[0:05] Good evening and welcome to the april work session meeting of the richardson isd board of trustees.

[0:11] I'm chris poteet, board president. Mr. Eager will not be joining us today.

[0:15] however, we do have a quorum present and this meeting is called to order at 6.01 p.m.

[0:23] at this time, we will proceed with our public comment section. Ms.

[0:27] renteria, do we have any persons who have signed up to address the board?

[0:33] we do not, mr. Poteet. All right. Thank you. With that, we'll move

[0:38] to our first item on the agenda. It's an information item,

[0:43] and we're going to receive a presentation regarding algebra 1 for all.

[0:47] ms. Brannan. Thank you, president poteet. Thank you, board.

[0:52] several years ago, our teaching and learning team, along with school leadership,

[0:57] underwent a journey to really look

[1:02] at and why many of our students were not accessing higher level math, as well as looking

[1:06] at tsi scores, sat, act, and continued

[1:12] to recognize that one of the barriers that our students have in taking that higher

[1:16] level math was algebra 1, and really not taking algebra 1 until that freshman year.

[1:22] and research has been very clear that when students take algebra 1 in eighth grade,

[1:28] they that it opens up tremendous avenues for students, especially

[1:32] first-generation college students. And our team at that point made a commitment that we

[1:37] were going to do the work, and we knew it was going to be a long road ahead

[1:43] to adjust curriculum, to provide professional learning to teachers,

[1:48] to support student readiness, to help communicate with parents the reason why this was such an important project

[1:53] for us. We are not where we need

[1:57] to be yet, but man have we made great strides and we are excited

[2:02] to just provide an update. One of the main outcomes that

[2:06] we wanted for this meeting was we know every time that

[2:10] we present for example our math scores we always look at that funky kind of grade

[2:15] seven and eight and part of that is because we have this acceleration and so we just

[2:20] wanted to provide you board as well as our community. With a little bit

[2:25] of deeper understanding of why this is important and the

[2:30] work that we are doing to increase student outcomes,

[2:34] student achievement specifically measured with algebra 1. And so huge applause to our

[2:38] teaching and learning team and to our math team who have just been steadfast.

[2:43] and there have been many times when we look at each other and we say, hey, is this the right work?

[2:49] and we keep coming back to our why of our north star goal and providing access

[2:54] to every opportunity for students that we can. So I'm going to now turn it over to dr.

[2:58] leeper and to ms. Teague, who are going to just walk us through the work and where we are and how

[3:03] we're going to continue to improve those outcomes. Thank you so much for such a

[3:08] great introduction. I feel complete now. All right, so we are going

[3:14] to be looking at algebra for all tonight, and we do appreciate the opportunity to bring an update because it

[3:19] really is important work. I want to start off, as we always do,

[3:24] by grounding ourselves in the north star goal. Every student, teacher, and

[3:28] leader will meet or exceed their academic growth goals.

[3:35] the next thing I want to do, though, is introduce you to the newest member

[3:39] of my team. She's been with us since last july. Her name is mia watson.

[3:44] she is our middle school specialist. She works with our

[3:50] pre-algebra and algebra and even our algebra one in high school.

[3:54] so it has been a wonderful year working with her.

[3:58] and so she is going to bring, y'all know how I like to do in math, I like you

[4:03] to have a little activity. We're going to call this the ignite activity because we are

[4:08] paying homage to the learner framework and so we want to do that for you and

[4:12] we are so excited and mia is going to take it away now.

[4:18] hi everybody. The first thing I would like to do is, this activity is called the

[4:24] algebra, the equation elevator. I would like for you all to look

[4:29] at the cards that are in front of you. There are pink cards,

[4:34] there are yellow cards, and the blue cards. The blue cards are the grade level. So we're going to start

[4:39] at sixth grade, and we're going to go all the way down to algebra 1.

[4:43] and then we have the purple cards, which are the teks indicators. And then we have the orange

[4:48] cards, which are the equations. So I'm going to give you

[4:52] about a minute. You and your partner are going to work together.

[4:56] and you are going to match the correct grade level with the correct equation and also

[5:01] try to find the right indicator for that grade level.

[7:44] we're yes.

[7:48] okay. Do you want to tell them the answer? Okay.

[7:52] so thank you for doing that activity. I loved all of the talking

[7:58] and like processing all of the vocabulary that are inside of the cards.

[8:04] and you were able to match the teaks with the correct grade level. And also I saw that

[8:09] in the groups, you and your partner may have been wondering that.

[8:13] seventh and eighth grade, how they went, what order did those equations go in, and sometimes that's where

[8:18] our students, that's how they feel. Like, I don't know what

[8:22] to do first or what comes before something else, and so here in risd,

[8:28] we have tried to make a conscious effort when we, now that we don't have a actual

[8:32] seventh grade math class, that we embed those skills within sixth grade and then

[8:37] also embed them in the eighth grade. Math or the seventh grade math that they take now.

[8:42] so the pre-algebra class that we have. So the first equation for sixth grade is equation a,

[8:47] which also goes with the one step equation.

[8:51] so all they have to do is combine like terms and then isolate the

[8:57] variable. Then seventh grade is equation d.

[9:02] they have to know how to combine like terms and then isolate the variable. Second is the eighth grade

[9:08] teac, which is equation b. Equation b has variables

[9:13] on both sides, but this question has a variable, I mean a constant

[9:18] on the outside where they have to distribute to the parentheses. And then equation c is

[9:23] algebra one, where they combine all of those skills. So it starts really early. You may think it starts

[9:28] in sixth grade, but it actually starts in elementary. Can you believe your students do algebra

[9:33] in elementary school? Yes, they are. This is a building block. For where we are sending our

[9:37] students. So when you think about algebra 1 for all, you need to think ground level.

[9:41] like where will they start? How are we preparing them in elementary to go up into

[9:45] secondary math and being successful? This is a very good indicator

[9:49] of how college will go for our students. And we want

[9:54] to make the math accessible to everybody. And that's what we've been doing here now

[9:59] by having our pre-algebra in 7th grade and our 8th graders taking algebra 1. It helps them.

[10:04] and we are able to build that math skill that we want people to have.

[10:08] and it makes them confident. You can hear them talking like today. I was at north, you know,

[10:13] helping with star. I've been helping prepare the kids for star and they look so happy today.

[10:20] they did not look stressed out at all. So our teachers are doing a really good job bridging the

[10:24] gap from where they were to where we are now. And the students looked happy

[10:29] and I was happy to see that because I'm a math person. So I just I wanted I want everybody

[10:35] to feel the way that I feel about my content. And I could see it in the students when I go

[10:39] to the campuses and visit with the middle school kids. So yes we were very excited to hear one

[10:45] of our co-workers got a call from her son and he said oh it was easy. It's a little bit scary

[10:51] to hear that but at the same time we're going with it was a positive.

[10:56] okay I want to start off tonight looking

[11:00] at the journey of algebra for all because it it has been a journey

[11:04] to get where we are now. In 2018-2019, risd made the decision

[11:10] to begin the work to make rigorous math accessible

[11:14] to all students.

[11:18] and so they phased in a program called algebra for all.

[11:23] and I will tell you, just personal, I love that name. I think it's a great name.

[11:28] I think it's a great message. Our second step occurred in

[11:32] 2019 and 2020 when we actually launched. The program.

[11:37] we started it at two schools, liberty and apollo, and unfortunately

[11:42] covid hit, and so we never got star scores that year. We went home

[11:47] at spring break, and we didn't come back until the next school year.

[11:52] 2020 and 2021 then were our second year, and we continued to phase in

[11:59] that program and roll schools into the program.

[12:04] in 2023, tea jumped on our bandwagon. They released senate bill

[12:11] 2124, which encourages all schools and all school

[12:16] districts to get students into algebra 1

[12:20] in eighth grade. In 2425, all eight of our

[12:26] junior highs and middle schools were implementing algebra for all.

[12:31] and so that's very exciting because it tells you where we are now. We're fully in.

[12:37] I want to talk about the why. Why is it important that we

[12:41] put eighth graders in algebra 1? And there's several things

[12:46] that we have to think about with this. First of all is college

[12:50] readiness and access for all. We want to increase the

[12:55] opportunities for underrepresented students. We want to ensure that

[12:59] they're not shut out of pathways for college and competitive careers.

[13:04] I always think about this. It doesn't end when they walk across the stage.

[13:08] we want them to have good jobs and be strong members of the community.

[13:13] and so what we've done those previous 13 years, that's the start

[13:17] to get them going. The other thing that is

[13:21] really good with algebra is for abstract thinking. And if you've seen me present

[13:26] before, you know that I talk about concrete, representational,

[13:30] and abstract. Abstract is what we get in algebra 1.

[13:35] and the great thing about that crucial, critical thinking and problem solving

[13:39] is that it's transferable. If you can problem solve in algebra 1, you can transfer

[13:44] that to other disciplines and areas in your life.

[13:49] and that's what we want. Our kids need to be able to solve problems.

[13:53] finally, we know. That research supports this. Research tells us that

[13:58] getting into algebra at an earlier age will increase and

[14:03] make higher math scores and a greater likelihood of taking

[14:07] advanced mathematics. And I'll show you in just a second,

[14:12] that's true in our district. It's also with better long-term outcomes because

[14:16] what we see is kids completing degrees and having greater earning potential.

[14:22] and those things are so important. And so when we look at algebra

[14:27] at the early ages or in eighth grade, we really are seeing and setting our

[14:31] kids up for more success. And maybe, julie, could you touch on,

[14:36] we also recognize that for many students, going directly into college

[14:41] may not be their pathway. They may have their eyes set on a career going right out

[14:46] of high school that might also be high wage,

[14:50] high demand. How does this work also prepare them maybe for some

[14:56] of those skilled trades? That's a good question and it obviously does because what

[15:00] we see with our kids that have completed algebra and moved on to higher

[15:05] mathematics is they have those crucial critical thinking skills and so they're able

[15:10] to problem solve. They're able to be working on a construction site and

[15:14] realize that something's not right or realize that something doesn't fit.

[15:19] we see those kids really grow in their personality and

[15:24] in their ability. It's not just math. It really is

[15:29] about skills that you can use in your lifetime.

[15:33] not all kids are going to go to college and do that route, and we know that.

[15:37] one of the things, well, I'll talk about it on another slide, but we're

[15:42] seeing such improvement in our ccmr scores, and that's something that we

[15:46] really, really want to celebrate. On the next slide, you'll see

[15:51] that we've come a long way in just a few years.

[15:56] when you look at what our scores are or how many

[16:00] of our children took algebra 1 in 8th grade in 2018, the

[16:05] year before we rolled out this program,

[16:10] you see that we had a total of 960 students that were

[16:17] in algebra 1 that year. In 2025, you see that we had

[16:21] 02,061 students in algebra for all.

[16:27] and the other thing that I want you to notice are the numbers

[16:31] below the 2061. Because what you see there is

[16:37] almost an identical snapshot of our actual enrollment in the district.

[16:42] and that is so important for us to understand. Because we are getting our

[16:46] kids in there that were

[16:51] underrepresented and now are able to do this.

[16:55] just to point out that those demographic percentages almost mirror that of our district.

[17:00] I went and looked today. We're at 30% white, 38% hispanic.

[17:05] it was almost identical. I was really surprised and very happy when I looked

[17:11] at that. When we look at the number

[17:15] of testers, this is where we will see some different numbers come into play.

[17:19] and I think it's important that we acknowledge this and look at it.

[17:24] in 2023, we were well into algebra for all. We'd been doing it

[17:28] for two or three years at that point. And so you'll see that

[17:33] in seventh grade, we only had 202 seventh graders taking the seventh

[17:38] grade star. Two years later, as we rolled everybody in,

[17:43] last year we had 14 seventh graders take the seventh

[17:48] grade star. It didn't all leave the

[17:53] district. They were just all in eighth grade math.

[17:58] and so that is what is so exciting. When I look at,

[18:02] and I'm going to jump over to the column that says eighth graders taking algebra 1, I

[18:08] think it's important to see that in 2023, we had 01,772 students taking

[18:13] algebra 1 in eighth grade. Bless you. In 2024, we had 2007.

[18:22] and in 2025, we had 2,061 eighth graders taking

[18:27] algebra 1, and that is exciting. The other number that you'll

[18:32] notice that really is changing is our ninth graders taking algebra 1. The more kids we can get

[18:38] through algebra 1 in middle school, the better off we'll be

[18:43] for those kids. We know that we will never

[18:48] have no kids in algebra 1 in high school. Because there will always be

[18:52] kids that move in that were at a place where maybe algebra 1 wasn't as prevalent

[18:59] in eighth grade as it is here in richardson. There will always be students in there, but we went from

[19:06] 01,946 in 2023 to 1,210, a difference of over 700

[19:13] students in two years taking algebra

[19:17] in high school. I want to look at some data

[19:22] trends that we've seen because it is important and it is something that we are

[19:27] very cognizant of that the scores are not exactly where we want them to be.

[19:32] the work is not done. We are continuing to improve and work

[19:37] on things, but I want to look at this full picture. You can see that we had

[19:42] seventh graders taking the algebra 1 test. These are a handful of advanced kids who are

[19:46] obviously actually working. Two grades above where they

[19:52] would be and you can see how high their scores are and so that tells you they're

[19:57] exactly where they need to be. They have not overstepped what they can do.

[20:01] in eighth grade, taking algebra 1, you see that our scores are really hanging in there.

[20:06] some years, the test is harder than other years. We know that.

[20:10] but we also can see that our kids are doing a really, really good job.

[20:15] in ninth grade, we see that as well as eighth grade. We need some more support

[20:19] there, and we are looking at ways to get that done,

[20:24] and I'll talk about those in just a minute, because it is important that we know the

[20:28] work isn't done. This work continues and we are continuing to do it.

[20:32] on this slide, I wanted to

[20:37] give you a teacher's perspective. Catherine, and she goes by

[20:41] katie caravano, is a middle school teacher at apollo

[20:46] junior high. She has been there for several years.

[20:51] she taught pre-algebra and now teaches algebra. And so I thought she was a good voice to talk

[20:56] about how it feels on the... On the end of it

[21:00] of a teacher and so I want to play her do I just point this and press let's see oh here

[21:05] we go hello I'm catherine

[21:11] caravano and I work at apollo junior high I am an algebra one teacher I've been

[21:16] doing algebra one for three years we do our algebra for all program where our sixth

[21:20] grade students move up as seventh graders into pre-algebra and then the

[21:25] eighth graders will take algebra 1.

[21:29] before we had this program, we had to convince the sixth graders

[21:35] to take advanced math so that they could move on to pre-algebra seventh graders.

[21:40] and a lot of them heard that word advanced and they're like, nope, I'm not going

[21:45] to do it. And I would have them sitting in my class bored doing the lesson before I even finished it,

[21:49] like being done. And so we would then have to do a process of have them take a test so they could

[21:54] then skip a grade and that was always more of a struggle whereas now they get that

[21:58] chance from the beginning and then they move on and they just do beautifully seamlessly one thing that I

[22:04] would love to add into the program for the students who are struggling

[22:09] with that jump is if we had a math lab, it would really be helpful to

[22:14] those students who just need a little bit more help front loading and getting those gaps in.

[22:20] and then we see, we just see

[22:24] so, like I've seen so much more growth because

[22:28] like I said, I used to teach pre-algebra and seventh grade math. The number of kids that I see

[22:33] successfully taking their algebra 1 class and that star test has just been so many

[22:37] more numbers from when we only have them taking it as advanced students.

[22:43] our on-level students do awesome in algebra 1, they

[22:47] really do, and it's great to see that they can then take algebra 2 starting

[22:51] in high school and move on and take ap courses and get that college credit from the get-go.

[23:00] okay, tonight we are kd squared. Because I had katie caravano

[23:04] and we also have katie motron who is our principal at westwood so she has dealt

[23:10] with this from a little bit of a different perspective.

[23:16] I am very proud principal of westwood junior high I'm really glad to be here to talk about math.

[23:21] also our principal of the year by the way secondary principal of the year well, I

[23:28] have a great math team I think that's why you know, we started the pre-algebra.

[23:32] so I say pre-algebra because eighth grade math, seventh graders taking it always

[23:37] confuses me. So pre-algebra, we started that in 2023.

[23:42] and certainly, you know, as we've kind of talked about, our data isn't exactly where we need

[23:46] it to be. But what has been really cool is every year we have made

[23:51] huge, huge strides. And then when we look at that seventh grade math. Our students

[23:55] in seventh grade on the eighth grade test are performing higher on that than other seventh graders

[23:59] within the state. And I think that that's a really important piece to make here,

[24:05] that while maybe our seventh graders, you know, there's a few gaps in terms

[24:10] of how they're performing against eighth graders

[24:14] statewide, they're outperforming seventh graders in the state in math.

[24:19] and so I think that just tells us just... A linear analytical person, I think that that tells us that this is working, right?

[24:24] we need strong teachers who know how to differentiate for kids and who know how to meet kids where they are and

[24:29] grow them and believe that this is possible for them.

[24:34] certainly at first it was a little scary, right? Our numbers were really high when you have kids who are

[24:39] self-selecting and accelerating into algebra 01, and now everybody is going to be in there.

[24:43] there's a few, you know, teachers can be apprehensive about that.

[24:48] but I do know that with the right support from really our curriculum

[24:54] department and within the campus, it can happen, right?

[24:58] our algebra I scores have remained high. We have still been competing

[25:03] and higher than the state. And that's eighth graders compared to a lot of ninth

[25:08] graders and mainly ninth graders. So I think overall it's really, really exciting.

[25:13] I love the opportunities that it expands for. Students in high school, right?

[25:18] they can take... More rigorous math at the high school and just even seeing kids be like wow

[25:23] like I'm in algebra 1 I'm an eighth grader and and ninth graders are doing this and

[25:27] I'm performing at a high level I think there's a lot that students that belief

[25:31] in themselves especially in math and moving on is really exciting for

[25:38] them you're welcome anytime you have a program you have

[25:45] to look at the ups and the downs and the grows and the glows.

[25:49] so I want to take a few minutes and kind of look at the things that are happening

[25:54] that we know are really great and then some of the areas that we want

[25:58] to see improvement. With our glows, we have 04,813 total hours

[26:04] of college math credit earned by the class of 2025.

[26:11] and I think that is so exciting. Think about that.

[26:16] that's just in math. When you think about all of the courses and all, we graduated so many kids that

[26:21] were going to walk into college as juniors. That is so exciting. And their parents are excited

[26:28] too, because that's two years they're not having to pay for.

[26:32] we also, because we've done eighth grade eoc

[26:36] in eighth grade, so we've got that off their back, they're able to have that opportunity to

[26:41] take those advanced math classes, and we are seeing... Increased enrollment

[26:45] in our advanced math, and I'm so excited about that.

[26:49] and the last thing I kind of alluded to a minute ago is that we had 97% ccmr met last

[26:54] year, and that is huge. That's further than we had

[26:59] even set our goals, and that's very exciting. When we think about grows,

[27:03] obviously the impact on accountability, because now it's not just our

[27:08] advanced eighth graders in algebra one it is kids who probably never dreamed that

[27:13] they would be in an advanced math course.

[27:20] but the exciting news is they are and they're passing. And that's what we want.

[27:25] we want our kids to get in there and learn it and meet and master and do all

[27:29] of that because they can. We know that this is an area of growth

[27:37] for us as we continue to get those scores up, but we will continue to work

[27:41] to get the scores up. I want to talk next

[27:47] about next steps, what are we doing next, and key takeaways.

[27:52] the first thing that we are so excited about is our new curriculum.

[27:57] we have a new curriculum resource that we will roll out this summer with trainings and then

[28:02] for the next school year in sixth grade through algebra one. This new curriculum resource

[28:07] has a lot of enrichment activities.

[28:11] it has a lot of differentiation. It's a very strong program.

[28:16] the teachers voted for it unanimously. They were very, very excited

[28:20] to have this program. We had a big committee of teachers and administrators

[28:25] and people that came and saw what the programs that we offered were.

[28:29] and this was the one they selected. And we're very, very excited about it.

[28:34] also, the vertical alignment. We're all going to be on the same program.

[28:39] and that is going to help so much with that vertical alignment.

[28:44] increased rigor and alignment for elementary, that's an area that we know we need to shore up.

[28:49] there are several things on the horizon that are going to help us there too.

[28:54] first of all, we have math academies that we're about to start rolling out,

[28:59] not next year, but the next. And we know that will increase the rigor and tie

[29:03] that alignment more tightly to where we need it to be in those early lower grades.

[29:08] my team... Audrey robertson, megan mayo, and myself have

[29:14] actually been selected to pilot it. And so we will be piloting those math academies next

[29:20] year. So we're really excited about that and the work that we're

[29:24] doing in elementary. We want to continue supporting our current

[29:28] teachers, administrators, and students as they work through these higher level

[29:33] math because we know it's so, so important.

[29:39] one of the things, and I want to give a shout out to you, is that part of

[29:46] what is so important here is that we retain our teachers. And part of retention is

[29:50] something that you guys have done.

[29:55] and that is with increased salaries. We know money talks and

[29:59] teachers listen. And it has allowed us to keep our really great teachers.

[30:03] also get teachers to come here who are great and

[30:08] experienced, but because of what we offer,

[30:12] they are so excited to be here, and that helps our administrators.

[30:18] because then they get the very best math teachers. The other thing we need

[30:23] to do is continue to communicate what it is and the why behind algebra for

[30:27] all. That's so important. Finally, with any program,

[30:32] you're going to have to refine. And I will tell you that when

[30:36] I met with katie caravano, I did not know that we were going to be implementing all

[30:42] the math labs next year. And so watching her say that,

[30:48] I was like, oh, my goodness,

[30:52] yes, because that's something that I have felt very strongly about

[30:57] for a while. Some of our kids don't walk through that door in seventh grade going into

[31:01] eighth grade math quite prepared for what they're about to see, and that's okay, because if we can have

[31:06] a math lab that front loads what's going to be taught, that scaffolds back and helps

[31:12] pick up those misconceptions, that's going to make a world of difference

[31:17] for those kids. And so the math labs are something I am super supportive

[31:22] of and excited about. Student data. With ddi, the way we have

[31:28] addressed that the last two or three years, we look at each student's name and need.

[31:34] what is it that child is struggling with? I always use this.

[31:38] it's kind of an analogy. It's just something I say. Where do the wheels come off?

[31:43] because a lot of times when you look at a student's work, you can tell exactly where they strayed

[31:49] from what they needed to be doing. One step. When you really understand

[31:53] that, that's when you can fix it. Fifth grade curriculum, we

[31:58] know there are ways that we can support sixth grade even more because sixth grade is

[32:03] aligned to middle school. Fifth grade is aligned to elementary,

[32:07] and there's a gap in there. So one of the things we've done is that... Next tuesday, our fifth

[32:12] graders will take star. And after that, the teks they will work

[32:17] on are sixth grade. We start teaching integers. Those last few weeks,

[32:22] we have over a month left in school, or about a month left

[32:27] in school. And we can't waste that time. So we're teaching integers and exponents and all the

[32:31] things that we can to get our fifth graders ready for sixth grade.

[32:37] the other thing that I'm super excited about is the middle school transformation.

[32:41] pulling those kids up into middle school, if you look at forest meadow and if you look at lake

[32:47] highlands middle school, you see the difference it makes.

[32:51] those teachers go back and forth and talk to each other.

[32:55] when I'm at an elementary school, I don't ever go to the middle school to talk to the eighth grade math

[33:00] teacher and say, what is it you really need my kids to be able to do?

[33:04] but at that middle school, they do. And it really is making a

[33:08] difference. We are seeing amazing scores from that.

[33:13] the last thing I want to say is this.

[33:18] implementing algebra for all in 2019 was a bold move, and it put risd ahead

[33:23] of the curve in mathematics.

[33:28] algebra for all is not a one-size-fits-all. And so the fact that we

[33:34] continue to refine the program. And work to make it even

[33:38] better just shows our dedication to it. Our teachers are wonderful.

[33:44] we have some very strong math teachers, and I'm so proud of them, and I'm so proud of

[33:48] the work they do. I cannot tell you how much they care, and I cannot tell

[33:53] you how proud they are of their kids.

[33:59] I know that we want to continue this work.

[34:04] and I want to say this, and tab said this when she opened

[34:09] for us, it's the right work.

