Good afternoon. This meeting is now convened at 01:08PM. I'd like everyone to please silence your cell phones. The quorum of the board is a member is present in the auditorium. We are let's see, we have a quorum here. Only absent members are Angela Flowers, Paula Mendoza, Rolando Martinez and everybody else is present. So, we will start with speakers. Our first order of business is to hear from speakers on the agenda. Public comment during school board meetings will be only available to those persons who have
signed up to speak prior to the meeting time per current protocol. Verbal and other disruptions by persons during the school board meetings are not acceptable as they inhibit the board's ability to conduct business, and the public's ability to observe, those processes. The persons who participate in such behavior will be given one warning, and if the behavior is replaced, they will be asked to leave the meeting. We have nine registered speakers, who will have two minutes each per board policy. We ask that you stay on topic and refrain from naming individuals, especially students, as their identity is protected under law,
but you may name your own child. I ask you to please respect our procedures and, and the other speakers, and at the end of your comments promptly when your time has expired and the timer rings. We'll begin with HISD Board of Education Trustee Savant Moore, is here. There he is. Followed by trustee Placido. Come on. Is Placido Placido here? Oh, there you go. Go ahead. Good afternoon. You know, I learned from you, man. I gotta keep working because usually, yeah, you have your poor uniform on.
But good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. Collectively, we represent 1,400,000 taxpayers. I commend each of you to showing up and prioritizing this work despite your demand and schedules. I wanna be clear and collaborative in this moment. Can we include a specific line item in the budget to help close the existing deficit? My phone is blowing up. Families are reporting no running water and a troubling loss of food pantries in our most vulnerable communities. I know the budget will address long overdue maintenance issues, and I thank you in advance for prioritizing that.
But the food pantry issue is not just about access. It's a communication problem. So I urge today to send the SMS and a printed handout today informing parents exactly where the pantries are. I personally volunteer at the West Orange Sunrise Pantry. I see the difference that it's making. I also request in this budget that we have small libraries in each Sunrise Center, a reader space with books and quiet time, a small cost but a huge return for investment of our kids. On April 5, I will be at the state capital advocating for an increase in public's,
school funding. Probably, it'll be about 20,000 people. We will be providing transportation from every major city and rural community in the state of Texas to get there because we know that this district deserves to have more funding in other districts in Texas. I kindly ask that this superintendent meet with the union leaders and schedule the consultation in April to honor the policy of this board of managers. I wanna acknowledge that NES is showing signs of success, But with this high cost, can we explore cost saving measures that won't compromise quality?
At the end of the day, we share the same mission, to respect teachers, support families, and educate every child to become a productive and empowered American. Know that all of y'all are on our prayer list. I'm praying for you. God bless you, and God bless HISD. Hey. I'm I'm just trying to be like you, mister president. So I'm going back to work to take care of my family. Alright. Have a good day. Thank you. I appreciate that. Trustee Gomez, good to see you. Likewise. Thank you all so much. I've been catching up on each ISU stuff over the last few weeks. My wife and I welcomed our little munchkin December of last year.
And I want to talk a bit about the budget right now. I have some questions that hopefully could help me understand. Is the budget being built under the assumption that the legislature is going to raise the basic allotments? And if so, are we sure we want to do that? And thirdly, what if the legislature doesn't or if it doesn't raise the allotment as much as we think it is or what if Title I funds don't get to HISD for whatever reason or if enrollment is below projections, are there other budgets, are there other versions that take these into account? As a point of comparison, my wife and I might be tempted to plan our days around our little guy
exactly following his nap schedule, exactly following his feeding schedule to a tee. And we look like geniuses if it works, but it often doesn't and it's very wise of us to have some contingency plans. So I don't mean to compare our legislators to a bunch of babies because that would be hugely insulting to my three month old son who just the other day, he flipped from his belly to his back for the first time and in so doing has accomplished more than a lot of our legislators have. And I hope to send him to really good HISD schools where he could amount to more, than a politician like like his dad has become,
unfortunately. But going back to the point, are there contingency plans in case the legislator does not do the right thing, which I'm sorry to say they have a history of doing so as recently as 2023? Thank you. I'll watch the video later on. Going to get back to work. Take care. Thank you. Will our remaining in person speakers please come to the microphone in the order of the numbers that they were assigned at the sign in? Please say your name as you step up to the mic room. Thank you. Ms. Smith, you want to call people? Do we have speaker number one? Were you assigned numbers?
Yeah. I'm number three. Okay. Is number one here? Number two? Go ahead, number three, please. Hi. Good afternoon. I'm Brooke Longoria. As per usual, I'm gonna give you all a quick update on books and my children. Nope. Still no books for my kid, but I do have good news. My friend's third grader is reading books, but, they are doing so in secret. They keep a worksheet under the book so that they can quickly pivot if visitors come to the classroom. I would like to raise a concern that I am worried about what message we are sending our children with that type of behavior. Now onto the budget.
I want us to think about the fact that we want a budget that represents our values, And I know that this will be a challenge considering the fact that y'all have removed, guardrails and safety nets. And now instead of high quality wrap around services, there are bonuses for superintendent Miles' bloated cabinet. We have children all over town missing recess to do Zearn lessons, and we have an extended school day that is developmentally inappropriate. Instead of funding field trips, the district is wasting money on rebranding. I've sat through a lot of school board meetings.
I've attended community meetings with, yes, every one of you here today. Not once has I heard branding raised as a top concern among families, and I'm not sure that that warrants investment. Instead of librarians, my tax dollars are being spent on conferences for superintendent Miles to peddle his subpar curriculum and education model. This year's budget and the one before serve superintendent Miles. It is my sincere hope that next year's budget serves our children and our community
members and that your actions reflect that. And I wish you the best of luck and thanks so much. Thank you. Number four, Liz Silva. Hey, y'all. My name is Liz Silva. I have children at Crockett Elementary, and I just wanted to discuss some payroll information that was, obtained by public information requests. So I just wanted to talk about the pay that many of our HISD executives have made, between 01/01/2024 and 12/31/2024. So I'll start off with mister Riddick.
He made a total of $304,000, a little more than that, with a line item of $40,119 in June of twenty twenty four, which I can assume is a bonus of some kind. Mister Miles left, 2024 with $581,000, with a $37,857 line item right before he received his $142,000 bonus. Laura Stout, who did not finish 2024 with us, received a total of $339,000
it's interesting here that, based on the press release, it seemed that she left on her own accord. So it's really interesting that she would have received a lump sum of $114,000 after leaving. It seems like why would she receive the rest of her contract if she left on her own accord? Luz Martinez had a total of 289,000 with a June 2024 line item of $39,000 Imelda received the same line item of $39,000 with a total of $282,000 pay for 2024.
Terry received Jim Terry received $304,000 with a bonus of $50,000, in June of twenty twenty four. Chief Massey received a total of $283,000 with a bonus of $39,282 Ms. Feinberg received a total of $261,000 and the list goes on and on for a total of $6,000,000 Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other speakers in person? Jessica Campos, Doctor. Hoffman Locke, Shannon Swoop? Okay. We'll move on to Doctor. Maria Benzone. You may begin.
Thank you. Hi. My name is doctor Maria Benzon, and I'm an HID parent and taxpayer. Our students deserve more than wasteful spending and broken trust. As you consider next year's budget, I urge you to reject the reckless financial decisions made under superintendent Mike Miles. Nearly $470,000 on a musical convocation starring him. $732,000,000, 1 third of the entire budget poured into the poured into the unproven NES system our new education system. A $4,400,000,000 bond overwhelmingly rejected by voters because they simply do not trust this leadership.
These are not just numbers. These they are warnings. It's time to make better choices. I ask you to prioritize three critical areas. First, invest in teachers. Highly qualified certified educators are the foundation of student success. Instead of hiring untrained staff and forcing scripted curriculum into classrooms, we must pay competitive salaries, support professional development, and trust our teachers to do what they do best, teach. Number two, support school infrastructure and staff. Students cannot learn in crumbling schools or without the people who keep schools running. Maintenance workers, librarians,
counselors, and wraparound specialists are not luxuries. They are necessities. It's time we fund them as such. Number three, restore fiscal responsibility. A superintendent with a 66.7% evaluation does not deserve a bonus. Every dollar must be spent wisely, not on vanity projects to promote a snake oil NES system or bloated salaries for those who simply echo Miles' wishes. Be stewards of public funds. Be champions for students. Do the right thing. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes our public comment. Okay.
This concludes our speakers on the agenda items. We'll now conduct the hearings that were scheduled for this meeting. Our first item, the purpose of this meeting is the recommendation of the independent hearing examiner in the matter of Kanisha Carey, a teacher at MacGregor Elementary School. Hearings involve complaints against district employees are to be held in closed session unless the employee who is subject to the hearing requests an open session. If both parties request open session during this hearing, the Board may go into closed session to consult with its attorneys under the terms
of the Texas Government Code Section 551.071. If any Board member wishes to seek advice of counsel, please make the request to me at this time. For the record, Wayne Lang, with the Houston Federation of Teachers, representing Miss Carrie is present. Bryce, Corso with with Spalding, Nichols, Lamp and Langolis, representing the administration is present. And Katasha Woods, HIIC's General Counsel is also present. Mr. Lang, do you wish to continue an open session or closed session?
Open session is fine. Closed session. Okay. Okay. The issues before the school board are whether, to accept, reject, or change the independent hearing examiner's findings of fact, conclusion of law, and propose and proposal based on the review of the record. We may reject or change a finding of fact if after reviewing the record of the proceedings before the hearing examiner, we find it is not supported by substantial evidence. If we reject the independent hearings examiner's recommendation or make any changes, we must state the reason,
and the legal bias basis for that. Mr. Cressau, you can, you will proceed first and you'll be allowed a ten minute presentation followed by a ten minute presentation by Mr. Lang. If you would like to reserve part of your ten minutes for rebuttal to the matters presented by Mr. Lang, both sides will be available for questions from the board after the respective presentations and after the deliberation, the board will handle this opinion. Are there any questions about how the hearing is going to be conducted? All good?
