Board meeting of the Keller ISD Board of Trustees. All trustees are present. Moving to the pledge, Bryce. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Here to lead us in the pledges tonight are the outstanding students from Sunset Valley Elementary School. Immediately following the pledges, principal Roby Nunn will come to the podium and introduce his students. Good evening members of the board, Doctor. Wilson. It is my honor to, announce some of our wonderful Sunset Valley students I am very proud of. We're gonna start over on the right side. I'm hoping I'm not gonna mess this up.
We got Shamir and Hope Shivangu. We got Mia and Ava Lutz, and then I've got Isis Zimitrius Lyrical and Honesty Collins. So thank you guys so much for being here tonight and board. And doctor Wilson, thank you guys for having us tonight. It's a pleasure. I wanna say something over. Actually, Shamir, is that is it your name? Shamir? Man, you took charge on that, man. Good job. You just went with it. I like it. Now move into, prayer. Vice President Washington. Heavenly father, thank you for the privilege of serving our schools and community.
May our choices be guided by integrity and compassion, and may the work we do here strengthen our schools for generations to come. In your name we pray. Amen. Thank you. Now move, the board president's update. Yeah, relatively short because I know Doctor. Wilson has, quite a bit to share with us. First of all, I wanna thank everyone for being here and for watching online. I also wanna thank all the committee members for taking the time to participate in the convening meetings that are now underway and the meeting on a regular basis.
There are a lot of important discussions and decisions, some of which will define the future of our schools. I know Doctor. Wilson will be providing more information. I simply wanted to say thank you and as a reminder, these meetings are open to the public. During audience with individuals, the time allotted to each speaker can be adjusted for effective meeting management. We say this, at every meeting. Many have asked what criteria I use to determine speaker time or if I simply decide this on an arbitrary basis.
The criteria I use is simply based on the number of eligible speakers for the meeting. Simply put, one to 15 speakers, three minutes. 16 to 25 speakers, two minutes. 26 and over one minute. I hope this now is clear, for everyone. As some of you have noticed, the time allotted is posted on the door as you enter the building as well as on the door entering the boardroom to give everyone a heads up prior to the start of the meeting.
We began this, I'm thinking, December. Probably the December meeting, we started posting, for everyone to see before they came in and they can adjust whatever it is they wanna say, accordingly. Doctor Wilson. Thank you, mister Burke. So before I get into the committee updates that I wanna share, just want everybody to know we are watching the weather very carefully. We have, employees lobbying, I'm looking at you, Nicole, who is lobbying for what we
should do. We have students who are emailing and sharing their opinions, so I appreciate all the input. Just know we are in conversation with our surrounding districts and, keep a close tab on that. We'll hope to have a decision as soon as the the data shores up. The closer we get to the event, the more likely it is to to come to fruition. So, we will we will be making that call as soon as we can, but obviously we want we want students in school and so that's priority.
But if we need to do it for for the safety of our staff and our kids, then we we certainly will. So more to come there. On a separate note, I wanted to update you on a couple of different things, one of them being related to the committees that are doing work. So part of the fun over the past month, and I mean that truly very enjoyable, has been meeting with our community, our teachers, and, those folks that are representing,
the the community, within our committees. So if you look at oops. Oh. So I'm running the clicker tonight and it's not doing what I want, Bryce. Oh, I got it. I got it. So the committees, we have our policy committee. They've met twice. They've looked over some existing policies. Policies are are to be reviewed every three years. I mean, three or five. Every three years. Yeah. Every three years. So we're starting that process. Our budget committee has met twice. Our long range planning committee has met twice, and our citizens bond advisory committee has
met once. There's a lag. So I really wanna fill you in on the joint meeting that our long range planning and our citizens bond advisory committee, began on January 14. I think we have five meetings, close to twice a month between now and March 10. Here's the purpose and I and I wanna be very clear about what my what my purpose of having these meetings are, is and what I'd shared with the committee. The first is we need these groups because a lot of the work that they're
doing right now overlap. You can't really make a good decision about, facility needs if you don't know what facilities you're going to use. You can't make a good decision, about where to prioritize funding if you don't know what the long range plan for the district is. And so we decided to bring these folks together. Their job is to plan for our future. We have to match our facility usage to our enrollment because there's a quite a there's a significant mismatch. But we also have to make sure that we use as you know funding has
has has become less, plentiful over the years, and so we want to make sure that we're using our resources as efficiently as we can. And the reason we need to do that is because if we don't, then that's gonna be at the expense of student programming and we're not going to be able to maintain or compensate our staff as we need to. And we're going to lose them whenever we want to do that. So both of those, if we can find those efficiencies in the long term, we can hit both of those. Now here's the part I need everybody to hear.
What they are going to do is they're going to recommend criteria for the district to then turn around and plan for which schools are we going to close. And I know I say consolidation a lot because that's the format terminology, but what I'm really talking about is we're gonna have to close some campuses. And so I don't want the decisions to be based on this campus over here, this campus over here, you know, this enrollment is low. There's so much more to it. If transportation costs are too high, if what we need to put into the facilities
is too much, then that campus may not make sense. It has to be part of a broader plan and it has to be based on criteria that we will then go work on and then bring back the committee for more feedback and input but then once the committee feels comfortable we will bring that to you all for you to hold on. The second part would later on, probably sometime this summer, our bond committee will then pick up and they will be working on a bond package. And so they will be putting that package together for you guys to approve later
in the year. As I told them, this may be some of the most important work that our community and our staff and this board is gonna engage in in really the history of Keller ISD. So when I got here in 2002, we had 19,000 kids, we've added 20 or so campuses since then, but never have we had to talk about closing. And when it comes to closing, when it talks about efficiency of funding, efficiency use, retaining staff, this is setting us up for the long term and we need to
get this right. And so I'm I'm proud of the committee. They were great at our first meeting. There were 120 so folks there. We had campus staff facilitating many of them, district staff helping facilitate, and it was a it was everybody was focused and they knew their their role and they were accepting of the task at hand. So here are the charges that I gave them. They need to use data to drive the decisions. Has to be in the best interest of the district and it has to be based on data. They need to focus on the district needs.
We are not in a position now where we can talk about our wants. There are a lot of them. We have to look at what our needs are because our needs are significant and and when you see the dollar it could be a large number because that's how much need there is just in the in the, maintenance, electrical, and plumbing I'm sorry, the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing that exists right now. I also want then to recommend the criteria that lead to greater overall efficiencies. Every dollar we spend somewhere that we don't need to is at is at the
expense of something else that we want to do. And so we're gonna have to make those those difficult decisions to enable us to to continue spending where we need to spend and where we want to spend. We need to rec they're gonna recommend to the board a campus consolidation plan and a bond package. I want them to maximize funding to support staff and, retention. So right now we are using dollars that could be that could that we could use on the I and S side, if we were to pass a bond to fund the daily operations of the district.