[34:13] and most of all, it shows our commitment to our students and to doing

[34:18] the right thing. I want to thank you for your support with all of

[34:22] this and then ask if you have any questions. First of all, I have to let

[34:27] kaysen know he thinks after star next tuesday that it's like smooth sailing the rest of his fifth grade.

[34:32] well. So I'm going

[34:36] to do some pre-teaching of integers. I don't want him to be mad at me, but no, it's not a downhill slide.

[34:40] he loves to speak. But I think I really want to

[34:44] highlight what you mentioned around algebra one for all is

[34:49] not a middle school focus. Just like we say graduation

[34:54] is not just a responsibility, or ccmr is just not the responsibility of the high schools.

[34:59] it's a pre-k-12. So when I think about elementary, we talk a

[35:04] lot around how important it is, for example, for students to have automaticity

[35:08] of their math facts. We send home flashcards for addition.

[35:13] third graders, we send home flashcards for multiplication. We equip parents with fun,

[35:18] easy games that they can use for those flashcards. And this is just my plug

[35:22] for any parents who are out there listening on this thursday night. How important it is that they

[35:27] are reinforcing that. As our students are taking more complex math, what we

[35:32] don't want is students having to process those basic math facts.

[35:39] we want them focused on the new concept or skill that they're developing.

[35:43] and if they have to worry about what is eight times six, they're focusing on that and not the skill that

[35:48] they're applying that math skill to. So parents, please use those

[35:52] flashcards. We want our students to have, and we believe in doing it the old school way,

[35:57] flashcards, practicing that, having fun games with that,

[36:02] manipulatives, because that really does bring that automaticity.

[36:06] so, again. Huge congratulations and appreciation to julie and her

[36:11] team and we would love to take any questions or comments. All right, we'll open it up

[36:16] to questions or comments. Board members.

[36:21] yes, mr. Andrea. Thank you. Yeah, what a wonderful

[36:26] presentation. Just so much excitement behind everything that you mentioned and I think it's

[36:30] awesome. I think for me, I know my own personal experience, I struggled with math.

[36:36] but all it took was one or two really bad math teachers, right?

[36:40] absolutely. And I think that that stays with you. And so it was like a catch-up for me, right?

[36:45] and math has always, I mean, I've always seen it as almost learning another language, right?

[36:51] and like with any other second language, it takes practice, right?

[36:56] you apply it. You have to keep doing it. And so that's something or the approach we took

[37:00] with our two children. So I love the excitement and I love this awesome presentation.

[37:05] I did want to see if you could clarify for me. You mentioned math labs. Can you just clarify a little

[37:10] bit about what that is and what it looks like? I mean,

[37:15] what is a math lab? Okay. So for our kids who take start,

[37:20] obviously, at the end of the school year, one year, and then they move

[37:24] into math the next year. For our kids who are not able to meet or master, that means

[37:28] they're not really performing at grade level. Even if they approached.

[37:33] it means they're slightly under. They need to be at the meets level.

[37:37] and so for those kids, we want to offer them a class that is a lab

[37:42] in that they'll go in, they'll have a teacher.

[37:46] this is at the middle school and junior high level. It's not at our elementary schools.

[37:52] we're not doing that there next year. But at our middle schools, our kids will go

[37:57] into a class with a teacher who will um go ahead and

[38:01] front load some of the things that they know they're going to be taught.

[38:06] we know from research that seeing something more than once really does help us understand it and retain it.

[38:11] and so seeing that, our kids will go in,

[38:16] they'll see that. We'll work on math facts. A lot of times those are the

[38:21] kids who it took longer to take the test. Maybe they didn't even finish.

[38:25] maybe they got tied and gave up because they don't know 6 times 7 is 42. And so they're sitting there

[38:30] counting on their... Fingers seven times. Well, if they get off

[38:36] at some point and put 43, we all understand why, but the answer's not going

[38:40] to be right. So working with those facts is going to be an important part

[38:45] of that. Learning the rules of integers, those things like that, that they need

[38:49] that reinforcement on, those are things that will happen in math labs. I'm very excited

[38:55] about front-loading. Because I will tell you,

[39:00] when I was a coach, one of the things I did was front load with my kids. And I couldn't believe the

[39:05] difference. I was talking to a teacher last week at one

[39:09] of the schools, and she was saying that she had started front loading some of her kids.

[39:14] and she was like, oh, my gosh, we got to class the next day. And they had their hand up

[39:19] because they knew what it was she was teaching. That was the experience I

[39:24] had. Their confidence built. They were excited. And that's what we want.

[39:29] and so in those labs, there will be a lot of front-loading.

[39:33] and I don't know if that clears it. I think so. Okay. So it's only in the middle

[39:38] school, junior high right now, like you just said. So we will have a math lab for our sixth and then

[39:43] seventh and then eighth. It's really just

[39:47] about providing more time. We recognize not every student masters a skill or a concept at the same rate.

[39:53] so having additional time, smaller class sizes so that the teacher can really

[39:57] differentiate and group students based upon what they need.

[40:01] and again, either prepare the students for what's coming up next, or

[40:06] maybe it is we recognize there's a skill that you lost in fourth grade and we need to make sure that we fill

[40:11] that before you walk into class tomorrow. Okay, I get it.

[40:15] and so not every student will be, you know, in a lab, right? So it's just those that we

[40:20] find that what taffer just described. Yes, ma'am. We're a little bit ahead,

[40:25] but in our next presentation around the schedule, again, I have a fifth grader.

[40:29] and so when I think about him in sixth grade, he's an advanced math student.

[40:35] and so many people would think he would not need additional time. However, these are

[40:40] foundational. This is foundational curriculum work and one of

[40:45] the opportunities we're going to be able to provide with the new schedule is that all

[40:49] sixth graders will also have an option to take an enrichment math. So not only is it

[40:54] about supporting students who may need that additional time to master a skill,

[40:59] but kids that need to go deeper and that need to be pushed, that need

[41:03] to be challenged. It may be more complex problem solving. It may be, you know,

[41:08] raising the rigor of the skills that they're learning, but making sure that they are

[41:13] equally challenged and that they have additional time, just like our students who

[41:17] may need time to master a skill. That is something that we

[41:21] have talked about doing for a long time, and for the first time the schedule is going to allow us.

[41:26] to make that happen more time isn't just for students who need intervention it's also for students who can go

[41:31] farther exactly I think that's wonderful so thank you for clarifying that and you know once again I think this

[41:35] is awesome and it's just it makes me excited about math thank you yes other board

[41:40] comments or questions on the presentation let's check

[41:45] out hi, thank you so much for

[41:52] your presentation. I loved it. I'm so excited to see just the engagement of

[41:58] our students and the diverse groups of students are taking advantage of these courses.

[42:03] also, you know, how they're performing on their end of year course exams.

[42:09] I have a question and you all mentioned it. You know, we we are taking care of the student

[42:14] from kindergarten on. Right. They don't start math at sixth grade.

[42:19] and then you gave the explanation on the math labs, which was also one

[42:24] of my questions. But how do we know that they're ready in sixth grade?

[42:28] or do they all go and then we do math labs for additional support or enrichment?

[42:33] okay.

[42:43] so we have math.

[43:14] the kids that go into seventh grade math are in a very challenging math

[43:18] course with no calculator. When our kids...

[43:25] yes, per the state. It's not because we wouldn't give them one.

[43:29] if anyone asked, if it were up to me, we would do calculators starting in sixth grade because how many

[43:34] of us truly do division of three numbers divided into six numbers without a

[43:40] calculator? I mean, honestly,

[43:44] I'm glad our kids can do it, but the truth is a calculator

[43:48] would help them. But in seventh grade, the math is hard and there's no

[43:54] calculator. By bumping them into pre-algebra, the math is

[44:00] not that much harder and they get a calculator. And we know that helps our

[44:05] kids who are struggling, especially with those basic skills.

[44:12] they still have to know how to do the math or they wouldn't know what to put in the calculator,

[44:16] but it keeps them from having to sit for so long doing the computation of something that takes such a

[44:21] long time when we know that moving forward they will be able

[44:27] to use that calculator. And so that's one of the things that we know.

[44:33] if we go ahead and put them in pre-algebra, and if you look

[44:38] across the state, seventh grade scores are a struggle all across the state, and I'm

[44:43] talking seventh graders and seventh grade math. It is.

[44:48] and so giving them that calculator, giving them that boost, that extra lab support is really going

[44:53] to make a difference. And so that's part of the reason we're so

[44:57] excited about it. But we want to give all of our kids that chance. Ok, I love that.

[45:02] I was curious because I'm sure families are wondering, is my kid just automatically placed in this class?

[45:06] do I opt out? Do I opt in? Like, how does this work?

[45:10] so I appreciate the explanation. I'm just, you know, full

[45:15] disclosure, I wasn't allowed to use a calculator until grade.

[45:20] so, yes, I did that kind of math. But I'm glad that they can use it for when they need it.

[45:25] the other thing I noticed, and I guess like you mentioned, we'll always have some

[45:29] of our ninth graders taking algebra 1 just because we have people who move in. We have students who move

[45:35] slower in the process or just, you know, have other things that

[45:39] they're really good at and math is just not it. Absolutely. But we need math, right?

[45:44] so I'm glad that we still have those options available to all our students and the

[45:50] opportunities to enrich and, of course, improve on concepts that they may be

[45:55] lacking. So, yeah, thank you. I'm excited. I've always been excited

[45:59] about the algebra for all, and it's good to see the numbers increase. Thank you.

[46:06] other comments or questions from the board? Ms. Timmy.

[46:13] microphone is revolting against me tonight I wonder why thank you guys we're

[46:17] great all three of you presenting that um I want to thank you

[46:22] to you guys I also want to just take the moment to say thank you to your point

[46:26] to the community for passing the bond so that we can have instructional alignment it is

[46:31] it is different when you have some vertical alignment that

[46:35] have specific really direct alignment such as this.

[46:40] to have those students ready for the algebra for all. So I know that instructional

[46:44] alignment is going to make a difference, especially when you're adopting a curriculum 6th

[46:49] through 12th grade. Having them in the same spot where you can support them is incredibly important, where

[46:53] in elementary, until that happens, we're just going to have to, you know,

[46:58] have two different kinds of support and know two different kinds of curriculum.

[47:02] but thank you to the community for doing that. It will make an instructional difference.

[47:07] one of the things, while I share... I show the same reasons for liking this alignment and

[47:12] this push as my colleagues do, but also, too,

[47:17] I think oftentimes out of good reasons and good

[47:21] intentions, we predetermine kind of where we think kids will be successful,

[47:26] and so they end up in those classes because we think they might be. And I think math is one place

[47:30] where you can see some kids shine, maybe in areas where they might struggle in other areas.

[47:35] and if you predetermine what they're going to be good or not good at, you're also going to

[47:40] predetermine their outcome. And I can guarantee you that if you don't expose them to the highest rigor,

[47:44] they're never going to reach that, right? And they may not reach it if they're exposed,

[47:49] but that's because of the skill set, what they may need, and not because somebody else has

[47:53] predetermined their outcome form. So I really like that option here.

[47:58] in thinking about that, though, also, we don't want to slow other classes down or I don't know another way

[48:05] to say it, but like drag instruction down. If we have students in there who aren't ready and who do need extra support

[48:10] significantly, right, we don't want to stifle learning at class. Do we support that

[48:14] with any ways, like looking at students who might need that maybe by class size? Like looking at like there

[48:19] might be some classes that have a larger size if kids are more ready and smaller class size if we know there's

[48:23] going to need to be more support? Well, so for example, students who are accelerated

[48:27] in math, you know, they're a lot of our kids, like, you know, kacen will be actually

[48:32] taking eighth grade and seventh grade. I mean, taking algebra 1 in seventh grade.

[48:37] so, yes, like those class sizes will be bigger. One of the reasons why the math lab is so important to

[48:41] us is that it will have differentiated class sizes to be smaller so that our

[48:46] teachers really can differentiate. A typical algebra 1, what we have not done is we've not

[48:51] tracked kids. So our algebra 1 kids, we really do.

[48:56] it's... The entire eighth grade and however their schedule fell, they are in algebra 1

[49:01] together in that class. There are some challenges

[49:06] with that, but there are also some benefits. And that's where I think when you heard our amazing apollo

[49:10] teacher mention why she feels like she needs that math lab, it's that she knows sometimes she needs to provide a little

[49:15] bit more treatment and a little bit more time and intensity with our kids that need that reinforcement.

[49:20] and right now, that's where she's struggling to find that time. And I think if you talk

[49:25] to all of our algebra 1 teachers at... Junior high, they would say

[49:29] the same thing. It's having that ability to meet all of them. Absolutely.

[49:35] I would like to also echo what you say that when you can front load for kids, listen,

[49:39] if somebody front loads me on something, when I go in and I know what I'm I know what's being talked about.

[49:44] I have a little bit. You talked about that they're going to raise their hands and things.

[49:48] they will participate more. Everybody wants to be successful. And when everything's hard

[49:53] for you every day, but you have now, you have a little bit of a leg up, it gives you an opportunity

[49:57] to participate and be engaged in a different way. And kids who are engaged in instruction, in my opinion,

[50:01] are just going to have better outcomes, right, other than trying to blend into the wall and, like, not make eye contact so

[50:06] you don't call them on them. So. So, I really think that's an excellent support.

[50:11] I think also, too, sometimes even understanding what the words mean. Like, maybe they know,

[50:15] but maybe they don't. Like, and it just, yeah. Sometimes you have kids who need

[50:20] to overlearn a concept, especially if they struggle in math, right? And that does happen. You have kids who are

[50:25] stronger, right, in certain subjects. So, I do, I think that's going to be a really great model.

[50:29] I'm glad to hear that you guys are using that. It sounds like that's going to be a really good support. Let's see.

[50:35] are you guys going to correlate how many kids are

[50:40] in this and the difference in how it goes to the ccmr outcomes?

[50:44] I'm trying to get to this. Are we going

[50:49] to see the correlation of starting them early and how it benefits them through

[50:53] additional coursework so that we're going to be able to see that over time? Yes, ma'am.

[50:58] so we began tracking that, and we provided some of that for you.

[51:03] but that is our next step. Once we have that full cohort, we will begin to show, before we did

[51:07] algebra 1 for all, this is how many kids that took, for example, it may be a business math, or it may be

[51:12] an ap calculus, calculus bc. And now this is how many kids

[51:18] that are accessing that because they had that math earlier.

[51:22] so yes, we're going to be able to track that. Tsi. Right.

[51:26] yes. Tsi before, tsi after. Well, with a new system, that's going to be huge. Yeah, it's going

[51:31] to be huge. Yes. So, yeah, we even as a district, you know,

[51:37] we flipped algebra 2 and geometry, again, as another tool around ccmr and tsi.

[51:42] so, again, measuring that, allowing kids to go straight from algebra 1 to algebra

[51:47] 02, geometry is kind of a little... A whole different math.

[51:51] yes. A whole different language. So moving that,

[51:55] so kids have algebra 1, algebra 2, and then they take the tsi right there. So we really use the tsi as

[51:59] our assessment of algebra and so what is that continuum?

[52:03] so, yes, we will begin to report on all of that

[52:09] for you. That's great. And then I'm assuming, too, for the kids who aren't

[52:14] successful going through there or who struggle, you'll be able to track that in the same way and be able to see, like, how we can

[52:18] channel them so that they still have the opportunities for those outcomes, even if this is just a challenge. You know, we want growth or

[52:25] whatever, and I want them to be the best that they can be for sure, but I also would hate

[52:29] for this pushing to prevent kids from getting into some places if we can

[52:34] channel them a different way, right, because there's so many multiple tracks that sometimes you need just the

[52:39] intentionality of if you're, like, there are other options if this isn't

[52:43] working the right way. One of the things we are really beginning to look

[52:47] at and where, again, we're so excited, again, thank you to our community for the support of the bond

[52:52] of our cte center. Because we also think it's super important to match math

[52:56] with their cte pathway. Absolutely. And there are some maths that, depending upon what

[53:00] your pathway is, are going to be better aligned to what it is that you're going to need

[53:05] to do versus others. Absolutely. So if we're going

[53:10] to support you in career, how do we align your math sequence to support you in that,

[53:14] versus if we know you're at rhs, we have a student that's going to mit.

[53:19] so his pathway for math. Was very differentiated from, you know, other students. And so how do we do that?

[53:24] so it's not just here's the course catalog and you take this class and then you take this class and you take this

[53:28] class. To julie's point, name a need.

[53:32] what do you need, ms. Timmy, that's different than ms. Pacheco and how do we make

[53:36] sure that that sequence looks like that? That's so great. Well, I want to thank all of our math teachers,

[53:41] our math department, who obviously do a great job, the fact that you guys were bold with this and have continued

[53:46] to stay with it even when it's been a struggle because some of the scores when they've not been, on that

[53:50] advanced track have been really tough right like and said that you guys have stayed with that and really worked

[53:55] to find supports and to fill those gaps um that along with the community allowing

[53:59] us to have some instructional alignment by having middle schools and moving that sixth grade up I think all

[54:04] of those things are going to student growth and student outcomes and I think that's what we want so thank you

[54:12] thank you for those comments do we have I see you reaching across the table. Ms.

[54:17] harris, you're up. Great. I mean, I've written

[54:21] down quite a few notes. And really what I want to focus on is just really comments.

[54:26] because when I think of math and algebra and all the things,

[54:31] the first thing that comes to mind for me is fear. I also feel

[54:37] like there's a lot of kids out there that feel the same way. And because they are so

[54:42] fearful of this stuff that they don't recognize, don't understand,

[54:47] they would just prefer to just shut down and not try and not do it.

[54:51] so all these extra things, the flashcards, something as simple as

[54:56] flashcards, take these home, I love it. I mean, engaging the parents,

[55:00] even though some of the parents may not know what the heck is going on. But it gives that student and

[55:06] the parent an opportunity to collaborate and to kind of try

[55:10] to figure this thing out, even if they have to google it.

[55:14] right. And so, you know, I really appreciate that. I love that because I was I

[55:19] was not strong in math at all. Right.

[55:23] still not today. But yeah, it does.

[55:27] it absolutely does. I mean, but you have some people out there just absolutely love

[55:31] it. So I just appreciate the opportunity that you're giving to students who may

[55:37] not know how well they can do in this. And it sounds like you all

[55:42] are headed in the right direction in doing that. So I really appreciate it.

[55:46] and trustee harris, if I can tell you that a secret objective outcome that I have is to eradicate our students

[55:52] saying I'm not good at math. I don't do math.

[56:00] math may be a little bit more challenging. We may spend more time on it, but you can be good at math.

[56:04] and we're going to show you how to be good at math. So that's my, I may not be able to measure that, but I

[56:09] do believe if we can change that mindset that we believe you can, and then we just give you the tools

[56:15] to do it, all kids can be successful.

[56:19] I think you'll be able to see it in your percentages. I absolutely think you'll.

[56:24] and you'll be able to see it in those students that wouldn't typically. Sign up for those classes

[56:29] because I know a lot of students like that. I know a lot of students

[56:33] like that. In our math department, we say every person is a math person because a lot

[56:38] of people say, oh, I'm not a math person. Yeah, you are.

[56:43] you are. You got here on time to work today, didn't you? That was math.

[56:47] you got your paycheck and you paid your bills. That was math. We're all math people. We may be

[56:52] at different levels, but we are all math people, period.

[56:59] other comments or, okay. Do you have a,

[57:05] squeeze one more in? Okay. I'm sorry. I want to squeeze one more in because I do think it's

[57:10] important. One thing that I did hear, and I heard it on that video,

[57:16] which is why I really want to come back to it. It is clear, and to me, I hope it is clear to others

[57:20] that. A teacher being comfortable enough to say in a video,

[57:26] I want a math lab, like I would like for you all to provide that.

[57:31] and then for you guys to already have had that, to me that speaks to, a, that our teachers feel comfortable enough to give feedback and

[57:35] ask what they want. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens because you guys overtly solicit it because

[57:40] our principals are making our teachers feel confident enough that their voice matters.

[57:44] and the fact that knowing this was coming to a board meeting, a teacher felt comfortable enough in

[57:49] letting us know. What they needed. That all speaks to how

[57:53] important the teacher's voice is. I think it goes to why they would want to come to work

[57:58] in richardson, why they would want to stay. That comes from great leadership and instilling

[58:03] confidence in other leaders and all of you all implementing that. And that's a little thing

[58:08] that could pass by pretty easily. And I just didn't want to let that go

[58:12] without saying it. So thank you guys for doing that.

[58:16] all right. Any other comments from the board questions? I will.

[58:21] close this item out, but one of the words I know that ms. Timmy used earlier, and this

[58:25] is a little bit more of a global comment, she used the word bold.

[58:29] and when I look back and you went over the journey and the timeline, how we were ahead

[58:34] of where the state was. And that made me kind of think, okay, where else have we been ahead

[58:39] of the state? Maybe cell phone policy. Maybe in our project right size,

[58:43] we were way ahead of a lot of our peer districts. And so all that together. Tells me that we're making

[58:49] bold decisions to the benefit of our

[58:53] students and everybody else has to play catch up around us so that brings a little

[58:59] bit of that independent in the independent school district that we've been looking for and feel like

[59:03] it's fleeting sometimes I think that shows a little independence that we're using in our isd and that builds a

[59:08] reputation and we will have a reputation where we take the bold steps for our students

[59:14] and our teachers so anyway, those just were some things that, as I heard some of these words and saw that

[59:19] timeline, I thought about. So appreciate the presentation.

[59:23] thanks for the time tonight. And with that, we are going to go to our second item,

[59:28] our next item on the agenda. Thank you.

[59:33] yes, thank you. Thank you, ms. Matra. The next item on the agenda

[59:37] is an information item to receive a presentation regarding secondary scheduling.

[59:42] ms. Branham. Thank you, trustee poteet. At our last meeting, I brought forward a series

[59:47] of reductions to help continue to right-size our budget

[59:52] to really better align with our current enrollment. And one of the adjustments

[59:56] that I did bring forward was moving our secondary schedule model.

[1:00:01] to a traditional seven or eight period day. We know that there are lots

[1:00:06] of questions in the community that we wanted to make sure to provide as much clarity as

[1:00:11] possible, and tonight we felt like this was the right time

[1:00:16] to bring that forward. I want

[1:00:20] to assure the community, I want to assure the board, that our team would not have

[1:00:24] brought that recommendation forward if we did not believe that the schedule and a new

[1:00:29] schedule would still align and support our north star goal.

[1:00:34] everything we do is around ensuring that we bring this from words on a page to to life in our students.

[1:00:40] and so if you go to the next slide and we're sharing because jenny's going

[1:00:45] to be presenting in a minute. If you keep going,

[1:00:50] what I want to highlight for everyone is like the calendar there's no perfect

[1:00:54] schedule. I actually went back to my email emails

[1:00:58] from when we transitioned during covid to a block schedule.

[1:01:04] and if the board will remember, we implemented that

[1:01:09] in response to our health experts asking us to reduce transitions and

[1:01:14] to try to prevent as, you know, minimum moving

[1:01:18] between classrooms, large groups in the hallways, and the block schedule did afford

[1:01:23] that. And as I went back to my emails, it's eerily similar to a couple of the emails

[1:01:28] that I have received from students and parents related to this schedule.

[1:01:33] you can have a student that is an advanced student who

[1:01:38] loves a block schedule, and you can have an advanced student that thrives

[1:01:42] in a seven-period day. You can have a student

[1:01:47] with anxiety that sitting in a classroom for 90 minutes is overwhelming, trying

[1:01:51] to tackle too many concepts at once. That can be overwhelming,

[1:01:57] and a seven-period day with added transitions can be overwhelming.

[1:02:02] so it's not even a certain profile of a student may or may not fit one schedule or

[1:02:06] the other. I wanted to, as transparently as I could,

[1:02:12] really just communicate to our stakeholders, what do we see as the

[1:02:17] benefits of both? Because both schedules are fine.

[1:02:21] like, both schedules are fine. Some of the benefits of a

[1:02:27] traditional seven-period day, for a lot of our students, the consistency.

[1:02:32] when you have a block schedule, for example, depending upon if you miss a friday and then maybe

[1:02:37] monday, for example, we had to have a snow day, then you may not see your a or b

[1:02:41] teacher for six days or five days. And that, for a lot

[1:02:46] of students, missing that instruction and not having their connection

[1:02:51] to their teacher for that long. Can be something that's

[1:02:55] really challenging. So knowing no matter what day, I know I'm going to see one

[1:03:00] through seven. I don't have to guess. Is it a day or b day?

