I'm sorry? Good afternoon. The meeting is now convened at 01:09PM, this is the special meeting of the School Board. I would like everyone to please silence all cell phones. A quorum of the board of members is present in the auditorium. I don't think we have many on Zoom, correct? Okay, Our first order of business is to hear from speakers to agenda items. Public comment during the school board meetings will only be available to those persons who have signed up to speak prior to the meeting time for 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. Persons who participate in such behavior will be given one warning and if the behavior is repeated, they will be asked to leave the meeting. We have six registered speakers who will be limited to 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 the law. But you may name your own child. I ask you, to please respect our procedures, and other speakers, and to end your comments promptly when your time has expired and the timer rings.
We will hear from in person speakers followed by speakers on Zoom if any. In person speakers, please come to the microphone and your number ordered. Please state your full name when you begin your remarks. Emily Smith, you can go ahead and call our speakers. Speakers one through five. Thank you. Good afternoon, Jesse Heiner. If I told you today that I had a miracle pill that guarantees that you can lose 20 pounds in twenty days, would you believe me? What if I told you it works because I've seen it work? Even though there's no peer reviewed data,
except a paper that my buddies in Dallas wrote, it hasn't been through any, review process. It works for everyone though because this perform this pill performs a whole sickle systemic transformation on your body. Just give me half a million dollars and it's yours. Would you believe me? Or would you think that I'm manipulating you for your own personal gain? For my own personal gain. I'm here to tell you about a school that Mike Miles calls a miracle, Wainwright Elementary. We are one of three schools in the entire state that went from an f to an a in just one year under the miracle NES program.
I could not be more proud, to be a part of the Wainwright community. During our miracle NES year, we lost 37 staff members. 10 out of our roughly 30 teachers were uncertified first year teachers. Our library program was removed, and our students learn only from PowerPoints and worksheets. No books are allowed in the curriculum. Most concerning, our unhoused student population went from 71 to just three students. Do you really think that our school went from an F to an A in one year because student outcomes have improved?
Or do you think someone who stands to gain half a million per year might be moving students around to make his miracle NES program look good and manipulating you for his own personal gain. Please pull all funding for Mike Miles' NES miracle scam during budget season this year so we can start to rebuild our community. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Tracy Liszewski speaking to the budget workshop. Last week's workshop raised some questions, which I hope you will take time to find the answers to. Administration stated that PUA schools will only receive 30% of any new state allotment dollars.
I did the math on the scenarios and examples given over the past two workshops. Last year, those schools received an average of 85% of the state allotment. So why now are they only receiving 30% of any additional funding? Administration stated that 40% of a state allotment dollar is needed for salaries, and 75% of that 40% is needed for teacher salaries. But PUA campuses pay the bulk of their salaries via their own budget. Roughly 90 to 98% of their allotment is used for salaries. So to say that money is being withheld from PUA campuses for salaries doesn't ring
entirely true. It could be that the 40% is needed for NES salaries, but there should be full transparency on the need to pull from a PUA allotment to fund NES. It is also important to understand why the administration is basing the ADA on cycles three and four when, as stated in the last workshop, HISD receives funding on cycles one through four. What is the value difference between what we receive versus what will be allocated to campuses? Finally, during last year's budget process, board Q and A for workshops were made available to the public. I'm uncertain if board Q and A is part of this year's process,
but if it is, please ask the administration to make these documents public. As yet, they are not. Thank you for ensuring there are so many workshops this year. Transparency is the key to rebuilding community trust. You'll soon be tasked with approving another close to $2,000,000,000 budget. Please make good use of this time to get suitable answers to hard questions. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Judy Chang. I spoke here last week and some of you were not here last week, so I wanted to remind you again your responsibility to ensure that every student in the district has a real opportunity to succeed.
Let me be clear once again, when mandated salary increases go unfunded, you're cutting the school budget and you are directly impact the student learning. So what happens when poor standardized test scores dominate the evaluation system? With limited budget, principal are left with no choices but to cut the very programs that make school meaningful, Foreign languages, fine arts, and athletics. Are we trying to accelerate HISD's enrollment decline by stripping schools of the programs that make sense and to turn them into test
prep centers? Why isn't money following students to their campus? Of the proposed $250 increase in the state basic allotment, why are school only seeing 75? Agency received not just state funding but also local and federal funds, yet only a fraction of that reach our campuses. Let's not forget 80% of HISD students are economically disadvantaged. Their needs doesn't change because of the school they attend, but yet per student allocation still varies drastically from one campus to another. I'm deeply disappointed by the lack of transparency in the budget process.
No Q and As have been posted, leaving family and stakeholder in the dark. At this point, only you have the ability to ask the right questions to drive the meaningful changes. Changes that prioritize real learning and give our schools the resources they need to be excellent, not just adequate. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any additional speakers present? There is no speaker on Zoom at this time, so this concludes speakers. Do we have a Zoom speaker? No? Okay. Okay. That concludes our, hearing of speakers to the agenda items.