And I'll get into more of that later, to show you an example, but that could free up significant dollars for us to use and alleviate some of our budget concerns. And we wanna make sure that we have safe, effective learning environments for our kids. Because when it's if it's not safe and it's not comfortable, it's really hard to learn. It's really hard to teach and it's really hard for kids to learn. They have enough distractions at that age, us, the environment that they're in can make a difference in how effective our instruction is.
So campus consolidation, we are going to bring this I put March as tentative because the committee ends on March 10, that's when that work is done, hopefully. I don't know the real, it depends on the committee work whether we can turn it around that quickly because I think another part of that well I know another part of that is whichever campuses are included in this, we're gonna need to go out and have some conversations with before we we we, finalize any of our plans. So we'll do that. An important note on this is that every time you close a campus or make
big changes, there are all these things that have to take place afterward. Work. So just like when I add a campus or we've added a campus in the past, you have grandfather process, you have, teacher movements, you have, boundary changes, you have all these other things that go along. Those are hard and that is not something that I want to rush, which is why the effective date for these closures would be at the start of the 2027 school year, not the start of 2026 this coming August.
Again, you can see what the decisions are based on and then again we will develop the plan to present to you based on the committee's criteria. This last slide here, or the last sentence on here is that I want you to I want you to if there's one thing you take from this, is that these decisions are gonna be based on their first of all, obviously the transparency is important. But I want you to know that these decisions are based on what's what's best for Keller ISD as a whole. This is Keller ISD. This isn't a particular area zone, feeder city.
We have to make decisions as as the committee is, believes as as well. We have to make it what's best for our entire district, so so we'll do that. As we move on to an explanation, and I know we can't we can't give this enough because we still get these questions, so I wanted to delve into this a little bit more deeply than I than I typically would in a meeting. Part of this is so we can get this data out here and then if if folks have questions they can access this and then reach out to us. Enrollment declining is a real thing.
We've gone from 34,500 kids to 30,433 or 43 or something like that. So enrollment declining is fewer kids. Fewer kids equals less funding because in Texas we're based, funding is based on a per pupil and if they if students leave us then that money goes away, it does not stay in the district. Problem is is that once a student leaves those costs cannot be reduced to equal the loss of funding associated with an enrollment decline.
So if a student leaves and the basic allotment is $6,215 at a base. That money doesn't necessarily mean we have a way to save $6,000 That means we're gonna have to find $6,000 to offset that loss. And I'll explain that here in just a minute. So Maybe that's it. Yeah. There you go. So here's our ten year forecast. You've seen this, but I wanted to bring this back up. Mr Templeton shared this in his meeting or his presentation I believe in December.
You can see our biggest issue is if you look at 2025, you can look at the green over there to the right under twelfth grade, it says 2661. Go all the way in that same row over to the left and you can see under the k column 1,693. And you can see in k one two, those numbers are smaller than in, eleven, twelve, and that's the issue. When you have 2,661 kids graduate and only 1,700 come in, you have a net
loss. And it's not it has nothing to do with the desirability of Keller ISD. It has a lot to do with we have fewer students, both rates are down, and, the price of housing and then just the housing market itself, which makes it difficult for that natural turnover that usually occurs once our kids graduate. So you see the numbers. I wanna put those numbers of dollars now. 25, 26. We're down about 1,600 kids. So to start the year we had to find almost $10,000,000 and that's just from
student enrollment decline. Remember, we declined due to more seniors leaving than kindergartners coming in. So 2627, that's next year, we're projected to lose another 1,083 kids. That's $6,730,000 800 wait. $638,145,000 dollars or $845. Follow that up with another 939 loss. Rather 6,000,000. Another 900 the following year, 5.6. And then in 2930, you're talking another 961.
So you're talking about another 6,000,000. So including this year, over five years we will our enrollment decline will have lost our funding will have dropped due to that on a little over 34,000,000 Which is why obviously our budget becomes very tight. It's natural to think that this expenditure side is what drives this. It's not. It's the funding side. It's the budgeting side. It's the it's the it's the loss of kids. So here's the other issue when we talk about capacity.
We're losing students. We built out, let's say, a perfect scenario based on the architecture's recommendations or design. We have enough seats to house 39,500 kids. That would be 100% utilized. That's max capacity. Realistically we're probably a functional capacity of about 35, 36, maybe 37 because we have special programs, self contained classrooms, and those types of specialty one offs. But right now we're utilizing 77% of our space.
That's very inefficient and that costs money because you wanna take advantage of economies of scale, you want to central there's a lot of staff offset, there's a lot of, cost to running buildings that at 7077 utilization were not as efficient as we need to be. In 2728, when we're projecting the year, we would start, with the closures of the buildings, if we did nothing that drops down to 72% utilized. So we're becoming even less efficient.
That's a lot of money. Ideally we wanna breed between 8590%. I would even take 80 if it was stable into the future. But, 72, we we just can't do we can't do it, which is why, unfortunately, we're gonna have to talk about closing campuses. So a lot of question one of the great questions that's always act asked is, when you're losing the kids, why can't you just offset it with less staff? So I'm gonna attempt to explain that to you real quick with an example of our kindergarten, first, and second grades.
So this year, we have six, 1,693 kids. Next year we're projected to have 1,671. But that's across 23 different campuses. So if you just did averages, you're gonna lose about a kid a campus. Second first grade, we're projected to lose 55 kids spread out across 23 campuses. That's 2.3 kids, a little over two kids. Second grade, two zero four kids losing. Now we're talking about almost nine kids across at each campus across the district. So two eighty one kids equals $1,746,000 That equates to 25 teachers.
But small declines don't always result in savings. So look at kindergarten, we lost 22 kids across our campuses from this year to next year. There's a possibility that there's zero impact. We have to staff exactly the same. First grade, we lost 55 kids. Well, that's only a couple per campus. Again, possibility of no impact. Even at two zero four, the impact is going to be limited spread over 23 campuses. Again, two eighty one kids, dollars 1,700,000.0
lost funding. What have we saved in staff? It's gonna be limited and I'll show you why. This is an example of Friendship Elementary. So right now Friendship Elementary has 62 students in kindergarten. We staff them, state mandated ratio is 22 to one. And so you want to put you don't want to put many more kindergartners in a classroom, because they're little and especially when they come in they're really little. And it takes a lot of management. So you're staffing those students at 22 to one, which means we need three teachers.