[1:03:04] like that consistency can really be a benefit. For our teachers, our teachers, again,

[1:03:09] they're amazing at what they do, and they can thrive in either schedule.

[1:03:13] I will say that when you're teaching to a 50-minute class period, there's an urgency to maximize every instructional

[1:03:18] minute. One of the challenges that sometimes we have in a block

[1:03:22] setting is that when you have 90 minutes, you don't necessarily want to try to introduce too many

[1:03:27] new concepts, because that can be completely overwhelming, and you can't introduce the next

[1:03:32] concept until you know the students have mastered the first.

[1:03:36] so a lot of times our teachers will give extended time for independent practice.

[1:03:40] they may even give some time for homework. Well, one of my kids,

[1:03:45] they are going to take advantage of every minute, and they are going

[1:03:49] to get that homework done. They're going to study. Another one, he would have been on his

[1:03:53] chromebook doing all kinds of things that mr.

[1:03:57] hall probably would have had to check out and address. So that urgency of maximizing

[1:04:03] those instructional minutes we see as a real benefit to the 7 or 8 period day.

[1:04:09] daily skills, just having that daily practice. There's less decay

[1:04:14] of learning. So I've learned something today,

[1:04:18] and guess what? I'm going to be back at it tomorrow. I'm not having to wait from,

[1:04:22] you know, thursday to monday to practice that or to ask a question of my

[1:04:27] teacher because maybe I got lost in something and I had to wait for it. Now I even forgot what

[1:04:31] question I had. So being able to every day be able

[1:04:36] to address that. Performance subjects specifically, they require

[1:04:41] that muscle memory. Fine arts, for example, is a curriculum area that they

[1:04:47] thrive with a shorter class period where they're meeting

[1:04:53] every day and they're practicing skills to get to that muscle memory.

[1:04:57] lower absentee impact. When students do miss a day, they're not having to wait

[1:05:02] for so longer as well as missing so much content. In that 90-minute block.

[1:05:07] so it does lessen what it feels like when I have to

[1:05:12] miss a day because I am sick, or maybe I've traveled with a team to compete or

[1:05:17] to perform somewhere. And then we do have to address attention cycle.

[1:05:21] and actually you're going to see that this is kind of a benefit on both sides.

[1:05:26] for some students, give me 50 minutes, I can be all in for 50 minutes,

[1:05:30] and then I get to transition and I get to move to something new. So for many students that is

[1:05:35] a real benefit. On the block schedule, again, you get instructional depth.

[1:05:40] if I'm a science teacher, give me the block schedule

[1:05:44] all day, every day, because I can get through a lab from beginning to end, and I don't have

[1:05:49] to break it up into parts. Instructional variety, when I have 90 minutes,

[1:05:54] I might be able to group students. We might be able to have different activities.

[1:05:59] all that happens in with one schedule. There is less student transition.

[1:06:04] there may be extended periods within that block where I have an opportunity

[1:06:09] to connect with our teachers. When our teachers have a

[1:06:13] planning period, they have a full 90-minute period, and I can get a lot done in

[1:06:18] 90 minutes. Sometimes with 50 minutes, by the time I get all my resources organized, I may

[1:06:23] not feel like I'm being as productive as if I have a full 90-minute block.

[1:06:28] more athletic time is built into the schedule. Some additional minutes

[1:06:33] to complete homework in class. So being very cognizant of that, and we're going

[1:06:37] to address that in a minute. And then again, on the other hand,

[1:06:41] attention cycle of kids. So having a block for many of our kids and not having to think about eight or seven

[1:06:46] different classes in a day, and just today I'm just focusing on these four,

[1:06:50] that feels doable. And so again, depending upon the individual

[1:06:55] student, they can have different impacts. So there's no perfect

[1:07:00] schedule. There's no perfect schedule. So if you come back to what

[1:07:07] we know impacts student achievement, and I know you hear us talk

[1:07:11] about this in the board, you have extended your value, as ms.

[1:07:15] teague said, to this research as well. The most consistent finding

[1:07:20] in educational research is that the schedule matters less than the pedagogy.

[1:07:24] among all student-related factors, including facilities, leadership, and services, teachers have two

[1:07:29] to three times the impact of any factor on student achievement.

[1:07:33] in the end, it comes down to the teacher in the classroom. And our phenomenal teachers are going to do great things

[1:07:38] and help grow our students, regardless if they're in a seven- or eight-period day or if they're

[1:07:43] in a block schedule.

[1:07:47] so just some context that I wanted to provide. Again until 2021, risd had

[1:07:51] implemented a traditional seven and eight period day. We had our health center that

[1:07:57] was at richardson methodist hospital, and our students traveled over there for all

[1:08:02] of the same courses that we have today. And we navigated that very

[1:08:08] successfully. As I mentioned, the block schedule was implemented to

[1:08:13] reduce transitions. I also think it's important to note that even, for example, plano isd will

[1:08:17] be in our new athletic district next year. And they are also on a seven-period day.

[1:08:22] mckinney isd, conroe, round rock, houston are just a few examples of districts that are

[1:08:26] on a traditional schedule like we are.

[1:08:30] almost every district in the state for middle school implements a traditional seven- or

[1:08:35] eight-period day. We were actually one of the outliers in middle school, and I think

[1:08:40] you all can imagine where some of the challenges I mentioned with the block schedule,

[1:08:45] it's exacerbated for our middle students.

[1:08:49] as they are developing and maturing, that 90-minute block and keeping up with everything every other day

[1:08:54] can sometimes really be difficult.

[1:08:58] and then lastly, there's really no significant risd data point to indicate

[1:09:03] student achievement or program success was impacted by a schedule design.

[1:09:08] so if you go back and look at fine arts enrollment, fine arts, you know,

[1:09:13] successes, we were equally successful. The success of our athletics

[1:09:20] programs, we had district winning,

[1:09:26] area winning programs on a traditional schedule just like we have had

[1:09:31] on the block schedule. So with that, we know

[1:09:35] everyone is anxiously awaiting for some of the details of the schedule, and so

[1:09:40] ms. Bates is going to provide some of the information. Go ahead.

[1:09:46] I'll turn it over to you, ms. Bates. Go.

[1:09:51] thank you, superintendent branham, board. I do apologize. I did not bring an activity today.

[1:09:55] I didn't know that that was a part. I'm just chalking it up to you.

[1:10:00] sorry. So thank you for giving me this opportunity to kind of explain to you kind of

[1:10:04] what this will mean as we shift over to this. First of all, first and foremost, the $4 million

[1:10:08] district savings, I think, is a good point of reference as we start this slide, because that is really kind

[1:10:13] of the why behind that. So this is actually for middle school.

[1:10:17] this is the junior high. Wait, wait, wait.

[1:10:22] I'm so sorry to interrupt you. Here's one.

[1:10:28] they're moving on to state. Yay they're going to be one

[1:10:33] of eight. They're one act play. Biddle just texted me. Oh, my, wow okay.

[1:10:38] no, that was a great interruption. I thought you were interrupting me because you said you've messed up

[1:10:43] already. She really wanted an activity. Woo, I know.

[1:10:48] I'm like, there was the activity. So that is amazing.

[1:10:53] okay, no, okay. Okay, so back to the junior high and middle school

[1:10:57] schedule. So, again, as we're transitioning

[1:11:03] to our middle school model across our district, we're going from a 90-minute

[1:11:09] block every other day to now a 45-minute bell schedule every day, just as

[1:11:14] superintendent brandon explained prior. With that, though, I will say

[1:11:19] that we will be adding 10 minutes to the day at the junior high and middle school

[1:11:24] only to accommodate for a couple of items. First, the middle school

[1:11:28] construction as we embark on that with six of our eight middle school junior highs

[1:11:33] now going to middle school. We also have to accommodate

[1:11:38] for the cte minutes. Every class period has to be 45 minutes.

[1:11:42] so in order for that to happen, we have to extend the day a little bit.

[1:11:47] and then, of course, advisory is very important, especially in our junior high and middle school years.

[1:11:53] to make sure we continue with the connections, some of the study skills as we

[1:11:57] transition to this new model. It's going to be really important that we help our

[1:12:01] junior high students and middle school students with some of those skills,

[1:12:06] and we can do that through our advisory period. And then, obviously, the

[1:12:10] instructional minutes that is needed. And then, as you can see, too, they will have a daily

[1:12:15] advisory built into the schedule. Okay, next I want

[1:12:20] to talk a little bit about the junior high reading, language arts, and math. So thank you to julie teague

[1:12:25] and cruz. You kind of led a lot into this for our math.

[1:12:31] so I will say that will be a part of this presentation as well.

[1:12:35] so I first want to start off with our rla scheduling. So one of the things in sixth

[1:12:40] grade only that rla will still be double-blocked. So we'll utilize the daily

[1:12:45] block. To focus on our literacy foundations and accelerated

[1:12:50] reading and then this total instructional time is aligned with our current elementary

[1:12:54] and middle school standards so when they when since sixth grade is still

[1:13:00] in some of our elementary schools that is that is that matches what we're doing in

[1:13:05] um our middle school so I wanted to point that out and then we will be providing an

[1:13:11] intervention opportunity as well in our seventh and eighth grades so there will

[1:13:16] be a double blocked rla, just like we talked about math,

[1:13:21] the same will apply for rla, that if they did not meet, then we will require have some intervention time

[1:13:25] for them as well. And then mta and take flight will also be separate courses. So this is exciting as well.

[1:13:30] so that way we're not having to pull them out of other courses so they can still meet their dyslexia schedule.

[1:13:34] and now moving over to math. Again, there will be double

[1:13:41] block required for students below meets. Standard including algebra

[1:13:45] so there was a lot of conversation around this in our previous presentation.

[1:13:50] so this is kind of where this is going

[1:13:54] to support all of what we just talked about. So I too want to share that I

[1:13:59] am super excited about the way that this math lab is going to be because I was a

[1:14:04] principal in this model and it really was powerful for our kids who were struggling

[1:14:08] in math. And I also seen the relationships that were built

[1:14:12] with their teachers. That helped with that confidence in math.

[1:14:16] so I just kind of wanted to put my little opportunity, have my plug in there for the math lab. And then we will have an

[1:14:21] advanced tracks for meets and masters. And in math enrichment will be required for sixth grade advanced and meets and master

[1:14:26] students. And again, giving them that opportunity to differentiate for their increased math,

[1:14:32] their love of math. And so we can continue to keep pouring into that.

[1:14:38] you will see on the bottom that because of this, each student,

[1:14:43] depending on their star performance, could actually add another

[1:14:47] elective period. So that's super exciting, and we'll talk a little bit about why

[1:14:51] in our next slide, because now they'll get an opportunity to have a little bit more flexibility

[1:14:56] in their schedules. Okay, so one of this, though,

[1:15:00] about the designated school-wide collaboration time for plcs, we are still going

[1:15:05] to provide opportunities for our tested. Subject areas

[1:15:10] for core teachers in rla 6 through 8, math 6 through 08, history or social studies,

[1:15:15] and science in eighth grade.

[1:15:19] so that is important that our teachers have that time together to collaborate

[1:15:23] in what we refer to it as a plc or a professional learning community so they

[1:15:28] can have time to make sure that they're meeting the rigor of our state test to that way that they are

[1:15:33] preparing our kids for that. So they will still have that designated plc time

[1:15:38] for our core teams. The other opportunity that this allows in junior high

[1:15:43] and middle school is our college and career and military readiness.

[1:15:49] the ric strongly recommends that all of our middle school students leave

[1:15:54] with two high school credits to increase space and high school schedule

[1:15:58] for additional electives. So this opens that for them to have that opportunity

[1:16:03] to get. Kind of leave junior high and middle school with high school credits,

[1:16:08] just like we encourage high school students to leave high school with college credits.

[1:16:13] so that kind of mimics that a little bit. And so a couple of options they could have is foreign language, health,

[1:16:18] additional cte courses, algebra 1, and then of course we're also going

[1:16:22] to continue to provide summer enrichment opportunities so they can also free up their schedule and do some

[1:16:27] of these courses in the summer. Okay, so superintendent

[1:16:33] branham kind of touched on a lot of these implications, and,

[1:16:37] of course, fine arts is going to be what

[1:16:42] we're really excited about. And, again, because pierce is now going to the state finals,

[1:16:48] that's another example. But what it will do is increase in program growth

[1:16:52] at pivotal entry points. So currently there is a struggle at the junior high

[1:16:56] and middle school because they do have to choose. Because there's not as many

[1:17:01] opportunities in their schedule for elective choices.

[1:17:06] the daily reinforcement and development of fine motor skills, when they get to see their

[1:17:10] students every day, that has a huge impact. And then increased retention of the materials.

[1:17:15] so it's very much when they're practicing every day and seeing them every day,

[1:17:20] that's going to help increase with the retention.

[1:17:24] and then, again, it goes without mentioning higher success rate of their craft.

[1:17:28] when they practice more frequently. So that will help

[1:17:32] with fine arts. The rapid feedback loop, so they're not having to wait another day.

[1:17:37] so they get to see them every day. So they can continue to do that in there.

[1:17:42] when you talk about immediate feedback, fine arts teachers do it the best. They give that immediate

[1:17:47] automatic feedback that I think even sometimes our core teachers could learn from because it's automatic and

[1:17:51] they're like, well, they practice and practice and they don't move on

[1:17:56] until they get it right. And then just retention and muscle memory. So that's implication

[1:18:00] on fine arts, which is all positive. Now, athletics, again, as superintendent branham said,

[1:18:05] that it will be a little bit of some longer days while in season for athletic staff

[1:18:09] because there is going to be some before and after school implications now.

[1:18:13] construction, that will impact the six campuses because

[1:18:18] of the way that we're having to move fields and move practice locations.

[1:18:22] we are going to have to transport and shuttle. Some students back and forth

[1:18:27] for a couple of years. So there will be some impact on that, but the long-term effects will be amazing when

[1:18:32] we see our brand new facilities. And just to know, that would

[1:18:36] be the case whether we're on block or on a traditional schedule, just like we did at lake highlands middle school.

[1:18:41] correct. Thank you for that. And then, of course, our cte, again, increased enrollment

[1:18:45] because now it's opening up a spot in their course to explore another cte option

[1:18:51] because as we know in junior high and middle school. That's where I spent most

[1:18:56] of my career. And we know that they don't make good decisions

[1:19:00] in that age. So giving them opportunities to explore some

[1:19:04] of those things and be able to change their mind when they think about what they want to do

[1:19:09] in their next phase of their life. So that's another exciting

[1:19:13] thing about this. And then offering some new course pathways for them so they can look

[1:19:18] at some of the things and do what they want. And maybe then change their

[1:19:23] mind like I just said, and then expand access to cte foundations and give students

[1:19:27] an opportunity to take principal's course, which also will give them

[1:19:31] high school credit, and then allows more time to explore cte options.

[1:19:37] the next slide I do want to make sure that this is just a sample bell schedule. I don't want, we're just,

[1:19:42] we're currently working through some mock and some schedules but I just wanted

[1:19:50] to put this up here to let you know that the schedule is, this is just a sample,

[1:19:54] but this will represent the 45-minute class periods with the advisory and then you can

[1:19:58] also see the lunch blocks but also know too it will also depend vary from campus to

[1:20:04] campus because what really impacts our bell schedule is

[1:20:08] the amount of lunch periods that a campus can have so I just wanted to note that okay

[1:20:12] now um we'll move on to high

[1:20:16] school so again we will anchor this part in with the

[1:20:22] seven million dollar district savings that it will recapture for us as we move

[1:20:27] into high school um this will be the additional zero hour option so we are going

[1:20:33] to be adding that to our high school schedule.

[1:20:39] now let me, this is not required, so I don't want everybody to think, oh my gosh, they're

[1:20:43] now extending that day. This is just to help with some of this transition so we can make sure that we

[1:20:48] can get all the requirements in. So we will be going from

[1:20:52] eight periods to seven periods, so that will be a reduction,

[1:20:56] one of the periods in this model. And so you will still have 28 credits available

[1:21:01] without zero hour, and this is where athletics will not be double blocked. We still will be having

[1:21:06] junior and senior release periods. So if you are a parent out

[1:21:11] there and your junior or senior had late arrival or

[1:21:15] early release, that will still apply. And then we will still be having daily advisory.

[1:21:19] I think it's super important to note that our athletes currently, if they're in athletics or any of our

[1:21:24] courses that we currently double block, they already have a 28-credit schedule because their athletics is

[1:21:32] taking up two of the eight periods. So we're really working hard

[1:21:36] to help educate and remind our parents of that so that they do not feel like their students are actually losing

[1:21:41] an opportunity on a seven-period day because many of our students are actually,

[1:21:45] it's almost like a wash because now athletics is one period versus taking up two.

[1:21:50] okay.

[1:21:55] next slide. So just real quick over some zero-hour options that could be possibility.

[1:22:00] fine arts, cte. Seniors needing an aid slot for endorsement pathways.

[1:22:04] this is an option for dual credit, ap on-ramps, and then it will be from 8 to 8.50, but it is important

[1:22:09] to note that transportation will not be provided for this.

[1:22:14] several of our teachers have expressed excitement about

[1:22:19] this because it also would allow them to have a flex schedule.

[1:22:23] so it might be that they could come in and teach a zero hour, and then they might actually not

[1:22:28] be there until the end of the day. So it also provides some flexibilities

[1:22:32] for our teachers. Okay, and again, the high school program implications,

[1:22:37] we have it divided again with fine arts, athletics, and cte.

[1:22:41] so with fine arts, again, it's just that daily reinforcement of the practice

[1:22:46] and muscle memory. With athletics, it will be full practice. That longer fits in

[1:22:52] within the school day. But like superintendent branham just said, that it's now no longer going

[1:22:56] to be double-blocked. But that is where it will be a little bit longer for our

[1:23:01] coaches and our athletes and our facility usage. With cte,

[1:23:06] just it's daily practice for skill mastery. And then the 45-minute

[1:23:10] requirement for funding is being met and prioritized. And then just making sure

[1:23:15] that we are ensuring that transportation and practicum courses are prioritized as

[1:23:20] well. And then for high school, the

[1:23:24] designated plc or common planning periods, as they're sometimes normally referred at, will be for english 1,

[1:23:30] english 2, algebra, biology, and u.s. History. And then also, too, just our

[1:23:35] junior and senior release periods, because we don't want anybody

[1:23:40] to be worried about those going away, because we know how important those are

[1:23:44] for our juniors and seniors. And as long as they are meeting their cte or ccmr indicators,

[1:23:49] they will still be. Eligible for those release periods and

[1:23:54] on track to graduate. Thank you.

[1:23:59] okay, so I've also provided a high school sample bell schedule here as well. This bell schedule reflects

[1:24:03] the 50-minute class periods with the advisory.

[1:24:08] again, I just want to make sure that we note that this will vary from campus to campus based on what is needed

[1:24:14] at each campus. Okay, secondary scheduled

[1:24:19] transition and support. So we also know that that is where some

[1:24:24] of the change that's coming through and how are we going to support our students

[1:24:29] through this. So we will be having some targeted professional

[1:24:34] development for our teachers because as we have talked about previously, moving

[1:24:39] from a 90 minute teaching block now to 45 minutes, we are also going to need to provide support for our teachers to make sure

[1:24:45] that they are. Equipped to meet those needs in our classroom.

[1:24:49] homework and testing schedule, it will be similar expectations prior to the last year's schedule change.

[1:24:53] so we will not be, this will not be an increase in homework. It will just be that we'll

[1:24:58] have to look at it a little bit differently. And then just-in-time support from teaching and learning

[1:25:03] and our campus instructional coaches for our teachers who are needing that as well. Bye.

[1:25:09] our teaching and learning department is working

[1:25:13] on curriculum realignment to make sure that the pacing tools and resources are

[1:25:17] for shorter daily sessions, and that makes sure that we will be have clear,

[1:25:22] purposeful lesson segments with longer concepts strategically chunked along classroom periods,

[1:25:27] and then focus on more engagement. I think that is the piece I want to pull out from this

[1:25:33] slide is the engagement piece that we're really wanting to make sure that it's more

[1:25:37] about. Keeping our students engaged in the curriculum and the

[1:25:42] activities that they're doing, rather than just making sure that we're getting through the lessons.

[1:25:47] and then leadership support. We will be continuing to revisit and look at this to make sure that we are having our leadership teams

[1:25:52] look at this and make sure if there's any adjustments we need to make. I want to also add,

[1:25:57] when we focus on engagement, one of the opportunities that we have is kind of that daily mastery

[1:26:02] check. Where we are, you know, as we

[1:26:08] introduce and students have that independent practice, did they actually learn what

[1:26:12] we expected them to learn? Did they master it at the level and the depth that we needed them to learn?

[1:26:17] and I think that we do think that that 50-minute class period allows for that

[1:26:21] to be short, frequent checks, so we catch a misconception right away versus waiting

[1:26:27] until, you know, maybe that next block where we finally

[1:26:31] realize that. Thank you guys. Yes, that is a good point. And then the reteach can

[1:26:36] happen almost immediately. Okay. And then now the next slide is just our student support.

[1:26:41] so again, we refer to the advisory period. So we will have specific advisory lessons to help

[1:26:46] with the implementation of this new model, especially with

[1:26:51] organizational and time management skills. That's going to be a huge support for our

[1:26:56] students as they transition to this new. Schedule and then our

[1:27:00] principal focus groups we use to get input and feedback and then as our amazing counselor team summer martin and her

[1:27:06] team will be providing counselor support for students who may feel

[1:27:10] this increased anxiety as well as making sure that she's supporting them in any

[1:27:14] of the scheduled changes okay so now I will turn it back over to you superintendent

[1:27:20] brandon again I absolutely want to thank our central

[1:27:25] team our principals and lead teachers who have given feedback as we've designed

[1:27:29] how we are going to support this transition. I do want everyone to know that actually beginning

[1:27:34] tomorrow morning we have communication that will be sent to students and to parents that will allow them

[1:27:38] to adjust their scheduled course selections. For some of our grade levels there's no impact because

[1:27:44] it's like a net neutral transition. For other students it might be that they get

[1:27:49] to pick up an elective or it may mean that they need to prioritize what elective that

[1:27:53] they would have. Our counselors have done a phenomenal video that walks our students and our parents

[1:27:58] through the process, and then there's a tailored way for each student to be able

[1:28:04] to give that feedback to their counselor so that we can make those adjustments as we're building the new master schedule.

[1:28:09] in addition, there is a website that will be live first thing in the morning that is specific to this

[1:28:14] schedule change. I believe it has over 20 faqs.

[1:28:19] it has sample schedules. And it had I'm sure there's some information that we have not addressed, and if there

[1:28:24] is, we will add it as we get new questions. But we really have tried to lift up a resource that our

[1:28:29] parents, students, and staff can access as we move forward with the transition.

[1:28:34] again, I just want to just reiterate that while we know it's a change, and some

[1:28:43] of our staff and some of our parents and some

[1:28:47] of our students will feel like they won the jackpot, others are going to feel like, you know,

[1:28:51] this. They're losing something that they loved. And so we will absolutely,

[1:28:57] you know, our counselors are available, our principals will be supporting everyone

[1:29:01] as we go through the change, making sure we get feedback along the way.

[1:29:07] from this point, majority of the feedback that our stakeholders receive will

[1:29:11] come from the principals. At this point, this is now kind of a campus management implementation

[1:29:17] because there are nuances at each campus. That might be different, might be unique.

[1:29:22] for example, at pierce high school, they have two lunches, whereas at lake

[1:29:26] highlands, they have to have three, just based upon preference and size of cafeteria and all

[1:29:31] of those things. So this was our night to basically say from a district level,

[1:29:36] here are our expectations, and then now from here, our campuses are really individualizing it based upon

[1:29:41] the needs of their campuses. A lot of people have asked, well,

[1:29:46] why is this a cost savings? And so I just want to make sure that we communicate that

[1:29:50] a traditional seven and eight period day is less resource intensive due to specifically

[1:29:55] the athletics double block. So if you think

[1:29:59] about a coach, if they teach ninth grade football and they coach varsity,

[1:30:03] that might be four periods of their eight period day that they no longer are teaching

[1:30:08] their actual content area. And then additional.