Okay. Okay. How would you like to split your time? Okay. You may begin. You, Mr. President, members of the board, the administration is asking that you adopt, accept and adopt the independent hearing examiner's recommendation finding and concluding that good cause exists to terminate Kenesha Carey's probationary contract. This case is pretty simple. Ms. Carey perpetuated outrageous and unacceptable misconduct when she engaged in a verbal altercation in a near physical fight with one of her students' moms. Of course, there's more to the story,
and I'd like to start at the beginning. HISD first employed Ms. Carey at the outset of this school year as a third grade teacher at MacGregor Elementary School under a one year employee probationary contract. And a copy of Ms. Carey's probationary contract is available at Exhibit P1 in HISD's exhibits. On 09/19/2024, just before Ms. Carey completed her two months of employment in the district, staff in the main office called Ms. Carey and directed her to send one of her students to the main office because
his mom was there to pick him up early. Ms. Carey did not send the student to the main office as directed. She instead made the deliberate decision to escort the student, leaving her third grade's other students unsupervised and without instruction, decided to escort that one student to the main office. And what was her intent and reasoning to do so? She wanted to confront the mom about her son's misbehavior in her class earlier that morning, and I'd like to pause to make three quick points. Ms. Carey violated directives and procedures when she escorted the student,
to the main office that morning. She also violated campus expectations and procedures when she left her classroom unattended and her students unsupervised. Third, Ms. Carrie violated campus expectations, procedures, and standards of conduct when she failed to complete a disciplinary referral via CLASS Dojo, which, as you may know, is the district's digital classroom management tool that our teachers are required to use to track student disciplinary issues and communicate with parents about them. All of that was bad enough, but what happened next was even more egregious. So once Ms.
Carey arrived to the main office in front of other staff, parents and students, she engaged in a hostile profanity laced confrontation, escalating the argument with the mom to the point where our assistant principal, Jerry McMurray, was forced to immediately and physically intervene. And again, I'd like to pause to make a couple points. First, our campus principal, Ms. Garrett, who has joined me today, she was not present at MacGregor Elementary School on the day of the incident, and so Assistant Principal McMurren was our top administrator and campus leader on, campus that day.
And also relevant here, Ms. McMurren was actively engaged in a virtual a virtual ARD meeting at the time of the incident. So when Ms. Carey's fight broke out, staff had to interrupt the ARD meeting. The ARD meeting had to end prematurely, and that in and of itself is significant, as you know. The ARD meeting had to be rescheduled within certain mandatory time lines, with both the committee and the students' parents. Also, in the meantime, that student's IEP and special education services were not up to date. So as I stated previously, Ms. McMurray was forced to physically intervene and that is because Ms.
Carrie was bowing up to mom. They had their fingers in each other's faces. They were screaming at each other. Ms. Carrie was even calling the mom the b word. So So Miss McMurrayn squeezed herself in between the two women, outstretched her arms to act as a physical shield between the two women, and attempted to create distance by pushing back against Miss Carrie to separate her physically, from the mom. Miss McMurray, while she was engaged in this physical activity, was also reminding Miss Carrie repeatedly to maintain her composure, to maintain her professionalism,
and to leave the scene. Miss Carrie refused. At one point, she even removed her identification lanyard and her earrings, while telling mom or threatening mom, this ain't what you want, this ain't what you want, b word. Thereafter, miss McMurray successfully guided miss Carrie about 15 to 20 feet away from mom. However, Ms. Carrie, rounded Ms. McMurray, charging back toward mom to again engage in this verbal altercation. This was not a quick incident. This entire episode found Ms. Carrie outside of her classroom for approximately forty five minutes. These outside of her classroom for approximately forty five minutes. These are third graders who are left unattended for forty five minutes.
So my argument to you all and to the hearing examiner who issued a positive recommendation for us was that this was not a fleeting momentary lapse in judgment rather it was a prolonged intentional and reckless disregard for professionalism and decorum. The consequences for MacGregor Elementary School were outstanding. Mom, of course, asked GS2 students, asked her students to record the events on the cell phone. She then ran to the news, who in turn showed up with their camera crew the next morning. And, this story was broadcast both via video and,
in writing, publicly. That, of course, resulted in parent complaints to the campus. Assistant Principal McMurray immediately notified Principal Garrett about the situation. I think she called her while she was away from campus. Principal Garrett then immediately investigated the sis the situation and substantiated the allegations against miss Curry or sorry, Carrie. And a copy of that investigation report as well as relevant witness statements as well as a copy of the surveillance video from the campus showing this incident, are available at Exhibits P5 through P9.
The administration rightly removed Ms. Carey from MacGregor Elementary School, and then this board proposed her midyear termination on 10/10/2024. This also was significant. It resulted in MacGregor losing one of its third grade teachers during the fall twenty twenty four semester. That teacher was not replaced until December 2. That's particularly egregious given the district's current aims to improve student testing scores and close achievement gaps. As you all know, Texas students begin testing, or taking the STAAR test in the third grade.
Obviously, Ms. Carey's, misconduct violated her probationary contract. It also violated, provisions of the MacGregor employee handbook, Board Policy DH Local as well as Board Policy DH Exhibit, which, as you all know, incorporates the educator's code of ethics into Board policy. The Texas Education Code provides that any probationary contract educator in Texas may be discharged at any time for good cause as determined by the Board of Trustees. And the term good cause is defined as, quote,
the failure to meet the accepted standards of conduct for the profession as generally recognized and applied in similarly situated school districts in this state. So Deidra Davis participated as an expert witness in our, hearing. Miss Davis is an executive director of human resource services at the Klein Independent School District, and she provided undisputed expert testimony that KISD is similarly situated and that KISD would have acted exactly as HISD administration did here if presented with the same facts and circumstances. To be clear, Ms. Carey does not dispute whether good cause exists.
In fact, during closing arguments, Mr. Lane actually stated verbatim, we are not disputing whether or not the district has the right to terminate a probationary contract for any reason within this binder. He continued arguing, however, that he believes HISD reached the conclusion too quickly and that it should consider a lighter punishment. Ultimately, however, it is the board, you all, who, ultimately determines whether the evidence presented constitutes good cause. We agree with miss Davis. We agree with the independent hearing examiner, and we agree with miss Carrie that the overwhelming, uncontroverted, and undisputed evidence establishes good cause exists supporting the termination of miss Carrie's probationary contract,
and we ask that you accept and adopt the independent hearing examiner's recommendation accordingly. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Lang, you may make your presentation to the Board, based on the transcript at this point for ten minutes or less. I'm going to split my time. Ms. Carey is going to speak for five minutes and then I'll come up and do a closing. Okay. Alright. Good afternoon. My name is Kanisha Carey, and I stand before you as a dedicated educator, a mother, and someone who moved to Houston with the the hope of building a better future for my family. I have always upheld the values of professionalism, integrity, and student advocacy.
However, I now find myself fighting to defend my name and career against basis allegations that have been misrepresented and mishandled. The incident in question began when I addressed a serious classroom issue, a student repeatedly using racial slurs toward other students. Following protocol, I sought to engage the parent as prior communication attempts had been unsuccessful. My intent to foster a respectful learning environment. Instead, I was met with hostility. While administration failed to intervene inappropriately, the assistant principal's immediate assumption that I was the aggressor without hearing my side set
off a chain of unjust actions that now put my career in jeopardy. I want to be clear. I was not the aggressor. I remain composed in the face of hostility. I was put I was pushed by my administrator, yet I am the one being accused of misconduct. CPS and law enforcement found no evidence of wrongdoing on my part, yet HISD contends to pursue my determination, choosing to uphold a false narrative rather than the truth. The district acted on media pressure rather than objective evidence, rushing to an unjust employment decision. They even stated in the media that I was terminated before conducting a proper investigation.
Meanwhile, another teacher on my campus has a felony and continues to work without scrutiny. If this process were truly about upholding professional standards, the selective enforcement of policies will not exist. Additionally, the parent who made the false allegations had no problem filing a false police report while still sending her child to the same campus for two months after the incident. But the moment CPS and HISD ruled out her claims, she immediately withdrew her son and vanished. That alone have raised serious concerns about the credibility of her allegations,
yet the district ignored these facts in pursuit of to end my career. To make matters worse, my first hearing was a setup for failure. Every piece of evidence I prevented to defend myself was objected, leaving me unable to properly make my case. The process was not about seeking the truth. It was about justifying a predetermined decision to remove me. They also provided false statements on their transcript about things I never said. Video evidence, though lacking audio, I was only visible for less than a minute. Does not sup it does not support the accusations. At no point did I remove my earrings nor threaten or attempt to harm anyone,
yet instead of a fair review of facts, termination was the first option. Why is that the first option for a non problematic teacher with a proven excellence of record? Probationary contract should not be a means to mistreat teachers to destroy their livelihood as if they're disposable simply because they are new to the district. The due process I am entitled to was denied. I was not interviewed properly by admin or anyone. Witnesses were not called. False claims and reports went unchecked. And worse, the administration's bias was evident when a racial stereotype was weaponized weaponized against me,
implying that as a black woman, my advocacy was aggression. This situation has cost me dearly, not just professionally, but my health and stability and my ability to provide for my family. I have served students faithfully, earned accolades as teacher of the year, graduated with master's degree, and have no history of misconduct, yet HISD is choosing to ignore my record and qualifications. I should not be punished for doing my job ensuring that all students feel safe and respected in my classroom. If I could change anything, I would have reported the behavior directly to admin, although they were not going to do anything about it prior to what I went
through before. I should not lose my career for taking action in the best interest of my students. I am asking you to do what is right, not just for me, but educators who dedicate themselves to this profession. Look beyond this single misrepresenting moment and consider my entire record, my character and unwavering commitment to education. I'm just asking you to overturn this unjust termination recommendation. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, as you stated, we are requested that you, look past the examiner's recommendation and reinstate her the probationary status. We have two valid points that we wanna make here.
One was, was the investigation fair? So the investigation, which took place on the nineteenth, statements were written, but only three were presented. It started on the September 20, although the statements were written on the nineteenth. The investigation was concluded on the twenty fifth. The results were reported, however, on the twentieth on News thirteen. The whole of Houston saw it. It was all over the media, but yet we weren't allowed to present that into it because of timing. Miss Carey was officially notified on October 1, '2 weeks after the news reported that she was gonna be moved for termination. The three statements that went to them was one from miss McMurray,
HISD's point of view, laced with allegations of profanity and aggression. The other one came from miss Butler, the clerk that actually went and got miss, McMurray out of McMurray and out of her ARD meeting. And the last was miss Carrie's statement. How the witnesses were not interviewed in this process? How many were not? Let's see. Page 45 of the transcripts, section, lines two through ten, eleven through seventeen, twenty three to 26. This is McMurren's missus McMurren's, statement. Several parents were present. No statement. Two secretaries, only one statement.