Okay? If we lose one per campus at Friendship, they go to 61. We've lost one student, we still need three teachers because the ratio is 22 to one. If you go to first grade, we have 65 kids. So they're right under meaning if they were 67 we would add a fourth staff member. They're at 65. They lose two students, they still have three teachers. We have not saved any money. Then you go to second grade, 85, they're 24 to one. Three teachers, you lose nine kids, you still need three teachers.
So in this scenario, this campus has lost 12 students. Revenue loss in the district is $74,580 We've reduced zero staff members and we have saved $0 Teachers are added or removed on whole positions, not fractions. Small losses across grade levels don't eliminate a class, and you still have to have a principal, assistant principal, PE teacher, music teacher, an art teacher, art teacher, theater teacher. You still have to have all those things because you only have one of them.
You can't reduce them any further. So the reality is, again I'll keep reiterating this, enrollment declines don't translate into savings. Students decline in small numbers across all campuses. It's not one campus that we can capitalize on. And the hard thing is revenue drops before our staffing can be offset, to catch up budget wise. Enrollment declines create immediate financial loss. Reductions cannot occur at the same pace. So let me show you some examples of this. This is for a two year comparison.
Now I want you to notice at the bottom, we're starting to and I and I have John and Pam to thank for this, is we are starting to go through and cite where we're getting our data because we wanna be as as open as we can. TEA's data is sometimes, confusing. It's it's plentiful but it's also confusing of how it's compiled and sometimes their data doesn't match ours and we have to call and say what's going on, how did you calculate this. But this is based on our data. We had 2,379 teachers.
You can see that we have lost, what is that, 378 teachers over the last several years which is about a 16% reduction. If you look at professional support, that is all of your pair I'm sorry, all of your, SLPs, your speech language pathologists, your diagnosticians, all the folks that exist to serve those ISTs, ESL teachers, GT teachers, those are all your professional support. That has been reduced by about 16 or 4%.
Campus administration has dropped from 144 to 110, which is a 24% decrease. Central office administration at 76, that has gone down 1418%. I'm gonna I wanna pull that out in particular because this is one we call TA on and said, how do you how are you calculating coming up with 76? Because this year we came up with 24. The reason being is because KCAL serves all four campuses. KCAL is not an individual campus.
So when you see central office administration, mister Parker, the principal over there, is assigned as a central office employee. All of our folks over at the annex are central office. Maintenance and operation folks are central office. The way it's all categorized and how it shakes out makes it look inflated. But, this is an area we watch closely because we don't want we want it to be as far away from the classroom as we can. And so we're working on cleaning that up a little bit, but just so you know, that's an 18% reduction in central office.
Educational payers, 408 to 416. And I'll show you why that is in a minute. And then you have your auxiliary staff. You have your, your child nutrition, your bus drivers, all those folks, that we've had to reduce as well. Now, I want to make sure that everybody understands this. These are I think I have 20 different districts in the North Texas region. And we are one of the larger districts in North Texas, We have 30,000 kids, Mansfield is a little bit bigger, Northwest is a little bit bigger, obviously Arlington and
Fort Worth, but then there's us. And so when you're doing comps of general administration spending, the way to do it is look at as a percentage of your budget how much you're spending on your general administrators or your central office folks. You can't look at the number or the dollars because you have to look at it in relation to how much your budget is. So if you look at Kennard ISD, you can see that we are down close to the bottom on the student the cost per student, but we're also very much
we're down where we need to be. And and it looks like a line of regression there. I promise it's not. It's just this is how it falls out when you put it on a scatter plot. You can see the state average. You can see where Keller ISD is. There are three districts that spend less than us per kid, and that are also, spend less percentage of budget. One is Lewisville ISD, one is Mansfield ISD by two hundredths of a percent, and the other one is escaping me for for right now. I'll I'll come up with it.
But I want to ensure you all that we're not there is not a heavy we we are actually very lean, and I know that's hard to look at but we we are we are a lean central office. Staffing costs. So if we're losing money and we're offloading staff, obviously, or we're having to reduce staff, Obviously our payroll costs are going down. Yes, but as I've as I we talked about just a second ago, just because you lose a bunch of kids doesn't mean you lose all that staff. And our costs, our payroll, just over these, these are TEA reports, the TEA actual
financials under PEIMS. In twenty twenty one-twenty two, we had $277,000,000 in payroll, which is about 80 three-eighty 4% of your budget. Twenty four-twenty five, that dropped to $2.65, or minus 12,000,000 and then, 79% of budget. But the funding loss to enrollment during that same period was 27,000,000. So what else is causing the continued budgeting challenges if we're reducing staff? Well, again, as we reduce staff, other costs are going up.
This is gonna be very small, but I promise you it's there for a reason. This is a side by side of the twenty twenty one, twenty two budget and the 2425. And this is off TEA's website. There are two things you'll see. One is the function which is all that all those categories at the top. So function is the is it it's down in the at the bottom on the bottom left. It's categorized it's categorization or the accounting of it and it's it is how you categorize instructional services or programs. For example, instruction is is a function 11, function 95, that's everything you spend on
your classroom and all the way down. You can see that those highlighted in yellow are increasing costs. Everything else is where we have reduced costs. As we have as our student enrollment declined, you you see the biggest drop is probably in our instruction costs because we're spending less money directly in the classroom. But where are we spending our money? And I have that slide so you can go back and reference it if you need to. Here are increased costs. So we've had to reduce our council we've had to increase our counseling ratios as
enrollment has declined as well so you have fewer counselors, but we've also had to transition into social workers. So we have social workers, we partner with, the city of Fort Worth, I believe, to, communities and schools which is a great program. It helps us, it helps our kids, but those costs have increased. Transportation has gone up about 2 and a half million. Facilities maintenance and operations, this is not staff. This is additional money that we have poured into air conditioners, heaters, all the other things that John and and Jerry and those folks are trying to get fixed.
Security and monitoring services. Again, with all of our security staff on campus, that cost has gone up 1,800,000.0. Data processing. It's interesting they still hold on to the term data processing because really that's a technology cost. So you're we're spending more and rightly so because, we everything is connected for kids and we need the devices to enable that, and the community service has gone up. There are two codes in particular that have really gone up, and that is so within that function if you want to specify it even further, you will say, for
example, a 23 would be students with disabilities. I think it's a 23. And that's your program intent code. Our students with disabilities, our cost for our students with special our special education students has increased $5,700,000 over the last four or five years. That's a lot. We have actually added 119 special education positions to our district at the same time that we have caught almost 400, you can see it if you go back to the other one. We've actually added 119. Now 52 of those were dyslexia teachers, because they switched over.