[1:30:12] additionally, with looking at and really strategically

[1:30:16] placing that plc, that is

[1:30:22] also supporting the reduction. We couldn't reduce plc on a block schedule because then

[1:30:27] you would have teachers that would not have a conference period every single day.

[1:30:32] and we did not feel, as we listened to teachers, that that would be a great

[1:30:37] system for anyone where they could thrive. Every teacher needs an

[1:30:42] opportunity to breathe during a day. And then, again, just want

[1:30:47] to reiterate over and over again and show great appreciation to the board

[1:30:52] that as we know our campuses are going to be reduced in their allocations,

[1:30:57] that we are doing all of that through attrition. So we are not looking at

[1:31:02] anyone and saying you don't have a job this year. It is you will have a job.

[1:31:06] it may not be in that same course,

[1:31:11] that same grade level, may be in a different campus. But everyone will have a job.

[1:31:15] I will also, as I shared with the board at our last meeting, we may

[1:31:19] not see the full savings until 27-28, because again,

[1:31:24] we're not looking at any one teacher and saying, sorry,

[1:31:28] you don't have a place. So if there happen to be some

[1:31:34] allocations we aren't able to reduce as a result

[1:31:38] of attrition, then that will help to lower class sizes or to provide additional support

[1:31:43] in another way. So I just want to make sure that we're being very transparent with that.

[1:31:49] so finally, in case you didn't guess, there's no perfect schedule.

[1:31:54] there's no perfect schedule. But I promise you our team, our principals, we would not

[1:32:00] bring this forward if we did not feel like we still absolutely could realize the north star goal and ensure

[1:32:04] strong outcomes for extracurricular and academic programs

[1:32:09] on a traditional schedule. You can see we have strong transition programs that are

[1:32:14] in place, and we will be ready to help

[1:32:19] our entire system as we move. Y'all,

[1:32:23] we've done this before. We were successful, so we feel very confident that we

[1:32:28] can do that again. And then in the end, you know, we're keeping the main

[1:32:33] thing the main thing, and that is how do we make sure that we love and grow our

[1:32:37] kids. And then, again, we're going to be soliciting a lot

[1:32:41] of feedback, and we will make just-in-time adjustments based upon the feedback that we receive.

[1:32:45] so, again, thank you to our team. Thank you to our principals, our counselors.

[1:32:50] of fine arts, athletics, all the people for all that they have done

[1:32:55] to have this ready. Without these reductions, a conversation that we're going

[1:32:59] to have later tonight about an appetite for compensation would not be

[1:33:04] even a conversation that we could have. So again, just I appreciate

[1:33:08] the staff and message this in our monday message.

[1:33:12] our staff, while many of them feel all different kinds of ways about the change,

[1:33:17] they have all been incredibly gracious in understanding why this is necessary.

[1:33:24] and I'm just incredibly grateful for them that they have just expressed a

[1:33:30] commitment that we're going to do great things for kids.

[1:33:36] and we recognize that there's a why behind why we're having to do this right now.

[1:33:41] thank you for the presentation. Thank you as well.

[1:33:46] we'll open it up to questions and comments there's a lot here so board members we'll

[1:33:51] start here and come back down towards uh miss mcgowan thank you um really really great

[1:33:56] presentation um you all have been busy um it's a lot of cognitive lift to go

[1:34:02] through this and to think of every possible outcome think of it from every single person's point of view

[1:34:07] to map it out and try to figure out where your pressure points are and to make an faq and

[1:34:12] to have all of these resources ready

[1:34:17] with all of the communications um that is a lot of work that is a lot

[1:34:23] of people I am like outside of just this room I know that goes into that

[1:34:28] to do it so um I want to say thank you guys for that that is I mean I'm

[1:34:35] saying it for the second time but that really goes back to the leadership

[1:34:40] of that and taking care of the people and trying to find the way forward and I it may be hard to understand

[1:34:45] like how much thinking all of these things through is exhausting and worrying about

[1:34:49] what you miss and worrying about how it's impacting staff and worrying

[1:34:55] about when you communicate it out like what did we miss right so I want to say thank you to you and

[1:34:59] your staff it's a big deal um also too I want to thank our staff in the

[1:35:03] buildings who are experiencing this change because not only are they hearing some messages that

[1:35:08] are hard to hear um that we hate that have to be delivered but also too that we're asking them to do some...

[1:35:14] changes as well, and I know that may mean you know for our coaching staff that's going

[1:35:18] to be longer hours and for our teachers that may mean some more prep in one day, right? They're going to be lots of

[1:35:23] different things that are going to be hardships, but I really appreciate the fact that unfortunately that we're having

[1:35:28] to make some tough decisions, and how you guys are handling that how our staff's handling it certainly certainly do

[1:35:34] appreciate that um you mentioned the money,

[1:35:38] and I just want to be I just wanna be sure we talked about it'll take a couple of years right like this to

[1:35:43] in your we're talking about when you're saying like, oh, this is $7 million and this is $4 million, you're talking

[1:35:48] about we're saving that in staffing allocations? Yes, ma'am. Is that where the saving comes from?

[1:35:53] yes, ma'am. It's purely staffing allocations. Okay, and that's why it may possibly take two years,

[1:35:57] right, for that realignment? So, for example, and this is not a specific number, but let's say we have

[1:36:02] a high school that with the new model, they may need 24 less teaching allocations than they had

[1:36:06] this year. They may not have 24 resignations or retirement. Right.

[1:36:12] so let's say they only get to 15, and there's not another campus that needs that one teacher that has

[1:36:17] that one certification. So that allocation, that teacher may stay

[1:36:22] on that campus and, for example, help reduce class sizes, those other things.

[1:36:27] so we may have that additional allocation for another year until we receive more resignations or

[1:36:31] retirements. Great. Thank you. Just in thinking it

[1:36:35] through with, like, knowing that the new cte center is coming and knowing that

[1:36:40] that's going to have some transportation implications and things like that, how is this scheduling potentially

[1:36:45] going to impact that? Just thinking about, like, getting to there, taking courses, getting back,

[1:36:49] how does that? We are very fortunate that we have a neighboring district that is actually opening

[1:36:53] their cte center next year. Plano isd is opening their cte center. And really, we were, I think

[1:36:58] we felt very confident that. The schedule we developed for

[1:37:03] the health science program. Again, if you think about like highlands traveling over to richardson

[1:37:09] methodist, that schedule will be the same schedule that we will apply to the cte

[1:37:13] center. And when we checked with our sister school district in

[1:37:18] plano, they're actually implementing the exact same model. So we will go and watch and

[1:37:23] hear feedback to make sure it's working as well for the cte center as we design and launch ours.

[1:37:27] that's great. Thank you. I mean, again, going back to

[1:37:32] this is a large lifter. I'm thinking through all the things, right?

[1:37:36] like it's hard to think through all of these things. Are you guys also looking at,

[1:37:42] and I'm sure that you are, I know that because of, I know that there is going to be potentially more prep,

[1:37:46] like there are going to be more preps in a day because there may be however many preps of certain teachers.

[1:37:52] are there caps on those things? And are there ways that you guys are ensuring that we're not?

[1:37:56] yes, I love you said that. Actually, today we sent we sent guidelines and expectations to the campus

[1:38:01] principals related to the number of preps any educator could have,

[1:38:05] as well as expectations around coaches schedules to

[1:38:10] ensure that they had they had their planning period as well as time to respond

[1:38:15] after that. They are coaching as well. So all of those expectations

[1:38:20] have been communicated to principals and they know what that needs to look like. Listen, like I said,

[1:38:25] y'all have been very busy. There are a lot of things that are happening right now between testing, things like this.

[1:38:30] it's incredibly impressive that you guys have done this. You know, to your point, there are pros and cons

[1:38:35] of all things, right? There are pros and cons to all things. I think you guys have done a

[1:38:39] really great job in trying to find the best path forward. While thinking of all the people, while

[1:38:44] ensuring that we have high standards, while ensuring also that we're being responsible and aligning

[1:38:49] to our north star goal, what we want are student outcomes, and ensuring that we're not losing traction

[1:38:54] by a change like this, while also being fiscally responsible in a time where we really

[1:38:59] have to be, and working on not cutting people and programs and really working

[1:39:03] on those things while maintaining our culture of support and importance for

[1:39:09] our staff. Because you have said it tonight and you'll say it

[1:39:14] other nights that that teacher in the classroom is the biggest determiner

[1:39:18] of the outcome of those students have. So taking care of people takes care

[1:39:23] of our students. And so thank you. All right. Thank you.

[1:39:28] ms. Mcgowan, you're next. Thank you

[1:39:32] for the presentation. Just a couple of questions. When you, one slide showed 4

[1:39:37] million, the other showed 7 million. Is that a total of 11 million in savings? Correct. It's cumulative.

[1:39:41] yeah. You add those numbers together. Okay. Awesome.

[1:39:45] and the other question I have is, are we having to cut? Does that come from like cutting the course catalog,

[1:39:49] the courses being offered? No, ma'am. There's no changes to the course selections.

[1:39:53] perfect. That's it. Thank you.

[1:39:57] okay. Other questions, comments? Yes, ms. Pacheco. Okay, great.

[1:40:02] thank you so much for the explanation on the schedule changes. I remember in the past

[1:40:06] with one of my kids we had this type of schedule and then with the other kid I had the other

[1:40:10] schedule for the last remaining parts of his years and I was always confused I didn't know what

[1:40:15] ab was and I was so happy that you guys had it on the board there when I was

[1:40:20] driving up so great yeah always used it

[1:40:25] but I had a question on the schedule changes and you know

[1:40:31] I I don't know what parents are doing right now. Do we have zero period

[1:40:35] with block period, or are we just implementing zero period again?

[1:40:40] we really don't have zero. None of our four high schools right now have a zero hour. Okay.

[1:40:45] and so this is something that they were very excited about bringing back with the traditional schedule.

[1:40:50] well, I'm just as excited because I know one of my kids did take full advantage of that zero hour and did all

[1:40:54] kinds of fun things and also opened up her schedule for the regular school day to

[1:40:59] do the things that she really liked. And trustee pacheco, just as

[1:41:04] a reminder to our parents and our students, tomorrow when they receive their scheduling

[1:41:08] information, there is an opportunity for them to basically

[1:41:13] indicate that they would like to take a zero hour and give us information so that,

[1:41:17] again, that is information that our principals can use in building the schedule. That sounds great.

[1:41:22] I do know that's good that they're doing that because sometimes she was interested in a class but there weren't

[1:41:26] enough students. So we don't have a class. Right. So I'm glad that you all are

[1:41:32] doing that early so we can have enough students take advantage of the zero period hour. With some

[1:41:37] of the middle schools, I noticed you are providing the students that opportunity,

[1:41:41] right, to take the summer classes or get ahead with this presentation,

[1:41:46] right? Yeah, all students have an opportunity to take summer enrichment.

[1:41:50] and then for our, the class that we have the most. As dr.

[1:41:56] martin and I talked the other day, we have the most concern for is making sure our

[1:42:00] juniors to seniors, that if they are impacted in any way moving from eight periods

[1:42:05] to seven periods. Oh, yes. So we will have specific

[1:42:10] virtual courses as well as in-person courses that we will be offering for free

[1:42:16] for any of our rising juniors or seniors that their graduation plan was in any way impacted

[1:42:20] by this change. We will have those available, and they'll have some options to make sure that their graduation plan is not

[1:42:25] impacted because of the schedule change. Okay, great. I was wondering about that,

[1:42:29] and I was wondering because sometimes when I used to see the options, they were usually half-semester

[1:42:34] classes. So with this option for our rising seniors,

[1:42:39] are they going to be able to do a full year maybe? Yes, we're actually, dr. Martin and the counselors, as

[1:42:43] soon as we receive back the adjustments that our parents and students will look at tomorrow,

[1:42:47] then we will begin to process what are those courses that we need to stand up.

[1:42:53] because we know that our students were impacted by the schedule change so that there

[1:42:57] will be multiple options available I can't speak to which ones yet because we need to hear from our kids

[1:43:01] but we are our teaching and learning team we're ready we're just waiting to know what the need is and we will

[1:43:06] stand those up and I know it's a lot of work it's a lot of kids so I'm really thankful that you

[1:43:11] guys are thinking through this working out with the students and their families lastly again just

[1:43:16] trying to you know get them more credits as quickly as they can can students...

[1:43:20] test out of language and not actually take a class? They can.

[1:43:28] yes, ma'am. They can do a credit by exam. And we do have several kids

[1:43:33] actually that do that. We test them, especially if they're native speakers. They can go ahead and get

[1:43:37] their spanish 1 and 2 credit and then go into spanish 3, ap spanish. We are looking at,

[1:43:42] to that point, offering spanish 1 and 2 possibly over the summer as well. Just looking at different

[1:43:46] courses that we haven't offered in the past to also help them

[1:43:51] in junior high to get those high school credits.

[1:43:55] credit to open up their courses. The 9-1-1 is those juniors to seniors making sure that we

[1:43:59] know what courses they need there but then also thinking back. We do that cbes but a lot with spanish we have here is

[1:44:04] mostly in the district but we also offer it for any language. Over 500 different languages.

[1:44:09] that's really awesome. I didn't realize I saw it there and I was

[1:44:13] like wait can they also test out besides just taking the class? So I think that's great. I know it's a change, change

[1:44:18] is hard for everybody. And I'm just thankful that you guys are working it through.

[1:44:23] you have a whole website that's going to be ready, so I'm excited that the families will now be able to look

[1:44:27] at something, look at samples, communicate, and, of course, share with their

[1:44:33] students and guidance counselors on courses. And I just think it's great.

[1:44:38] I really feel like it's going to give them a bigger opportunity

[1:44:44] at taking extra classes, you know, stretching themselves,

[1:44:49] learning something different that they probably wouldn't have an opportunity to do. With a block schedule trustee

[1:44:54] pacheco one of the the areas that we we think we will see

[1:44:58] that the greatest impact for example is students will have an opportunity

[1:45:03] to take that principles of a cte pathway in middle school and more students will have available slots to take

[1:45:07] that um and why we're excited number one if they take that class in middle school they're much more likely

[1:45:12] to finish that pathway in high school but also if they take a pathway and they

[1:45:16] realize this is not for me I don't like blood after all, and I don't want to touch it.

[1:45:21] and they still then have all four years of high school to dive into another pathway

[1:45:27] and potentially find something else that better aligns

[1:45:31] with their interests. So I think this gives them some more flexibility. It will take us a minute

[1:45:35] to get there, but we do think that that's going to be a real benefit. Yes, I think it is.

[1:45:40] I mean, we do still have the one group of kids that are going to be in that transition and

[1:45:45] senior year, and, of course, that's really important. To get them to

[1:45:49] to the final mark but I think everybody else will see the advantages and have less

[1:45:53] confused parents like myself so I appreciate it and thank you for that presentation and

[1:45:58] all the hard work other comments questions yes mr andrea uh just one quick

[1:46:07] question and this may have already been answered

[1:46:12] in what ms pacheco said but I was wondering like the programs that are like with pip.

[1:46:16] that you have internships. Help me remember, because I know that that was still

[1:46:21] something when my son did it, but even on this new schedule,

[1:46:26] they'll still be able, it's not going to affect, or when the students that go

[1:46:30] off campus, okay, so it'll all stay the same.

[1:46:35] right, right. That's what I remember. Yes, we had all of those programs on our traditional schedule as well. Okay, perfect.

[1:46:39] thank you. All right.

[1:46:44] great questions, great discussion. The one question that I had

[1:46:48] and I think I know the answer but there's no impact on class sizes right because we will be increasing I'm so

[1:46:53] glad that you mentioned that we are not increasing class

[1:46:57] sizes so that is not part of the reduction so we're maintaining our current class

[1:47:02] size and that same ratio is in place and that's how allocations were calculated

[1:47:07] excellent all right great and I know we were at the the ambassador meeting and there

[1:47:12] was a lot of questions about

[1:47:17] you know why couldn't we have done this three months ago why couldn't we have done

[1:47:22] this in the fall and I just think that it's important to understand kind of the the sequential manner that we got

[1:47:26] here and knowing what our revenue is going to be drives the decisions that we've got

[1:47:32] to make and unfortunately we don't have that until appraisal districts give us numbers so we have our final

[1:47:37] enrollment numbers so there were a lot

[1:47:41] of pieces that had to hit before we actually got this presentation as an option

[1:47:45] that we had to consider. So we're always open. I know you all are

[1:47:50] at the district level, at the administration level, to answer those questions. But I know that's been one

[1:47:54] that I've heard quite a few times is the timing of this.

[1:47:58] and with that being said, again, kudos to turning around in such quick order.

[1:48:02] the planning and the execution. I mean, it's dr. Martin and her group of counselors and

[1:48:08] department. I mean, they're burning the

[1:48:14] midnight oil trying to get this all hammered out and they will be over the next few weeks.

[1:48:18] so it's not, we wouldn't have asked

[1:48:23] for it this way, but we were given this and had to react and bravo

[1:48:27] to the reaction. So, okay. With that, I am going to,

[1:48:31] let's take a quick 15-minute break before we come back for...

[1:48:36] the next item, so it is, let's say this, at 8.05 we'll

[1:48:41] return and get going again. Thank you.

[1:48:47] all right, we're going to get started. We are one minute early.

[1:48:52] so the next item on our agenda is an information item to receive an update on bond

[1:48:57] 2025 middle school bond projects for apollo middle school and richardson north

[1:49:02] middle school. Ms. Branham.

[1:49:07] thank you. Thank you very much. We wanted to bring forward a presentation tonight.

[1:49:11] really, we chose our two most complex projects because these are going to involve the most movements

[1:49:16] in terms of phases and or may involve the most

[1:49:20] portables. And we know that as our

[1:49:25] parents and our staff are processing that information, we just want to make sure

[1:49:30] we're very transparent, make sure they know the plan. Make sure they know all of

[1:49:35] the amazing safety supports that our facilities team have put in place to make sure

[1:49:39] that this construction over the next two years is a safe one and a project that still

[1:49:45] allows for students to focus on learning, because in the

[1:49:49] end that's what they're there for. The great news for us is we've been

[1:49:54] through this a couple times. Not just with lake highlands middle school and with forest meadow,

[1:49:58] but we've also been through it with mohawk and brentfield and pierce for three years.

[1:50:03] I mean, we have had practice at how do you, northridge, stoltz, lots of opportunities for us to

[1:50:08] recognize what lifting up a project like this looks like in a way that doesn't have to completely disrupt learning.

[1:50:14] so we've invited the facilities team.

[1:50:18] I think, lee, you're going to be the lead tonight. But I thank all of them for the incredible work they've

[1:50:23] done. Also, huge kudos to our strategy and engagement team because, like the schedule

[1:50:28] presentation we just had, we have a bond 2025 website that is already listed up.

[1:50:33] it's already live, and there are already, again, faqs, information, so that

[1:50:38] parents have a go-to place as they're seeking out information.

[1:50:43] so I'll turn it over to you all. Thank you, superintendent

[1:50:48] brannon. Good evening, board of trustees. I'm going to walk through the

[1:50:53] construction phasing of apollo middle school and richardson north middle school.

[1:50:57] as superintendent bram said, you know, k-12 projects are

[1:51:01] the most complicated. You have a couple

[1:51:06] of factors. The campus needs to be occupied. There's not a big window of time except for summer

[1:51:11] where students are not there. And then you also are dealing with students, students that are learning every day. So you need to make sure that

[1:51:16] their learning environment is sacred and it's not disrupted during construction. So with that being said we've

[1:51:20] been working with these contractors who are very qualified and have done lots of k-12 projects

[1:51:24] in phase construction for the last year to really determine what's the most efficient phasing that we can

[1:51:29] have for these two projects so I want to really highlight apollo first and just to look back at the end goal

[1:51:34] right these beautiful renderings it will take two years to get apollo to look like this but we also have to

[1:51:39] remember this is the end goal right this is this is the wow this is the august of 2028

[1:51:43] this is what our students will be walking into but to get there, it's going to be quite a journey

[1:51:48] for the next two years. It's exciting, very exciting, and I want to walk through that

[1:51:53] in the most efficient, simplified way I can. So looking at this schedule

[1:51:58] that we've put together, it has from 2026 all the way to 2028, where we have

[1:52:02] substantial completion of august in 2028. For apollo, apollo's really

[1:52:07] broken down into two big phases. You have phase one and you

[1:52:13] have phase two. And if you can see the ticker on the top, where you see the two different colors are kind of big milestones that

[1:52:18] there's a big turnover or a big milestone switchover for the contractors.

[1:52:24] so from april to july is one kind of phase one part. From august to may is a chunk.

[1:52:28] the summer of june and july and 27. And then august to

[1:52:32] december. And then january to may. And then each slide that I'll

[1:52:37] go through next corresponds to each one of those chunks. To give a breakdown

[1:52:42] of bite-sized pieces as we go through from today all the way to 2028.

[1:52:46] so looking at the first phase, this is looking from april to april of 2026 to july of 2026, so this coming

[1:52:52] summer. So I broke every single slide

[1:52:56] into what's happening on the outside, exterior, and what's happening on the inside.

[1:53:01] you guys can see holistically what the plan will be. So on the exterior, starting

[1:53:05] in april, the construction, fencing, and mobilization has already commenced. You should see it at apollo

[1:53:12] right now, some construction. Site utilities and

[1:53:16] infrastructure are starting. The portables and the covered walkways are also starting. Those will not be occupied until august

[1:53:21] of this coming year, but they need to set up all the infrastructure for it. And then site paving and parking is going

[1:53:27] to be started. On the inside, which will happen after school releases in

[1:53:31] may, so june and july, there will be selective abatement in the area in red, and temporary administration

[1:53:36] suite will be getting built. Structural demolition will start happening in june and july.

[1:53:41] we'll start renovation on some of the existing, and then we'll start the new

[1:53:45] academic. And then as I go through these diagrams, I want to point out the line

[1:53:50] in blue is going to be the construction fencing. And then everything within that construction fencing is

[1:53:55] where the contractor will be laying down his materials. That's where the workers will be.

[1:53:59] parked most likely, that's where all their materials will be. Everything in red that you

[1:54:04] see is going to be kind of off limits. No students will be there, no one will be there

[1:54:09] in the chunk of time that we're talking about. So april to june, that will

[1:54:14] be occupied. Everything that you see in white within the building will be occupied, and then you'll see in the next coming slides,

[1:54:18] things that are in green are going to be occupied. I'm trying to keep it consistent

[1:54:24] for all the phasing. So after...

[1:54:31] I've got it. Sorry, skipped a slide. So just to zoom in

[1:54:36] on the portables, I really wanted to highlight some of our safety measures regarding the portables.

[1:54:41] so the entire area that you see in yellow, and it's pretty small, but the whole area in yellow is going

[1:54:46] to be completely secure. There will be covered walkways from the main campus to the portables

[1:54:51] with the exception of fire lane. And it's very small, but anytime you leave the main

[1:54:55] campus, you will be under a covered walkway with the exception of the fire lane.

[1:55:00] all of the secured gates with panic hardware, there'll be panic hardware throughout. So if there was any

[1:55:04] emergency, students can exit and leave out of those gates

[1:55:08] with the panic hardware. It's those push bars that you see on doors. There'll be sensing,

[1:55:13] like I said, all around the portables, which you can see that's outlined in that yellow area secured.

[1:55:19] all classrooms have controllable air conditioning and heating. All classrooms have emergency

[1:55:24] phones, full fire alarms, security cameras, interior corridors.

[1:55:28] and the exterior walkways, as well as the public address system that's tied into them.

[1:55:33] then another point is the restrooms are provided in the portables. And these portables are a

[1:55:38] little different than what you normally see as a typical portable. So these portables are

[1:55:43] actually a building that has a hallway and then classrooms. So the classroom doors aren't

[1:55:47] on the very exterior of the building. You're actually going into a building, there's a

[1:55:52] hallway, and then you go into your classroom. So that's one of the key differences

[1:55:56] on these portables for apollo, and I'll talk about portables at north that are different.

[1:56:01] so that's one key difference. And then another factor that I want to talk about just very briefly is why so many

[1:56:05] portables. So the way we work with the contractor is we had a lot of limitations

[1:56:10] on the existing structure of the building. These buildings were built

[1:56:15] in the 70s and 60s and 70s. So the code back in the 60s and 70s were very different

[1:56:19] than what we need today. So after working with the city and some pretty strict

[1:56:24] code interpretations that we had, they didn't allow us to occupy lots of chunks of the building that we

[1:56:29] wanted to have. But we had a lot of limiting.