Miss Robertson. No statement. Miss miss Henderson. No statement. Security guard who actually intervened to keep the parents separated. No statement. Page 50, miss McGrayer's testimony on lines one through 11. She says, there are several parents. There were other parents to pick up their children. Some of the children were coming from the front office during the incident. Two or three of these secretaries, miss Robinson, is the third one who was coming out of the office. So I went two to three secretaries. By the time the whole incident had finished, the cafeteria supervisor in the sense that it was also there. So there were parents,
students, staff members, all of them, including the security guard. This is from the transcripts. It's page 45, one through 11. HISD exhibit number seven, miss Murray's statement on the bottom of the page, lists the whole extra witness that wasn't even in that first part, and that was, miss Houston. No statement from her as well. HISD's exhibit seven. I went through that one here. CPS was not reported to, but yet we have a report from CPS that was not allowed. HISD police showed up on the scene later afternoon. No report from HISD police in the investigation. HISD's exhibit eight,
Butler's testimony. Parent accused miss Carrie of physical abuse of her student. No record of that investigation. It's not even marked down as having it happened. The news was called, came to the campus. Exhibits our exhibits three and four not allowed was the news reports. And exhibit four, which was allowed, is statements from the parents. I encourage you to go read what the parents have to say about her. Victim's, statement, not included. Not even the video that they in their statement and testimony said that the parent recorded, not included in the investigation. Was this a victimless allegation? McMurd spent twenty minutes consoling and apologizing to the parent,
but no statement. Nothing in writing from the parent. Nothing, no public record of her statement. The false allegation she made was reported on the news. It was investigated. No outcome from the the allegations. Miss McMurray stated that she was trying to calm miss Curry down when she sent, spent more time actually calming down the parent. The only comment she did was pushing herself against miss, Carrie and holding her hands down. So she says, pointing in the face. No. Miss Carrie's trying to get her hands free. It's it's the investigation was not fair. Progressive discipline.
Was she given, notice of concern? She was. But five minutes later, she was put out of the campus for her investigation. Was it reasonable? The memo of concern outlined in expectations and consequences. That is progressive discipline. That's maybe shot. It should have been handled. Reassignment to home for the allegations. There was allegations that she did wrongdoing to a child, so, yes, reassignment for home was appropriate. Was there, was it fair? The question that we posed earlier was a lot of doubt on the fairness since the conference to discuss the outcome of investigation was also a conference notifying her for
termination on top of October 1. The investigation ended on September 25. We have already outlined the details and the shortcomings of the investigation. Was there significant proof? The evidence, video statements, and testimony say no. There are too many factors missing. Was there equal treatment? Several of the teachers on the campus have confrontations confrontation with parents. None of them were terminated. Miss McMurray not only raised a voice to miss Carrie, but laid hands on her. No member of termination. And here we need to remember that DH local, legal, and exhibit, says that all educators must follow the code of ethics.
Was the penalty appropriate? We don't think so. There was first evidence. It was her first offense in the district. The training on the code of ethics did not occur. There was no sign of sheet, and the, the preservice week was not evidence to provide outcomes otherwise. The handbook that she supposedly said that they went over, exhibit 22, with no publishing date and no revision date. The date it was delivered was August 23, and it had in the subject line, DEC eight, which is about attendance, and DFBB, which is about nonrenewals. Nothing to says about the code of ethics.
The member of concern, and the inclusiveness outcome in the conclusion of and in conclusion of the investigations. We do not have Thank you. Thank you. Mister Crowe Chris Ho, would you like to take your remaining minute? Yes, sir. In closing, I would like to talk about, you know, he mentioned there was evidence excluded. I wanted to say that Ms. Carey's evidence during the hearing, she received a full and fair hearing. The The reason that her evidence was excluded, however, is because she violated the prehearing orders. There were multiple prehearing orders issued by our hearing examiner.
They did not present any documents or any evidence to us before the actual day of the trial. It was also excluded because it's irrelevant. He was mentioning allegations. She mentioned allegations of student abuse. All of that was a separate and unrelated incident that happened after this incident and the employment decision at issue were made. So to the extent that they are talking about police reports and other witnesses about allegations of student abuse, that was separate and apart from this incident. This incident was she left her classroom of third grade students unattended,
unsupervised without instruction for forty five minutes so she could go and confront a mom about the students' misbehavior rather than following campus expectations and disciplinary policies and procedures. And then Thank you. Are there any questions for my colleagues? Okay. The parties have completed their presentations and it's now time for Board members to make our decision on the issues before us. We must either adopt the findings of fact, conclusions of law and recommendation of the hearing examiner or reject or change the hearing examiner's findings of fact and conclusion of law and propose a grant of relief.
If we find that substantial evidence does not support a finding of fact, the finding may be rejected or changed based on the record and exhibits presented before the hearing examiner. Furthermore, should we determine that a hearing examiner did not correctly interpret the applicable HISD board policies or administrative procedures and or state and or federal law, we may reject or change the hearing examiner's conclusion of law. The conclusion of law may also be changed or rejected if a finding of fact
that supports the conclusion of law has been found by us not to be supported by substantial evidence. We must state in writing the specific reason and legal basis for any change or rejection. Any action we take must be supported by the record presented by the independent hearing examiner. Is there any discussion? Okay. Is there a need for us to go to closed session? Okay. So let's go ahead and the Board will now recess to closed session under Chapter five fifty one of the Texas Government Code Open Meetings Act, subsection 550.004
through 551.089. Should Board final action, vote or decision on any matter considered in the closed session be required, such final action, vote or decision shall be taken in an open meeting covered by this notice upon the reconvening of the public meeting or at a subsequent public meeting of the Board upon notice thereof. The Board has recessed a closed session at 01:46PM on 03/26/2025. Okay. Computer's up. Do I have a motion? Yes. I move that we adopt the decision and recommendation of the independent hearing examiner,
adopt the findings of fact and conclusions of law recommended by the independent hearing examiner, and approve the proposed termination of Kanisha Carey's twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five probationary contract for good cause. Is there a second? Do we not have this, Yes. There's a second. Okay. Here we go. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Any questions or comments? If not, please vote. The motion passes. Thank you. I understand one of our speakers has arrived that was not here. There you go. You may go ahead. I'll go ahead and take you now. Yeah. No problem.
Thank you. I mean, the Far East for two weeks and No worries. Time reentry is quite a thing. I can imagine. Thank you. Go ahead. I'm concerned about the fundamental vision and values reflected in the budget. The current singular focus on standardized testing to measure student success using test scores to evaluate teachers creating forced curve distributions, all of these reflect the values of corporate America driven by profit margin and competition. It's a fundamentally flawed framework to use here because public education is about investing in children and doing that successfully requires collaboration,
mentoring, and cooperation, the proverbial village, not competition. If we do it right, the children, not shareholders, the superintendent, or the administration, the children are the ones who benefit. The fundamental difference between teachers and corporate employees is that teachers are motivated to help kids by love, not by the promise of a bigger paycheck. Learning is impacted by countless factors beyond the school's control, whether a child has enough sleep, is sick or in pain, has books at home, or even has a home. Learning assessment is also impacted by myriad additional factors, including the time of day, room temperature, and setting. This is why measuring learning is incredibly complicated and cannot be accurately or validly accomplished
by a single test. Focusing exclusively on test scores contradicts everything we know about what children need to thrive, which is trusting supportive relationships with adults and a sense of belonging and security. This is supported by literally all the peer reviewed research out there. Teachers cannot develop supportive relationships with students when they're required to read verbatim from a script while constantly forcing students to hurry through boring error written worksheets with interruptions every four minutes and no time allowed for questions or deeper exploration of material. Students cannot develop a sense of belonging or security in a school where staff turnover
is constant and teachers cannot tailor curriculum to engage their interests. Removing wraparound specialists and reducing food distribution locations, eliminating the entire dyslexia department, paying a huge bonus to the superintendent when the district loses 42% of its teachers. These actions do not indicate that the district values children or teachers, but the community does. Thank you. Any more speakers? Just okay. Good. Okay. Next item up. Purpose of this meeting is considered the dispute filed by James Westhoff, police officer, HISD Police Department.
Hearings involve complaints against district employees are to be held in closed session unless employee who is subject to the hearing requests an open hearing. If both parties request an open session during the course of the hearing, the board may go into closed session to consult with its attorney under the terms of Texas government code section 551.071. If any board member wishes to seek advice and counsel, please let me know. And for the record, we also have Mr. Martinez joined. For the record, Avery Krushall and Bonnie Creed with the Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas represents James Westhoff.
They are present. Also, we have Andrew Francis with Spaulding, Nichols, Lamp and Langolis representing the administration. Katasha Woods, HAIC General Counsel is also present. Mr. Krishall and Mr. Creed, do you wish to continue in closed session or open session? Closed, please. Closed session, okay. If the party is not involved in this hearing, we need to have you leave the auditorium at this time. We'd appreciate that. This, special meeting of the school board of the Houston Independent School District is now reconvene
in open session. The time is 02:46PM. Let's see. I think you might have to hit my computer since mine just went off. What do we gotta do here? They got their computer up. You good over there? Do we have a motion? I move. K. Okay. Go ahead and read your motion. I move that we deny all requested relief remedies not previously granted by the level two hearing officer and uphold the decision of the level two hearing officer. K. Is there a second? K. We have a motion and a second. Any questions or comments? If not, please vote. The motion passes.
A letter notifying both parties of the action of the Board should be prepared and signed by the Executive Director of Board Relations as soon as possible. The hearing is concluded at 02:48 p. M. Thank you. Yes. Okay. We're gonna start the next hearing. Do we have the parties here? We have one set of parties. We do have another set here. Terennis Shields? No? So Yeah. Go check out side. Thank you. I mean, technically, we're gonna go ahead and have to reschedule this, hearing. We can't reach either party, and we have to talk to them specifically, if we dismissed. So we cannot do that at this point.
So we're gonna postpone, this and reschedule, at another date. Okay? And then at the meantime in the meantime, we're gonna take a brief break. We'll reconvene at, how long a break you want? Get started on the budget. I don't think anybody's here. We need to get them all organized. So let's take a ten minute break. You're going to organize for the budget workshop and then we'll come back at 03:05, okay? Ten minute. Ten minute break, 03:05. Let's make sure we have all our computers set up and ready to hit the road on the budget review, okay, to our budget workshop. So we're taking that break now.