But even then you're still talking about 57 to 67 teachers we've had to hire. And then that unallocated, that is inflation. That's the cost of diesel going up, that's the cost of utilities going up, that's the cost of, all the things that John likes to talk about. Property casual, just contracts. That's where it is. Now I've highlighted two areas, the facilities maintenance and operations and I've highlighted the data processing. So right now that is over the over the last several years has cost us
13,000,000. We'll point now where on a yearly basis, that's probably closer, I'm gonna throw out a guess, 7 to $9,000,000. That's money that if we had a bond package that included those items, we could recoup and not have that in our M and O or operating budget. So that's why campus consolidation is one way to become more efficient. But the other part is making sure that we're spending our money or that we're budgeting and using the budget available to us.
And and I wanna make that clear. This is not this is not this is not something that I would, I am only working with the system that I'm given. And I don't have a way to, provide all the infrastructure costs, especially when one building is $19,000,000 to bring up to speed. We don't have that in our daily operating budget, the m and o. What the state is set up is this is this is why you do bonds. And so we're just using their system, but if we did that, we could free
up a lot of operating costs which we could then invest in our staff. So key takeaways, declining enrollment, less funding, most staffing and campus operating costs cannot be reduced student by student, budget growth reflects intentional investments not overspending. And I'm I'm glad I read that out loud because I'm I wanna make sure that our that our families know I don't begrudge spending more on special education students because it's the right thing. You have to spend your money on your neediest kids. And we need to do that.
We just need to make sure that the funding that's been promised to us, that would, special education funding that was increased last session, we haven't realized that yet. And so, it's a good it's a good, investment, but we gotta figure out a way to control those costs from a funding level and then obviously internally making sure we're as efficient as we can. And then many of our buildings are not being utilized fully and these realities certainly reinforce the need for long range planning including the ongoing work with our planning and
bond committees, because we want, we're gonna align our facility, use its capital needs, and then the future financial stability of our district. That was a ton of information and I and I'm thank you for for sitting with that sitting through that with me, but I also wanted to get that out there so we can have folks that can access this, on the website, that we've had a chance to have a little bit of discussion about it. And then if you have a chance, this is a QR code that will take
you to the web page that Bryce and his folks have put together where if you have feedback on campus consolidation, if you have feedback on the process or any concerns, here's where to go. We're gonna post all of our facts there, we're gonna post all the data. This is where everything's housed. Go here. If you have a question, we're gonna do Q and A's here, FAQ's. This is where everything's gonna be housed, but there's also a place for the community to share with us what they think. So please take advantage of that.
And with that, our superintendent's report is complete. Thank you, doctor Wilson, for kinda setting the stage of, what the next few months are gonna look like with our, committees. They're meeting regularly and, for sure it's a heavy lift but an important one. So as we begin the rest of our meeting, I'd like to highlight the school board meeting protocol. Any violations to these expectations could result in a request to be removed from the
meeting. No signs are allowed as this presents a safety concern. Applause, heckling, booing, and verbal disturbances of any kind will not be allowed or tolerated during the meeting. Please refrain from side conversations during the meeting as it serves as a distraction Attacks of a personal nature and name calling against district staff and board members will not be tolerated Members of the public will not be allowed to approach or walk in front of the dais at any time during the meeting unless invited to do so.
Business of the board begins with audience with individuals. This portion of the meeting is specifically for members of the public to address the Board. Your input is encouraged and will always be thoughtfully considered. Please address your comments to the Board as a whole rather than to the audience or any individual. Trustees may not respond to audience questions or inquiries. Specific complaints or grievances against an individual should be addressed through the grievance process and not in this venue. We expect everyone to act civilly and with respect.
Individuals who wanted to speak were required to sign up before the meeting began. Pursuant to board policy BED local, the amount of time each speaker receives may be adjusted for effective meeting management. Tonight, each speaker will have three minutes to address the board. A timer will be visible on the screen and will change color to indicate that you have thirty seconds remaining. Each speaker will be speaking from the standalone microphone to your left. In order for speakers to hear when they are called and to be heard, we ask that audience members remain quiet and respectful of everyone.
Bryce will be calling each individual up to speak as well as the individual who will be coming up next so you can make your way to the microphone and be ready when it's your turn. Bryce, would you please call the speakers if I can? Sure. First up, we have Stuart Rennie followed by Barbara Brewer. Well, thanks a lot for wasting my time last meeting with your name rules in Kabuki Theater, and crackerjack called and wants your legal adviser's degree back. Meanwhile, in the infamous words of the great Ed Hulsey, let's check the rule book.
Kennel ISD board policy b e board meetings. In consultation with the board president, the superintendent shall prepare the agenda for all board meetings. When a trustee wishes to have a subject included in the agenda for a meeting and the subject has been submitted in accordance with all agenda deadlines, the subject will be included on the preliminary agenda of a regularly scheduled meeting to be held within thirty days unless the board president and superintendent agree the unique circumstances require additional time
before the item may be thoughtfully considered. Before the official agenda is finalized for any meeting, the superintendent shall consult with the board president to ensure the agenda and the topics included meet with the board president's approval. In reviewing the preliminary agenda, the board president shall ensure that any topics the board or individual board members have requested to be addressed, either on the agenda or scheduled for deliberation at an appropriate time in the near future. The board president shall not have authority to remove from that agenda, a subject requested
by a board member without that board member's specific authorization. The phrase near future is, in this context, generally interpreted to mean within a 90 period or a quarter. However, board policy BBE uses a twenty business day timeline for responses with a possible ten business day extension. These thirty business days are as much as forty two calendar days, but much less than a quarter. This board policy also allows suit for injunctive relief if the information is not provided. Now according to publicly available information, trustee Campbell submitted a request for inclusion of a
discussion of an RFQ for legal services prior to the 10/23/2025 meeting. The failure of board president Burt and superintendent Wilson to include this item on the October, November, or December meeting agendas means more than ninety days have passed. I am, concerned that the failure of board president Byrd to act in accordance with board policy b e is suggestive of prudential financial misconduct or a cover up. As such, I think grounds now exist to request, in accordance with board policy BBE,
that all board members file a financial ethics statement per Texas government code five seventy two sub chapter b. I'm confident the SCC and FBI will be interested. They have been investigating ISDs. I close with Theodore Geisel. It all began with a shoe on the wall. A shoe on the wall shouldn't be there at all. Barbara Brewer? It's hard to believe it's been a year since I stood up here. For over a year, our community has been asking for transparency. We have asked to see the invoices. We're still waiting for them to be released. These those invoices belong to the taxpayers.
They're public records and should have been released. Last spring, we did everything we could to fight the potential split. We wrapped trees. We went to commissioner's meetings. We went to city council meetings. We drove to Austin. We showed up over and over again because we believed our voices mattered. There are plenty of attorneys in DFW, and I'm asking that you, request an RFQ. I'm asking for Keller ISD to release the invoices from Jackson and Walker. Thank you. We now have a public hearing this evening.