[1:56:34] we could only go 20 feet. It was very unrealistic in some of these spaces.

[1:56:38] so that's what, with the available land that apollo had, we were able to say, how about we just do

[1:56:43] two large phases, move a lot of the students out into the portables, and able

[1:56:47] to turn over some of these spaces a lot quicker. So that was one

[1:56:52] of the main whys on why we had so many on the site and then so after we just had summer so this

[1:57:00] now is a snapshot of okay what is august of 20

[1:57:08] so phase one the 2026-2027 school year again, you can see the blue fencing is still

[1:57:12] intact. Everything in green and everything in white is going

[1:57:17] to be completely occupiable, so students will be in those spaces.

[1:57:21] so on the outside, the new south fire lane and the east parking lot and drive is

[1:57:26] complete, but it's only used for emergency. The portables and the covered

[1:57:31] walkways, those are complete. Inside the building, the temporary admin suite is

[1:57:35] complete. What that shows is a red dash.

[1:57:40] as you can see, everything in red is currently under construction, which included the new administration area.

[1:57:44] we needed to put... A temporary admin somewhere we did this very similar to you so the area that's dashed

[1:57:48] in red is where the temporary admin will go and then again renovation of the existing is still ongoing and the new

[1:57:52] academic wing which is on the north side of the building that's ongoing so that would be the whole first

[1:58:00] 2026-2027 looking into phase two again two big phases so

[1:58:04] the majority of that that building was taken over. Going

[1:58:08] into the second school year in summer of starting june

[1:58:14] of 2027 and july of 2027, on the outside

[1:58:19] of the building, they're finishing that north fire lane on the north. Again, it's used for starting

[1:58:25] the detention corner over there. We have a reduction

[1:58:29] in portables. That second summer, we're reducing the portables in half.

[1:58:35] there's less portables out there. We're starting a covered walkway for the new academic.

[1:58:40] I'll show you that in the next slide. And then inside, the existing renovation is still ongoing

[1:58:44] and the new academic. So the next slide is august

[1:58:49] of 2027. So this phase is showing the

[1:58:55] fall semester of 27. So on the outside now, the fire lane is still complete and the south is complete.

[1:59:00] but again, it's only used for emergency. The reduced portables is

[1:59:06] complete. So if you can see in the bottom.

[1:59:10] with the green portables those have been reduced now but they're still occupied the detention pond is ongoing and if you can see in that

[1:59:15] light blue there is a covered walkway so that new academic wing is complete

[1:59:21] on the north everything in green it's complete and so we need to connect that new

[1:59:26] academic wing to the new cafeteria so that will be a

[1:59:30] covered walkway that has fencing all around we've done this

[1:59:35] before we've done it on pierce new completed wings

[1:59:42] like I said the new academic wing and storm shelter is also complete um the renovate portion of level two is also

[1:59:47] complete I want to bring up level two because I'm not showing it in the diagram the

[1:59:51] new cafeteria and stage is complete which is on the south end the southeast corner um this is a very

[1:59:57] small image but it's a big green box in the bottom the demolition

[2:00:01] of the existing cafeteria is ongoing and then renovation of the the existing, ongoing, and the new competition.

[2:00:06] again, this is a snapshot of what august, the fall

[2:00:12] 2020 semester was. Going into spring of 2028,

[2:00:16] you can now see that a big chunk of the building now is all green.

[2:00:22] on the exterior, the detention pond is complete. There's another reduction

[2:00:26] of portable classrooms, so only one is remaining for athletics.

[2:00:31] in the interior, the new main entrance, the media center, the new administration.

[2:00:36] new cte classrooms art classrooms and all the second floor at drive on the northeast as well that's now

[2:00:41] complete too um so the you can see the construction center has moved now so now

[2:00:45] they're utilizing the new drop-off and the new pickup and the new admin the cafeteria courtyard and

[2:00:51] interior courtyards are complete and then the renovation of the existing

[2:00:55] practice gym the new competition area addition and the fine arts wing that is

[2:01:00] all under construction in the red and this is a snapshot of what spring of 2028 looks

[2:01:07] like so by spring of 2028 probably 80 of the building

[2:01:12] is now so then going into summer of 2028 the track

[2:01:19] and field is gonna will be starting construction and the fine arts and new locker room

[2:01:24] renovation and new competition gym will be getting underway.

[2:01:30] and finally... August of 2028, all

[2:01:35] of it's green. It's all completed. The track and field will be completed at the end of

[2:01:39] august. The only remaining items left for that august would be punch list items, and the

[2:01:44] building is the same. Then going on to north middle school, again,

[2:01:49] snapshot of what the end goal is.

[2:01:55] so for apollo and north,

[2:02:01] there was two different...

[2:02:05] for phasing the apollo you had two big chunks two big

[2:02:11] moves to get the project completed there was available land at north, we didn't have a ton of land, but a bunch

[2:02:16] of portals. We have some,

[2:02:20] and I'll show you that in a minute. But the mindset with north was we take it all in little chunks.

[2:02:25] so as you can see on the construction page here, there's multiple phases in little chunks where students or staff will be kind

[2:02:30] of turning over once new parts of the building.

[2:02:34] so from may to july is phase 1a. From august to december, it's phase 1b.

[2:02:39] january to may of 27 is phase 1c. And then so on and so forth. And each of those correspond

[2:02:44] with the semester. So again, a different school

[2:02:49] of thought because of the site-specific conditions. Apollo, two big chunks

[2:02:54] to get the project done. On north, smaller chunks throughout the whole thing.

[2:03:00] so going into, again, same kind of graphics where

[2:03:05] blue is the construction fencing, red is kind of off-limits, white is occupied,

[2:03:10] and then green will be... So looking at phase 1a, which is summer

[2:03:14] of this year, june and july of 2026, the construction, fencing and mobilization will

[2:03:19] start, site utilities will start, the portables and covered walkway will also

[2:03:23] start, and that's the box in the bottom right corner, and then site paving

[2:03:28] demolition. And then on the inside, they

[2:03:33] will be demolishing the northwest corner of the building.

[2:03:39] looking at portables again, again, same safety measures that we have for apollo,

[2:03:44] but there's a couple of different nuances. So the entire area in yellow is going

[2:03:48] to be secured. There's covered walkways from the main campus portables, again, with the exception

[2:03:53] of the fire lane. There's secured gates with panic hardware throughout. All classrooms and exterior

[2:03:58] doors are walkable. The fencing around the portables is feet-foot tall.

[2:04:02] all classrooms have controllable air conditioning. And again, all classrooms

[2:04:07] within those portables. They have emergency phones, full fire alarms, security cameras, as well as public

[2:04:12] address that's tied into the main campus. And then the difference on north is that the restrooms

[2:04:17] are accessed in the main campus, and we did at forest meadow

[2:04:22] where students have a bathroom pass.

[2:04:30] so looking at fall of 2026, this is a snapshot of what fall of 2026 looks

[2:04:35] like. So that north parking lot is closed. The new fine arts and

[2:04:39] athletic addition started, so that big red box at the northeast corner.

[2:04:44] and then portables and the covered walkway, those are complete.

[2:04:49] again, all of the white is going to be occupied during the fall of 2026.

[2:04:55] on the inside, the renovation of the classroom south of the courtyard, level one and two,

[2:04:59] those are started. So they'll be renovating those.

[2:05:05] and then again, just wanted to put out the bus loop is also still open.

[2:05:14] the traffic on this one, the bus loop is still open. Looking

[2:05:18] into the next semester, so phase 1c is spring of 27. So in spring of 27, that fine arts and athletic

[2:05:23] edition is still ongoing at that northeast corner. The north parking lot and parent drop-off, that's now

[2:05:27] opened. Again, going back, during the fall it was closed. They're working on it,

[2:05:32] so now it's open spring of 27. On the inside of the building, they've now

[2:05:36] finished those south classrooms, and they've moved on

[2:05:40] to the north classrooms north of the courtyard. So the strategy here is you basically flip around the courtyard every semester.

[2:05:46] one area gets completed, they flip to the next area to start renovation. And this applies to both

[2:05:51] level one and level two. So looking into summer of

[2:05:55] 2027, so that south parking lot is started.

[2:06:00] the portion of the east fire lane is complete and used for emergency only.

[2:06:05] the remaining portion of the east fire lane is started.

[2:06:10] the athletics and fine arts wing is still ongoing. And on the inside,

[2:06:14] the middle of the building is going to be completely demolished on the north side

[2:06:20] during that summer of 27. The temporary administration area renovation is started as well.

[2:06:24] this is very similar to apollo where we're working on the administration area, so we need a temporary one.

[2:06:28] and again, we've done this before at forest meadow. And then a covered walkway

[2:06:33] connecting the main campus. So fall of 2027.

[2:06:38] so fall of 2027, you see a lot more green.

[2:06:43] the new athletic and fine arts additions at north and south parking lot are

[2:06:48] complete now. That east fire lane is complete, but again,

[2:06:53] it's only for emergencies. Existing bus loops still

[2:06:59] remain on the inside. Those renovated classrooms west of the courtyard have started, so now we've taken

[2:07:04] over the west side of the courtyard. The new administration wing cafeteria and library have

[2:07:08] started as well, which is the... Big red block

[2:07:12] in the center. That's the new admin that's started.

[2:07:17] the new athletics and fine arts addition is complete. So the big box

[2:07:21] in the right, that is complete. Temporary admin area is shown

[2:07:25] in the red dashed on the south building. And then there's a covered walkway connecting the staff

[2:07:31] parking lot to the main campus and a covered walkway connecting the main campus to the new athletic and fine

[2:07:36] arts.

[2:07:43] that's shown in blue. So looking at spring of 27, so the next semester, all the

[2:07:48] portables have been removed. The track and field renovations have started. The covered walkway now from

[2:07:53] the north staff parking lot to the main campus is complete.

[2:07:57] renovation of the bus loop has started. And then the tennis courts have started.

[2:08:02] and then inside, the renovation of the classrooms west of the courtyard are complete now.

[2:08:06] now we're flipping over to the east side where the new sped classrooms and new

[2:08:10] classroom renovations on the east courtyard have started. And then the new administration wing and

[2:08:15] cafeteria and library and then finally that summer of

[2:08:22] 28 is the track and field renovation is still ongoing the covered walkways have

[2:08:27] been removed renovation of the bus loop is complete the tennis courts are ongoing the

[2:08:31] new sped classrooms and classroom renovations courtyard are complete and

[2:08:35] then the new administration wing that includes the cafeteria library in the

[2:08:40] courtyard are ongoing or finishing up that summer august of 28 the track and

[2:08:46] field and tennis courts are complete all the remaining items left are punchless in

[2:08:52] the building now that was a

[2:08:57] lot to digest and we've been working on these plans for over a year and I tried to condense it as much as

[2:09:01] possible but some key takeaways from this project or from this presentation is you know

[2:09:06] each project requires phase construction to ensure the campus remains operational

[2:09:10] students and staff safety in a priority with affordable and then the projects aligned to rsd's middle school

[2:09:16] transformation in which modernization is complete grade students to attend

[2:09:22] middle school beginning fall of 2028 as tabitha mentioned

[2:09:27] bond 2025 website is where we will keep everyone up to date on I also want to add

[2:09:32] that again this team is absolutely amazing all of our

[2:09:37] partners whether it's our construction crew or architects, they have just

[2:09:42] been amazing. I also want to speak

[2:09:47] for a minute from a mom's perspective. So karis, when she was

[2:09:51] graduating from pierce, her freshman year, she got hit with covid.

[2:09:56] and then her sophomore, junior and senior year were all construction.

[2:10:01] so when I think about, we recognize that there's disruption, even though they put all

[2:10:06] of these measures in place to make sure that students can stay focused on learning

[2:10:10] teachers can stay focused on teaching. We know that there are still going to be some experiences

[2:10:15] that is very different for this group of students as we go through construction.

[2:10:20] my own son, when he transitions, we will be under construction when he goes

[2:10:25] to middle school. Kirsten was like, mom, you couldn't at least sacrifice

[2:10:29] one. I'm like, no, I treat you equally. You both are going

[2:10:35] to have construction. So when we're in the meetings,

[2:10:40] I do bring that mom lens. It's like as a mom, what how would I want to make sure that we are looking

[2:10:44] at safety? How are we communicating to parents so that they have a heads up and they can prepare the students?

[2:10:48] how do we make sure that we message this to students so that they are aware of what the changes look like and that they feel secure as

[2:10:53] well in their new learning environment? So again, we recognize that for our junior high students, they're there

[2:10:58] for two years. And when they're there for two years, both years,

[2:11:03] they're going to be under construction. And sometimes...

[2:11:07] like I would tell karis, sometimes we make a little bit of a personal sacrifice

[2:11:11] because the outcome is going to benefit graduating classes that leave pierce high

[2:11:17] school for the next 50 years. And guess what? You still had an amazing high

[2:11:21] school experience and you don't even think about the construction anymore.

[2:11:26] but I would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge that we do recognize that what parents think about when they send

[2:11:31] their kids to that next place is not necessarily construction.

[2:11:35] but we do believe in the end the outcome will be worth it. So again, thank you team and

[2:11:41] we are happy to take any questions.

[2:11:45] all right. There's a lot there.

[2:11:51] let's open it up. Questions, comments on any of these?

[2:11:56] do any of the board members have? Okay. We'll start with rachel and

[2:12:01] then we'll go to ms. Pacheco. Thank you for the presentation.

[2:12:05] it's gorgeous, the outcomes. I think we're going to have to go back to the presentation. It's just about security.

[2:12:10] and as a mom, I think about portables and my kids being in portables. And you said, I know there's

[2:12:15] an eight-foot wall that's around the portables, but that area is secured. How secure,

[2:12:19] like truly secure, are those portables for an active shooter?

[2:12:29] well, the use of portables is pretty standard. We know from previous projects that we've done here

[2:12:33] in the district, and, of course, we know from other districts, that they're a necessary part

[2:12:38] of doing phasing as complicated as this. So when you ask about... How secure are they?

[2:12:43] so the standard starts with an eight-foot non-scalable fence with all the panic hardware

[2:12:47] in case there's an emergency where kids had to exit that area.

[2:12:52] and so that's the starting point. The portables at apollo

[2:12:56] versus the portables at north, and correct me if I'm wrong, lee, they're a little

[2:13:01] bit different in the fact that they have an interior corridor.

[2:13:06] so the classroom doors at the apollo portables don't face the exterior, don't face the outside.

[2:13:11] so there's another layer of added safety there with that additional door to enter that hallway to get

[2:13:16] to your portable classroom. Does that kind of speak to what you're asking?

[2:13:21] yeah. Additionally, it's important to note our sros.

[2:13:27] so we will be collaborating with either rpd or dpd and with those sros.

[2:13:31] this may change, for example, what their walking pattern looks like,

[2:13:36] especially at apollo when you have such a concentration. Where they're spending the majority of their time,

[2:13:41] where we locate their office, is going to be close to those portables so that, again, we have that proximity

[2:13:46] as well. It really is similar. Our students are outside

[2:13:51] practicing football and soccer, so it's under that same kind of experience.

[2:13:56] but safety is by far, and this is, again, why we wanted

[2:14:01] to bring it forward, all the steps that we've taken, security cameras, all of those things.

[2:14:06] to make sure our parents know that that is a priority for us. Yep, ms. Branham,

[2:14:10] along the same lines, thank you for bringing up the security cameras. We'll have all the same

[2:14:15] functionality that we do in the brick-and-mortar building as it exists right now, including the new phones that

[2:14:20] we updated this school year. If you remember, if the board will recall, we went through a dva,

[2:14:25] a district vulnerability assessment, and so one of the key components was that each classroom is enabled with a

[2:14:30] 911 panic, if you will, button. In case of emergency.

[2:14:34] our staff also has, through informacast, the ability to enter into any of the srp protocols,

[2:14:40] those kind of things. So all the functionality that we have in the regular building, the

[2:14:45] portable classrooms will have that as well. Ms.

[2:14:51] pacheco. Okay, great. Thank you so much for your

[2:14:56] presentation. I thought I followed it really well.

[2:15:00] I appreciate you breaking it down into the faces. And showing us the different

[2:15:04] things that both schools are going to have. I wish we didn't have

[2:15:09] to do this like the way we're doing it, but it's necessary because it is important, right, to align our students in

[2:15:14] their learning and better outcomes and to really move those sixth graders into the middle school.

[2:15:20] so I appreciate all the hard effort, our community, for ensuring that we are able to do this for the remaining

[2:15:24] schools that we have. And, you know, just... Ask our families, you know,

[2:15:30] be patient. You know, it's going to be a little bit hard,

[2:15:34] but we have a plan. We're going to keep our kids safe.

[2:15:38] they're going to still be able to stay motivated, active, and engaged in school and

[2:15:43] learning and activities. I'm sorry.

[2:15:47] and, you know, it's just going to be great. I think it's going to be really nice.

[2:15:52] it's beautiful. I truly believe our kids are just going to come in there.

[2:15:56] and be wowed by it. I just, I'm wowed and I'm looking at renderings.

[2:16:01] I can't imagine learning in classrooms that look like that and going into a school that look like that.

[2:16:06] so I appreciate it and all the hard work. So thank you. Ms.

[2:16:11] pacheco, if I could, you actually hit on a point that we want to make sure that we share with the board in that the

[2:16:15] board will continue to get periodic updates on the various, six various

[2:16:20] projects that are going on.

[2:16:24] of course, we talked a little bit about phasing, and so you can imagine that we might come back at different points

[2:16:29] during the two-year process to update you on those. As part of the comprehensive communications plan

[2:16:33] with strategy engagement, we're working hand-in-hand. We will also meet

[2:16:38] with parents and community, kind of in alignment with the phasing process. We've already begun to meet

[2:16:45] with campus staffs because they're the ones that are going

[2:16:49] to be immediately impacted. Apollo, for instance, has the fencing up already.

[2:16:54] and so those types of meeting and communication will happen throughout the course of the two years because we want to

[2:16:58] be as thorough and transparent and offer everyone the chance to ask questions so they understand

[2:17:04] the why behind it, not just the you guys decided to do this kind of thing. In addition, our junior high

[2:17:08] principals will be adding a construction connection message to each of their newsletters, so they

[2:17:14] will be providing weekly updates to parents, letting them know how the construction is progressing. They're going to also be

[2:17:19] sharing those updates with elementary feeders, so that elementary students who, again, if I'm a parent

[2:17:24] of a fifth or sixth grader, I know my kiddo is going to be going up to that. I'm being kept apprised

[2:17:29] along the way as well, so I know what to prepare when my kiddo is ready

[2:17:33] for that transition. Great.

[2:17:42] other comments? Only one I've got in question is engagement

[2:17:47] with the neighborhoods. So traffic flow, construction, traffic,

[2:17:51] all that kind of stuff. How is that being handled, communicating with all of the surrounding neighborhoods?

[2:17:57] because it's pretty tight. Yeah, actually, we met last week, and we were looking specifically, for example,

[2:18:01] at north. Parking at north is going to be really rough for a year.

[2:18:06] and it already is hard, and then this is going to exacerbate that. So when they have big events,

[2:18:10] meet the teacher, all of those things. And so some of the things that we talked

[2:18:16] about were making sure that there are, maybe that we put a mailer in the mailbox to let them

[2:18:21] know open house is coming, or we're meeting with the homeowners association so

[2:18:26] we're communicating, hey, here are the five big events. On these nights you might see

[2:18:31] extra parking in the neighborhood. We want to make sure that we are good neighbors, good

[2:18:37] friends, and that they know, again, this is for a short period of time.

[2:18:41] yeah, and to that point, I'm sorry, lee, to that point, I really want to commend both principals,

[2:18:45] ms. Gaither and mr. Lopez. Mr.

[2:18:50] lopez particularly is coming over from pierce who lived through the project there. And so he's got a keen sense

[2:18:54] of what's about to happen because he's lived it. And he was very, very clear when we met

[2:18:59] with he and his team last week about the parent messaging.

[2:19:03] the top of his list is if we tell them ahead of time, they'll still kind

[2:19:07] of have feelings about how critical mass it's going to be for a little while,

[2:19:11] but they'll figure it out because they know the end game is worth it.

[2:19:15] and so both principals really deserve a lot of accolades for their communication.

[2:19:20] we've also worked with the city jurisdictions, the city of dallas and city of richardson. We've hired consultants to do

[2:19:24] traffic management plans and traffic analysis for us, and this has all been approved

[2:19:29] by the city already as well. We've worked with the city on communication with the neighbors. We've had community meetings

[2:19:34] where they specifically talked about city or talked about traffic management. So we've gone

[2:19:38] through all those avenues on all six projects. Excellent.

[2:19:44] all right. Great presentation. Thank you, ms. Estes.

[2:19:49] thank you, mr. Hossow. Mr.

[2:19:54] watson, thanks for being here. Support. And we are going to move on

[2:19:58] to our next item. Last item, our final item on the agenda is an information item to receive a

[2:20:02] presentation regarding the 2026-2027 compensation and

[2:20:09] budget update. Ms. Brannon. Yes, thank you, trustee poteet.

[2:20:13] yes, we started this journey in january, and we are headed to the end of april, and we are still phase-by-phase

[2:20:17] moving along, trying to provide the critical information that you need,

[2:20:22] board, to make decisions. First and foremost related to compensation and then overall

[2:20:26] the direction you would like for us to take in our final adopted budget

[2:20:30] in june. So tonight the presentation is going to be shared by

[2:20:34] mr. Pate and dr. Goodson, so I'm going to turn it over to them.

[2:20:40] thank you, ms. Branham. Trustees, you know, we've talked about the north star goal, you know,

[2:20:45] the budget's 90 percent compensation and it is, its entire focus is

[2:20:50] on providing the resources. To achieve the district's north star goal as ms brown

[2:20:57] said we'll go over the general fund budget I'll turn it over to dr goodson to discuss compensation options

[2:21:02] and then we will look at some a couple of revenue increase options and then

[2:21:07] pull it all together with next steps and we'll be glad

[2:21:12] to address your questions this evening starting

[2:21:17] with the 2627 general fund budget I just want to ago. Kind of start

[2:21:22] at the beginning of the budget with enrollment. Our budget is really now with

[2:21:26] the way past legislations have gone, legislative sessions have gone, it is really all

[2:21:31] about enrollment. That is what drives our funding.

[2:21:36] and you can see going back to 2014, we were at 38,283 students.

[2:21:40] we hit our peak in the 2019-2020 school year.

[2:21:50] with 39,619 students and for this year,

[2:21:56] and I should have mentioned, all the blue columns are our actual enrollment and the red

[2:22:01] columns are the demographer projections. So here we are,

[2:22:06] the last blue column there at 25-26 school year, and these are all pems enrollment

[2:22:11] dates in blue, the last friday in october. And we were at 36,228. Our demographer is predicting

[2:22:17] 35,704 students for 2027, with a decline down to 34,207 students

[2:22:21] in the 2030-31 school year,

[2:22:28] which is an average of

[2:22:34] about 400 students a year decrease through 2031.

[2:22:39] and just a reminder from when mr. Huff presented

[2:22:44] the demographic study these projections do not have any

[2:22:48] estimated impact of the education savings accounts or waivers I mean or vouchers

[2:22:56] excuse me factored in so we don't know what those are going to do we know people

[2:23:01] just received information about whether or not they received a voucher that they applied for but we have not

[2:23:06] we do not have the data to factor that into these calculations at this point so michael

[2:23:11] freeman prepares this report for us.

[2:23:18] and it is enrollment for each week on mondays.

[2:23:23] and so he sends that out. The gray and the blue lines

[2:23:28] are the prior two years.

[2:23:33] the orange line is the

[2:23:37] current year. And as of the 23rd monday of the school year, we were

[2:23:42] at 35,585 students. And that is 119 students

[2:23:48] below our demographer projection for next year.

[2:23:54] and you'll also notice that while we always have some enrollment declines

[2:23:59] in the spring, we hit a peak in the fall, and then it declines a little bit

[2:24:03] into the spring, that our decline we're experiencing this year is a higher rate of

[2:24:08] decline than we've experienced in previous years.

[2:24:15] just a comment on that. We've dug in specifically to look

[2:24:20] at the students and just like we reported to you in the fall when we gave you an

[2:24:24] enrollment update, we lost almost another 600 students specifically

[2:24:29] in our hispanic population.