So we're recessed at 02:55 p. M. Ready to go? Okay. Board members and members of the public, we are good to go. So this meeting is reconvened at 03:18PM. We'll now address our workshop topic, the twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six district budget. Superintendent Miles, you have the floor. Yes, sir. I'm going to do it from the podium. Okay. While you're getting ready, board members, you each got a copy of this self evaluation for the quarterly tracker. If you would take a look at that and there's some items already checked on
it, if you have any changes or you want to make changes to it, would you please get that to us by tomorrow, sort of end of business, so we can put it in the package for Friday? Got it? Thank you. Mr. Potato Miles? Mr. President, members of the board, we're here to do the second budget workshop. And you'll recall that, last budget workshop, we did the methodologies and assumptions. We talked we had Alvarism Rasal present on sort of the best in class budget practices. I went over a part of that as well and then the overview of the
District financial position. Today, we're going to talk about the action plan and its relationship to the Board goals and the budget related to both. We'll also spend a little bit of time talking about the budget methodology for school budgets. So we're not going to be presenting any budget line items. We'll talk a little bit about how much more money we're going to spend as a result of the action plan. But this is not, the itemized budget, of course, and neither will we get school budget information, just the methodology. You'll get that though
You'll get, more precise numbers, of course, next month. And when we do this, school budgeting approach, we'll have this school numbers for you, at least the preliminary ones. And then we'll also have department numbers for you, the preliminary ones. That's next month. So today, it's about action plan because as the best in class discussion was held last time, we talked about how your money should follow your priorities and goals. The budget should be built on those priorities and
ensuring that we accomplish our goals. Keep in mind that in in our case, the goals are not just the board goals, we're gonna be covering that in a minute, but it's also about getting out of intervention status. So the first thing, though, and this is just just a preamble. Last time, we talked about the methodology and assumptions budget assumptions and methodology. And we said that as the year goes on, the next couple of months, we're going to get more and more information so that we can build an accurate budget,
but we need to know exactly what the revenue side will be and that involves the legislative session. And at this point, we don't have a lot more information, but we have a little bit better idea than we did before. The headline is, it does seem that the draft bills and you see four of them up on the screen. It does seem that the draft bills put out a number and there's an appetite, there's negotiations are increasing the numbers. Senate Bill 26 isn't an increase, but there's no there hasn't been a lot of discussion about decreasing
the amount of money in Senate Bill 26. We'll see what happens in the end. This is the Senate bill that requires a pay increase for teachers. There's still several questions outstanding. One is, is it an allotment or is it a one time funding? What's it going to be like? If it's if it comes out the way it's written right now, we stand to gain $38,000,000 but all of that will be budget neutral and because we'll be paying that out right away to teacher salaries. So budget neutral means that it won't affect our fund balance or decrease or increase
our general fund revenue much since we'll be paying it right out. Senate Bill two sixty school safety allotment, there's an amount in there. We do think there'll be money for safety and security, which is great for us since we had projected we want to do some of our high priority facilities needs. This will help with that. Comprehensive Education Fund and the Basic Allotment. The bill had $220,000,000 in it or $220,000,000 per pupil increase. And it does seem like there's good debate right now on increasing that amount.
So we don't think it'll be lowered. We think that'll be increase. There's lots of different variations, so I don't think it's wise to project too high, but our current assumptions are conservative, we believe, the $2.20 or two fifty. It's the same with the entitlements, which we also peg we peg the increase in basic allotment to two fifty and entitlements to 200. So we think that's a conservative estimate. And then finally, it looks like our Schars program,
that School Health and Related Services will get some money. Again, these are all assumptions and probabilities, but it does look like that will turn out. Jim, do you know how what's the total amount on charrs? Is it $17,000,000 Well, what we think they would bring into us would be about $32,000,000 to $40,000,000 if the bill is passed, and there's several bills out there. So we hadn't really budgeted for that. So again, our assumption is pretty conservative here. So again, don't go buying any property based on this information.
This is just our we're getting closer and closer to finding out what we'll actually get. But it does look like we've given the board a conservative estimate, and it looks like we'll have more money than that conservative estimate. All right. This is the budget development time line. We're right on track. We're in March. This is second budget workshop, and we have three more workshops and then the regular Board meeting, of course, and then the June meeting where the Board will entertain the budget for vote.
This year is a little bit different than last year. Last year, we really had to right size. What we're trying to do this year Gentle Miles, can we break right here for Yes, sir. Because it's a good place to break because you've gone through sort of legislative update and the process and timeline. Is there any questions that Board members have about the timeline of the process or not so far? I have one question. I have a question. So we are including in the budgeting that HB2 two fifty dollars per pupil and then HB2 $200 per pupil or no?
No. So the HB2 is the basic allotment that is the $2.25 or the $2.50 per pupil that we put in the budget assumptions. The there's a HB2 also includes entitlements, which is not noted here. So there's lots of different entitlements that will be in the comprehensive bill. And I didn't outline any directly, but it doesn't look like it'll go down much so than what we projected. It might and in fact,
it probably will go up. So are we assuming any increase in entitlements? Yes. I mean, again, this is we're not changing our budget methodology or assumptions, because we did that last time. And I think it's prudent to wait. I'm just suggesting the headline is that what we projected a month ago is probably going to be conservative, meaning we'll probably get more money than that. That's it. And I don't want to be more definitive than that.
Okay. I'm just trying to understand. So I thought you said something about $200 but maybe Yes. That's you're right. It's just not outlined in the same way here. House Bill two includes not only the basic allotment, entitlements and several other things related to education funding. And all I'm suggesting is that on the entitlements and the basic allotment, we think it's going to go up. The bait is bringing it up, not cutting it. Okay. And then on charrs, is there we don't for this HB 500,
would there be any additional things that we would have to do to receive this enhanced money? It's just okay. It's only if the legislature passed. Got it. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, great. Thank you. All right. So this is I mean, what we're trying to do this year is either bring in a balanced budget or very close to a balanced budget. Part of that reason is so that we can show that we can sustain the work that we're doing over the long haul. At some point,
you got to get to a balanced budget, otherwise, it's not sustainable. There were lots of reasons why we couldn't the year before this year because we the revenue side did not come in and we're in the middle of transformation. Still, we have to get pretty quickly to a balanced budget. So that's the one of the problems we're trying to solve is to show that we can balance the budget and also sustain transformation. So the work we are doing, any changes we make has to be sustainable. And then this is a goal for every district every year,
at least effective ones, and that is there's when you're in scarce resource environment, then you have to prioritize. And the question is, can you prioritize in a way to still accomplish the goals, which in our case is many fold based on our vision and the board goals and the TEA requirements to get us out of intervention status. So we've got to prioritize our monies to do that. And that's, that's always a problem we will be trying to solve. Of course, having said that, just like last year,
if we're going to meet the board goals, which is raise achievement, close gaps, get us out of intervention status, then obviously, we've got to preserve what happens in the classroom. We've got to be able to support teachers well and provide the resources that a teacher needs and a school needs. So you're going to see that many of the cuts keep are kept away from the classroom as much as possible. It can't do that everywhere, but to the extent that we can, that's what we'll do. We will prioritize resources. And then decisions that we make now have to support long term financial sustainability.
So you won't see us putting, you know, one time monies into recurring expenses, for example. That's not a long term financially sustainable plan. Those are our guiding principles. Those principles combined with the district vision and the board goals and I'll stop after that. We're trying to not only meet the intervention criteria, so you'll see prioritize instruction and special education, but we also have to prepare our kids for year 02/1935 environment. It's not enough to do well on the start. We
also have to do well CCMR area and other things that prepare kids for the workplace. And then, of course, the board goals are tied to the to this notion of getting out of intervention status and helping our kids achieve. And this is just a summation of that effort. Obviously, it's more than third grade and more than special ed and more than TSI. But, these are doing these well will also meet the other needs that our kids have. So that's it.
That's where the board, board goals come in. This is where the t e TEA intervention criteria comes in and our vision. The rest of this presentation is about, okay, how do our actions then align with the vision and the Board goals. This is just a summation. I mean, you can stop me anytime. We'll talk about each one here in a minute. But this is a summary. You have the action plan. You also have this PowerPoint, but you there's a lot more detail in the district action plan that you receive. So indicators of success,
specific actions are outlined in that document. So I'll quickly do a summary of these eight key actions. Obviously, there's a hundred things that the district has to do and thousands of specific actions that we take every day. This prioritizing is an exercise in saying which is the ones that we have to focus on and which one will get us the biggest bang for, but given that we have the goals and vision that we have. So these key actions that there are eight of them,
some of them directly, obviously, can be correlated or translated to a goal like improving the quality of instruction. We know that directly influences the achievement in third grade and it directly influences that, TSI. Board member Lindner. It directly affects that. Special education, of course, directly impacts special ed goal number three or the board goals on special education, the TEA criteria. And then the others are indirectly tied to the board goals like having a good teacher evaluation system improves
teacher effectiveness, paying people well, brings people in and those also will get the achievement results that we need. So those others are indirectly related and you can see the chart on the right hand side. So let me just go quickly again. There's a lot more detail and you can stop me anytime, a lot more detail on each of the key actions, but I won't read through these slides. I'll just point out some big, big elements. We're at a point at where we've done a good job, I think, over the last two years, last year and this year on making sure that two seventy three schools have,
are aligned on what the quality of instruction means. Of course, it requires continual professional development. We will always have some new teachers. We will probably always have teachers moving towards certification. We think we'll have fewer and fewer of those, but we are living in a certified education deficit in the country and in the state of Texas. So we'll probably always have an effort to improve, teacher instruction. Even the teachers who have been here, we're going to continue to improve that. It also means that we have to calibrate all the time and make sure our
principals are good at giving instructional feedback. And so you see an indicator around improving our IRT, independent review team, practice, our calibration. We also, not that we've ignored it, but we want to put a little bit more effort into emergent bilingual instructional strategies. We've added to our slide deck and curriculum with scaffolds to help emergent bilinguals. We have ELD, English language developer people, teachers, ELD teachers who help. And we've done, I think, a good job of implementing dual language versus bilingual.
Still, having said all that, we have a growing population of emerging bilingual students. So we need to really shore that up and increase the number of students growing in TELPAS proficiency. That's how we'll measure whether or not we're doing a good job there. And then since we're starting TES next year, that will help us improve the quality of instruction, but we want to make sure that any appraiser, just like we did with T Test, but we're going to be much more rigorous in this, they're certified to appraise teachers. So our principals,
our APs, have to pass certification in order to appraise. Key action two is, the implementation of TES. It's one thing to pass it and I thank the board for doing that last board meeting, but it's another to make sure it's implemented with fidelity, implemented fairly rigorously and, consistently across two seventy three schools. So that's not that's easier said than done. So we have a key action around that. A big part of TES is this distinguished teacher review and so we'll be implementing
that well. And the whole point well, not the whole point. One one part of TES besides the rigorous evaluation and the developing the proficiency of teachers is ensure that when we have the ratings that they and we apply them and we pay for that, for higher ratings that we retain a larger percentage of proficient teachers and teachers are above proficient. We think we're going to see that. We already see that with TTES. We think we're going to see it even more with TES.