We'll now address our workshop topic, the twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six District Budget. Superintendent Miles, you have the floor. Let me just clarify too. We, we, usually have hearings, but we had one hearing that was scheduled and is withdrawn, and postponed to another date. So there are no hearings today. Just a workshop. Thank you. Prosper. Alright. Mister president, members of the board, we're here for workshop number four. In this workshop, we, said we would give you a high level budget overview, and then we'll talk about our,
quickly just another big overview of campus budgets, which we talked about last time, and then the FMO update around facilities and then legislative update. We'll spend most of the time on the first bullet. That's where we are in this budget process. Next budget workshop, we'll be talking about the the budget again, but a little bit more fine tuned. And here's our timeline again. Budget's due in June. So, we're we're following this timeline fairly well. Just to remind you, we try to prioritize our resources to sustain transformation and in this particular budget we're
paying attention to long term sustainability. I said to the Board last time and I'll repeat, we're trying to get to a balanced budget which is which will help with the sustainability notion either this year or next year. And I think we'll be well on our way to that. At the same time, trying to keep the cuts as far away from the classroom as possible, but really, the budget should follow our actions. We have to get, student achievement and, get kids ready for year 02/1935. That's what the money is here for,
doing that. And, of course, it has to be sustainable over the over the long term. So, let's get started. But before I start on the numbers, you got some numbers and I'm gonna keep reminding you of this slide here. The budget process over the next couple months and over the last couple months is an iterative process. I've been in government organizations almost my entire adult life. Whether it's military, whether it's state department, whether it's education and I've been in very big organizations and this is what happens in the spring.
It's an iterative process where you try to bring in the balanced budget for the end of the year and then as you work on the next year, and that's what we're involved in right now. So the materials that you got in pre read, the materials you get today, the materials you get next week will be changing. And then once we get closer to the budget in June, it's gonna change again because the legislature will come out, with final numbers and that may be different from the numbers we're assuming. We're still pretty close to our budget assumptions methodologies that we gave you back in
February, but just want you to know that anytime you get numbers, don't go buying buying property based on that information, because it will change. Alright. Nonetheless, every day, we are getting closer and closer. Let me give you a couple examples. I know this is off script for my team, but let me give you a couple examples of what I mean by iterative and why these these changes. Last night at or yesterday at 04:00, the assessed valuation came out, not and it won't come out a day earlier. And then it'll come out in another month a different assessed valuation or possibly a
different one. As a result of the assessed value, that's the money we get from taxes, based on the assessment of our property. As a result of that we get a change, actually in this case, a change up in the local revenue and adjustment down in the state revenue. And there's a there's a balance of because the state revenue is based partly on local revenue because of a recapture policy. So that happened at 04:00 yesterday, and so that changed. Last week, I had a talk with a couple of the, principals,
high school principals, we told you we're trying to help schools with their budgeting, the schools are doing fairly well with that, but a couple of the high schools because, the state cut our high school subsidies, and so we no longer have that. They still wanted some portion of that, so I made a $2,100,000 decision right then and there to help some of the high schools that were struggling to make their their budget. That's a $2,100,000 impact on our bottom line. We are looking just like every other organization in in Texas,
but, across the The United States when it's a public organization, we're looking at grant funding right now. If you don't spend all your grant money, the effort right now is to say, hey. Are there general fund dollars that the grant money could be used for? We pull it from the general fund. We put it in the grant. That is a normal process, and that changes our bottom line again. This is what happens during this time. And so I just and you probably know that, but I'm just trying to remind you and the public that that's why numbers change. And it's gonna be a,
you know, up and down little process until we get to June. And even then, you know, we'll make some budget adjustment as we get information in. Alright. So our this this is a projection, right? Enrollment could change. It could be higher or lower. We think 6,500 is a a conservative number. We probably won't lose that many students, but, that's one of the budget assumptions. And by the way that number changed because the schools have come to us and argued that projected enrollment is not gonna be the projected enrollment for them because they
they have historical data, they have, they've done a survey of their staff and so that number also varies a little bit. So, that's the enrollment. Our average daily attendance, at least based on right now is gonna be very similar to what it is this year, next year. Then the weighted average daily attendance, that's the state calculation And the reason why it's gonna go down is because we don't have as many kids in those weighted formulas because we've lost, you know, kids. So it's not that much difference, but, it is a difference.
And then finally, I I I just talked about taxable property values. That number will change every month a little bit, hopefully not too much. And then all the legislative, bills right now are still, you know, haven't been finalized. So the the basic allotment, that's one thing, but the safety and security bill, that's not finalized. The charge is not finalized. So there's still some variability. I'm just giving you a hint that, you know, a lot of this depends on the legislation. We will react appropriately once we get, numbers from the legislature.