[2:24:33] so again, it is the enrollment loss is specific to a demographic.

[2:24:37] of that, the majority of those students are also economically disadvantaged.

[2:24:43] so we're specifically seeing it in a specific area based upon lots of different

[2:24:47] factors that we know exist right now.

[2:24:56] so again, this is just complicating the data for next year.

[2:25:00] I have shared this slide with mr. Huff last week, and he is

[2:25:06] taking a look at things. But again, it's not necessarily

[2:25:10] at this point enough data to modify. The demographer projections

[2:25:16] for next year. So, we have, this is just a reminder, I will not go through this in detail, but

[2:25:22] this is the expenditure increases that we brought forward in the march meeting.

[2:25:27] there's been no change to these expenditure increase requests.

[2:25:34] if I can also just add, there's been some confusion through a little, a few let's

[2:25:39] talks that I've received. The board has not made a decision on if you are going

[2:25:43] to move forward with advertising and marketing or if you're going to improve any of these

[2:25:48] expenditure increases. We just bring these forward as a reminder that these are the things that are

[2:25:54] on the table and need to be under consideration as we adopt a final budget.

[2:25:59] but there has no decision been made that we are going to invest that $500,000 in this marketing.

[2:26:04] it's an option available to the board as well as there are options that are cheaper.

[2:26:09] that we can be very specific

[2:26:14] and some some actions that the board would want to take, but no decision has been made on that.

[2:26:19] thank you, ms. Brandon. And yes, so you will see this 1m dollars in the multi year financial forecast just because effectively this is

[2:26:24] a, as mr. I said, it's a worst case scenario.

[2:26:29] okay.

[2:26:35] and here are the 25m dollars in. Budget efficiencies that were

[2:26:41] brought forward in the previous meeting. We went through the high

[2:26:45] school and middle school schedule changes in great detail

[2:26:49] in a previous presentation. And so this, again, this number has not changed.

[2:26:54] it is still the $25.7 million presented previously. And so pulling this all

[2:26:58] together into the multi-year forecast,

[2:27:03] I just want to kind of give you the foundation of what the assumptions are

[2:27:08] based on. So we have taxable property value growth.

[2:27:13] we ended up with a decline or expected decline this year of 1.22%. That is a smaller

[2:27:22] decline in taxable value growth than we were

[2:27:28] predicting back in the summer when we received our certified values. And I'll just remind you,

[2:27:33] we had the... One of the largest dollar amounts of value under protest that we've had

[2:27:37] in recent years. And so we did recover more of that than we were expecting. So we are better off

[2:27:43] on the property value there. We just received last week our certified estimated

[2:27:47] property values from dcad.

[2:27:52] so right now we're holding taxable value growth

[2:27:59] for next year at 0%.

[2:28:06] we will start in may. We'll start getting almost weekly updates from dcad on what our values are doing.

[2:28:12] so we'll just continue to monitor that. For 27, 28, and 28, 29, I'm

[2:28:18] just using a 1% value growth, being very conservative at this point.

[2:28:23] because when we have had declines in the past, some of those we have seen up

[2:28:27] to a three to four year of downward trend in values before it starts going back

[2:28:33] up. And it does not always go

[2:28:37] back up quickly. So we're using the conservative one and two

[2:28:42] percent. And again, our revenue in the general fund is primarily

[2:28:47] driven by the number of students.

[2:28:51] so higher value, less students, more recapture. So we don't really benefit

[2:28:56] from value growth on the general fund side. We do on the debt service fund side, but not

[2:29:00] on the general fund side. And then our enrollment growth is just our actual pems for this year and,

[2:29:06] of course, what our demographer provided for the future years.

[2:29:11] and then, again, with the current state of the economy and fluctuations,

[2:29:16] we're using a 5% inflation factor.

[2:29:21] on the non-payroll portion of the budget,

[2:29:26] that would include fuel, utilities, insurance, which all areas that we've seen

[2:29:30] some pretty substantial increases in, even though inflation is not currently

[2:29:34] running at 5% overall, went ahead and did a 5% inflation factor there.

[2:29:41] so looking at our multi-year,

[2:29:46] I'm going to start you there with the 25-26. Estimate for how we're going

[2:29:52] to end the year, we're looking at a $25 million deficit, almost $26

[2:29:57] million deficit. One thing I'll point out as we look at going

[2:30:02] from 25-26 to 26-27, you'll see that's about a

[2:30:06] $17 million decline in revenue.

[2:30:15] well, there's about $6.8 million in 25-26 that is one-time revenue.

[2:30:20] from the state related to property value audits that are, purdue brandon does

[2:30:28] those for us. They evaluate them every year.

[2:30:34] and so we can protest, just like our taxpayers can protest their values with dcad,

[2:30:40] we can protest property values with the comptroller's office that are used in the state funding formula.

[2:30:44] and so purdue brandon, you get, I think, two.

[2:30:50] opportunities to protest your value in a certain time period and

[2:30:55] purdue monitors that for us regularly and protests when it is advantageous to us.

[2:31:01] so we received $6.8 million for prior years in the current year.

[2:31:06] so that is part of why that drop looks so large going from $25.26 to $26.27

[2:31:11] compared to the other declines in

[2:31:16] revenue. Which are really just related to the declines in enrollment.

[2:31:22] you can see our recapture cost, relatively stable,

[2:31:28] five and a half, roughly to six and a half million

[2:31:33] dollars. Our recurring expenditures, and as you'll remember for

[2:31:37] 2526, we're using the proceeds from the sale

[2:31:43] of the sherman property to... Reduce the level of deficit we have. As I said, a $25.8 million

[2:31:51] deficit estimated for the current year. Our ending fund balance

[2:31:55] with that deficit would be $140 million. And our target for fund balance,

[2:32:01] and that is total fund balance, and so our targeted fund balance is $110 million,

[2:32:08] and that is 25% of expenditures.

[2:32:13] and then just carrying that across there, you can see.

[2:32:19] so as we get into 26-27, you'll see the budget increases we discussed

[2:32:26] of a million, the budget reductions of 25.7, total expenditures of 419.

[2:32:30] you'll notice in those total expenditures, no raise is listed on there for any year because dr.

[2:32:35] goodson will go over the raise options with you.

[2:32:40] but just at this point, even without giving a raise, we're expecting a $21 million

[2:32:44] deficit, and that deficit will continue to grow because none of those years have a raise.

[2:32:51] and you can see there in 27-28. The targeted fund balance

[2:32:57] would be $105 million, and our estimated ending fund balance is $90 million.

[2:33:02] so we're about $15 million under our target,

[2:33:07] and that also just continues to grow in future years. Two important points.

[2:33:12] we have the permanent school fund, just as a reminder to the community and the board, and we're going

[2:33:17] to talk a little bit more about that as a compensation option. And then secondly, when you

[2:33:21] say that that deficit moves forward, that's also to say if we don't do anything else to intervene

[2:33:26] to reduce our expenditures. Correct. And the other thing, and

[2:33:30] at this point, I'm not inclined to bet

[2:33:35] on this option, but just remember, in the spring

[2:33:40] of every odd-numbered year, we do have a legislative

[2:33:44] session. So this forecast is built

[2:33:48] on current law, but there's not been a substantial increase in the basic allotment

[2:33:55] in a very long time now for us. So, you know, the only option

[2:33:59] I have is to do this on current law. And again, we have options

[2:34:04] to continue to work on this. And I'll prove, as ms.

[2:34:08] branham said, we'll talk a little bit more about the local permanent

[2:34:12] school fund in a minute, and we'll talk about a couple of revenue enhancement

[2:34:17] options in a minute. But I just want to make sure I'm laying an appropriate

[2:34:22] foundation here and not glossing over anything for you.

[2:34:28] and with that, I will turn this over to dr. Goodson. Maybe click and talk. Okay.

[2:34:35] thank you, mr. Pate. Good evening, board. We just want to bring back

[2:34:39] to the table some options in terms of possible compensation packages for 26-27.

[2:34:44] we shared several options with you in our march meeting. And then based on some of the

[2:34:48] feedback that you provided, we came back and have kind of fleshed out a few of the options,

[2:34:53] tweaked them a little bit. And so, again, we always want to show you there are lots

[2:34:57] of possibilities in terms of the way that you look at a pay increase

[2:35:02] for the next school year. And see,

[2:35:06] that's why I don't get. Thank you. Ok. So just as a reminder,

[2:35:11] if you were to provide a percentage increase to all employees.

[2:35:16] the approximate cost of a 1% pay increase will be $3.6 million, 2% will be

[2:35:20] $7.2, and then 3% will be $10.8. And as noted here, david

[2:35:24] wants to be sure we remind everyone, these raised

[2:35:29] calculations are general fund only and with employer

[2:35:34] benefits excluding health insurance contributions. So last time we gave you option a, b, and c.

[2:35:39] tonight, we're going to show you a little bit of a different take with option a and then a1 and then

[2:35:44] option b. So for option a, similar to what we shared

[2:35:48] in our last meeting, this would be a pay increase for all teacher types before we've delineated with

[2:35:54] classroom teachers and then a separate increase for non-087 teachers.

[2:36:02] for this particular model, we are bringing the group back together, so to speak.

[2:36:07] so t-types in this setting are all teachers, librarians, counselors, and nurses. Anyone completing one to 10

[2:36:14] years, they would see a $1,000 increase.

[2:36:19] for anyone completing 11 years and up, they would receive a $2,000 increase.

[2:36:23] and so the bullets underneath there show you that for next school year, a teacher who's completed five

[2:36:28] years will be making $66,000. With the $1,000 increase

[2:36:32] for 10 years, it would be $71,000 and so on. So you can see this is what

[2:36:37] that individual would be making for their...

[2:36:42] new salary for 26-27. The cost for that is approximately $5.6 million.

[2:36:47] that's a little bit higher than what we shared with you last time because in our last option a, it was just classroom

[2:36:52] teachers, and then we grouped the others in a different group.

[2:36:56] so that's why that has gone up just a little bit. And then on the right, that still means that

[2:37:00] for a new year, a new teacher starting in 26-27, we would recommend that the zero-year salary

[2:37:05] will be $63,500. That would be $5,000 below what a one-year teacher would

[2:37:11] be making. So again, new teacher this

[2:37:17] year is $63,000. If they got a $1,000 increase, it will be

[2:37:22] $64,000. So then that means a new teacher coming

[2:37:26] in will be making $63,500. And then to make sure that we're staying compliant with the legislation,

[2:37:32] an uncertified teacher coming in at zero years experience will be making $63,000, which

[2:37:36] is where we are starting now. Dr. Goodson, just to clarify,

[2:37:40] when you mentioned the separation between teachers and then counselors, nurses,

[2:37:45] and librarians, that was not a delineation that richardson isd identified. That came

[2:37:50] from the state as a result of the last legislation. Thank you for the clarification.

[2:37:55] yes, that difference, that separation on the teacher scales of the pay scales and the pay

[2:38:00] increases were the result of the state legislation. Yes, ma'am.

[2:38:05] what we've done to target the other groups down below there is that all the other employees,

[2:38:09] if we're talking about central campus staff, administrators, and others,

[2:38:13] that will be a 2% pay increase. That's a proposal here.

[2:38:18] we would also propose a 3% pay increase for all paraprofessional and auxiliary staff, and that

[2:38:23] would be approximately $2.7 million.

[2:38:28] so option a1 is a different approach to the pay increase, and for this scenario,

[2:38:33] we are looking at you a $1,000 increase for one to 10 year employees and a $2,000 increase for 11 plus

[2:38:39] years employees. And that would be all employees and it would be

[2:38:44] provided in the form of a retention stipend. So I have to apologize

[2:38:50] because when you see the bullets under option a1 there,

[2:38:54] the sub bullets, it says 2627 salary. But that's my apologies that that basically is the 2627

[2:39:00] take home for the teachers and the employees. I'm sorry. The base salaries would not

[2:39:05] change because it's a one-time stipend. So our salaries would be

[2:39:09] at the same level, which is also why we have the cost as it is and the starting

[2:39:14] teacher salary. We are bringing this concept forward strictly from working

[2:39:19] towards managing our current deficit budget and trying

[2:39:24] to give another,

[2:39:29] for example, might this be the year. That since it's a stipend it

[2:39:34] would not be a recurring line item in the budget this might

[2:39:38] be the time that we tap into the permanent school fund use that to pay for this

[2:39:43] retention stipend so it gives us another year to find the additional 20

[2:39:48] million dollars and that we need to in savings to completely right size our

[2:39:54] budget um so again it's just an idea it's a concept um that would just again provide

[2:39:58] a little bit more capacity a little bit more time for us to find the reductions.

[2:40:03] again, this may not be something that the board has an appetite for.

[2:40:07] this may not continue to accomplish the objectives that you set up. But I felt

[2:40:12] like it would be remiss to at least not bring forward an option that doesn't increase

[2:40:16] our recurring budget moving forward.

[2:40:23] so for option b, it's similar to option a. In terms of the structure,

[2:40:27] but the difference here is that the dollar amount increased for one to 10 years

[2:40:32] instead of $1,000. We are showing what it would be if it was $1,500. Again,

[2:40:37] for all teacher types, teachers, librarians, counselors, and nurses, and then for 11 plus years,

[2:40:42] $3,000. And so that approximate cost would be $8.1 million.

[2:40:47] with the sub-bill is there, you can see what a five-year teacher would be making, $10, $15, $20, and 30.

[2:40:53] with this particular option, we would need to start our zero-year teaching salary

[2:40:58] for 26-27 at $64,000. So that still stays below

[2:41:04] what a new one-year experienced teacher would be making.

[2:41:09] and then again, with the uncertified, we would propose keeping that at $63,500 so that there's

[2:41:14] still a difference between uncertified and certified. And then the cost

[2:41:18] at the bottom for the other employees is the same at $2.7 million

[2:41:23] with them grouped. By 2% increase

[2:41:27] for central and others, and then 3% for paraprofessional and auxiliary.

[2:41:32] I leaned in a little close and it got louder, sorry. So this is just a comparison

[2:41:36] page for all three of these options. Again, not proposing one

[2:41:41] over the other, really just discussion points for us to consider and for you to consider today.

[2:41:46] and then the approximate cost on the far right hand side. And then again,

[2:41:50] across the bottom, if you were to give a flat one, two or 3% pay increase. Those are the dollar amounts

[2:41:55] associated with those as well. I also want to mention that the board may also have an

[2:41:59] option of doing kind of a combination. The board may decide we want to make sure that we're

[2:42:04] continuing to invest in the teacher's salary. So we might decide that you're going to go

[2:42:08] with one model and, again, add that potentially to our recurring costs.

[2:42:13] but, for example, for the central, it might be more of a

[2:42:18] retention stipend so that we're not building that in. Into our recurring costs so

[2:42:22] there even some flexibilities within what we've brought forward for the board to consider and provide us

[2:42:27] feedback moving back to the revenue recommendations you'll remember our community

[2:42:38] budget steering committee recommended a va tre and they recommended expanding explore

[2:42:45] enrollment so we're going

[2:42:51] to look at a couple of options related to that now, starting with

[2:42:56] explore. If you have detailed

[2:43:02] questions on this, I'm going to turn it over to dr. Laper, but I will do my best

[2:43:07] to cover this at this point. The proposal is

[2:43:11] to increase the, what I call the school day or school year

[2:43:15] explore rates by $5 a week for the afternoon community, free and reduced lunch,

[2:43:20] and then a $6 increase related to for our employees.

[2:43:35] and you can see the comparison. There in the middle are current explore rates with the proposed for 26-27

[2:43:40] and the rate increases on the far right. An increase of $10 a day for our holiday explore

[2:43:45] program and then summer explore, an increase of $25 a week.

[2:43:53] and all of this combined would generate about a $700,000 increase.

[2:43:58] and it would so part of this is also in the lower

[2:44:02] left corner is a raise for our explorer personnel

[2:44:07] from $16 to $18 an hour. And so that would help offset

[2:44:13] the cost of that increase

[2:44:18] in the explorer, I mean, for paying our explorer staff.

[2:44:27] and historically, our explorer program has made a contribution back

[2:44:31] to the general fund. It is not a cost center. It is a small profit center.

[2:44:35] and, you know, with wage inflation everywhere and the

[2:44:41] competition that we have for staff and our attempts to increase our enrollment

[2:44:50] in explore, we do need to pay our staff some more so that we can stay staffed up and

[2:44:54] attract the quality of staff that we need for our explore program.

[2:45:04] and then moving on to the vatre.

[2:45:08] you may remember that back in the fall of 2018, our

[2:45:12] voters approved a tre for all 13 cents available

[2:45:19] at the time. And then immediately

[2:45:24] in that spring of 2019, back in the 86th legislative session, the state passed, I do not remember the house

[2:45:30] bill number now, but it compressed our property tax rates. And so the state actually

[2:45:35] took away. 3.17 cents that our voters had given us.

[2:45:39] and so they made it so that

[2:45:43] we have to go back to the voters to get back the 3.17 cents

[2:45:48] that they had given us back in the fall of 2018. So what you have here, the

[2:45:53] top half is just property tax revenue, state revenue,

[2:45:57] and recapture. Without a vatre,

[2:46:01] and they changed the name from tre, tax ratification election, to voter approval

[2:46:05] tax ratification election. And so the top part is no vatre.

[2:46:10] the bottom is with the vatre. And really the important

[2:46:15] number for you is the blue row

[2:46:20] at the very bottom, and you can see the increase

[2:46:24] in revenue for a successful vatre.

[2:46:29] is about $7.7 million. It's all really in the property tax revenue side.

[2:46:35] we have an increase in property tax revenue, small to no change

[2:46:40] in state revenue, and then an increase in recapture.

[2:46:47] so we end up netting with all of those changes, again, about $7.7 million.

[2:46:52] a couple more comments

[2:46:57] on this in just a second. Just a little bit more information for you here.

[2:47:05] so this is our statewide peer districts and how many pennies they have left

[2:47:10] available to them if they wanted to call the atre.

[2:47:16] and you can see several of them are in the same boat we are.

[2:47:21] they have 3.17 cents. Some of you have gone to their voters for all of their pennies.

[2:47:26] the little asterisk there. Ector county, midland, and spring branch, all are also

[2:47:30] in the same boat we are. They have a local option homestead exemption in place.

[2:47:35] and you can see at the bottom of the slide there in the lower right,

[2:47:39] I just put the amount of pennies available to us for a vatre, that 3.17 cents.

[2:47:46] here are our north texas peers.

[2:47:50] and you can see, again, very similar.

[2:47:57] allen has a little over $0.05 they can go for.

[2:48:02] carrollton, dallas, and frisco all have the same

[2:48:09] $0.0317. Garland just recently passed a vatre, so they have all

[2:48:14] of their pennies now. Mckinney, same boat we are. Mesquite has nine cents available. Plano, rockwall have gone

[2:48:19] back to their voters for all of them. And wiley with 12. And in dallas county, I know

[2:48:23] we've discussed this many times, but dallas and highland park are the only two districts in dallas

[2:48:27] county that still have a local option homestead exemption. And we do not use highland

[2:48:32] park isd as one of our peer districts for this.

[2:48:38] so some vatra considerations. We only have 3.17 cents to go for.

[2:48:44] yes, ma'am. And if I can say that the main reason that we are bringing this forward and

[2:48:48] highlighting this, as david mentioned, we are going into a legislative session.

[2:48:53] and one of the items that is always up for consideration is austin making it more

[2:48:58] difficult for districts to bring forward vaters as well as bring forward bond

[2:49:03] elections. Whether it's changing a vote majority number or not even

[2:49:08] giving us this option. So this is really the last window of time where we have

[2:49:12] certainty that it's an option. We're not necessarily recommending it.

[2:49:17] we just want to put everything out on the table and make sure that the board knows their full menu

[2:49:21] of options and what it would look like to move forward with this process, just so you're aware.

[2:49:26] thank you, ms. Brennan. Yes, legislative outcomes are

[2:49:30] always uncertain. At one time, we could have removed the local option homestead exemption, but the

[2:49:34] legislature several sessions ago set a date, and we cannot consider removing the local option homestead exemption.

[2:49:39] and they have extended that deadline in the last several legislative sessions.

[2:49:49] so we are being punished for having done that

[2:49:55] at this point. We leave money

[2:49:59] on the table. Just like all the other districts do that have a local option homestead

[2:50:03] exemption. So we're at a competitive disadvantage to our peers that either never gave a

[2:50:07] local option homestead exemption or removed theirs. Some of the other vatre

[2:50:12] considerations in addition to legislative uncertainty, we do have the 3.17 cents

[2:50:17] available. We will have to hire an auditor to conduct an

[2:50:22] efficiency audit if you want to move forward

[2:50:27] with a vatre. Our current audit firm can

[2:50:31] conduct the efficiency audit. They've done so for other school districts. I have reached out

[2:50:36] to them. The cost of that efficiency audit is $15,000.

[2:50:42] we will have to have a board meeting to discuss the results of the efficiency audit,

[2:50:46] kind of a public hearing type situation. I've got all the important

[2:50:51] dates related to the vatre process on the following slides, and we'll go over those

[2:50:56] in just a second. And I just wanted to.

[2:51:00] remind everybody of the tax rate. So I have,

[2:51:05] assuming I've got a with and without a vatre for 2627 listed here.

[2:51:09] so with a vatre, the m&o rate would rise to

[2:51:14] 78.69 cents. The ins rate does increase

[2:51:20] from the current 35 cents to the 39 cents.

[2:51:24] that's the four cents. That we told the voters that was associated with the $1.4

[2:51:29] billion bond election. So with a vatre, the total tax rate would be

[2:51:33] $1.1769. Without the vatre m&o rate,

[2:51:37] I expect to stay at $0.7552. Again, that could change when

[2:51:45] tre, excuse me, tea gives us our maximum compressed rates,

[2:51:51] but it would change in both cases.

[2:51:55] the ins rate. It's still going to the 39 cents, and I expect us to be

[2:51:59] at $1.1452 without a vatre.

[2:52:04] so what are all the dates? So I've added in red on each of this is the budget

[2:52:08] calendar you're used to seeing, but anything in red is key dates that are associated now have been

[2:52:16] added for the vatre timeline. So we will need to, at the

[2:52:21] june 4th meeting select an auditor and get that

[2:52:26] on the agenda to hire the auditor for an efficiency audit.

[2:52:33] that is our last meeting before july 3rd, last scheduled meeting,

[2:52:38] unless you wanted to have another one, but that is the last scheduled meeting.

[2:52:43] and the deadline to hire an auditor to conduct the efficiency audit is july 3rd. The other key dates, august

[2:52:50] 7th. We will need to publish the notice of hearing

[2:52:55] on the tax rate, no less than 10 days, no more than 30s.

[2:52:59] that is all the normal timeline. But if you choose to call for vatre, we will have

[2:53:04] to publish a new notice. That is, there's no option there.

[2:53:09] we will have to do that. August 17th, and this is just what the timeline has

[2:53:15] to be. August 17th is the last day

[2:53:19] to call a vatre. That is a monday, and we do have a work session scheduled on august 20th, but because that's the

[2:53:24] last day to call an election, august

[2:53:31] 7th, and you'll see right there, august 5th, that's the last day for tea

[2:53:37] to provide our maximum compressed rate.

[2:53:41] we need that information. To get our notice in the newspaper.

[2:53:45] and so this is as early as we can push up anything, is to have that notice published

[2:53:51] in the morning news on august 7th.

[2:53:56] therefore, because it's got to be 10 days, at least 10 days before that august 17th, and that is the last day

[2:54:01] to call an election. Then october 1st,

[2:54:06] we would have to post the results of the efficiency audit on our website and hold an open

[2:54:11] board meeting to discuss the results. This is a thursday. There is no meeting currently

[2:54:16] scheduled that I'm aware of for that thursday, but it is at least on a traditional

[2:54:21] board meeting night. And then, of course, the november 3rd general election

[2:54:26] date would be when the vatre would be held. And then november 17th is the

[2:54:31] last day to canvas the election results. And then we would send out tax bills as close to

[2:54:38] november 18th as possible as soon as we can get those published.

[2:54:44] what are our key takeaways

[2:54:49] and next steps? Despite the $41.7 million

[2:54:54] in budget reductions since project right size began, we'll still adopt a deficit

[2:55:00] budget for 26-27, even without a raise.