And you see there Key Action one didn't require any additional funding because we already do that. We will just do better training. We have professional developers. But the implementation of t test, we think, will require a few more people at central office to manage it, to also help certify and keep track of the data. So there is a cost to it and we're estimating a million dollars for that. Key action three,
improve special education. I put down zero to the budget here, but it really depends on whether or not we get that many more special ed students. If we do, we may have to increase it if concomitantly at the legislature, they don't increase IDA funds or keep it the same. If we get a decrease in IDA, then maybe we'll have to increase that. So right now, it says zero, but I want a footnote on that. That might have to increase depending on the number of kids we have. So we've done I think we've done a good job with compliance on special ed
this year, getting better and better of getting out of the TEA dog house for for special ed, but the real the real meat is on in on the instructional side, and that is not something you can check a box for. That takes a lot of instruction, coaching, so that we improve our special ed instruction. So that's why you see improve the IRT scores for special education teachers, and that the IEPs have a at least a good portion of it is instructional
improvements, not just, things to check the IEP compliance box. And then, we know that we need to continue to have good teacher assistance for our special ed classrooms. So again, that says zero, but it may change. Pre k, we want to continue to grow our pre k kids. This is this is not an easy thing to do. The cost comes in the pre k teachers that we have to hire, but also in the facilities to make sure that we have enough room in classrooms
to get to 800 additional pre K seats. So a rough estimate is $5,000,000 to that we have to find that in the budget and we have to budget for that. Can I ask a question on that? Yes, ma'am. Is your $5,000,000 is that for actual renovations to schools or is that for personnel or both? I think most of it will be for personnel, but maybe Kristen can you add to that? A big part of the personnel that we support is the teaching assistants. So a pre k classroom can have up to 22 students,
and so we add teaching assistants to make the ratio more like one to 11, which is really our true target. So this number funds a lot of the teaching assistants, in NES and PUA, and then any new classroom, it'll always fund the start up costs. So the furniture, the equipment, just everything you need to get a room class, the curriculum, everything you need to get the room classroom ready. And are we expecting, more pre k student? I mean, I understand the seats, but do we have kids to fill the seats? That's also actually a part of this as we are doing a lot more to,
provide information to the community that pre k is expanding and that it's available. So, we're investing in both kind of on the ground marketing and digital marketing resources to make sure that we are communicating in the particular zones that are expanding that there are seats available. So it's both combination of creating the seats as well as the supports to help students enroll in the seats because oftentimes those parents again like they're not on our listservs, they don't have access to that information. So we're investing in trying to get the information out there.
Okay. And last sorry. Last question. So, do we is it currently open enrollment for pre k for next year? There's a pre k school choice application, that first round has closed, but it will still stay open, and there'll be, there's a TA requires us to admit pre k for eligible students first. So the application for that group has closed. The application for the remaining pre k students is still open, but then as seats are available, anybody can still apply. And so are we projecting that these will all be full plus the 800 new
seats? Our goal, more broadly, is always to fill upper 90% of seats across the board. But what actually happens across HISD is certain zones have wait list that are a mile long, and other zones might have some open seats where we really need to invest in the marketing. So what we do is look at the zones that still have open seats, so that we actually can make sure they're full, but we still target that above 95% goal across the district. And so the 800 seats I'm assuming are going to the areas where there's fleetless? If there's space.
If there's capacity at the campuses. So, we do data triangulation across the board. We look at what the demographer shows in terms of where families are growing. We also look at where historically there has been waitlists as well to determine and if there have been long wait lists, yes, that's absolutely the place where, we start. But if that building is full, then sometimes we're a little bit stuck in that zone unless we can do a partnership in that zone, which requires us to find a different facility from an external vendor.
It does make it operationally complex when we have a partnership because the principal isn't at that partnership school yet we're still overseeing the kids, but it is one solution we have found in a couple zones where we know there's a lot of demand and are still looking to increase supply. Thank you. Any other questions on this one? Okay. I guess just about a trend with the Department of Education cuts, my understanding is that there are there's some funding that was going to pre K in the community as a whole and I'm not sure how that works logistically exactly,
but I wonder about how that supply demand, can affect what we're doing on the ground. Yes. I hadn't heard that about federal funding cuts to pre K or even TEA cuts to pre K anything that have you heard? Not that I'm aware of, Jim. I'm not sure if Jim has insight, but not that I'm aware of increases or decreases. All right. Thank you, Member of Ron. One additional question, sorry, Mr. Chairman. Yes, go ahead. If we were to fill those 800 seats, what would be our total count for pre K? If we fill the 800 seats, what's the total count? Just shy of 14,000
seats. Oh, wow. Pre K? Wow, good job. Great job, guys. That includes H3 and H4. Yes, that's still alive. Thank you. All right. The next one, improved the SYRWAI systems and efficiency. So I'm gonna switch to another slide deck. My staff can take a sigh breath here. It's okay. This is, you know, sometimes you have to do as the spirit moves you. So if we're gonna talk about systems and the and and the efficiency, it is worth talking about where we are in the system. And and then we can go back to number five,
which is which is directly related to this. This is a Jackson Pollock, picture, and it represents this is for you, Audrey. This this represents It doesn't represent me just No. No. No. It doesn't represent you. For me. Yeah. It represents to clarify. It represents in a visual way the systems and processes that were here when this team got here. And I I don't wanna be, you know, I don't wanna use a lot of words, you know, and and and aspersions. So maybe the picture will help ease that.
But every district has systems and processes. And if you think of the big the rectangle, the blue rectangle as a department, HR, finance is a different one. Curriculum is a different one. Schools is a different one, etcetera. We have we still have systems and processes that are all over the place. And I can give you examples even in the first summer, HR, trying to get a handle on position control numbers and then trying to hire by breaking bad processes
associated with position control numbers was a nightmare. Trying to get offers out when the regulations have old, old regulations that say you can't hire until forty five days after a person get non renewed, things like that. It was just a mess and that's just HR. Many other systems and processes that are that were not aligned. And sometimes and I know the reporters are here, but I don't care. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe we got the outcomes we got with the
systems and processes that were as as challenging as they were. So, that was first year. And we just by good leadership among the departments, some really effective chiefs, deputy chiefs, we got the outcomes we needed to get. We serve teachers and we serve kids anyway. And we fixed a lot of it but suffered from many others. That's this year. This year, we're still aligned and improving systems. Anybody who's worked in a big organization, we have, you know, we have 25,000 employees,
knows how much work and effort it takes to get from this to this. And I credit the I I know we don't talk about it a lot, but the cabinet and the deputy chiefs are first rate, and I'm telling you that as a person who's been a superintendent or CEO for eighteen years. Their first rate and so are we are we, you know, where we need to be? No. We still have some broken systems. You know, now I'll be honest. I didn't put transportation up here because that would look like this. But we're getting there.
We're getting aligned. We're aligning the system, but improving the system and processes we have. That's where we are. As a result though, this is not where you should wind up. Now most large system get to this point and then they stop and what you have then is a siloing effect. So if you just improve the system and processes in your lane, in your blue box, that is that is known as a silo. And so you can get really good at it like this, and still you would have silos and that's not the most effective way to run
an organization, especially high performing one. So, yes, we gotta get here, but really what we have to do is get here. So we're not there. We started this. We we are we are here. So going forward, this is not now, sequential. If you go here, you actually might strengthen your silos. So the thing to do in a large system when you're at this point right here is to work to align the system cross functionally. And that's what we're trying to do. So, two months ago,
we started looking at our data integration developing a data integration team. And that resulted in some people shifts and you'll see soon the org for chief of staff is gonna grow a little bit so that we can do this. So that we don't go from here to here, we go from here to here. Now it might take us more than a year, not much more, but more than a year to get to this. But we're definitely not going to do it if we don't improve the system cross functionally,
and that's where we are. And so, you know, one of the things when you think about data and some of the challenges we've had with defining data, you may not know that there have been hardly any business rules around much of the data nor service level agreements. I mentioned that in the efficiency report back in February of the first year. Business rules and service level agreements. So for example, when we say I'll just take the most recent example,
ask Matthew Sawyer in HR, you know, tell me what the what how many teachers were chronically absent in twenty twenty two-twenty three? Because since then, we have business rules for chronically absent. We have defined it. And we have regulations around that. When I say chronically absent, everybody, at least in the administration, knows what that means. And we've got good data to show that teachers now know what it means and so do principals. Well, if you try to define it in 2022, '20 '20 '3,
there were no business rules around it. So if the board asked me, well, how have we improved in our chronically absence since before you got here? And the answer is, we can give you a broad number, but that's they didn't have the same business rules. Had they had the business rule, maybe people wouldn't have been as absent. So it is a little bit like comparing apples and oranges. Still, we can give you generally how many teachers, you know, exceeded their PTO days and their state days. But they also had dock days. So does dock days count as a day absent?
That's a business rule. So anyway, point is, this is where we need to be. Now I can get back to number five. My board is my staff is applauding the fact that we're returning to the PowerPoint. But I I I I'm hoping you understand this is why this key action is important, because we want to strengthen the availability and accuracy of key data. And underneath that, the definition or the nuance there is we need business rules, we need service level agreements, we need clean data,
we need one common definition of enrollment, We need one business rule for how many buses we have. You know, does it include buses that are, gonna be sold? Does it include broken buses? Do you count cannibalized buses? What you know, what's the rule? So So when you ask me how many buses we have, you know, it's like, okay, well, it depends. And the fact is that people have been using different dashboards, different software in many, many different areas. So even if we got the blue rectangle squared away, it still wouldn't be cross functional,
and we still would get, you know, differences in data reporting. And so it's really important to have one. All right. The $10,000,000 there will probably come from maintenance tax notes if it's necessary. That money is partly for the data integration team, but most of that is going to be, getting our transportation system optimized. And that also includes business rules and data so that we can track the number of riders we have,
and we can be much more efficient in optimizing the routes. But also when a student leaves a bus route or wants to join a bus route, we're going to have a better data integration system that it's included everywhere. Okay. We have a question here. Go ahead. Yes. Thank you. Okay. So I just want to make sure I understand this $10,000,000 that's maintenance tax notes, is that associated with actually what if first of all, is it a recurring thing that we're going to be paying on an annual basis? We pay the interest on the maintenance sector as we currently until it's paid off.
And so the what's the right word, the res, the substance of the amount that would be expended is the principal amount, I guess. That's not the right word. Jim, is it $100,000,000 Like the principal? 10,000,000 and then it will be structured, depending on the the marketplace. And then we'll pay out of the general fund so much a a month for twenty years. And we had that in assumptions and methodology by which is we didn't exclude that. And that so that is about a hundred million dollars or so. Hundred and 10,000,000.