Alright. So the big overview at this point in time, the the headline or the narrative is this. Based on our assumptions on what the state and local and the other revenue streams are, we will have more money coming into this district next year than we did this year. Somewhere around 94,000,000, that could go up or down, so the next report you might see might be a little bit different based on, let's say, the SARs, estimate changes. So $94,000,000 so the storyline here is that we will be getting more revenue.
So that's good news. On the expenditure side, the headline here is we are going around we have been for the last couple months. We're not done, but we are cutting what we can cut. Keep in mind that we are still suffering from the vestiges of the mismanagement of ESSER dollars and the use of ESSER funds and recurring expenses. Last year, we did not get rid of all those recurring expenses used by ESSER. We did made a big dent in it. That's why we were able to go from a revenue stream that was short $528,000,000
to $246,000,000 deficit. And now we're gonna, bring that down even more. So the departments are doing a good job of cutting what they can cut. We're not done with that process. We're still looking at purchase services. We're still looking at some positions. But you see there, we have cut back for next year, over $50,000,000 from the departments. We've cut, both the PUA and that most of that is the number of teachers and the NES because enrollment decrease or projected enrollment decrease.
We won't have recapture and then, various other other things that we're we're not spending money on. That's an $80,000,000 decrease in expenditures, which which I think is, speaks a lot to the various departments trying to work as efficiently and with as few people as possible so that we don't increase class size, so that we keep salaries going up, and things like that in the schools, the programs in the schools. So all total, this current year revenue $20.25, that's this current year,
minus expenditures I said we had a $245,000,000 deficit, And most of that is because we, lost $528,000,000 at the start of the school year. This year, we're gonna be $72,000,000, difference, the the net change. So, overall, the fund balance at the end of this year, these are projected this well, the the 2025 is budgeted. We are budgeted at $800,000,000 fund balance, for next year. At this point in time,
$730,000,000 fund balance and I say that over because we are not done. We hope we will decrease expenditures in April, May and June of this current year, which will raise the projected ending fund balance and will change the revenue balance or the fund balance for 2026. That's where we are right at this minute. And overall, I think, the story is if we don't balance the budget this year, I think if we can bring that 71 to 50
or, that seven thirty to seven fifty, we will then be able to balance the budget the following year and we can start moving that $7.50 back to 800. It could be higher than that, could be a little lower than that. Let's I I wanna wait. The next budget workshop will have a better feel and then, of of course, we'll have a better feel in June after the legislation and after we've had an attempt to see if we're able to save money in the next couple months. That's the overall, fund, general fund, the initial 20,000 foot view. You all had some questions about PUA and NES so I wanted to answer those
as part of this overview. So this is the the broad brush for, next year. The total budgets you see for PUA and NES are there in the second column. The enrollment is, as you see there. And then the average, that's just a division problem. Right? The amount total amount. This is total amount versus enrollment. And so the average per people operating revenue for PUA school is close to 6,000 and for NES is close to 8,300. So the difference we are spending,
and I've said this over and over again, we are spending more money on NES. We're spending more money on underserved kids. How are we spending that money? We're spending it this way. I I said last time that the most the reason the difference is the biggest difference is teacher apprentices, learning coaches, and the salary. So if you if you took out teacher apprentices, learning coaches, and, the difference in average salary, NES would be making only $259 per pupil than PUA.
So the big difference you see is learning coaches, apprentices, and salaries. It's not programming. It's not materials. It's it's that. And that is part of the that is the main thing of the NES model or, the things that cost anyway. The main thing of instructional feedback, the, the the model where we differentiate instruction, the curriculum, those are not, costly. These are the things that cost. So, I will stop there, sir, because we'll go into the FMO, but, give the board a chance to answer. Any questions?
Go ahead. Thank you very much. I think this is maybe a little bit different than what we got in the preread. So if we could get the update, it'd be great. On page nine, you were talking about the ADA kind of remaining at 94%. Is that average across the state or or and also, is there a way to improve that that we've been considering since it's so impactful to our budget? Yes. I I don't have the data in in front of me. I'm pretty sure that's fairly average or a little bit better than large districts in
the state of Texas. Is there a way to improve that? Yes. The whole country has suffered from poor attendance, especially in large urbans and absences. And so it's a larger phenomenon. The answer is we just have to continue to be vigilant in calling parents when a kid is absent, making sure principals follow-up on and teachers follow-up when kids are absent. There's no tried and true way. 90 four-ninety 5% is not bad. I know we have some schools with 97, you know, 96, and then some schools with 90.