[2:55:05] we don't know what the impact of education savings accounts is going to be at this point.

[2:55:09] I wish I could give you information

[2:55:14] on that. I would love to have information on that. It would make me a lot more

[2:55:18] comfortable with this whole process. And as ms.

[2:55:23] branham said, is now the time to tap into the local permanent school fund or rainy day fund.

[2:55:28] to carry us through the 90th legislative session, which begins in january.

[2:55:32] so the local permanent school

[2:55:37] fund, just for a refresher for everyone,

[2:55:41] our predecessors created this, prior boards, prior administrations created the

[2:55:46] local permanent school fund. When I bring you the document in the summer

[2:55:52] to restrict fund balance, is on there.

[2:55:58] that is one of the things you're restricting for. We've recorded in a completely separate fund

[2:56:03] number. It is a local special revenue fund.

[2:56:07] it has various one-time kind of found monies that were put in it over the years,

[2:56:14] and we invest it separately, and it continues to earn interest, and it has

[2:56:18] grown, and so there is currently a balance of $27 million

[2:56:23] in that rainy day fund that is an option for us. We will not spend it

[2:56:31] without board authorization. And then the community

[2:56:36] budget steering committee has recommended that we consider a vatre.

[2:56:41] again, it would generate about $7.7 million. And then as ms.

[2:56:47] branham said, it is unclear as to whether or not the vatre will be an

[2:56:53] option after the 90th legislative session. We do know that there is a

[2:56:57] desire to reduce isd's taxing ability, taxing authority.

[2:57:04] and city.

[2:57:10] and city, county, basically anybody that levies a property tax.

[2:57:15] there is a desire to restrict that for all of us.

[2:57:20] and it is our only real source of revenue. Cities do have various fees,

[2:57:24] water, sewer. Sanitation fees, cities do collect sales tax benefit

[2:57:30] from sales tax, property tax is our only source of revenue outside of the

[2:57:35] state funding and they are very closely linked. With that we'll be glad to

[2:57:42] answer any questions and thank you.

[2:57:55] well, with that presentation, thank you very much. We will open it up

[2:58:00] to comments and questions from the board.

[2:58:05] that's right. All right, ms. Pacheco, you can start us off.

[2:58:09] all right. Well, awesome presentation on all the things that.

[2:58:13] and should not happen to us as a school district.

[2:58:20] thank you so much for all of the hard work, the explanations that you do, mr. Pate.

[2:58:25] I think our community and I know we appreciate it so much. One question, I have a couple

[2:58:30] of questions, but it may be out of order because my brain is a little bit out of order

[2:58:35] with this. If we were to do like a vatre and we get those pennies,

[2:58:42] when I looked at the chart, recapture increases so recapture is not based on

[2:58:47] student enrollment numbers it's just based on tax rate value that we earn they're

[2:58:52] linked but it increases like by three million dollars

[2:58:59] that's I mean more than three so that's kind of yes but

[2:59:04] it's all it it all ties back to wealth per student is what the recapture is it's part of

[2:59:08] the old terminology robin hood and so the wealthier per student we become the larger

[2:59:14] the recapture is but because um we do because our voters authorize them we do get

[2:59:22] to keep a portion of the additional revenue generated uh through the atre through those essentially local

[2:59:30] option pennies but yes you're right we we do have

[2:59:35] to give some of them away right I yeah I know it's

[2:59:39] disappointing because not that I mind giving away and providing support

[2:59:44] to other school districts, but if we're already doing $6 million and we know we need more money here,

[2:59:50] we should be able to keep some of that, more of that, especially when they

[2:59:55] took it away to begin with. But that's just an opinion, but thank you

[3:00:00] for explaining that. The second part I had a question on was one of our pay-raise modeling

[3:00:05] comparisons, and option a1 is a stipend. So with this amount, it's a

[3:00:11] one-time amount that is given to each person. And is this amount, like

[3:00:17] in corporate world, it gets charged as a bonus, or does this get taxed as

[3:00:23] whatever tax bracket this person belongs to? Like what happens

[3:00:27] to that amount? Yes, ma'am.

[3:00:32] go ahead. It is taxed as ordinary income. So it would be taxed.

[3:00:36] based on whatever an employee put on their w-4 and the appropriate tax tables.

[3:00:41] but I will point out that because it is a one-time payment, a retention stipend,

[3:00:50] if you will, it is not part of their trs salary,

[3:00:55] so it does not contribute to their trs because it is a one-time payment.

[3:01:00] like you said, it's more like a bonus. Than pay for work done.

[3:01:06] pay for work, okay. And then if I could add,

[3:01:10] one thing that we've done in the past is we stagger the payment so that it's usually not all

[3:01:16] in one check as well. So we wait a few months until the school year is there so we make sure that the person

[3:01:20] has actually come back to receive the stipend. And then we've broken it up into two payments, one

[3:01:25] in the fall and one in the spring. So it's not 2,000 additional dollars, for example, all in

[3:01:30] one check that could cause more taxes. We try to just break it up into chunks.

[3:01:36] and so it'll cross our employees' income tax year, which is the calendar year

[3:01:45] generally for most, if not all, employees.

[3:01:49] okay, perfect. And then just for further clarification, I just want to make sure,

[3:01:55] option a and option a1. Option a is ongoing,

[3:01:59] and it'll compound for the following year, right? Right, that would be

[3:02:04] recurring. Recurring. Okay. And then option a1 is that one-time thing we added and

[3:02:08] then it's gone. Correct. Like we don't add it again,

[3:02:13] ever again. Yes, ma'am.

[3:02:18] okay. Option b, we added continuously?

[3:02:22] recurring. Okay. Yes. So option a, so going back to the multi-year, option a,

[3:02:27] you would see, options a and b, you would see in the 26-27 column, 27-28 column, 28-29 column,

[3:02:31] and 29- 30 column. Option a1 would only appear in the 26-27 column.

[3:02:39] and you could bring revenue in, you could do a transfer in from the local permanent

[3:02:44] school fund, as ms. Branham said, into the general fund for

[3:02:49] 26-27 so that there would be equal revenue and equal expense for option a1 and it

[3:02:54] would have no net impact. On the 21 million dollar

[3:03:00] deficit, whereas a and b would increase the deficits.

[3:03:05] it does increase the deficit,

[3:03:10] but we can't use that fund. Right or we can you week week I mean yes I can make a

[3:03:15] decision even if it was recurring so that doesn't matter right the board that's

[3:03:20] right if the board decided we yes we want to invest in a recurring raise the board can still make a decision you're

[3:03:25] going to commit x percent of the permanent school fund

[3:03:29] to help offset the increase in expenditure and again give

[3:03:34] us more time to find those efficiencies also I want to say with a one as I mentioned that it could be a

[3:03:38] combination. You all could decide. For teachers and

[3:03:43] for t-types, we're going to do that as a recurring. We're going to invest

[3:03:48] in their salary. But for central, for example, that might be more of a

[3:03:53] retention stipend that we would pay for one time. So you have some options and

[3:03:58] flexibilities based upon just kind of your willingness to see what happens in the

[3:04:05] next legislative session. You know, each time we go to find $20 million of

[3:04:09] savings. It gets harder and harder to find $20 million in savings.

[3:04:14] so I just want to present a menu of choices for our consideration as we

[3:04:19] continue to right-size.

[3:04:23] yes, I know you say $20 million, but I feel like it's a little higher than that at the end of the day,

[3:04:27] right? Yes, and just to reiterate what ms.

[3:04:32] brenner said, you could direct us, for instance, to bring in, say, a fourth of the...

[3:04:39] balance in the local permanent school fund, just divide it by four and bring

[3:04:44] in one fourth every year for years 26, 27 through 29, 30 as an option.

[3:04:49] right. But that then reduces the investment opportunity of the fund itself. And that's probably not the

[3:04:54] best move. Okay. So with the combination of things, I do have a

[3:04:59] question and I know you mentioned this before to us, but is there

[3:05:04] like a reason, I know the reason between certified and uncertified

[3:05:08] teachers, and the amount, but is there a reason why the difference is only 500? Like, why isn't it 6,300 and

[3:05:13] the other uncertified teacher, I don't know, 62 or 61?

[3:05:17] like, where did these numbers?

[3:05:22] sorry, we just picked the number that aligned with the particular option that we had.

[3:05:28] we could always have that uncertified teacher number be lower. It was just a requirement

[3:05:33] with the legislation to make sure that there was a difference between the compensation for

[3:05:37] it. A certified teacher and uncertified? Where I would caution having

[3:05:41] too much of a differentiation is, for example, our cte teachers.

[3:05:45] many of them are uncertified, but they're highly skilled because they've had such incredible industry

[3:05:50] experience. So even if I think about some of our health care, they've

[3:05:55] had such incredible industry experience that that is a part of our district of

[3:05:59] innovation plan. So it's not the same thing as the plan that we brought forward to the board.

[3:06:04] to reduce our uncertified teacher in core areas. So I would just caution us

[3:06:09] because we need our strong cte teachers

[3:06:14] for our pathway. I get it. So thank you

[3:06:18] for the clarity. I mean, you know, some people don't know, and they don't, you know, I don't fully understand what a

[3:06:22] certified teacher versus an uncertified teacher. So that makes a lot of sense as to where

[3:06:27] uncertified teachers are and the things that they're providing our students

[3:06:32] around the district. So that's really important to know and understand and why the difference is smaller

[3:06:36] versus bigger. Let's see. I think full fund,

[3:06:41] restrict fund balance.

[3:06:45] okay. I think that's it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

[3:06:50] thank you, ms. Pacheco. All right. Ms. Timmy, go ahead.

[3:06:54] okay. I want to just talking about one, about a1, specifically

[3:06:59] in the stipend. I just, this is just my opinion. One of seven, I know, but

[3:07:04] just my opinion. I always get concerned when we talk about doing a stipend

[3:07:09] and masking the raise that we're giving while I understand the flexibility

[3:07:13] that's needed, but it may mean in order to catch up and then potentially give another

[3:07:18] raise, we're at 4% to 8% at that point. And so we almost at times anti-ourselves

[3:07:23] to perception. And I think that's really,

[3:07:27] really important. I would rather... Just my opinion, I would

[3:07:32] rather us give the raise that needs to be given versus a stipend that masks what we're

[3:07:38] doing. We got ourselves into

[3:07:43] trouble, and that was part of the compression issue. It was part

[3:07:47] of the reason it looked like we were giving raises at one point in time, and then we came back and we were

[3:07:51] not. I think there's a different message that that sends. So I just want to throw that

[3:07:57] out there just as my feedback on that. I mean, I certainly want to look

[3:08:01] at do some other research on some of the other ones just to make sure that the due

[3:08:05] diligence is done for that can we look at slide 19 real quick?

[3:08:10] I just have a question on that.

[3:08:17] on that one, when we're talking like it says total revenue, and it says, you know, approximately $3.5 million

[3:08:22] overall in revenue on the bottom right part of that table, is that less expensive?

[3:08:30] so that would be like expense, like that would be like we're bringing in 3.5

[3:08:35] after expenses. That's just our profit. Okay. It's not.

[3:08:39] okay. Great. That's what I wanted. And then on slide 20, I think I'm asking a dumb question,

[3:08:43] but I'm going to go ahead and do it. When I'm looking at, listen, I do it all the time.

[3:08:47] I'm, you know, nothing new over here. I'm just preparing y'all. Right.

[3:08:52] so the giggles stay minimal. Looking at the increase on the vadr on those bottom blue lines.

[3:08:56] if I'm looking at what the forecast is for 28-29 and the forecast for 29-30, why is there

[3:09:00] like a $2 million difference there, but all the other ones look the same or more similar?

[3:09:06] I am still trying to figure that out. I will be honest with you. I don't know if that is an

[3:09:10] error in omar's template or

[3:09:21] if it is just really that's the way it's supposed to work. I have concerns that it does

[3:09:25] drop that much in that year. Especially if you look

[3:09:31] at the year before. Yes. There's some other pricing difference or other revenue pieces in there that are

[3:09:36] lower and look different, but yet it doesn't drop it. I don't know.

[3:09:40] I can't understand why it would devalue by $2 million. I'm still trying to figure that out,

[3:09:45] and I will continue to work on that. Not as dumb as I thought. No. Thank you very much.

[3:09:53] I just did a shorter number, and I was and I apologize that I did not highlight that

[3:09:57] earlier because that has been driving me a little crazy. Absolutely.

[3:10:03] okay. I think, I don't know, I mean, I'm not really sure

[3:10:07] what's being asked. I think this is just information and presentation. I do just want to say that,

[3:10:12] like, I do think there's some due diligence that really needs to be done here. I would be remiss if I didn't say that we've talked all

[3:10:16] night about, like, how having the best teachers in that classroom is what's going to get us to our north star goal.

[3:10:22] I know some of our neighboring districts that we're going to compete with. I've seen some of their

[3:10:26] starting salaries. I've seen some big percent raises. I've also seen some other

[3:10:30] funding models that we'll compete for for some of those experienced teachers. I think we jumped out ahead

[3:10:35] of the curve, as we should have, appropriately. But I also think, too, like if we're really going

[3:10:40] to be committed to that north star goal, then we have to really be sure we take care of our teachers.

[3:10:44] now, how we do that, right, that's what we get to decide. But I do think that ensuring

[3:10:49] that what we're putting in in a really tough time frame,

[3:10:53] in a really tough time to be paying teachers and having to make some difficult choices

[3:10:58] and whatever choice, whatever we end up going with, I know is going to make

[3:11:02] more difficult conversations down the road.

[3:11:07] and to me, it's not just a risk tolerance. It's that.

[3:11:11] but it's also the tolerance of the conversations that we're going to be forcing going forward

[3:11:16] for that. But this is I mean, listen.

[3:11:21] this is why we get paid the big bucks, right? We have to have these conversations,

[3:11:25] and that's part of our job. But I do hope that just as the board, and we do continue

[3:11:29] to keep that north star goal and aligning our resources, as small as they might be at this point, with the

[3:11:34] outcomes that we desire, I do think this is a situation where you get what you pay

[3:11:39] for. So that's it. Thanks.

[3:11:43] timmy, do you have any feedback related to our... Just as I think about modeling this out

[3:11:48] further and bringing back the information that you would need to help give us directional approval

[3:11:54] in our first may meeting, because we would like to share our compensation in that may meeting, get

[3:11:59] directional approval. Y'all don't adopt the budget until june.

[3:12:03] do one of these models speak to you? I hear a1 is not something that you would like for us

[3:12:09] to continue with, and of course, look forward to other feedback

[3:12:14] from the board. But a or b in any way. Yeah, so listen, I tend

[3:12:19] to lean more towards a and I mean, listen, if I had my heart's desire,

[3:12:23] we would definitely be doing that is where I would land. That being said, I also feel like it is incumbent upon us

[3:12:28] to do our due diligence to look at the modeling. I think what I would like to look for is I would like

[3:12:33] to see what the other starting salaries that we are competing with.

[3:12:38] I would also like to see how you guys have done it before where it looks like we're the experienced

[3:12:43] teachers. I know that's a little bit harder. But that benchmarking data from the other districts,

[3:12:48] like I know that mckinney is giving like a three and a half percent raise. I don't know where that then

[3:12:54] puts us in relation to them. I understand there's some districts that we won't be able to model against because of the model

[3:12:59] that they're using, which is fine. That's I mean, that is what it is. But what I would I just would

[3:13:04] like to see where we land. We worked really hard to get where we are. I am committed to our teachers in this

[3:13:08] district. I know as our enrollment drops that we are going

[3:13:13] to have to have different conversations. I understand that,

[3:13:18] but we're going to just have to really, I would like to see that because I just would have a very hard time

[3:13:23] dropping in where we've been when we've made the progress that we've made. And so those would be the

[3:13:28] kinds of things that I'm going

[3:13:33] to look at. Okay, thank you for that. One last just follow-up. In terms

[3:13:38] of other employee types, would you like to see any adjustments in that percent increase? Would you like us

[3:13:43] to lower that? Would you like... Any feedback on that? You're talking about outside of just t-types as you're

[3:13:47] defining them now? Yes, ma'am. I'm talking specifically central and paraprofessional. Listen, I would like

[3:13:52] to give everybody all of the money. Let's just be honest.

[3:13:57] that's right, matt. I think I know we've done a little bit of pay on paras. I would say that I would have

[3:14:04] to go back and look at that to see because I would want to see what that looks like. I mean, I think I'd be

[3:14:08] hard-pressed. I mean, 3%. On what we don't pay them enough already

[3:14:13] for what we ask of them. I would be extremely, it would be extremely hard for me to ever get behind

[3:14:18] anything that would drop that. That's how we felt as well. Yeah.

[3:14:24] I don't, and I don't know that I think I would want to on central office either at this time, especially

[3:14:28] given the cuts that we're making and the amount of work that they're having to pick up in light of the cuts that we're making.

[3:14:33] like we're making these cuts and we're getting a lot of less people, but it doesn't mean that those jobs

[3:14:37] aren't there. It means we've shifted them to someone else. Right.

[3:14:42] I know that we'll also be asking for additional cuts, right? I mean, it's going to have to happen.

[3:14:46] I don't know where that comes from. It will be starting in august.

[3:14:52] yeah. I don't know where that's going to come from, but I

[3:14:57] would assume we would be doing the same thing. It's not like the work's getting less.

[3:15:01] we're going to continue to shift more work on fewer people. And so I would have a hard time then not giving them an

[3:15:06] increase, asking them to do more work while they're being prepared to determine what cuts we're going to make. Well, we're not giving them a

[3:15:10] salary increase. I would have a very hard time getting behind that. That's just my thoughts. That helps us know kind

[3:15:14] of what to model. All right. Others. We'll go to ms. Mcgowan now.

[3:15:20] yeah. Would you like to add on to ms.

[3:15:24] timmy?

[3:15:29] I think ms. Timmy and ms. Pacheco have said plenty.

[3:15:36] I do have just explore. I just had a question wrote down, like, is this our only child care option?

[3:15:41] or do we look into other options for after school? Or does that even make a

[3:15:46] difference? I don't know. We provide what I think is a

[3:15:51] high-quality after school option, and it's very, very affordable. Right.

[3:15:55] I was going to say, you can't find anything cheaper. Even with the increase, you cannot find cheaper than that.

[3:16:00] and we've not. We purposely, again, we recognize that. I know.

[3:16:04] cost of living for everyone is increasing, so we have been very conservative

[3:16:09] in not addressing explore. I think it's been three years, maybe four, since we've last adjusted this.

[3:16:14] we did look at all of our benchmark districts, and we are by far charging right now the lowest.

[3:16:18] and I feel like there's even financial assistance for parents in the explore program.

[3:16:24] so where does that assistance come from? It basically drops the revenue from the explore

[3:16:28] model. Yes. I mean, again, this program

[3:16:32] still generates revenue. It still generates. It just reduces the revenue. Is this,

[3:16:37] is it a separate company? No, ma'am. It's all us. Yes, dr.

[3:16:43] lieber and david burkholder and his team lead the entire thing. Okay. Well, I know because the ymca

[3:16:48] has tried to break in. I thought they were like an outside. I thought it was outside of the district.

[3:16:52] but if it's all internal, then we've got to hold on to all of that. Yes. For sure. Again, it is a revenue

[3:16:57] generator for the district. One of the hopes that we have, and this is one

[3:17:02] of the recommendations from the community budget steering committee, is if we can increase, and we didn't

[3:17:07] model this because we don't know, but if we can increase that hourly rate and we can attract more workers, we have

[3:17:11] a significant waiting list for our explore program. It's so cheap.

[3:17:16] yes. It's just finding enough workers. So we're hoping that if we

[3:17:20] can increase this hourly rate, maybe we will attract some more workers so that we

[3:17:25] can get more students in to even increase the revenue.

[3:17:29] gotcha. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that.

[3:17:34] I would also like to see, I know ms. Timmy mentioned seeing the comparison

[3:17:38] with or benchmark districts, but I also wrote down the different employee types,

[3:17:44] like you were saying, your parent professionals. I would like to see, and I wrote that down, are we aligned

[3:17:49] with our neighboring districts on that pay?

[3:17:54] today, are we even aligned? On the specific raise or on salary?

[3:17:58] salary. It depends upon which employee type you're talking

[3:18:03] about within that category. So within that, there are layers

[3:18:07] of employees. It might be auxiliary staff. It may be a classroom

[3:18:12] paraprofessional. It may be an executive assistant. It may be our sdss.

[3:18:17] so there's a... Multitude of positions and each one benchmarks differently based upon what

[3:18:21] we've been able to do and adjust over time. I will say they probably,

[3:18:26] they all at some point will have to do some market adjustment,

[3:18:30] but we know we don't have the capacity and the budget to do that. And that's why we knew we had

[3:18:35] to at least bring forward a 3% consideration for that job category. Dr.

[3:18:42] goodson, I don't know if you want to add anything to that. No, that actually is... Very accurate.

[3:18:46] they are the lower paying positions. And so over the last several years, we've tried to bring

[3:18:52] forward those groupings of employee types that needed to have some type of adjustment because they were

[3:18:57] the farthest behind the rest of our benchmark districts

[3:19:03] with actual salary and in some cases the starting salary for new hires coming in.

[3:19:07] so we've made progress coming into this year. We targeted assistant

[3:19:12] principals, we targeted central special

[3:19:17] education, paraprofessionals, executive assistants, different groupings within the paraprofessional ranks.

[3:19:26] and so we know that that's going to have to be the case moving forward.

[3:19:30] I think we have to stick to that.

[3:19:35] I feel like that we have to stick to that pay increase for that type.

[3:19:41] and my last question is, ms. Pacheco touched on the certified teacher.

[3:19:46] and then you clarified, because I wrote the same question down, and then you clarified the cte space.

[3:19:51] but then my mind went to, but what about in the classroom space for our non-certified teachers

[3:19:56] there? Can we further that?

[3:20:01] can we widen that gap, like the classroom uncertified versus the classroom certified, and not touch the

[3:20:06] cte uncertified? Well, there are a few other. Job categories that I would

[3:20:11] recommend we would want to keep

[3:20:16] in that close differential. What I would offer is, for example, this year,

[3:20:20] unless we have, I don't anticipate having as many openings because of some of

[3:20:24] the attrition work we're doing. But if we do, hr knows we

[3:20:29] have to hire certified people. We are under legislation that

[3:20:34] requires us in the core areas to have certified teachers. We have presented a plan that

[3:20:39] the board approved. To reduce the amount of uncertified teachers we have

[3:20:44] by 50%. So I think we have kind of a project in place,

[3:20:49] a system in place that will address that without having so many different salary

[3:20:54] schedules that it makes it incredibly complex for our hr system and our payroll system

[3:20:59] to make sure that we are adequately paying everyone what they need to.

[3:21:03] of course, whatever the board, I'm at the will of the board.

[3:21:09] but I think we have another way to solve that that would allow us to kind

[3:21:13] of maintain. Pulling all uncertified

[3:21:17] teachers out of the classroom. Reducing, yes. Kidding.

[3:21:21] working to reduce that. Just kidding. Okay, awesome. I appreciate that.

[3:21:26] I love that plan. I appreciate the work. It's a lot. So, yeah, that's all.

[3:21:30] thank you. Thank you. Comments or questions?

[3:21:35] mr. Andrea.

[3:21:39] I think my colleagues already said a whole lot. I mean, I just, yeah, I agree with everything that

[3:21:43] was said, especially on the part with the paraprofessionals and all.

[3:21:48] absolutely agree across, I mean, for the longest time, I mean, they have been the most, I guess, underpaid,

[3:21:52] and they do so, so much work. I mean, they are equivalent to what a teacher does

[3:21:57] in the classroom. And so that, again, I agree with that. One of the questions I did

[3:22:02] have was on the very beginning, on the very, I don't know what slide,

[3:22:07] what slide is this? Slide seven. You know, I just think it's super important.

[3:22:12] I think all of us here, when we get to a certain topic, we talk about how important that is,

[3:22:16] right? And so absolutely, I think all of us agree that the teacher compensation is super

[3:22:21] important. If we could, we would give them exactly, I mean, give everybody the top most,

[3:22:26] yeah, in a race. But I think it's offsetting these things. So when we talk about,

[3:22:31] I know we talked about the marketing. How important that was when we did that presentation,

[3:22:35] right? I just feel like whatever's in front of us, we're like, yeah, let's do that. And then, yeah,

[3:22:40] let's do that. And yes, we'll do that. But when it comes to this, again, I think for all

[3:22:44] of us, I know for me, the teacher compensation is super important and top priority.