That's to do the to do what? The transportation? And you'll see transportation is only 10,000,000 of it. You'll see later on, there's Barbara Barbara Jordan and CareerTech Ed. Then let's see, you'll see it'll be coming up here. Got it. Thank you. Oh, yes. Maintenance and Security. I thought it was more than just buses. Okay. I want to make sure. Thank you. Yes. It's only $10,000,000 and not buses and transportation efficiency. Understood. Sorry. Are there any sort of challenging decisions that we're looking at from a transportation perspective? Any offerings, anything there where we're I hear you with Optimize,
but is there any of that Optimize made any tough decisions for what we offer? Yes. At some point, we're going to we're in the middle of that planning and we'll bring it to the Board in a coherent manner. So I don't just give out bits and pieces here that would just confuse people. But the answer is, yes is the answer. We've sent out a survey to parents. We're getting information from them on what makes the most sense. The bottom line is it'll be much more efficient. It'll be better for kids and we think it's going to increase ridership. All right. And then just a couple more key actions.
This is also part of that, you know, accuracy of information and timeliness and the data dashboard is going to help with that. So when one of the board members or, you know, and I ask for data all the time and we, you know, we ask for different things or the community asks, that we'll have more timely and accurate information. Part of the information flow also will we hope that HISD Now will grow in its viewership and we can get information out that way.
We're raising we're trying to raise some onetime monies philanthropically to support this because some of it is onetime expenditures. But our budget allocation for communications, not just HISD now, but family facing communications in many different ways and our website, by the way, which we will have up this next year at the start of the year, and much streamlined and more accurate website and more user friendly one. So we're budgeting $2,000,000
for this key action. And all these amounts are over and above what we're already spending, of course, on communications or special education things. These the amount you see here are change to the budget allocation or in this case, increase. Last year, I think there was a reference to $10,000,000 allocation for a website. Is that do we see some seasonal I don't think that we had a massive website. I think there was a communication budget. But that would have been last year's budget, whatever it was. Yes. Yes. So this is more the additional amount.
I think it also included philanthropy. Oh, is your question whether the money was actually applied? Do you have do you have a a number in your head for the communications budget? Last year, I just don't have it in my head. Communications budget last year was very small. Like, our overall non, salary communications budget for this current academic year was, a little over a million dollars, and that included the money that needed to be spent this calendar year on bond education. So this year, we've leveraged philanthropy to, like, let us start communications projects that will go over into next year.
And so this in the upcoming school year, most of our communications needs will be covered by the district budget, which is why the the $2,000,000 increase. So just so I'm so I'm clear, I I recall a a need of $10,000,000 And I guess what I'm saying is, is that need has that need been whittled down? I know we didn't allocate $10,000,000 The need to do some large scale communications and data integration projects is roughly $5,000,000
over this fiscal year and early next fiscal year, and philanthropy is helping with that by making some gifts in kind to the district. The $10,000,000 figure is not, one that, we've been operating off of or what the need is. Okay. And then I just want to be clear, the reason why this 2,000,000 you can one should only use philanthropy for onetime costs unless the philanthropic college is going to be extended over five, ten years. So that's why you have an increase here because we need to invest in communications,
and not just the people side, but also the the material side, HISD Now, the infrastructure, the website, things like that. Number seven, high quality post secondary pathways. Very, very proud of the work Kristen Hull and her team has done on CCMR and CTE. We have lots of data. You've gotten some of it on improvements to CTE and CCMR, and we're going to continue that. Having said that, we need to upgrade our career tech ed. I said this all last year or the beginning of this year and the end
of last year. We need to upgrade our CTE. And even though the bond didn't pass, we we have career tech ed courses that we need to upgrade. And so we're gonna try to do what we can do, to to improve our programs of study and to offer 10 schools an upgraded CareerTechEd center at Barbara Jordan. So that's where you see the money. There's $30,000 there. Probably, again, we'll see what the legislature does. But if it comes out like we think it is or conservatively,
then we'll use $30,000,000 out of $110,000,000 maintenance tax notes for Barbara JordanCareerTech And just so we're clear, again, I'm sorry, but we're not paying out this $20,000,000 and $10,000,000 those are part of the $110,000,000 total million dollars of maintenance. Okay. We only think we're only one maintenance tax note. Right. But I'm showing you how it will be spent. I got it. Okay. And then well, any questions on CareerTechEd or any of that? So I'm just to be clear. So this so there is no budget adjustment of $20,000,000
or $10,000,000 right? It's a $10,000,000 payment on this That's right. The $110,000,000 I think in the budget assumptions and methodology is $7,500,000 for payment on the interest on that note. Got it. Thank you. I do have a question about that. So as it relates to outcomes, Barbara Jordan is not centralized, right? It's not in the Central Of Houston. What is the strategy then to make sure that it's, available, accessible to students throughout the district and not just those that are closely located to the to the facility?
Yeah. So right now, it's it will be available to 10 high schools. It's the other high schools have in fact, all high schools have some sort of CTE program. There there's no there's no attempt, at least in the next year, to have all the high schools go to Barbara Jordan. But there will be an attempt already, as you see, the four programs of study that we put in every high school, the AI elective in every high school. We are going to try to upgrade programs of study for everybody. And by the way, you'll see in the budget that we're paying for that,
not the schools that we put programs of study in. So we've got a few more programs of study that we're offering at Robert Jordan. And over time, we hope to help all the high schools with upgrading their CTE programs. Thank you. And then finally, health and safety. We still have $1,030,000,000 of urgent need or important need for our health and safety. That was the money we asked for in the bond and we're not going to
get 1.03 and we can't spend that much money. But what we can do is take our highest priority items that Alicia Jolivette and her team has already identified and put in some money for that. Some of this will get from the state and increase because we're going to continue to spend what we always spend on health and safety. But if we get more money from the state, we can put money into this and then also the budget allocation of $40,000,000 also added maintenance tax notes.
So that's one way where we can address the biggest needs, as you can see on the screen, especially HVAC, roofs, perimeter fencing, things like that. And we went through an exercise, I think, three months ago now where we had an algorithm to find the biggest needs where we're serving the most kids. So if you got a small school that needs an HVAC, they probably won't get this, this money here. You know, we'll we'll do what we can do to keep it going, but we won't, you know, put a new one in or anything like that. So we wanna serve the most kids with the money that we have.
Alright. I'll stop there. Those are the key actions. Again, that there's a hundred things that we have to do. These are the ones that are prioritized and the ones that will use money. Got all the questions for that. Go ahead. All right. So, I want to take a minute to set you up or to to give you a preview of the school budgets. You won't get the numbers today because we don't have them. We're we have a draft and we're working through that. And then we'll be giving that out to the schools. Is it March 28? What what days would March 28? Hey.
Got it right. So, the board will get it, after the after the schools get their exact their exact number. This is how it'll work. The basic formula hasn't changed. This is how we get paid from the state and this is how we pay the schools. The per unit allocation, not to be confused with non NES p PUA, the reason why they're called PUA is because they're they they operate off of a per unit allocation, times the projected enrollment times ADA. So that's not gonna change. We're gonna keep the PUA the same,
which is now the PUA, as you can see on the slide, is not only the basic amount that we give the schools, but it also includes all these other weights. And that's the way the district has done it for a while. We decided not to change it, just to keep as much keep down the changes as much as possible and the shifts between schools. So we had the PUA. It's unchanged since 2023. And it was keeping the same one that we had this year. And then if the legislative session comes through and changes the allotment for emergent bilingual,
we're not going to change that until fiscal year 2027, '20 '20 '6, '20 '20 '7 because it won't we won't know that until later in the summer. So that's the PUA. Can I ask a question on that? Sure. So can you explain how the PUA number is calculated? Well, I'll give you the general one and Jim, you can if anything you want. We start with an amount and I don't know what amount it is, is it $5,000.06 6,000, something somewhere around there. It's 5,000, I think, $82 5 thousand 80 2 dollars somewhere in there.
Okay. And then we multiply that by we add a weighted factor for the number of kids. So let's say you have 300 emergent bilingual students or bilingual students, and the weight is I'm gonna make it a point zero two. Sure. You multiply point zero two times the 300 kids, and you add that to the 5,032. And so all of these weights are prescribed by legislature and TEA, and we use the same weights. And so there is some whatever that number is,
five thousand and eighty two or thirty two or whatever, that's the minimum assuming no special education students. Right. And there's no school that doesn't get some sort of weight, but because they all have SPED and they all have bilingual or almost all of them are gifted and talented. Now there's a couple in here that we added that's up to the district, like magnet subsidies, is a district created subsidy. We didn't change it. It's still the same. Small school subsidy, high school subsidy, we're adding to the per unit allocation.
Got it. Thank you. Just wanted to clarify. You said so if we get new mandates for like entitlements and an increase, you're saying that we wouldn't apply the increase? That's right. I mean, we could change everything, but we're we think it would be more prudent to let people because it could also be a decrease, by the way. Let let me clarify that those weights for the entitlements are not are going to change in this legislative session.
And we don't know what those changes are going to be, we're going to bring it there. So essentially we just took the per unit allocation, each campus is a little bit different based on their social economic structure and the base amount was then each student was weighted given the last legislative session. And so that was back in 2023. And so we just used that for, you know, '24, '20 '5, and we used that for '26,
and we know they're gonna change, and then we will change it for '27. Those weights will look at the enrollments at each one of those campuses. And keep in mind, they can go up or down. No. No. I understand. And if we use the October count, which is what we'd have to do on the new weights, you could have some some significant shifts midyear for schools, and that that would probably not be a good thing. No. That's helpful. And I'm I'm really just trying to understand if we get new mandates and additional funding, what the impact would be to the schools.
Right? So it makes sense to me logically what you're saying, and I'm just trying to make sure that, in the event that we had, like, some new mandate that costs a substantial amount, those schools wouldn't be hurt. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for asking that. I mean, the I mean, obviously, if if if something happens in the legislature that requires it's an unfunded mandate or there's a huge shift in a way or the federal government does something, then we will we will have to adjust and we will bring the board an adjustment to either schools or the district budget.
Related to question. So the weights are the weights that are being used to determine what we're receiving from the state in terms of the basic allotment plus entitlement that's probably not the right way to say it, but the entitlement You get a basic allotment of 6,160 per student. And then you have what are called entitlements based on the social economic status of the students. And there's what are there, 30 now or 35 different entitlements. Yeah, and anyway, they all have all they'll have all weights.