So it's a matter of working on the schools that have lower lower attendance. Okay. On page 11. So on, I see that the increases to the expenditures are identified by line item. On the reductions or the decreases. So for example, department budgets, those are I mean, I imagine that's a many, many different cuts that are being made throughout the department. Yes, ma'am. Is that consistent with what you presented last last meeting? We we don't have to go through it again, but Yeah. I mean, we we we haven't given you the line each department has,
you know, couple hundred line items. So these this is the sum summation of those departments. And I think, during our last meeting, you went through some large items that may have fallen into those decreases. I assume those are part of the department decreases. That's right. I just wanted to give you an idea what makes up that number. And that this number is where we are today. It'll probably be larger the next time we meet. Okay. Larger decrease, meaning decrease to expenditures. Understood. On the the, PUA line item of the negative 17.1,
that is, I assume, school budget changes. Is that right? Yes. So that's the difference between last year and this year on the PUA schools. Okay. Most of that is due to projected enrollment decrease and the different methodology. Remember, we capped at 12% of the budget loss. This year, we gave them back 10% of budget decrease. And then same question for the NES. NES, the reduction in $30,000,000 is I'm just asking, is it driven primarily by reduction in children?
That's right. So almost we do the crosswalk and we estimate the number of kids in each school. And most of the large portion of the 6,500, just like last year, the enrollment decreases the majority of it actually more than the majority is in the NES schools. Enrollment decrease. On page 14, the on this can we get this also for last year just to do a side by side? It's calculated the same. Yep. Certainly can. Thank you. That's it. Go ahead. Thank you.
You mentioned, the high school subsidy that the state doesn't provide. Is the work that you're doing with high schools reflected in the general fund expenditure summary yet, or will we see that next month? The high school budgets? The yes. The the, you said you were working with some high schools on a subsidy that doesn't exist, but you're working with them to give some funding back. Yes. So, you see that in the whole PUA number. So the high schools are in that PUA number, of $17,000,000 So that's where it is. It would have been higher than that or, yeah, higher than that,
but we put 2,000,000 back in. Got it. Thank you. That's where that is. And just, because the the one thing I know the board was interested in is the waits. And we're we I'll remind you, we're waiting for the legislature to finish, and we made a conscious decision not to change the weights for the any school, much Metrolis High School, until the following year. So this fall, we will, involve the school principals and finance, of course, and we will keep the board apprised of how we're gonna change the weights and
the allocations. So, for example, I I know that, the fact that the state cut our high cut high school allotments, really, high schools need some sort of subsidy to be high school. Elementary and middle schools subsidize high schools across the country. That's the way it's always been. There's more programming. There's more different courses, different activities at the high school level that the elementary and middle just don't have. So we need to change that a little bit. So we're gonna, you know, we're gonna have, some sort of subsidy and we'll figure it out together.
And and at the same time, use the weights for EB and SPED and things like that that the state changes so that we have a good, waiting program for that fits Houston. Because I don't think that's been changed for twenty years. Thank you. The, obviously, our our sensitivity to, enrollment is something that's top of mind, and I imagine you and your team talk about this a lot. This wouldn't be something I would imagine you could answer today, but, the idea that for us and and for our community to understand how the district
is, now that we have a demographer as well, how we're looking at those numbers, how we can understand where, what this data means for us, not just this year, but going forward. Because I imagine that some of the decisions that we're making are based on assumptions around our trends in enrollment, not just now but in the future. But also, I would hope that some of that data could also help us better understand and not just jump to conclusions that these enrollment numbers are impacted by the community's reaction to the transformation. So it would I would imagine if,
it would be helpful to, help us better understand where those shifts might be happening and, that that would help me maybe better understand our enrollment, how we react to this enrollment, change overall. Yeah. That that is that is right. The sense to the enrollment is a big part of our budgeting process. And losing enrollment is really tough on any budget and losing this many kids is tough. We're making the assumption, but you're right, it's there's all kinds of variables that impact the enrollment,
including demographic information about where kids move. We found out recently, for example, that there are many fewer NES students who applied to, for magnet transfer this year than last year. So that also impacts enroll. So that means they'll they're staying at the NES school. There there's still transfers but or request to or applications for magnet schools but not as many. So that that has a, impact on where the enrollment is happening.
We know that demographically, kids are not not as many younger kids are there are not as many young kids or babies in Houston. That's a that's a fact. And that's been happening for a while. We don't know the impact of vouchers, but all of this is to say, yes. You're absolutely right. That's a critical leverage point. By the way, we started a task force to try to target specific schools and help them with enrollment. It's called HEAT, h e a t. I don't remember what it stands for,
but they're bringing the HEAT to some campuses to try to get the enrollment up. But the point is, yes, this is critical. It's a leverage point. We're trying to understand it. We we think we'll get more information at at the end of this year and the beginning of next year so that we can then target our our supports for that and do better in budgeting. Follow follows here. Hello. I appreciate the transparency about the different allotments. We've you know, there are questions about PUA versus NES.