Doctor Allison will present the financial integrity rating system of Texas report. Doctor Allison. Thank you, mister Byrd. Every Texas school district is required to to present yearly, regarding the the first report. It's to occur after you have completed your official, independent audit. We typically do this in December. We're doing it in January this year. Because of the government shutdown, there were were some directions that had to be provided
from DC before auditors were allowed to complete the audits. So that delayed everything by over a month, and that's why our our first, which you would typically find us doing in December, is is now in January. Some of the requirements for the public hearing are also notice in the, newspaper at least ten days prior to the hearing. That notice was placed in in due time and, listing tonight's board meeting as the
time and location for our hearing. So the financial integrity rating system of Texas is designed to encourage Texas public schools to better manage their financial resources. And I would say while the intent is positive, the actual outcome of presenting an accurate perspective on a district's real financial health misses the mark. And I'll point out a a few of those, areas this evening. On the first, there are four critical indicators that any district that, has a no
for one of those four automatically would, not pass, first. So, Keller ISD has, of course, passed those four. It's a it's a pass fail system. You could see the two, twenty four twenty five report. It's available online. It can provide, all the detail. We will post the report, as TEA provides on our website. You'll be able to to see that as well as a couple disclosures, which I will, touch base at the very end.
So they break it out, by point systems, a superior rating and above, standard meets standard and substandard achievement based on points. Keller, for the third year in a row, will be a meet standard, 70, for our first rating, and I'll go into a little more detail here. There are 21 indicators that, potentially can be assessed. Every fall, the commissioner selects which indicators and notify school districts which indicators will be
assessed for that given year. This year, there were 20. There was one indicator that was, was not selected. What I'm going to do tonight is go through the four indicators where we did not receive the the highest rating and explain why, which is what, Ben, gave us our 70 out of 100 points. So indicator number seven, is the the number of days of cash on hand in
current investments in the general fund for a school district. You're gonna see a reoccurring theme on all four of these indicators. They all have to do with fund balance, cash on hand and our investments. So we know that our fund balance is lower than what TEA recommends, and something we are working to, to it will take us time to progress. Cash on hand, and it they come at this in multiple indicators as we'll walk through here in a minute.
And each time there's a little different nuance or a different standard that they establish. So when we think about our our cash on hand, it's what we have in our in our budget at any time based against our proposed budgets, expenditures. That would also include our investments. We have had investments in CDs that were laddered over time. We're starting to, to reach the end of those. They were by far the the best financial investment for the district. We're very limited in what we can invest in.
At that time, they were paying almost twice what we could have gotten with some of the government fund indexes that we're allowed to invest in. However, TEA does not consider CDs to be cash on hand, that they cannot be liquidated, which they can, and in many cases can be done so in just the same amount of time as our other investments. But those CDs have have counted against our cash on hand. We We also have, about 20,000,000 in our, health care deficit that, is counted against
our cash on hand until we eventually, pay that back. So those are, several factors that that impact, those assets. So then when we take a look at, again, current assets to current, liabilities, That's going to have a great deal to do with our fund balance, our cash at hand as as they take a look at it. And they they do a ratio. You could see how they break out and configure that. You will not find that the numbers they use match our proposed budgets because TEA,
has a has a different calculation that that they use than what were required to report, for the first. The other piece I failed to to mention at the very beginning, this is for the 2324 budget. So the first ratings lag a year behind the actual year we close out a a fiscal year. So this is based on data for 2324. So improvements as we've made to stabilizing our fund balance as well as equalizing our
expenditures has not yet caught up with our first ratings. On nine, did the school district's general fund revenues equal or exceed expenditures? On this measure, it has to do with cash on hand being less than sixty days. So because we had less than sixty days, you'll notice one, of the indicators, it was fifty days. It varies. We received zero points on this indicator. And the last is number 11, and that's on the ratio of long term liabilities
to total assets. And, again, we received six out of the 10, and it comes back to our investments and our fund balance calculations. So we have really four indicators that all are looking at really the same set of financial data but have different points. So as you break this out and you look at the points in the other questions, they are heavily weighing, the fund balance aspect to the final first reportings.
Other requirements, that we we must follow through with for first, the superintendent's employment contract must be on the district's website, and that's the superintendent's contract as of today of our hearing. That's also available on the website. A summary, schedule of the fiscal year for total reimbursements received by the superintendent and each board member. There is a chart that will be posted with our report, but, there were none, so there was nothing to report. You'll see that on that breakout.
We also must disclose any outside compensation or fees received by the superintendent for professional consulting or any other personal services. Again, none. Disclosure of any gifts received by executive officers and board members, or first degree relatives in any fiscal year. There was nothing to report. And disclosures of all business transactions between the school district and board members for the fiscal year, again, nothing to report. So in those four, disclosures, there was nothing to report and that will be posted
on our district website. So that concludes, the outline of our first information, the four indicators where we did not receive the maximum points and the required information that we will be posting on our website. So with that, I'd be happy to take any questions. Yeah. Can you go back to the slide that shows the liabilities versus the assets? Yeah. Okay. So, here in red and bold, it says, only growing districts and score 10 points.
Why is that? So when you break this amount thank you, mister Coker, for pointing that out because I didn't. So the way they calculate the points is, in essence, if you were growing and you would be receiving more funding, that is a positive outlook for the district for your financial stability. It doesn't take into consideration that as you lose students, you would also have to adjust your expenditures or it would impact your your fund balance. So the the way that calculation works, they look at a three year average of
where your student population is either growing or decreased. So as you look across the state, if I remember correctly, it was only about 60 I'm not gonna say because I don't remember off the top of my head. You're seeing each year a greater number of districts not receive these points because they're not growing. The the student population is flatlining or decreasing as as we know in looking at our demographic study, but they have not changed this indicator. So that's one of those where I really don't believe this indicates much about our
financial health because it's it's using a measure that says if if you're not growing, you're you're failing on on your financials, and that's just not true. Okay. So walk me through again how exactly it's calculated. Is it really we're just Liabilities to assets. Right? Assets, obviously, is cash is an asset. I know that you mentioned that they don't consider our CDs as an asset. Is that correct? Correct. Which is just silly. But, but other investments, they do consider an asset. Right? And can you give me some examples of those?