And we're still in house bill two now, which will be the instrument by which we will get funded when it's passed. They're arguing now over those weights for the entitlements as well as the basic allotment, which the superintendent talked about, which right now was $2.20 and some of it might go up as ISA six eighty. But the legislative budget board is saying you guys got to go back to the drawing board to figure that out.
And that's what they're we're waiting for is a rewrite of House Bill two for the weights and for the basic allotment. Thank you. Alright. And then the projected enrollment, this I mean, I know enrollment's all It's a controversial thing. Board member Flowers has joined. Yes. Hey. But we're going to use the projected enrollment from the demographer, and we will true up at the end. So if the demographer is way off, then we'll get the actual number in October using the PEIMS number. And then average daily attendance, same thing.
We're using the average daily attendance in the last two attendance cycles, which is three and four, but we true up with the actual average daily attendance once we get it. So there'll be a true up and that won't happen till October because that's when we submit the PEIMS report. All right. I started with the problems we're trying to solve. And one of the problems we're trying to solve is make sure we have a balanced budget and that the budget is still tight. I don't see anything in the legislature right now that's going to give us a
whole bunch of money. I mean, well, we had the methodology and assumptions report. It'll be better than that probably, but we still are in a fiscally tight year and actually probably next couple of years, we're going to remain fiscally tight. We think we can get close to a balanced budget, if not a balanced budget. But that means, when we allocate money to the schools, we have to consider the fact that we're not back to balance. Back to balance would be what we did in this district prior to COVID, which is you get your in in PUA,
your per unit allocation, you multiply by enrollment and then you multiply by ADA. That's what you get. That's what how you run your program. The district will pay for a whole bunch of stuff over here. We're going to go over that, but that's balance. Last year, we did not balance. And we didn't balance because there were a lot of other changes and we wanted to minimize the impact of change. And so we used a different methodology and we'll talk about that. So last year, we capped the loss at 12%. That kept the schools with not flush with money,
but with significantly more money than the balanced budget would have been. Balance is PUA times enrollment times ADA. So they got much more money than that. And I know there was, you know, anytime you cut anything, it's like, well, no. Can I live without the thing you're gonna cut? And so there's there's always that. But it turns out, we were the schools were able to do what they needed to do. They still got they're still getting achievement. They're still taking their field trips. They're still doing the performance arts. They're still doing the magnet programs,
all of that. So this year, we're going to change the methodology to what you see in the third bullet. We're going to give them their basic formula, PUA times enrollment times ADA. And then if they lose any money, we'll calculate 10% and we'll add that back. So it'll look like this. Project enrollment times average data tenant, times PUA. That's the total funding plus if there's any reduction, we take that reduction, we multiply it by 10%, and we give it back to them. So it's 10% of the loss.
It it's still a loss. We can't disguise that. I'm not trying to. But what I am trying to say is it's more than balance. It's more than what you would get if it was pre COVID. So, that's that's gonna there are some schools that are gonna decrease, and it's important to know this. If you have a decrease in ADA or enrollment, then it is likely that your budget goes down and people should not be surprised about that. I mean, that's that's fiscally responsible behavior. If your enrollment or ADA goes down,
if the district level have to do the same thing, we're cutting lots of things. And you saw that in the budget and methodology report because we anticipate enrollment going down. If enrollment goes down, you have to cut some staff or programs or purchase services, something like that. So, you saw that in the budget methodologies session that we did a month ago And schools need to do the same. If their employment goes down, their ADA goes down, they have to cut back. And that's the main reason why a budget would go down.
If the budget goes up because enrollment goes up or if enrollment goes up or ADA goes up or a combination of two, then most likely they will have an increase. And I'm going to go over examples of that. Now we have, you know, we have some small schools. The small school subsidy isn't enough to carry a small school that has, you know, fewer than 250 kids. So in the meantime, since we're not closing schools next year, we're going to bring to the board, I think I told you last time, some schools most likely will bring to the board in the late fall,
a list of schools to close for the following year, twenty six-twenty seven, not twenty five-twenty. So in twenty five-twenty six, what I'm saying to the board is we'll probably have to subsidize, you know, some schools more than the small school subsidy. But if we're going to if we're going to keep a small school open, then it's, I think, our obligation to make sure they have enough money to operate well. And that's so even if they see a reduction in their line item because of decrease in enrollment, we will still figure it out.
We will help them maintain an AP, for example, maintain the class size or the teachers for the core subjects, etcetera. Alright. Yes, ma'am. Sorry. I just want to ask a question before we move away from that slide. The first bullet, I'd just like to ask the question, it said that it is likely, if enrollment or ADA decreases that the school budget allocation will decrease. What type of scenario is there that it won't happen with these decreases? Thank you. Good question. I'm going to show you. But the answer is, if your ADA increases,
even if your enrollment goes down a little bit, you probably won't have a decrease in your budget. Or if your enrollment goes down only a little bit or your AD goes down a little bit, that 10% reduction will actually pull it back up. But there's no question at all, if your ADA goes down, I mean, we have, I think, one or two schools where the ADA is in the high 80s, or if your enrollment goes down, 100 kids, to me, there's probably no question, and we're going to show you examples, that your total budget doesn't go down.
It's going to go down. One quick question as well. Just as we discussed 50% of schools with the PUA, what impacts would enrollment declines have on the NES school? So right now, what Ina Meyer and her team is doing with HR is they are right sizing based on that enrollment projection. So they will lose teachers. They already don't have a lot of purchase services or programs. It's the NES model. It's the HISD curriculum. So there's not much additions to cut.
They don't have a lot of extra people except for teacher apprentices and learning coaches, which is part of the model. But if they lose enrollment, they're going to lose staff mostly. That's the impact. Can you just remind us, because I've forgotten, what is the ratio of, teacher assistants and learning coaches? Teacher assistants this year was 125 to one. One hundred and 20 five. And 125 and learning coaches is one to 100. This year, everything is one to 100. Learning coaches and teacher apprentices, one to 100 in the NAS orbit.
Alright. And so, some examples real quick just to to go through. Here's a school. Again, no no names on it. This is a school with 300 and 3,224, so pretty big school. The enrollment decreased by 72. The ADA, went up a little bit, so that's good. So their total campus allocation is $14,946,000 so almost $15,000,000 They lost based on the reduction, that's a reduction of $216,000 which by the way, in a budget of 15,000,000
is not that much. We're going to add back 10%. That's 21,000. So their adjusted campus is almost 15,000,000, 14 million 9 hundred and 60 8 thousand. So that's not going to be a big impact on that school even though they lost 72 kids. So I am part of the reason I was asking about the PUA calculation is when we looked at these different examples, they're all they're all different, obviously, based on the weights that, Jim just described. But, so this one in particular is I don't know if this is an actual school or not.
I think this is a hypothetical one. Totally made up. Okay. So the that $5,052 just would never exist because it's less than what you just said is the low exam rate. Okay. Got it. Yes. I think this person, whoever did this chart, assumed no bare bones TUA. So is that the right 5,052? I was trying to understand the You know, it's what is the bare bones with no increase? Is it 5,000? Based on rate level. Business rules. So I'll provide that to you. Got it. Okay.
So this is fair minimum without weights? Weighted Weighted for this campus. Example, each PUA is after the calculation with the weights. Right. But what I just said Yes. So but it's not just a fictitious number. It's a real campus with real weightings on and that's how you came up with a POE number, correct? Correct. Okay. So help me then. So for is it K through five is one number and then middle school and then high school has a different number? Yes. That's my grade level. And are they increasing over time?
Or Yes. I'll I'll I'll provide that information. Okay. I don't have the exact numbers on it. Okay. Got it. Yeah. It cost it costs more to run high schools Right. Per pupil. Alright. This is another one, probably better example of a loss. The enrollment decreases by 153. That's a lot of kids in one year even for a big school. The PUA, multiplied by that times 80 and, oh, and ADA went down incredibly, 81.2. So this is a loss of 2,589,000.
If we add back 10%, we add back 258,000, but it's still a loss of, you know, over $2,000,000 But if your ADA goes down like this and your enrollment goes down, you are going to lose money as a campus. Well, the math the way the math works, 12.7%, when you take that number relative to the $14,000,000 of the twenty four, twenty five campus allocation, it's $2,000,000 right? So it's about you got to have people coming to the school,
not just enrollment. It's a combination of the two, right? Yes. This is an extreme example. Total extreme. Yes. But still, it makes the point. Yes. It's hypothetical, I know, but just for our understanding. So with $2,000,000 gone, what does that look like in real life for like, if you were the principal, what do they say? How do you get $2,000,000 The the way you get $2,000,000 mostly is through staff. So that means cutting people. So what it it probably means testing coordinator. You know, none of the NES campuses have testing coordinators.
It may mean, other positions that are non classroom positions. I don't wanna say anything because then people just go crazy. I didn't mean the types of people, but like how mid are we talking about? Ten, twenty five? One teacher, I think you can think of it this way. Dollars 250,000 is three teachers. Thank you. And it's a discretion of the principal. Because it's kind of benefits, by the way. It's also discretion of the principal based on the defined autonomy, correct? That's right. Yeah. Okay. Can I it also so if this would mean making sure my class sizes are
25, 20 six instead of 20 or 12? It might it might mean cutting out any purchase services. So I bought something to, for after school programming or something then, you know, then I'm gonna have my teachers do it instead of this fancy company or whatever. I mean, I'm making things up, of course. This is a hypothetical. Mhmm. Thank you. But, it's not just staff, it's purchased services. Thank you. Okay. Why don't you go ahead and then I've got a question. Thanks for that question, Angie. That's actually a good question. Is there a point where we
take too many staff members away and then it impacts the desired outcomes of the school? Yeah. Thanks for asking. That's a hard question to answer. Let me answer it this way though. The reason why it's a hard question to answer is because it depends on what the principal decides to do. If what if your outcome is getting student achievement results and continuing to offer your programming, magnet programming, for example, then, I wouldn't cut those folks. I would cut other things. You can't do everything, and we had additional monies thrown into the system because of ESSER,
and people got used to additional people. And we were no longer in that luxury period. So, PUA times enrollment times ADA should allow you to run an effective school depending on what your outcomes are. If your outcome is achievement, the board goals, the vision, then that is enough. You know, but but if your outcome is trying to do everything, then no, it may not be enough. And thank you for that, superintendent. And I wonder,
and again just hypothetical because I don't know that the details of every school, but I'm assuming that there are some campuses where we already have 26, 20 seven students per classroom. And so we're going to now potentially move into the 30s. And how does that impact? And I know that there are some campuses where at least from my well, I'll just say, I'm aware that there are some classrooms are doubling up sometimes. And so, how does that help or hurt students and outcomes and so forth? Yes. And again, if I encounter that as an ED or chief of a division,
I'd look at the staffing, I'd look at their budget and I would help them. You know, I've run a charter network. I've run, you know, two other districts. And I know that you always have enough money to do the things you prioritize in a district this size. And the schools getting PUA times enrollment times ADA has enough money to do our core job. Now we can people will debate that, but instead of cutting a language arts teacher and making the class size 28 or
29, which a PA could do, they should not do that, and they should cut something else. I've seen schools we don't need to talk about HIC, so I don't need to offend anybody here, but, and and other places where they have 300 kids and four office managers. They don't need four office managers. You think you might the principal might think they need four office managers, but they don't. They might have to actually do a spreadsheet themselves, you know, or make more phone calls themselves. You know? So, there's many things that we in the profession have gotten used to that we don't
need. So the answer to your question is they don't need to cut the core things, the core mission. And I would say first, let me look at it, let the division chief look at it, let the ED look at it and we can tell what should be covered, what shouldn't. Now whether they want to or not, that's a different story. I bet. And my understanding is that the EDs are going to assist the principals to the extent they requested with their budgets. Is that right? Yes. The EDs will look at all the budgets. They'll be careful in the PUA side. The budget is up to the principal.