Just to ground my thinking, so clearly the data says we are spending more money on resources towards the kids. But to ground my thinking and the community's thinking, can you remind us why we are choosing this group of kids, and having this funding difference? Yeah. Thanks for asking, and giving me a chance to expound on it. Yes. Our most of the NAS schools, if you if you remember, we started with the F campuses, D and F campuses. We started with 28 schools, but then we expanded to D and F's 57 other schools,
so 85 schools. We added 45 schools that were f campuses or low d, and then the high d's could join if they wanted to and 20 of them did. So these are are mostly our low performance schools, not every one of them but mostly. Now many of them have moved out of the DNF category, but when we started that's what where it was. And, you know, I don't I don't know what term resonates most, but most of these schools are in our underserved populations, underserved areas of town.
And so the way to combat that and the the the modus vivendi of NES is to put your highest performing teachers with your lowest performing students and provide additional supports that we know work to improve instruction and achievement. So the biggest parts of that low you lowest highest performing teachers, lowest performing kids we gotta incentivize. That's why the salary difference matters, and that's half of the difference in the in the PUA to n NES.
And then the other half of that difference is teacher apprentices and learning coaches. So, if you were to ask the teachers there, learning coaches and teacher apprentices provide tremendous support for a teacher when they're instructing, for the team center, even discipline in the hallway because there's more adults. So, that is that is the why. And maybe at some point, you know, we will have enough money to provide learning coaches and teacher apprentices to the PUA schools. For for example, we're already and you'll see this in the in the budget line item,
we're, looking to to hire, 65 teacher residents. They're part of the university program. They're a pipeline for certified teachers, but they're gonna act as teacher apprentices. And many of them, we will put in the PUA schools that are special focus. So we're already, you know, thinking about that. So that's on top of they don't have to budget for it. We're gonna be adding that because we know that support works. And so, if if we can do that more and more, as we get more money, we first,
we get out of the deficit hole, then we have money to to help the other schools with those sorts of programs. Go ahead, Adam. Thank you, sir. I think I'll go to the numbers just a little bit. The, the first area that I just wanted to highlight, thank you for sharing, one, the goal, right, that we're working towards a balanced budget. And that the, that number is that 800,000,000 that we've discussed in the past. So that's always encouraging. We know that there's a lot of challenges at this time for a number of reasons, and we get that.
But working towards that goal will allow us all to be trekking towards the same place. There are a few things on '25 and '26 that seem materially different. And so if you go to, like, the summary grand fund general fund summary, A little bit higher. I think the very first one. Yeah. There we go. So and I'll just highlight a couple. I don't we don't have to line item anything. But, what would be helpful is to kind of get a connection point on some of these. So,
the things I noticed that aren't here are like maintenance notes, any insurance recoupment, transfers in and any net investment income. In the past, those things have flown in a different parts of the budget, and we've moved several items from other areas into the top line. So, I was hoping that we would see all of them flow up. Yes, sir. So, just quickly, on this page here, the transfers end should be under what? Other sources? What? So other sources are transfers in.
But the maintenance tax notes are separate line item, but what you see is the debt payment on the tax note as $8,000,000 So maintenance tax note is not part of the general fund budget. The $8,000,000 though, because we have to pay for the interest on that, is part of the general fund. And so you see that on this page here. So I mean, that's a couple of there was was there some there was one There's some other stuff, but I just at a big picture level, there were So probably just explaining that a little bit more is helpful. Yeah. The, that would be helpful because, the it just makes sure that I'm seeing the full picture that we're discussing.
And I realize maintenance notes are separate, right? But we're spending that money next year, and so it's like how do we make sure we see everything that we're doing. Yes. Maybe I'm wrong. I thought we showed you what we're going to spend for the maintenance tax notes and if I didn't, I apologize, but we could also include it in the appendix for the board. Yes. It was in the last budget workshop. But we can include it in the next budget workshop as an appendix. And I think if those are called out, it just helps to see the flow. And then additionally, with respect to to, like, 24,
20 five, 20 six, having an opportunity to see those actuals versus current, like, in my mind, there's a piece missing, but there may not be. And that's okay. But by connecting the dots for us, it'll help me to ensure that I see the whole flow of, expenditures and revenues. And then if we can categorize any material changes there, that'd be great. I think also about the we talked a little bit about the PUA schools versus the NES. Thank you for the, elaboration on that and the questions that came to guide it.
The the thing that is a little confusing to me is the the amount that now is a reduction for the PUA. It it seems like the original calculation or the the first working document we had didn't include the $75. And this one does, or maybe it it did and and that was a misalignment just on my part. Jim, did it did this one include and it did. Okay. So the number just increased and that's okay. It's just there was a change there. Right?
