug out from under us

[1:34:08] but I'm really struggling to do so the state has now after we have adopted the budget after we have already

[1:34:12] told the taxpayers you know, we know we're running into deficits, but we think we'll be able

[1:34:17] to clear, you know do our best to be stewards they've changed the rules on us and now our

[1:34:22] deficits going to be materially higher to the tune of 50. So we're 50

[1:34:26] million dollars or so. Is that correct? That's correct I'm frustrated

[1:34:32] and hopefully the state will realize that you can't change the rules on us once again like they have done in the past

[1:34:38] and they will correct this and we'll be able to have an end result more in line of what we

[1:34:43] were hoping our expectations would be my last question was, you know I know you're you

[1:34:48] chief ramos you and your team please don't let my frustration in any way come

[1:34:53] across as a reflection on the wonderful work you guys are doing and and and every year

[1:34:57] you find ways to be excellent stewards

[1:35:01] of our taxpayers dollars and that's why we've been able to dramatically reduce the

[1:35:06] deficits that were projected for the last many years I am

[1:35:10] just curious, you know, there is at least a little bit more time left in the fiscal year do we anticipate being

[1:35:15] able to close even further and toward that that, you know, I'm looking at slide to where

[1:35:19] we're projecting a budget

[1:35:24] deficit of 90 basically 91 million dollars is that kind of where we think we'll end up or

[1:35:29] do we think there's some hope that'll get even smaller over the next few months, you know, our goal is to continue

[1:35:34] to reduce that deficit, but I'm gonna answer it with I'm gonna under promise so that I can try

[1:35:40] to deliver I I expect this

[1:35:46] to be a little better. But again, I we just we don't want this time. We're very in a

[1:35:53] very different spot than we were and it's late in the year and so that's my

[1:35:59] hesitant the other times I felt comfortable saying hey, we're gonna be able

[1:36:03] to do this we're gonna be able to do that. We are essentially, you know halfway through april we have two months left

[1:36:12] in this budget year and we just got notification right in the memo in march

[1:36:16] before spring break with regard to this change. So we we anticipate doing better

[1:36:22] and just really unsure right now what we can do

[1:36:26] in two and a half months. We will do something. I just don't know what and am I

[1:36:32] correct that this calculation changes? Out disproportionate the right

[1:36:37] word, but it's hitting us as a district much harder than it is others right now we cannot find

[1:36:41] anyone that is having a percent hit anywhere close

[1:36:45] to what we are including houston I'm not a math whiz or

[1:36:50] I don't want to show it's on myself I'm pretty good at math, but I have no idea how you can have a calculation

[1:36:56] change that hits one district out of the state dramatically worse than everyone else that

[1:37:01] that doesn't make sense and hopefully the state will revisit and can make a

[1:37:05] correction. So, thank you

[1:37:09] trustee turner I want to say a great presentation and I feel

[1:37:14] the pain that my colleagues are talking about my main concern

[1:37:20] even though we've had these cuts I will still be interested and maybe we'll just have this

[1:37:25] in a one-on-one conversation about some things in the budget

[1:37:30] that I've taken a look at that I do have some concerns about but I will talk

[1:37:35] to the superintendent offline

[1:37:41] about that. Thank you trustee lambert well, everybody had such great questions that I

[1:37:46] appreciate the diligence with which we're all taking a look at this I also appreciate the diligence with which you

[1:37:51] prepared all this information and I find it. I just want

[1:37:58] to say having a you know 50 ish million dollar hit from a change in a calculation

[1:38:03] from february to now is tough. So thank you all for rolling up your sleeves

[1:38:08] digging deep trying to understand and provide clarity so that perhaps we can we can

[1:38:13] make it right. So I want to I want to say thank you all

[1:38:18] for that. I I also will have a quick question

[1:38:23] on the assumption of the four and a half percent rate, where does that come from?

[1:38:28] so that comes from looking at our historical growth and actually we just met with the

[1:38:32] chief appraiser today and they gave us a confirmation that

[1:38:38] that is what they are looking at as far as property value growth. Okay, great thank you.