You know, we're not going to let a principal do crazy stuff though. Define autonomy or not. You're not going to get rid of all your math teachers or, you know, or have class sizes of 40 for your math when you have too many office managers or too many other this or this. So we're not going to let that happen because all kids deserve effective run schools. But they do have discretion over staff as the bottom line. So My real other question was, can you remind us and maybe I'm misremembering this, but there was a staffing amount per teacher.
We're not, I guess, the right way to ask this. Out of the school budgets, are the the actual dollars that are paid to each particular teacher coming out of that budget, or is it some estimated number or average number or some does is what I'm asking making sense? In other words, if you have a teacher that's being paid $90,000 and a teacher that's being paid $60,000 are they gonna cost different amounts out of the budget? Or is there, like, a 70 something thousand? Thank you. Sorry. That was my question. Okay. Thanks. Okay. A couple more examples and we can we can stop.
This is one where the decrease is only 14 students. 80 eight goes up a little bit. So the campus allocation increases by 43,000. And so you can see ADA matters in this case, so their budget is higher than the year before. Here's a school where the decrease is only 11 students or an increase of 11 students, not to not a lot, stays about the same. 88 stays about the same. The PUA, of course, is the same. So their amount is only $60,000
more, but it's an increase. And then finally, this is a decrease of 16 kids. So if if you stay about the same and the enrollment or the ADA goes up in this case, you see that they're not losing money. Even though they lost 16 kids, their ADA made up for it. So, there will be schools that will will struggle. We'll try to help where we can. The biggest thing though is, this. We are providing this is, we're still not at balance because we're going to provide all of these things. NES is one thing, but for PUA campuses, we'll fund the core curriculum if it's on the approved list,
just like we did this year. So RLA, math, science, social studies, we there's, I think, three vetted curriculum. If they wanna use those three, we'll pay for it. We're paying for, ESOL. We're paying for zone math, the ELA digital resource, like, I think this year it was Amira. Yep. Then Summit K-twelve, Apex, Newsela, Learning A through Z. So those are ones we will support. Can I ask a question about that? Yep. On, like Zern, for example, if it's not a PUA special focus school, then the school budget would cover that,
is that right? No, I think all Chris would answer. There's a different answer based on the resource that is listed on here. So for example, Summit K-twelve, we have a broader license too. Last year, we were able to fund Zern at more campuses due to a TEA grant. So it just depends. As we do budgeting for this year, our priority is NES and the special focus, but we are looking to see if we can also support, multiple other of these in addition to that for PUA. So, So the goal is in an ideal state,
yes, we cover this for everybody because everything on this list, we make sure we have analysis that shows that it connects to outcomes. Then, we're paying for all the assessments, of course. Superintendent, I'm sorry. Can we go back to that question? I'm sorry. Yes, sir. So going back to the software, the platforms that we have, So if there's select schools, they're going to have access to it, right, just because based on okay. So again, what, I wouldn't say research because it's not research, but what is the potential impact for campuses who have used it to improve and
are not under that category, they're not NES. How are we going to support them and what are the options what are the alternatives we have in lieu of these software platforms? So I mean, as we know there's research that this works for kids, that's for sure. But the question about the resource for PUA schools is the methodology we're using. In other words, we're not paying for this. Would it help the PUA schools that are not special focus? Probably, but they have some choices over that. You know, they have they have some choices over the whether they purchase curriculum or not.
They could use the HISD curriculum. By the way, the majority of schools will be using the HISD curriculum, which is free, and they're gonna use that and they're gonna stop paying for, you know, any other curriculum that's not vetted because we're gonna pay for vetted curriculum. But even even then, I will guarantee you that majority of schools will use the HSD curriculum instead of Amplify, even though Amplify is vetted and will will pay for. So, that it's choices that the PUA schools make around their budgeting process. To I think to add to that,
right now at this state and time, we are not anticipating, we are not at a place yet where we're saying any PUA campus that was using one of these last year would no longer be able to have access to it this year. We're not at that place yet for next year's budget. So anybody who is previously using these, may very likely still be able to have access to them next year as PUA. So we're looking into that though. Yeah. Paying for these assessments, of course, paying paying for 50% of pre k teaching assistance in the PUA campuses. This was a big one last year. Dual credit,
dual enrollment, AP, and IB programming. So that will be covered. Paying for TSI assessment fees for SATACT and TSIA. And access to Khan Academy to support SAT and TSAI prep. Mike, just to clarify, there were some questions, I think, this year about IB programming and fees and maybe some other costs related to that. Could would you clarify would those be included as well? I'm pretty sure. But Kristen, can you just verify? Last year, the approach we took is that everything that Central Office was previously paying for with
IB, we continue to pay for and that's the plan as we continue forward as well. Do you recall what the the question was? I think it was about maybe, some kind of recurring, like, assessment or maybe checking every five years or something like that? Certification. Oh, okay. Certification. Those are paid by the schools. Right? The certification and training is by the school. Right? Yes. Every five years, the IB organization comes to the school to make sure the program is compliant. And so, yes, we, we work with the IB organization to do that and schools are on a cycle.
The biggest expense for us from an IB programming side is covering the assessment. That's the expensive piece. That's the piece we had to hold on a little bit for last year, but that we were ultimately able to cover and we plan to cover that again as of now. Is there a cost in the certification? And are we paying it? I can double check that, but likely, yes. Like we don't if we have paid for it before we pay for it again, I'll double check that. Yes, it's okay to check. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And the same thing goes for CT curriculum, soon IBC testing, testing fees, and,
professional development. I already said we pray for the four programs to study. And I don't want to read all this, but you can go through it. These are other things that we pay for that, the schools do not have to do. Mike, sorry, on that previous one, those health and medical, those are separate from anything we might see around our Sunrise centers. Those are because those are not campus costs. Correct. Just to clarify. Okay. Thank you. And by that same token, the telehealth piece is separate or is that funded by grant? What was that? Hazel Health is a district paid from just checking to make sure Hazel Health is
paid for by the district. Correct. We this year, it's covered fully by the district, yes. And so next year also? Next year, let me look at where we are. We are evaluating the cost of the specific program, but we do want to remain committed to providing the telehealth services for physical health and mental health. But we are evaluating, the contract and just making sure it's the fiscally responsible approach. Okay. And then you can see it's School Links and credit recovery through Apex. Fine Arts? Can I ask a question on Hazel Hill?
Is part of your assessment like the use and return on investment and that kind of thing? Absolutely. Okay, thanks. So the district supports fine arts through curriculum development and some online resources and curated materials. Can you review just at a very high level, Schools that have fine arts departments that become NES, I know the overarching program doesn't have like a specific support in place, but how what's the vision there around what it is that they should expect
around programming? Yes. So if they have any sort of not just fine arts, but any magnet program, we continue to support that. So and the district will pay for those fees. NES doesn't have its own budget, so the district essentially covers those costs like Dyad. And they'll continue to do so. Is that correct? And will continue to do so. And I think I told you at the last meeting, we don't plan to add, NAS campuses, so that won't be a challenge as far as increase in budget or anything unless
a PUA school drops to an F. And then these are just some other costs. Of course, this is this is not new information. What's that? Yeah, unnecessary, but okay. Alright, Questions about this and we can then review what's coming up. Thank you. Good. Go ahead. So on the next time, I think, you will get a little bit more excitement because we'll be giving you the department allocations, the number, the total amount, and then school based allocation. Keep in mind,
those numbers will still be preliminary and draft because it depends on what the legislature does if we can give them more money or not. The same thing with school based allocations, you'll you'll get the number the allocation amount for each school. And we will review that. Questions about it? Any other questions? Sure. Go ahead. One general. At the in the very beginning of the presentation, there was there was the annotation around the district's vision. Could you pull that slide up for me? And I just want to offer a reflection because it seems like I may have
been maybe there were more than one slide, so maybe it was just one. You're talking about this slide here? Yes. So it's a little bit challenging for me when I see district vision on a slide presented to us, because it's not the vision. And so what I'm thinking about is just I know this is the strategy to help us get to our goal and get to our vision. I think just from a communication standpoint, it will help if we kind of delineate between those strategies versus visions, which, you know, for us is empowering students to become critical leaders,
thinkers, visionary leaders, active contributors to the community. I think it's important to just distinguish between the goals, visions, strategies going forward, so that we don't kind of mince words and strategies, if you will. Sure. I'm sure we can figure out something. Any other questions, comments? Okay. Okay, great. So, the that's the balance of our meeting today. So, Board members, I do want to remind you that we have this self evaluation. And actually, two of us have already filled them out. There's really Three.
Three, sorry. There's only one change from the last one, which would be visions and goals number four, and all the rest are pretty much the same. We've actually increased two points from the vision and goals number four, because of what we did in January. And so it shouldn't be really difficult for you all to fill this out pretty quickly and sign your name and maybe hand it to Emily. Emily has yours probably. Okay, great. With that, any other comments or questions from Board members? Can I say thank you, please to everyone involved in this budgeting workshop work because it's a lot of work,
but I really appreciate the pacing and the way you've been able to break the information out? And I know it's a lot. And so when we ask questions and you don't have an answer, I know it's like you're in the middle of budgeting and it's okay. But thank you so much for allowing us the space to better understand. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Great. I will echo that too. Thank you. We stand adjourned.