So in any case, we also added, 15% for benefits. So I think the very first time that wasn't there and then we came back and we put in the benefits. Got it. So the original number didn't have benefits. You took it out and then got it. Yep. Good. And next and and finally, I think, is how we validate and and roll those numbers up, whether it's PUA or NES. I just think about the process that we have for, ensuring that we reconcile those numbers and they link up. I think you've got a good process. It just as the as we shift things,
I'm always trying to go back to last year or the year before because when I look at the when I look at the expenditure page, which I think we're on now, the budget we have for 2025, PUA versus NES, don't seem to line up to what we had last year documented. And so I'm trying to connect those dots as well. Yes. It's certainly different from last year to this year. We will bring you and we have in our notes that we will bring you, you know, what we think that the actual expenditures
for the PUAs and the NES, schools currently. Now right now when we do that, you have to understand that we will project the last two months, because, you know, we're not there. But I think that's a much better comparison than try to go from budget to budget because you got to understand, you know, last year at this process, we're kind of at the same thing. It's our best guess. And now we can bring you, you know, pretty accurately what we think we're going to end this year with, versus our projection for next year. Great.
I agree. Does that work? It does. It does. And yes, I think that gets to my other question, which was that side by side actuals versus budget. So that'll be perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent, for the time. Let me say that when we first started this process, I had the same concerns that I did last year with regard to PUA campuses and whether the budget that we were allocating for them were going to help us meet the outcomes. I'm glad to hear that we gave them the $75 for campus and then we also cover the central, the expenses for salary as well, is that correct?
Right, and that's a projection right? Right, projection right, projection right. So speaking of projections, I want to talk about, the basic allotment. I know I think we made the assumption of $240 right? Somewhere in there, right? $250 for the basic allotment and then some for entitlements. And then so if it increases over $250 like how would that go directly to the school? Would that be the same 30%? Let me interject that currently, we are using the $3.95 We thought that when the House Bill two went into committee that it seemed to
us that that's where they were gearing for. And our contacts in Austin also said that they felt more comfortable with the $3.95. So if in fact it ends up back down towards the $2.52 20 because the House the Senate version is $2.20 and the House version is three ninety five. And the House Bill, House Bill two is kind of the main vehicle that we feel will be passed by the Senate and end up on the Governor's table. So that's where we are right now.
But to answer your question, yes, I mean, this is part of this dance I'm talking about, right, with this iterative process. So, if it's three ninety four, we will put or three ninety five, We are required and we will, raise teacher salaries by X amount. We will figure out what the connection between House Bill two and Senate Bill 26 is because that's also hanging out there. And that may change House Bill two. So, teacher salaries will probably go up and then we will look at,
any adjustments to, PUA, allocation that we need to make in order to make sure that they're able to run their programs. So, Chief Terab, I understand then that the or, you need to put in the $75 projection is the total amount is $3.95 is what you projected that off of? So no? No. That was based on $250 or Okay. That's what I thought I heard. Dollars $3.95. I'm sorry. Oh, based on based on $220 2 20 dollars Yeah. Okay. I thought I heard $395 And, you know, that's that's so that we don't project high and then have to cut,
project low, yes. So if that basic allotment increases over $2.5 that difference, that delta, what would we do? Would we I'm looking at you guys so that I don't get in trouble. Yes. We can look at that, but you must understand that if it turns out that we got the $395,000,000 that's included in this number. And that the bottom line right now is $70,000,000 into the fund balance. So any money that we add on the expenditure side is going to increase that and
we're going to decrease your you know, fund balance and take this further away from a balanced budget. We'll look all of that closely. But, you know, that $3.95 will also depend on Senate Bill 26. It will also depend on chart I mean, there's a lot that we have to look at. But we definitely will look at it and see what we do with it. Yes. I know at the beginning of this year well, actually not probably every legislative year, there's some mandates from the state. Do we anticipate any additional mandates or we're not going to receive the appropriate funds
for that? I don't think so, but we're having trouble with the House Bill three mandate already, which was unfunded Right. Right. For security. So we're hoping to see safety and security money go up so that we can pay for that. We also know that there's an outstanding state grant on safety that has not been put out there for us to apply again for any district to apply, which impacts our police department. So, there are things out there that's going to take away from us if they're not
addressed in the legislation. Sounds good. And then I have two more questions. I know that we've talked about decreasing enrollment and then next year we'll have to look at enrollment across the District and look at campuses in particular. And then we have agreements with charter schools, have we reviewed that to determine and again, I'm going to bring it back to the Board outcomes, have we determined or reviewed those contracts to make sure that those students are also increasing and growing as well and then the impact of potential budget in the future? Yes. I think all of them are up for renewal this coming year. So, yes, we are looking at that to make sure that they're running good programs.
I think their enrollment is pretty stable. But, we will I will give you much more information in the fall as we bring this Charter renewal process to the Board. Okay. And the last question, so you mentioned underserved kids which I totally understand, a lot of the NES programs have not had their adequate resources and support for that. But there's underserved kids in our entire district, right? It's not just NES schools but in PUA campus too. And so one of the questions I had was are there like new programs that
we're requiring schools to have that perhaps we're asking the campus to pay for and not necessarily central office. I think one quick example would be that we're asking campuses to have pre K, which is great because we want it rolling up, but we're only paying for half of their TA teacher assistant salaries. So if you can explain that and then any other programs that we're asking them that we're not covering for. Yes. So we are covering most of the pre K. What we're asking the schools to do is pay for half a TA and the enrollment of pre K kids is gonna cover that.