[1:38:45] thank you so much. I look forward to the greater detail on the roi calculations and you

[1:38:49] know in may when we take a really roll up our sleeves and take a hard look

[1:38:54] at the budget and take our vote so thank you for that. And I also circling back to to trustee mish case point

[1:38:59] in my conversations with the community it's noted

[1:39:04] that we have two buckets

[1:39:09] of money. So we have the bucket by which we're going to the voters and they get to opine

[1:39:14] on whether or not they want to fund facilities and then we

[1:39:18] have this bucket which is which is designated or dictated by the state legislature. It is not in the hands of voters

[1:39:23] it's in the hands of the state and they tell us and those are two very different things as he

[1:39:27] mentioned I think that's really important for us to drive home and to continue to educate our just you know

[1:39:33] constituents on that the two buckets of money are very separate

[1:39:38] facilities is voter decided and operating funds the day-to-day,

[1:39:42] you know paying the teachers instructional materials

[1:39:47] transportation costs, you know gas, etc. Utilities. All

[1:39:52] of that is really we kind of get what we get and appreciate what we get very

[1:39:58] much and at the same time hope that we can get more so thank you so much for all the detail.

[1:40:03] I look forward to our conversation in may I know it's going to make a good detailed one.

[1:40:10] thanks trustee garcia thank you

[1:40:14] for the presentation, this is very helpful and understanding something we've

[1:40:19] already know that we're on a starving budget. I think was

[1:40:24] said before and this sounds like a rhetorical question,

[1:40:29] but is there a way to prep for false projections in the future. Is that something that?

[1:40:33] chief ramos, maybe you're a magician like that. I mean that the only the best way to prep for it is just

[1:40:38] to be conservative with your budgeting but okay, well there are some areas of

[1:40:45] the budget that I will address continue to address in my

[1:40:50] one-on-ones and also have some questions around different

[1:40:58] roles. I don't want to know every role I don't need to know what they all do

[1:41:02] but some you know high-level understanding as a newer board member and then I also just

[1:41:06] want to I think it'll it's stuck out. I know you mentioned

[1:41:11] there's community meetings how how do trustees support these community meetings and how can

[1:41:17] we engage? I know that we get so many questions outside

[1:41:22] of those meetings, but you had a list of them. I know I saw

[1:41:27] environmental center so so doubt yeah, so a participation

[1:41:33] at the meetings if you can participate it would be greatly appreciated and is there the

[1:41:38] are the dates already out? Yeah so the last slide has the

[1:41:43] dates and the time and our communications team has already started pushing those out and

[1:41:48] they'll continue to do so and we can make sure that our campuses put that information

[1:41:53] out through their own you know campus informations whether

[1:41:58] that's their organization's ptas sbdms we'll use all

[1:42:05] avenues through chief you at powell as well as you know any any event that we're holding

[1:42:09] will make sure that this information is also readily available so anyone can attend

[1:42:15] to any of these wonderful. Thank you round two trustee

[1:42:21] curry just a real small point well trustee miss kay and

[1:42:25] trustee weinberg talked about how you know, this is

[1:42:31] about the sort of capital side of the balance sheet as opposed to the operating side but just to shout out to props see just

[1:42:35] so people understand what that does it does refinance some debt which would then as part of that shift some

[1:42:40] of the debt payments from the operating side

[1:42:44] to the other side of the sheet which would free up at least a little bit of operating cash is that

[1:42:50] correct? That's correct. I just wanted to make sure that that you know while the legislature

[1:42:55] controls the vast majority of the operating budget there's at least a small thing that taxpayers will have the

[1:43:00] opportunity to vote on related to additional dollars

[1:43:04] in the operating budget just

[1:43:09] you ever just quickly in the meetings that we have with the public I'm hoping that

[1:43:14] perhaps it you all I always think of this so bear with me if you already have which I

[1:43:20] imagine you have but just kind of that basic overview of how school finance works

[1:43:25] on both sides and then also, you know kind of I think what we were talking

[1:43:30] about yesterday and an opportunity to tell the public also the district's results and

[1:43:35] sort of as as part of return on investment

[1:43:40] in the overarching sense, right? How the investment that we've

[1:43:44] made? Relates to how students are

[1:43:48] performing. I just wanted to put that out there. Thank

[1:43:53] you jersey for me. I just want to quickly say when we go to the public what?

[1:43:58] we struggle with what you're telling us.