Yes. So, our our other investments, I'm trying to find the the the breakout on these points because when you read the indicator and then you look at at what they're actually measuring, the largest portion of it is around your student growth and population, not the the assets which they've measured in, indicator nine and and eight. So while they sound very similar, the majority of the points come from not those,
ratio measures as they concluded them, but your your student growth and population. Okay. So if you could get for me exactly what, all the what what they use to determine this, because when I look at it, it's, again, you know, liabilities versus assets. And so the way I look at that is the way I would any other business. So I Operator, I'm looking to acquire. And and it has really nothing to do with student population. It has everything to do with cash on hand and, liabilities attached to that. So, I guess the question I have is if we were to increase our investment
investment portfolio outside CDs, then that would positively affect us here. Correct? Correct. Yeah. So here's here's the breakout. They look at long term liabilities, which they had for us at, dollars 809,988,017, our total assets of 1,000,000,000, 91,395,957, then they factor in your 24, twenty twenty four number
of total students, your twenty twenty total number of students, then they do a threshold on whether you have a five year percent increase or decrease in students, and then the change in students, and they do a numerical threshold for the increase or decrease in students. So to to your question, this is why you look at some of these indicators and you go until you actually see what they're breaking it down. They they took a a look at our liabilities and assets, and then the rest
of the calculation is about your student growth. But is that based on your assets? So the way I look at it, you know, I always try to decipher what the people in Austin want because they're not always the best at communicating it, and half the time, I don't think they know what they want. But I try to always equate everything to what we see in the business world and or even a personal or a net worth conversation. So, you know, your net worth is obviously your investment portfolio, your cash on hand against liabilities, you know, mortgage, any other debt you may have. Is is that metric for the student growth, either increase or decrease, attached to the
overall net worth of the district is what I'm already getting at. And what I mean by that is if what they're really trying to achieve is, does this district have enough net worth to equate for, rapid growth? Will rapid growth can be offset by the fact they're gonna get more funding because of rapid growth, but they're also gonna have reductions. They're gonna have reductions, to the point, you know, I think everyone's made is that you wanna see a lag in that and you need to have a a stronger net worth to to be able to manage that reduction while you're also reducing your
income because of that. So I think that's what they're trying to get at here. And if the the student population growth or reduction is tied to the actual net worth, I'm gonna use the term net worth because I I don't know if people understand that, of the district, that kind of makes sense to me. And if that's the case, then that means that we need to increase our net worth. Yes. That's one way you could look at it because we we don't have the details on what they're looking for. But if you go back to the superintendent's comments earlier, one of the issues you
have when you take a look at your expenditures and your liabilities is if you're a declining school district, you're also losing revenue faster than you can reduce it. So you you could look on on both ends of of the spectrum but again it it's not necessarily taking into account what your general expenditures on the budget because it's it's looking at a five year snapshot of students and a two year old
snapshot on your expenditures to liabilities. So yes, I I think it that could be a perspective, but it's it's it also highlights why, in my opinion the the first ratings aren't necessarily matching a district's financial health. Keller is is much better financially than the the first rating would indicate Okay. If if that answers your question. I think the answer is best you could because I think that's all I really know. I think another thing, Chris, is when you look at it from you know, if
I'm looking at a if I'm looking at a, at a business, I'm looking for, obviously, are they making a profit? Are they growing the business? And I think that same principle is difficult to translate, but I think it that's what they're attempting to do. So I'm looking at negative growth over how many years. Well, if I'm in a business and you're evaluating business, you're thinking probably not a good investment, unless you you look at the assets as well, and then you can make a decision based on that. But that's the way I try to translate it because I I look at what
are they trying to get at, just like you said. And it's that translation of what makes a healthy business, and a positive business, certainly one you wanna invest in, versus what you want in a school district. And it's tough, you know, obviously they're, you know, you're right, when you're realizing 4,000 kids over that short period of time, that's a chunk of money and that would just be that would equate to a business that is at a significant downturn in in their profitability. Yeah. And I guess what I'm what I'm really kinda so and some people fundamentally disagree
with me on this comment, but I mean, they all have to say this is an education environment, this isn't a business, but I would disagree. This is a business. We have a very large budget that we have to manage, and we have a lot of intricacies and details that have to be looked at that, you know, people outside of education sometimes don't understand. I know it's been a big learning curve for me over the past two, two and a half years on state requirements and things of that nature, But the fundamentals are the same. And so, ultimately, I think, you know, where yeah. In today's standard, we can look at this and say it's not a healthy look
at where we are financially, but as to the status quo, not to what the expectation was. And I think that ultimately, we should have been over the years, putting more into investments that we have than we have been. And maybe part of that's the CD, conversation. I think that's fundamentally silly, having to get a better return on CD, put your money on CD. It was almost twice what we could get at the time. And, I didn't address one of the statements you made which you are correct, the
CDs impacted that because if you look at this snapshot at the time that we had our highest investments in CDs to where we're now those ladders are falling off would have been reflected in this measurement as well. So as we get the principal from the CDs back is the plan to put those into other investments that can be calculated? Yes, and we're very limited in what we can invest in. So, you know, unfortunately, CDs may or may not be in the future our best
investment and we'll have to weigh whether we're willing to take some point hits on first for the best investment or the other way around. Yeah. And I get that. And then I guess that's what the the fundamentals that I'm really narrowing down to is that agree or disagree, which in this situation, not how we disagree with the way they calculate this from the state's perspective, but that's the way they do it. And so, even, yeah, we we're not gonna get as good a return. I do believe that, you know, that's where that money needs to go so that
it positively benefits the score while at the same time giving us some sort of interest return. Right? So, okay, if you could, after this, I would I'm a little bit of a data nerd, so I would like to actually get how exactly they calculate like this and, do some analysis for myself, if you don't mind. Alright. Thank you. You touched a little bit on the fund balance and the impact on the rating, but can you go a little more in-depth on that in terms of what we've been doing fund balance over the last couple of years just to kind of tie in with the prior conversations? I think it's a good supplement. Yes. TEA establishes what they recommend as a, as a fund balance, as a percentage of
of your total budget. We actually had this discussion with, our budget committee the the other night And, TEA's calculation for fund balance is one of the more, I'm not gonna say aggressive, but the the benchmark that they've established would be some of the highest across the country that they would expect a a district to maintain. And there's there's a number of ways to to look at that. So we're, roughly 33,000,000 from where they would recommend.
You're seeing across the state right now, of course, five years of no additional state funding inflation. You're seeing school districts' fund balances, declining. We utilized our fund balance earlier than most, which is why we reached a point where we could not continue to budget in a in a deficit manner. And that's why we were a year or so ahead of most school districts in needing to make the types of reductions we did. And you're you're watching that, across the metro area.
One of them that comes to mind is, Prosper. Prosper ISD is one of the fastest growing school districts in the nation, and yet because of growth in the costs and and decisions they've made, they've run almost a $29,000,000 deficit every year for the last two years. So decisions we made regarding our fund balance, we've stabilized, not using fund balance, balanced budgets. We actually were able to, add a little more this year. We've been able to do that incrementally.