So it's a cost neutral thing for them. But you're right, we are expecting schools not to close pre k if they have, enough kids who want to enroll them. That is a requirement because it's one of our key goals for the district. And last year we had some principals make some bad decisions about we're going to keep a testing coordinator and we're going to close a pre k classroom. That's a bad decision for kids. And so, we're not going to let that happen even in the PUA schools.
Still, having said that, we are respecting to find autonomy with regard to programming. You're absolutely right and it's a concern of mine that there are achievement gaps in many schools and there are kids who are not getting the education they need, and so what to do about that, right? That's the question. One, for the defined autonomy schools, especially levels three and four, if they have an achievement gap over 30 and now I think it's this year's 25, over 25 percentage points for any groups of kids among the major demographics,
they have to put in their action plan what they're doing about it. We are not insisting that we will run that. We're asking them to look at it first. Over time, if it doesn't close, we are going to be more directive. But we're not at that point. The other thing though is the biggest thing is this, you're we need to raise the quality of instruction. We need to make sure that, Curriculum resources are strong and that the teacher quality is strong. So passing TES, putting everybody on a pay for performance is actually going to help that.
Our instructional methodology, our insistence on spot observations, everybody gets reviewed, everybody gets visited, everybody gets evaluated the same way in a rigorous fashion, everybody gets on the job coaching no matter what school you're in. That is to ensure that our kids who are behind, considerably behind, not getting the best education, does get that. So, I think that's what we're doing right now. It has helped. Went from 93 A and B schools to 170. And our high performance schools have not dropped.
I mean, there may be one or two here, but out of the in general, our high performance schools are now doing even better. So, I think that's what we do. Yeah. Let me just end up the positive too. To hear you say that we're looking at, teacher apprentices across the district, that's excellent. Because one of the things about you Yeah. Just to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A focus group until we have Right. Right. Right. And then it can be across the street. I think the fact that we're just even having that conversation is phenomenal because I know that we in our PUA campuses, we have long term subs for many, many months,
right? So this is an excellent way of hopefully getting there, but this is great. Thank you. Yes. As soon I mean, I'm telling you, as soon as we get out of this hole, which if not this year, it will be next year, then we can really look at expanding what we know works and having apprentices versus subs is a good practice. Go ahead. Thank you. Sorry. Just one more that I hadn't heard yet and was a burning question around anything that you care to highlight in in the budget data we've seen so far that
would move us toward and exceeding our goal for for our special education students and the services they receive. Off the page, we see an increase in the special education, teacher and teaching assistant row here. But anything additional that you'd care to highlight that we haven't heard already that would help us address our our our, you know, reaching and exceeding our goal for Special Ed students? Yeah, I that's a very that's tough. We've been doing a lot, but there are challenges with Special Ed. Our Special Ed numbers are growing,
and it continues to be costly to go outside the system for outside purchase services for Special Education. That's the reality we're going to have to live with. What might help the only I mean, you see we're maintaining our amount of money, but what might help is a couple of things. Number one, the state is, has some money to pay for our highest, cost special ed kids. So we have some students that cost well over $40,000
because they apply for and receive services out of state or in a very specialized program, a residential program and that is really expensive. And the more and more you get those sorts of students, that's really prohibitive as far as providing services for everybody else. So, we will apply for that grant. We think we're gonna get a little bit more money this year to help with that. The other thing is we're just hopeful that in the weights that the state gives us that there'll be different weights for special needs students especially autism or dyslexia.
Okay. All right, Pat, looks like we're done with this set of questions. But let me clarify questions in general, okay? So this year we're having five budget workshops and those budget workshops are being feathered in between Board meetings and other hearings and things like that. So in order to make sure that we aren't constantly asking questions, answering questions, asking questions because of the cycle that we're in, we decided to use this forum to ask the questions, right? So that so there are no published questions because there have been a series of
questions that have been asked. They are going to be answered coming up to the next budget workshop. So we will have at the next budget workshop, I think today the next deadline for Board members is on May 7 and that is to ask more detailed questions on everything you've seen so far or anything that pops into your head that you want to ask about. Then we'll be getting additional workshop materials prior to the next budget workshop which is on May. And when you get those when we get those materials out,
there will be specific Q and A then just like we have in a regular Board meeting. So prior to that May 22, we will publish all of the questions that you have that you just sent in for on May 7 or any other questions that have been asked but haven't been answered yet. I think there are a number of questions that haven't been asked yet or have been asked that have not been answered because the data wasn't available to answer those questions. So with all that said, we will have published Q and A in addition to what we've been doing at these workshops at the next budget workshop meeting,
okay? So that way everybody will have that in advance of that next budget workshop meeting, okay? Yes, sir. And if I might add, I appreciate the questions here, because there can be follow-up, I can be a little bit more thorough or at least, answer the way the actual question. Sometimes we have to guess at what the question is when it's in writing. But I think this is a good process and there's been a lot of questions and I appreciate those and the opportunity to answer them. Great. Okay, you have another piece of this? Yes, sir. So, we wanted to talk a little bit about the FMO and this just is part of the maintenance tax note.