[1:44:04] so, you know, the public's gonna struggle superintendent I hope there is

[1:44:10] a takeaway some kind of questionnaire or something

[1:44:14] to give the public an opportunity to interject and

[1:44:19] to be able to give their opinion rather than just a presentation. We

[1:44:24] need a takeaway

[1:44:28] for the public thank you I'll also commit that we will put

[1:44:34] what our first draft of our presentation with doing some sort

[1:44:39] of takeaway from our public. We will put that in a board update so that all

[1:44:45] of you can see what we will be utilizing and that way if

[1:44:50] necessary we can certainly make some adjustments. So thank you for raising that and we'll put

[1:44:54] that in in a board update that'll probably be me coming with the suggestions trustees

[1:45:03] further questions seeing none. Thank you all for the presentation trustees.

[1:45:07] we'll now move to agenda items or questions under minutes submitted

[1:45:14] for approval. However, the minutes trustees will be posted indeligent

[1:45:18] for your review the trustees under statutory items 10a I want to make you aware

[1:45:24] at the last regular meeting of the month the board of

[1:45:28] trustees before an election of trustees the current president of each local board

[1:45:33] of trustees is required to announce the name of each board member who has completed

[1:45:38] the required continuing education who has exceeded the required hours

[1:45:43] of continuing education anyway, and who is deficient in meeting the required continuing

[1:45:48] education as of the anniversary of the date of each board members election

[1:45:52] or appointment to the board completing the required continuing education is a basic obligation and expectation

[1:45:57] of any sitting board member under the state board of education rule if you have not

[1:46:03] completed your required training, please do so before this month's april 23rd

[1:46:09] meeting or else I guess

[1:46:13] trustees any questions? Um, any other questions

[1:46:19] under statutory items 10 no

[1:46:35] how about policy updates which is

[1:46:41] 11 there's only one 11 a anyone

[1:46:50] okay okay, what about academics and transformation division

[1:46:57] which would be 14 14 a anything

[1:47:05] there information technology division 16 a I see trustee foreman, right?

[1:47:23] okay okay 16 a I'm just curious

[1:47:28] do we have any other contracts for it professional services or

[1:47:33] is this the only one? So we have contracts

[1:47:39] for instance with power school, there's

[1:47:43] professional services baked into that contract this is separate from any other

[1:47:49] overarching contract for me, I just like

[1:47:54] to know and see how many other professional services contracts

[1:47:59] we have. Yes including this one and a dollar amount and the

[1:48:03] year we actually let that particular contract. Yes

[1:48:07] trustee. All right. Thank you

[1:48:12] okay trustees anyone else for 16 a okay, then we'll go to

[1:48:16] financial services division

[1:48:21] which is 18 a yes

[1:48:26] through which one 18 a yes, 18 a 18 a trustee turner yeah, I

[1:48:32] have a concern my man concerned

[1:48:45] a budget is looking at a you basically

[1:48:52] with transportation and they're already at 75%

[1:48:57] of their spending already here in february so is that related to fuel costs? Is it related

[1:49:02] to overtime? Like can you tell me why?

[1:49:08] it's the cost yeah that's actually related to the payroll estimate and if

[1:49:14] you look at next year's budget, we have adjusted our

[1:49:19] transportation estimate and it's because when we looked at the historical spending

[1:49:24] on payroll we were miscalculating our payroll

[1:49:29] estimate so that's kind of where we've adjusted the payroll for next year because I

[1:49:33] see in the proposal budget that you have overtime for a million dollars, is that the adjustment that you're

[1:49:38] making? Yes also, is that one of the tools that you're kind of put in place

[1:49:43] to make sure that we don't go over budget when it comes to overtime so overtime actually

[1:49:48] this year and last year. We've reduced overtime by 30% so that's one

[1:49:54] of the areas that we're looking at with regards to our budget so we've managed to control overtime

[1:49:58] in a district wide however in this particular department we are challenged by the fact

[1:50:03] that we don't have enough drivers and so our only other option if we don't and we're

[1:50:08] thankful I actually want to thank our drivers who do pick up the extra runs because otherwise we would have

[1:50:13] to make decisions like the first place we'd have to cut. I mean we could keep

[1:50:18] from going overtime we would just have to cut routes so for

[1:50:23] instance the first area that costs us the most that's not required would be magnet

[1:50:29] transportation but we all know that if we cut magnet transportation that's an

[1:50:34] accessibility for many students and so that's one of the areas that we we it