[3:22:49] I mean, what everybody said here is absolutely right. But when I see some of these other things, I

[3:22:53] mean, this right here on this slide, are these like, I know the advertisement one you said,

[3:22:58] we can go back and forth. There's things that we can move around. But are some of these pretty

[3:23:03] much, I mean, there's just, and I know it only adds up to that, you know, the $1

[3:23:08] million here. But say like property auto

[3:23:12] liability, cyber insurance, is that like just something that it is what it is,

[3:23:16] right? The cost increase.

[3:23:21] where the board would have some options, for example, the fine arts supplies. That is a request that mr.

[3:23:25] sinet with visual arts brought forward. We've not made any adjustments

[3:23:29] in supply budget. For elementary or secondary visual arts teachers um and so he he did ask that we make

[3:23:35] a a small adjustment but the crossing guard is required by the city

[3:23:40] of richardson and we have to we have a cost associated

[3:23:45] with that. The two special education teachers and four central paraprofessionals,

[3:23:50] we could continue to work with our special student services.

[3:23:54] we could potentially put a pin on that and see if we can find some efficiencies, maybe

[3:23:59] add one or two students depending upon the special program that it is.

[3:24:06] we just know that our students... Identification continues to

[3:24:10] increase our request is that we hire that early so we can

[3:24:17] get higher quality individuals versus realizing in october that we need those

[3:24:22] classrooms and then trying to find teachers and paraprofessionals

[3:24:26] in that classroom in october so there there potentially might be some flexibility there so really advertising

[3:24:31] and marketing plan potentially the special

[3:24:35] education classrooms and the fine art supplies the other things are unfortunately

[3:24:40] that's just what it is okay well that was my question because I didn't know what else yeah

[3:24:45] but again I think I agree with my colleagues here where I mean the as far as the teacher pay I agree that's a

[3:24:50] tough part yeah thank you and thanks for the presentation

[3:24:54] do other board members have

[3:24:58] any feedback related to a versus b you go

[3:25:07] to slide slide 16. Slide 16.

[3:25:14] and, again, as we referenced all models, we brought but there may be something else that you would like

[3:25:19] to see us model and compare to benchmark. So we're open to your

[3:25:24] feedback. I'll go last. All right.

[3:25:31] just waiting over here. As far as feedback, I think I

[3:25:36] would definitely want to see more on a and b. Maybe there's a combination or something we do in

[3:25:41] between with it.

[3:25:46] I agree with ms. Timmy on seeing benchmarks on teachers with experience and what do the salaries

[3:25:51] really look like for our auxiliary and paraprofessionals.

[3:25:56] I asked about the stipend because I was just really curious.

[3:26:00] I hadn't seen something like this before, and I was like, does that really move the needle?

[3:26:05] what is it exactly? But really and truly, it's kind of like one of

[3:26:10] those that doesn't really change a lot for any of our employees.

[3:26:14] and when it doesn't also help with their retirement and it doesn't help with other

[3:26:19] things versus a salary increase. It truly is.

[3:26:24] it's very different. I mean, thank you for providing an option.

[3:26:28] but that's definitely not one that I would think it's going to really make a difference. Is that one, so the one to

[3:26:34] 10 years, 1,000, 11 plus

[3:26:38] years, 2,000, that is the stipend we're talking about, right?

[3:26:42] that's going across the... So a and b, actually, that is a salary increase, whereas a1, it would be a

[3:26:47] one-time, two times a year, but it's more

[3:26:55] of a one-time stipend. So it does not increase the actual salary.

[3:27:01] I'm going to lean towards because I know what they're doing in fort worth, which is

[3:27:06] insane. I mean, it's not insane, I'm so sorry.

[3:27:11] but I'm going to lean more towards b. We're going to adopt the deficit.

[3:27:18] and, I mean, it just doesn't even really move the needle that much in salary pay,

[3:27:22] right? But if that's on the table, that's what I'm leaning

[3:27:26] towards. Anybody else want

[3:27:31] to speak? Any other trustees? Okay.

[3:27:35] can you go to, no? I can't see. Okay.

[3:27:41] can you switch back to slide 10?

[3:27:46] and I know we're focusing on compensation decisions and stuff ahead of may.

[3:27:50] slide 10, and I'm kind of, I keep coming back to this big overall picture

[3:27:55] of where we're headed, right? And I know we're focused

[3:27:59] right now on decisions that we're making today. We're kind of touching on.

[3:28:03] next year and impacts beyond that. But when you look at this and you look at the

[3:28:08] ending fund balance compared to the fund balance targets,

[3:28:13] we hit an exponential cliff in 27-28. You can see we go to a $15

[3:28:18] million deficit in where we need to be with our fund balance to a

[3:28:22] 50 to 110 or whatever. I don't know what the plan is

[3:28:27] going forward to. I mean, how many cuts can we make

[3:28:32] to make up $100 million in the next two or three years? I mean, that's just not.

[3:28:37] so I know we're talking about. We're kind of splitting hairs on compensation discussion a

[3:28:43] little bit because when we're talking about that magnitude of change, and that's not

[3:28:47] like in five years. I remember when we had this conversation years ago and we said, oh,

[3:28:53] it's five years out. We're going to take some bold moves, which we needed

[3:28:57] to do and we could. Well, the light in the tunnel is the train, and it's about on top of us.

[3:29:03] so this is an important slide for me to kind of think about things.

[3:29:08] I know we've committed to bold moves. We've committed

[3:29:12] to bold compensation moves for our teachers, especially multiple times,

[3:29:16] because we go back to our north star goal and we're looking at outcomes.

[3:29:21] and we know that the teacher in the classroom, the veteran teacher,

[3:29:26] the good teacher that we want to retain, the great teacher we want

[3:29:31] to recruit, those are what's going to so when we take these bold actions, I just have to remind myself there's

[3:29:36] additional pressure now to produce outcomes. I mean, it's just you feel it, right?

[3:29:40] I mean, because we're taking risk. And I know you mentioned a

[3:29:46] risk. That's part of the equation, right, the risk proposition. So we're taking this risk

[3:29:51] on a fiduciary side of the house for the roi on the student outcome side. And so the more risk we take,

[3:29:56] the more pressure I feel, right?

[3:30:01] and I think that's how it's supposed to happen at the end of the day, right? But this is a lot of

[3:30:06] pressure. There's a lot of risk there. And I know that $8 million this year, a decision, or

[3:30:11] $10 million, or $12 million, or whatever. We're just talking a few million here and there.

[3:30:15] but according to that, I mean, we've got bigger problems than just $8 or $10

[3:30:20] million. And that's really what at least caused me to say we needed

[3:30:25] to have this conversation. Because without a compensation increase.

[3:30:30] we need to find $21 million next year. Just next year.

[3:30:37] you want the year after that. Right.

[3:30:41] 50. Right. It's not, yeah, it increases exponentially. Absolutely.

[3:30:47] I hear you. So I'm more talking than asking a question, but these are things that, as

[3:30:52] we have the discussion that keep going through my head, one, compression. We took care of that,

[3:30:56] right? So none of these reintroduce compression. We've kind of made the.

[3:31:01] that's basically why we adopted this. Okay. I just want to make sure in

[3:31:06] my mind that I understand we're not accidentally sliding back into something like that.

[3:31:14] use the term completely right size our budget. That's something later on we

[3:31:18] can see what that looks like. The challenge I have is that

[3:31:22] what the amount is that I need to identify to right size our keeps is a moving

[3:31:27] target. Yes, absolutely. And as long as we're losing

[3:31:33] enrollment, it's like catching a falling knife. So, I know.

[3:31:37] okay. Well, bear

[3:31:42] with me. A couple of questions on the audit.

[3:31:46] I don't understand what that all means, the definition of the efficiency audit. But it sounds like, I mean,

[3:31:51] this is probably going to be a no-brainer on having to do that.

[3:31:55] but how long is that audit good for? Because we're operating on all these slides

[3:32:00] on we have to go to the voters in the fall. Yes, I will double check.

[3:32:04] there is a time period where it would have to be refreshed, and the

[3:32:08] audit is actually state. The testing or the procedures associated with this efficiency audit is mandated

[3:32:14] by the state. So it's not like your normal financial statement audit

[3:32:19] that we're used to having it as a special purpose.

[3:32:27] so my leading question there is, do we need to go

[3:32:32] in the fall? And I know we talk about the pressures of potential action

[3:32:36] at the legislative session. And we talked about that last time because we almost accelerated our bond

[3:32:41] to get ahead of that, which it ended up it was a bill. It went to the house. It did not get passed.

[3:32:46] thank goodness. But, you know, can we do it in the spring?

[3:32:50] if they do legislation, when does it take effect? Is it immediately? Is it september 1? I'm just seeing is our only

[3:32:56] option. Just to note, right now, vaders can only be done in november. November, okay.

[3:33:01] so it would be this november or next november.

[3:33:06] so, yes, only in november, and chances are, based on prior legislative activity, if they pass any legislation

[3:33:11] related to vatre, we let's see, in 27.

[3:33:27] chances are like 20 legislation coming out of the 90th session in 27 could very likely prevent us

[3:33:32] from having a va tre in the fall of 27 they had a

[3:33:39] kind of out the last time if we had discussed it within a certain time period,

[3:33:44] but I don't know if they would give that to us again.

[3:33:50] okay. So my point is that we're tying this to this

[3:33:54] november. One of my other concerns with that is the and please note, we're open

[3:33:59] to board feedback. We just want to make sure you had all the information that you needed to let it, like,

[3:34:04] nope, we don't have, like, that's not something we even want to explore.

[3:34:08] no, we need to continue to see what that would look like. And that vader, I think we're

[3:34:13] getting to the point where if you look at this, we've got to execute every, we've got to pull every lever that we

[3:34:18] have. We've got to consider it and we've got to probably do more than consider it.

[3:34:22] we've got to find the change in the cushion of the couch. We're digging everywhere we

[3:34:27] can. I know you've talked about the permanent fund. That's a good option as well.

[3:34:32] I'm not sure I want to exhaust it all in a year or two or whatever. But I also wonder what the

[3:34:37] appetite of our voters are going from a bond to a vader

[3:34:41] in a short order. And so the whole point of that question was,

[3:34:45] can we put space between those two requests?

[3:34:52] and I totally know and we can preach all day that they're two different buckets of money and two colors

[3:34:57] of money. But it's a tax, all of us. Right. And so that's my concern is

[3:35:04] that separation between the bond. And the vader.

[3:35:09] and so that's what leads me to ask about the audit and the timing of the election and

[3:35:13] all that kind of stuff. So anyway, that's my comment

[3:35:18] is just a concern that I want to make sure that we keep on our radar. And if I can note

[3:35:24] to something you mentioned about the bond, I just just

[3:35:30] to clarify. We did not accelerate the bond to a november election just out of concerns

[3:35:35] from legislators. It was also if we wanted to have any chance of being open in the august of 28.

[3:35:41] that's true. We had to do it in november.

[3:35:45] otherwise, it would have been like a january, which doesn't make sense with a school calendar year.

[3:35:50] I know we were on a five-year cycle, and then we got off of that for a number of reasons.

[3:35:55] hopefully just this one time. Yeah. Mr. Poteet, can I add just a piece?

[3:35:59] I do want to add, there was something that you said, and I think you've said a couple of times, but I actually think it's

[3:36:04] like incredibly relevant. So we're talking about like the $10 million raise for our teachers, right?

[3:36:09] like 10.8, right? I think is that what it is? But we also, if that's what we went,

[3:36:13] right? Like at max, like max is I think what we're talking about. But if I'm really,

[3:36:18] and I know we're talking about like these deficits and things like that and out to

[3:36:22] 2930 and I fully get that. We already know that on the legislative priority list that there is a piece to go

[3:36:27] to zero ability to collect any tax payer or any property tax, which is, as you said,

[3:36:31] our sole source of funding, which means the whole system at some point, if that goes

[3:36:36] through, they're going to have to figure that out because then what?

[3:36:40] so then it doesn't become those numbers at all.

[3:36:44] and I know we cannot plan on what we think the legislative session will or will not do,

[3:36:49] and I get that. And I'm... On one hand don't think we should but I also think too

[3:36:53] you you mentioned we're talking about splitting here is about 10.8 million dollars to

[3:36:58] give teachers a raise and a potential of a complete and different funding system so

[3:37:02] like when I look at that when that's the legislative priority I do look at those

[3:37:07] deficits a little bit differently um because 10.8

[3:37:11] in that and having no funding sources coming in at all I I just I it doesn't seem like well we want

[3:37:16] to be while we want to be responsible fiscally

[3:37:22] with our funds, if we don't continue to fund

[3:37:27] our teachers the way we are, trying to base it on a current system, which we don't know if it's going

[3:37:32] to be there, which we don't, like, I, in my mind, have to keep my eye on the prize,

[3:37:37] which is student outcomes, because I can't with all the other things that are happening. I hope that, listen,

[3:37:42] I very rarely will get into politics in here for a number of reasons on, from a work perspective.

[3:37:48] however, I do hope that our community will get out and understand the impact it's going to have to our

[3:37:52] education system should we not find a way to fund our schools without the strings and

[3:37:56] without the harnesses to programs that may not be right for our community in order to increase that.

[3:38:09] but I think that it makes it not arbitrary. I don't mean that those

[3:38:14] numbers are arbitrary, but I do think that... I think in some ways it does.

[3:38:18] and so I just want to leave it at that.

[3:38:24] I also want to recognize what both of you said. I hope you know that there's not a person in this room

[3:38:28] that does not share your urgency around student outcomes. And we know that...

[3:38:33] again, you have made the investment, and now our

[3:38:37] central systems have to support our educators

[3:38:41] in realizing those outcomes. So 100%. Yeah, and just now I was speaking more about my,

[3:38:47] the pressure that I feel, you know,

[3:38:52] and I know you do every day, all day. But I just think that it's like everything else we do.

[3:38:56] it's a balance. It's a balance of looking at sticking with the north star goal and the

[3:39:02] commitments, the bold commitments we've made. But then it's a balance of also looking at.

[3:39:08] knowing the landscape as it is today, the law as it is today, you know,

[3:39:12] this is what we're looking at in two and three years out. So where do we find that balance and where's the risk

[3:39:17] in the decisions that we make? So I appreciate the presentation.

[3:39:21] hopefully you got a lot of feedback from the board. Ms.

[3:39:26] harris, are you good? Can I ask a couple of clarifying? Okay.

[3:39:32] well, we're not voting here. I know, but do you have any directional feedback on what you'd like us

[3:39:37] to bring back? What I want to see? No, I mean, I do feel that the stipend, I

[3:39:41] appreciate you bringing that forward just so that we could have the discussion, understand that option and

[3:39:46] what it means. I do think that there's, while it looks good

[3:39:50] on paper, there's other second and third order impacts, like we said to trs

[3:39:55] and things that that's culturally impactful as well. To our teachers so um so I I

[3:39:59] am more interested in option a and b and to our

[3:40:03] point that we had a while ago you know is is two million dollars in the grand scheme

[3:40:09] of things do we get but also the questions ask you know

[3:40:14] does an extra two million dollars does that what do we get for that so you kind of got to look at both

[3:40:18] of those but I think we're I see some coalescence around those kinds

[3:40:24] of options. Yep. So all right do you have one

[3:40:29] more question? Talking about stipends, while we're on the stipend point,

[3:40:33] I know a lot of our bilingual teachers received a stipend for, like, our bilingual.

[3:40:38] we're not changing that. So we're going to continue that? Yes, ma'am.

[3:40:42] okay. Not in the presentation related to stipend reduction. We are not, our special

[3:40:47] education, bilingual, many of our other specialty stipends, we are not reducing that. We're really targeting things

[3:40:52] like travel, for example, to earn a certain. You know, travel allotment,

[3:40:56] you know, a staff member may have to travel 172 miles in a month

[3:41:02] to have earned that amount. We know that that is probably not happening. And so it's those kind of

[3:41:07] targeted things that we're looking at, but we're really trying to maintain, especially for

[3:41:12] our bilingual and our special student services classroom teachers, we're holding on to those stipends.

[3:41:19] I just wanted to add something too.

[3:41:23] I think that, you know, it's, it's, for me, it's a frustration, right? It's really a frustration

[3:41:28] because both sides of what mr. Poteet and also what ms. Timmy said, you know,

[3:41:33] we're kind of caught in the middle. And I think the frustrating part for me is that, you

[3:41:38] know, with austin, you know, it's the blatant almost, you know, intention to dismantle

[3:41:42] public education. And it's coming at all of this, right?

[3:41:47] because we're doing the very best we can.

[3:41:52] I mean, and I know that our... That other districts are doing the same thing

[3:41:57] in the state. But, you know, again,

[3:42:01] I think that as we talk about we don't know what's going to happen with this next

[3:42:06] legislative session. We don't know what's going to happen, and we're all trying to guess, and

[3:42:10] at the same time trying to do what we're supposed to do, and then at the same time provide and keep those teachers.

[3:42:15] it just seems so impossible, right? I mean, we're trying to split hairs here on what it is, and it's really hard,

[3:42:19] you know. But I get frustrated because, you know, the cuts keep coming from further up.

[3:42:25] and it's an intentional and, you know, just like I said, a blatant and intentional point to just continue to dismantle

[3:42:29] public ed. I would also just add that

[3:42:35] it's not only the underfunding, but then it's

[3:42:40] also a continued change in the rules of the game.

[3:42:45] so just ccmr is one example of as districts have continued to work towards.

[3:42:49] what they're holding up as like this is where we need you to be,

[3:42:53] then they continue to change the rules of what counts, what doesn't,

[3:43:00] how many points you get. And so even for our current high school students, we're having to reimagine all

[3:43:05] the work we have done to make sure that we're doing great things for kids.

[3:43:09] we're having to reimagine it all over now because the state has moved

[3:43:14] that target. And that's just one. That's just one area.

[3:43:20] that's not alone, all the other areas. And, david, if you could hit the last slide, the takeaway slide, because I do want the

[3:43:25] community especially to hear this as we're having this conversation.

[3:43:31] I know this year, as we hear a $25 million reduction, I just have

[3:43:37] to continue to communicate that we've not been on this journey just one year. We have been on this journey

[3:43:42] since project right size. We have reduced our expenditures by almost $42

[3:43:48] million in three years. So we have not taken this lightly. We have not put our head

[3:43:55] in the sand and pretended

[3:44:01] like we're not in this. This current financial

[3:44:06] situation, every year we have continued to find as many efficiencies, keep them as far away from

[3:44:11] the classroom as possible because we feel that urgency.

[3:44:15] but to think that in three years we've reduced by $41 million and

[3:44:21] to know we've got to do another 20 next year. That is still not enough.

[3:44:25] right. I mean, and every time we get to a certain point, they move the needle.

[3:44:31] yes. I mean, they're just moving more and moving more. And that's what I'm saying.

[3:44:35] and then for those who don't understand that it's like, well, our public schools aren't doing enough. Our public schools don't

[3:44:40] provide this and that. And even to mr. Poteet's point about having, I thought the same thing.

[3:44:45] I was like, well, we just passed and our community was kind enough and understood how important this bond was.

[3:44:50] but then to also come again and say, hey, guys,

[3:44:54] now we need this evader. It's like, what more do you want? And we're just trying

[3:44:59] to stay afloat. We're just trying to stay afloat. It's like a hamster wheel

[3:45:03] because if we don't have facilities and if we don't have the learning environment that will attract and retain, it's kind of

[3:45:08] like the marketing, right? Right. I recognize we don't have $500,000 to spend

[3:45:14] on marketing. I get it. Like, we don't. At the same time, we recognize the only way

[3:45:19] to increase revenue is to try to recruit more. And so it's a hamster wheel in every area,

[3:45:24] and I'm desperately trying to find the off ramp to get us

[3:45:29] off the hamster wheel but we keep getting like sucked back in exactly

[3:45:33] so I just I just had to communicate like we had

[3:45:37] the board has been very strategic with charging staff to find

[3:45:43] these efficiencies the community budget steering committee was very strategic in making recommendations so

[3:45:47] I just that's why I just feel like we're all doing our part right we're all trying really

[3:45:52] hard except it seems like austin is not austin's not

[3:45:56] doing their part and that's what's frustrating and minutes. Yeah, yeah,

[3:46:01] exactly. I do just, okay, and I'll be quiet over this. I do just want

[3:46:06] to add, I would be remiss if I did not say we are so lucky

[3:46:10] that you are superintendent. I know you're not asked for this because this is hard work. Your team and what you

[3:46:16] all do, this is such hard work. And I know you guys get hit with so

[3:46:20] much negative all the time. I mean, that just. Somewhat of the nature

[3:46:25] of the job. I mean, we get that as principals sometimes too, but not always all the positive pieces of this, but this is not easy work.

[3:46:30] this is extremely hard. I'm just thinking of the presentations we had tonight, all the thought and all

[3:46:34] of the planning and all of the repercussions and all of the different things that you all are working through

[3:46:39] from just a cognitive load of just thinking through every single aspect of that,

[3:46:46] how difficult that is. We don't tell you thank you

[3:46:50] enough for those things. We don't tell your team thank you enough

[3:46:54] for those things. It takes the entire team to make this happen. I'm so glad that you

[3:46:59] guys, you have such a strong team that helps her do that, but also, too,

[3:47:03] for your leadership in allowing them to help and work with that. I hate to think

[3:47:09] where our district would be if we didn't have somebody who could lead this kind

[3:47:14] of stuff. It's hard. So thank you. Any other? Oh, yes, ms. Mcgowan. One more question, and this is

[3:47:18] probably the dumbest question, ms. Timmy. So I'm going to take that. Is this a competition? I'm taking that

[3:47:23] on tonight. Okay, so, and just for the public to understand, because people are always speculating and

[3:47:27] throwing things out, like, oh, they shouldn't do this, they shouldn't do that, oh, they should do this. Can you

[3:47:31] put it in layman's terms? Like, what would it take to truly right-size our budget?

[3:47:36] like, what would you have to really do? Shut down what at this point? And because we

[3:47:41] can't, like, realistically, you cannot do those things, right? It's not possible. So if you were talking to

[3:47:47] someone and they were like, well, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? Tell them exactly what it would take to

[3:47:51] truly right-size our budget. Sorry, it's a moving target.

[3:47:58] so if you're asking what are our next steps in finding the next $20

[3:48:03] million? I'm saying options that are not even on the table, options that

[3:48:07] we're not even considering. Like what would you have to do to just be like, if you had a magic wand and you're

[3:48:12] like, I can't even, I wouldn't even want to speculate on that.

[3:48:17] because people are going to speculate. Yeah, I don't want to become a headline

[3:48:22] on it. What I will say is

[3:48:26] just like it took us to find this $25 million, our team will start in

[3:48:33] august. We will get school started. And then that very next week, we will get back to the work of identifying

[3:48:38] every opportunity. To find the next efficiency. So, you know,

[3:48:44] changing staffing models, you know, looking

[3:48:48] at how can we provide services to campuses differently

[3:48:52] with less people. You know, we'll have to start looking at programming and are there

[3:49:00] certain programming options that we we have

[3:49:04] to explore and look at differently. So it's it it will start in august and we will work august through

[3:49:09] december. Just like we did this year to begin to identify those and then begin to bring those forward for

[3:49:14] feedback all right thank you somebody told me a term one time called abundance mindset

[3:49:20] heard that so that's a good way I think to bring this all back

[3:49:24] around that we we deal with this we've got hard decisions we got hard discussions but

[3:49:29] as you've told staff throughout the entire

[3:49:34] district we need to approach this with an abundance mindset you sometimes that's harder

[3:49:39] to do than to say. We absolutely do. Well, thank

[3:49:44] you very much. Thanks for all the information, mr. Pate down there. Thank

[3:49:49] you. Thank you, superintendent branham.

[3:49:54] thank you, dr. Goodson. Appreciate it. Didn't want to leave you out

[3:49:59] down there. So with that, I would like to thank the staff, our visitors, and my colleagues for being here this evening.

[3:50:05] we will not have a closed session tonight, and therefore this meeting is

[3:50:10] adjourned at 10.04 p.m.

Apr 23, 2026 Called Meeting / Work Session

Agenda

Transcript