We I don't need to tell you that we have aging infrastructure, failing infrastructure that was evident through the bond. And the fact that the bond didn't pass doesn't mean that we still don't have aging infrastructure. In fact, it's getting worse as we talk. So we need to continue to address HVAC systems. We do this almost daily now and heating systems in the winter. We have roofs that need to be improved, and all of it is to improve the learning environment to the point where kids
can learn well and parents can feel that they can send their kid to a facility, that's safe, but also properly cooled or warmed, so that kids can learn. As a result of that, we're going to use a maintenance tax note and $40,000,000 of that maintenance tax note we're applying to facilities. Obviously, dollars 40,000,000 is not even close to the $1,030,000,000 that we had in the bond for safety, security and upgrades for health, like heating and cooling systems.
But at least it'll address our most severe problems. So mostly we're talking about HVAC, that's a continual battle, roofing and then other infrastructure needs. And so the the way we wanna use the 40,000,000 because the most, important need is heating and cooling. I think most people would agree with that. And then if there's water leaking that just, got to stop instruction, it's just not good for your learning environment.
This slide, I just have in here just to let you know, it's not just $10,000,000,000 worth of need every day, it grows. So at some point in time in the future, the Board and the community will talk about another bond. I'm not even projecting when that might be. But it will be a need down the road. In the meantime, we will address our biggest needs with this $40,000,000 And we hope to do it this coming year, by April. So next year from now,
we should be done with the $40,000,000 in construction and repairs. So, you have this just to give you the backdrop, what we tried to do, what Alicia's team tried to do is look at our greatest needs, but also the biggest impact on the number of students. So we've got some small schools that have huge need, but you don't put, you know, 5,000,000 or 8,000,000 of your 40,000,000 into one small school that has two fifty kids. You see what I mean? So, that also had to be taken into account.
We only have 40,000,000. Gotta address as many kids, as as possible. And so you see that, again, I think you have this, but these are the projects for HVAC, on these two these three slides. And then you have roofing projects on the next couple. So, I won't go through any of them. Alicia is here to talk about any one in specific if you have it, but I'm here to answer any questions broadly about our $40,000,000 allocation to facilities. Can I can I just, this is just a reminder because I can't remember?
The the total amount am I correct? It was a hundred and $20,000,000? Alright. A hundred and 10. Is that did I get this right? We we have a hundred and 20 in there up to a hundred and 20. We'll probably more for approval with, Does that make sense? Yes. And so and 40 of that is for HVAC roofing and infrastructure as you just described. What's the other $70,000,000 or $80,000,000 we can bring that slide to you, but the biggest portion of the remainder is CareerTechEd. And so changes to Barbara Jordan Career Tech Ed Center is the biggest portion of
that. And we'll just bring it back to you. And the ERPs. And the ERPs. And ERP. Yes. So those Okay. And when are those when is all that happening? Is that also this coming Yes, ma'am. This coming year. ERP will actually take two or three years to to, turn over. Okay. Thank you. At a high level sorry? Just at a high level, the $40,000,000 is it all allocated? Or is there a portion that's for contingency because we know other stuff is still gonna break? Yeah. So thank you for asking.
So the what you see here is what we're gonna use the $40,000,000 on. The things that normally I mean, we we still have maintenance, and facilities dollars in the budget to handle things that will break, things that come up. So this is in addition to that. Alright. Thank you, Alicia. And then finally, just to give you a quick update, not much much has changed on these. We're still these are some big things that we're still looking at that could have impacted the budget significantly. One is the school safety allotment.
The reason why that's a big deal is that, we need to pay for armed security guards. That was the unfunded mandate, and so this might help with that as well as some of the things that you guys noted or we noted in the in the safety briefings that you get, like doors that are that can't be secured properly. The state comp ad bill, House Bill two, we hope that basic allotment stays at $3.95 or goes higher, full day pre k funding would really be an assist and then the hold harmless.
And then finally, the charrs, not sure how that will turn out. That's that could mean as much as $34,000,000 for us. We budgeted at $20,000,000 but that's another bill we're waiting to see. There's a couple others that are out there that we're still waiting on, but these are the big ones. Any questions? I guess we'll know the last week or June. Yes, sir. That's when most of these will be done. There you go. Okay. All right. Thank you, Superintendent. Any other questions or comments from the Board? Okay,
great. With no further business to discuss this meeting, we'll be adjourned. The time is 02:19PM on 05/01/2025. Thank you.