We do have the offset on our health care fund that's calculated as part of that until that is off our books. So, on on the fund balance component of it, from my perspective, the business perspective is what does your fund balance need to do to to cash flow, to provide, safety valve and for financial security moving forward? We're not there yet, but I'm not sure that the the state's, recommended allotmentism a
little too high that we meet all those goals, but those are the rules we have to play by and that's how they calculate, a great deal of, of the different ratings that they provide even beyond first, if that answered your question. Okay. So you mentioned earlier, one of the reasons that the CDs is not something that they look into or they don't consider, and that was because of liquidation. Does that mean that other investments they do consider, is it is it is it
an exact fund balance requirement from the state or is it all immediately or quickly liquidatable assets that are required by the state? The fund balance is, on on most of these, it's it's the cash at hand. So your your investments, are considered part of the cash at hand. That's also gonna go into what what your fund balance is. Yeah. So with 33,000,000 under including investments because of the so how many do we have in CDs? Would recommend. Yeah. Okay. What what do we have, in bonds right now?
Or see I'm not buying CDs. Do We're getting closer.
Okay. So we're 4,000,000 away that are still in long term CDs? Is that right? Yes. Okay. And so we're moving into the short term investments. We're not moving in the fund balance. Correct? No. No. I'm not correct, or no. We're not doing it? No. I'm sorry. Did you say are we moving them to fund balance? Yeah. So as they're maturing, we're moving them into short term investments. We are not moving them into fund balance. We have no idle cash except for what we are using for that day's, purposes. So every day we we reinvest everything.
Okay. Perfect. Does that help? It does. Thank you. Thanks. Who's this? That's that's where our fund balance is. It's invested. Thank you. Thank you, John. Chris, you make a number of good points, and I recall that every year, the administration puts forward to the board investment, portfolios, and I know that they're somewhat strict and I guess they're guided also by TEA. But it sounds like there may be some opportunities, as Chris pointed out, that maybe we I don't know what the latitude is between ultra conservative and somewhat conservative versus
risky. And I know we don't wanna be risky, but maybe there's something is that something the budget committee looks at at some point or We we have a a an investment, group that we work with that we that reviews that and brings it to you each year. We don't get an opportunity to invest in anything that isn't basically government security backed, a 100% as close as you can get non risk, which is also why the
dividends it pays is is much lower than other investments. So, we we are by by law regulated on exactly where our investments can go. Okay. A couple other, thoughts. You said this was '23 data? 2324. Okay. So, I noticed your comment or noted your comment that we are better, than this report would indicate. So I think that that's great and I know that, you also use the term
stabilized and I think that's been an effort of this board and, I mean, collectively the board between balanced budgets and minimizing, working with the district on on cost reductions. We've taken, what, dollars 57,000,000 out of the budget over the last, last three years. And I don't know how the TEA expects us to have, what what was, some $70,000,000 or some number in in fund balance?
How much? 83,000,000. 83,000,000, when we get screwed on the funding, quite honestly. I mean, I just don't know, how you how you go up another $30,000,000 in fund balance when you basically get screwed on the funding. Well but, anyway, it was, go ahead, Chris. Sorry. No. I'm saying, well, I mean, I can't I do. I mean, at the end of the year, at the end of the day, right, we if we're being if we wanna be honest with ourselves, which we have to do to get all this under underway, I mean, we operated some pretty large budget
budget deficits, you know, five from four or five years ago. And, that's exactly how we got to where we're at. But I would argue poor manger own money, in the past. And so that's just the reality, and we have to admit that. Otherwise, we can't fix the problem. So with that being said, I'm very been very happy with what we've been able to do the past three years and making some changes to, course correct, right the ship, and now we have the hard work of, getting back to where we need to be. It's funny how one or two years of, I would argue, bad money management can
turn into a decade or more of making up for it. And so, but that's okay, because I like to think we're moving in the right direction. So And as you know, because I bring this slide up almost every time we talk about budget, It, to your point, mister Burt, is the unfunded mandates. And when we take a look at that slide, if you look at just the unfunded mandates that the states required over the last five years, we wouldn't even be having this conversation around our our fund balances, because it's it exceeds the amount we've
reduced from from our budget over over the last three years. And that's you know, if you're gonna require it, you should fund it, and that's, that that is putting ongoing budget pressure. If if you think about just the requirement for armed security at every one of our campuses, was there money provided? Yes. What they provided doesn't even come close to covering half of it, and not that we would want, any other outcome other than maintaining the safety of our campuses.
But again, if you're gonna require it from a state level, it needs to be funded as well. Yep. No, I I agree. And, Chris, I agree with you as well. I know, you know, how we how we got here and stable and three years worth of balanced budgets, a lot of hard work, a lot of nashing and grinding up teeth. So the stabilized nature of where we are, I think course correction was the right term and, rather moving forward. Any other comments, questions?
I have a couple questions. Okay. So just to verify, so we are seeing improvement in these four indicators, just solely looking off of our numbers for '24, 25, 25, 26. Correct? Correct. Okay. So, another question I had was, is there any change in the criteria, that you're seeing for these indicators at all or any change whatsoever when it comes to this calculation? Not over the last several years. The change we see in FIRST is out of the 21 indicators.
A couple years back they, they were only assessing this one was it, like 17 indicators if I remember correctly. So it's which indicators they're assessing in a given year does tend to change. Gotcha. I know when you were talking about indicator 11 that there's many campuses across the state that are not growing, so I didn't I didn't know if maybe there was, any change in the future or anything like that that you were aware of, so I appreciate that. So also to just to reiterate. So $33,000,000 increase is what we're looking at that is needed to bring our fund
balance to a level that the state likes according to the indicators. And so we put 4,000,000 away this year. Correct? Correct. And we are budgeted to do more next year. Correct? Well, we'll have to see. Well, yeah. We're getting there. Yeah. Okay. But that is the the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is that we could we could build that up a little, a little every year. Right. Okay. Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. Any other questions, comments? So now is the time for the public to have an opportunity to provide input or comments on this first report.
No individual signed up to speak specifically on this item. If anybody, in the audience would like to speak on the report, please make your way to the microphone. You'll have three minutes to address the board on this specific topic. The hearing is not a time for questions and answers, nor is it a dialogue between the speaker and the board. It's your opportunity to provide input and comments on the the hearing topic. Seeing no speakers. Excuse me? I don't know. Speak. I have a little issue with mister, Coco's comments regarding budget deficits.