[1:50:39] costs you more you're absolutely right cost us more

[1:50:43] because we have to pay time and a half when we pay overtime but if we don't have any enough

[1:50:48] drivers, then our option is to reduce services and so

[1:50:53] while we've done a good job of overtime district wide I definitely want to make sure

[1:50:59] that I'm being transparent I don't see us being this

[1:51:05] particular department would not be a place that I would be able to cut our overtime now I'm not

[1:51:11] saying to cut over time. I just want to make sure that we're managing it properly and also know

[1:51:16] like any efficiencies with routes schedule changes

[1:51:20] things of that nature. Is that something else that we are exploring? Yes, we actually

[1:51:26] reduced our special ed routes last year. Okay. Now we'll talk

[1:51:30] about fuel costs, but especially what's going on right now what impact are we

[1:51:36] forecasting for a rise in fuel especially going into

[1:51:40] the summertime? So fuel we've with regards

[1:51:45] to few we kind of priced out our contract and it's a fixed cost so that minimizes our

[1:51:50] impact whenever a few costs increase so we buy like futures. Yeah. Okay. Yes

[1:51:55] thank you, so it just a quorum

[1:52:00] in 18 a yeah, just just real quick so we're telling how many

[1:52:08] square miles is dallas isd 340 320 300 and I think it's

[1:52:13] it's right under 400 like 380

[1:52:18] almost 390 square. It's huge. Yes, ma'am. So and that I asked that question

[1:52:22] for a simple reason. I understand the frustration

[1:52:27] of trustee turner looking at the numbers, but because it is so large I don't know if

[1:52:34] we'll ever have enough bus drivers in you can prop you

[1:52:38] probably remember when we took over transportation from

[1:52:43] dallas county schools, and we knew at the time that that was going

[1:52:47] to be a struggle and I think it continues to be a struggle trying to

[1:52:52] manage that particular situation and with all of the options that we have

[1:52:59] transporting kids back and forth is really something

[1:53:05] that's cumbersome and we also

[1:53:09] had cut back on some of our our field trips which hopefully we

[1:53:16] will pick up on more of those field trips, but that's also transportation

[1:53:22] costs and also drivers, so I think that's a really difficult

[1:53:27] area to to work with with such a large district if we were

[1:53:33] small, I won't call any small districts names because I get in trouble, but if we were a

[1:53:38] smaller district, I think it would be much more manageable

[1:53:47] okay, so I saw ramos shaking his head and agreeing with me

[1:53:54] trustees anyone else for 18a okay, then anything else under

[1:53:59] financial services division which is 18a through 23a okay

[1:54:22] okay, and how about operation

[1:54:26] services division, which is 25 and 26. Oh, I have 22 did you

[1:54:32] skip that or did I forget to say okay, so a 22 a yeah,

[1:54:37] okay 22 a trustee warnberg. I just have a quick question. That's the federal grants and it's just I'm curious how when

[1:54:44] do we get confirmed that this funding will actually be available to us? How at risk is this amount

[1:54:50] of funding? It was a hundred sixteen one that hundred eighteen million 116 point five

[1:54:56] million. Yeah, so that is that is the funding that we are expecting to receive so it's

[1:55:01] been confirmed. That's that's not at risk in any way. Correct. That is confirmed as far as we know. Yes okay,

[1:55:06] no recalculations or that we know that we know of thank you okay, anyone

[1:55:17] for operation services division 25 or 26 okay what about

[1:55:26] construction services division, which is 28 and 29 I have a

[1:55:34] question. Okay. I see turner which one which uh,

[1:55:38] which item I just wanted brent to get out of seat that was it. Oh,

[1:55:43] really? No, he's there's oh my goodness. All right. He wanted

[1:55:48] you to exercise. Okay. Okay. Anyone else construction services division so, you know

[1:55:55] supposed to do that's my job. There you go okay, nothing else, okay looks

[1:56:01] like you're good right? Okay, then trustees will turn

[1:56:05] to agenda item 30 wait, okay. I did get clarification because of the question we did we are

[1:56:10] 384 square miles and houston is 320 oh, there you go. Trustees

[1:56:17] will turn to june. I'm 30 adjournment. The time is 6 34

[1:56:23] p.m., the meeting is adjourned.

Apr 09, 2026 Board Briefing

Agenda

Transcript