Let's review where and when the budget deficits occurred with this board. 2223, about 5,000,000 deficit. 2324, projected $34,000,000 deficit. Who's in charge then? That's what I wanna say. Seeing no other speakers on this topic, we'll close the hearing at this time. We'll now move into reports. Our first report is the 2627 budget report. Doctor Allison. Alright. Now, favorite topic, budget.
As we take a look at our 2627 budget, tonight is just our our first, kind of preview for you on our assumptions as we're working toward our 2627 budget. There are, and I'll touch on this just a little bit more as we talk about the revenue projections. There are still quite a few question marks regarding our revenue from the state from the last legislative session that we're still waiting for details.
And, the reason that matters is we do not budget revenue that is unpredictable. So, for example, the thousand dollars districts are to receive for the initial special ed evaluation of a student, we would project somewhere between probably a million and a million 2 that we would receive based on the number of of initial assessments we've done over the last several years.
I'm going to assume that we'll receive that money as, as set aside in the the legislation. It was left up to TEA to determine how we would be funded for it. So at this point in time, we don't know is this gonna be a part of our our monthly, quarterly, settle up after the year, those types of things. So this will change as we get more refinement. The commissioner has a list of when they believe some of the there was a there was a lot of heavy lifting left to TEA in the legislation that we
wanna do, like, the thousand dollar assessment, but we're gonna leave it up to TEA to figure out how and and what that looks like. So they're they're playing catch up. We're hoping here in the next few months we'll get some some details for that. So you'll see our revenue projections when we start to put, definite numbers to it grow as as we move forward. So, we are starting the basis of our budget, considerations with the idea that we will receive no new revenue, that there will be no additional state revenue and no
additional federal revenue. The federal revenue is also a very big question mark based on, what's going on in DC with the Department of Education and how, some of the programs like title and other will be impacted or, spun out to other agencies. We're going to base our initial, projections on a flat tax growth. When we look at TAD assessing every two years, it's a little harder to to project what that growth might look like.
This year's tax growth, we're fortunate, was a little bit higher than we had anticipated. We will receive here fairly soon the preliminary preliminary tax estimation from TAD. And as we've talked about in the past, that usually there's some pretty wide variance from that point to where we get. So, we take a look at that as well as some of our our own estimations. Again, we're basing our revenue projections and, building our budget based on a balanced budget.
We're basing our revenue that we would will receive on the basic allotment, with a loss of a 83 students, which we saw in our, demographers report, and with our ADA at 94%. We're now required to turn in our ADA every six weeks. We just submitted our six weeks ADA, and we're close to the 96%, which for, coming out of the month of December is is positive.
It's about a percent higher than we've typically been this time of year. So I'm hoping that that holds through the end of the year depending on what flu season does to us. So those are just the assumptions we've started with for our first look at at our budget, and developing, what those revenue projections will look like. Now we need to take a look at kind of that, that first glance on some of those large dollar, projections and assumptions we we need to make, to develop
what our our target will be for this budget. So I get to, share with you about the assumptions that we've started looking at and working with, because the goal is to get us to a balanced budget. And, the one of the first things that we have to put in there when we're calculating is that loss of student based, basic allotment. So we're at that 6,000,000, 6.7. So initially, if you're just doing a basic balancing of a budget, you're 6.7. So initially, if you're just doing a basic balancing of a budget, you're gonna throw that up there first. Knowing that we've got to to balance that budget, we're gonna have to find 6.7,
just right off the bat. Then the next thing we start looking at is some of the bigger items that would be that hit to that assumption of what that budget would look like, and that gets into if we're given staff raises. If the the board, would like to move forward with that and do what we did is with the staff raises is we started off with all staff in the district at a 1%. And so then that gives us a 2,000,000 that would add on to our six. And then if we gave the staff that qualified for a step, then that's another,
1.3. And then you can see, of course, we know some stables that are always gonna go up, and you hear that at every one of the budget meetings is our transportation, our utilities. Our property and casualty, we won't know if that's going up. Most likely, it will. It it trends everywhere to continue to go up property and casualty, and we'll find that out in March. And then, HVAC is another one. HVAC right now, when you put 500,000, that looks low, but that is what we
know in this moment in time, moving forward. Not to say that that couldn't change as we continue to move forward and as other things, start to come forward as a need. And then, I noticed Matt had moved up to the table. And I can I can touch on this one? We Matt is working to develop what a cost impact will be for us to replace our iPads. The vast majority of our iPads will not function for state testing next year.
They will not meet the the requirements that the that the state has. We'll need to replace those iPads as well as look at a, a replacement cycle for staff devices. We have, many of our staff utilizing eight and nine year old devices. We're starting to see failure rates increase exponentially with those as well as limitations. Again, these are the the the first starting kind of large category assumptions. This is not looking at any offsets to those.
And what I mean by that is if you take a look at the loss of the student basic allotment at $6,700,000 we also know we will be able to right size staff to a certain extent. And that goes back to doctor Wilson's earlier. Just because we lose, a 83 students doesn't mean you can divide that number by 25 and go, okay. That's how many teachers we'll be able to eliminate and and that will offset that, that loss in revenue. It it will not be, that that clean.
It will probably be about half of that that we we believe we can offset. So the the next snapshot we'll be bringing to you next month is is we're beginning to look at what do we think our staffing offsets will be. We'll have better numbers on, particular, in particular, some of the technology devices. The property casualty, as you know, we don't always get we don't get our number until almost literally right before you approve a budget in June, our our final. But what we can watch are those that are the March renewal districts, and we
could see what percentage they're seeing either in decrease or increase and that gives us a pretty good bellwether unless we've had some large claims which, you know, we hope doesn't occur with the next ice storm or hailstorm or those types of things, it gives us at least a way to project what that takes a look like. So again, these are just the preliminary assumptions, starting points for us to be to begin that work in earnest, over the next couple months and we will bring back more detailed information for you all, every month from now till the time you approve
a budget. Any questions for doctor Allison? I have a couple questions. So the I was under the impression that the iPad lease is already factored into the budget. Is is that wrong? No. The the lease is the current lease for the laptops at the secondary one to one. Gotcha. We have not done the the iPads. We've been stretching those as, as far out as as we could, and now we've reached that point where they're they they will not, they will not function for us
moving forward. Gotcha. So there's no update. There's no ISO update. Nothing with Apple to get the iPads to where they could be utilized for state testing? Correct. The about 85 to 90% of our iPad fleet is technically end of life in October, this past October. So they're no longer supported by updates by Apple. There are no security updates, anything like that. But the big thing is star specs to take that test, they will not support,
iPad seven, which is the bulk of our fleet going into next year. So that's why we have to look at replacing them next year. Gotcha. If somehow that was, something that we could move over to the bonded, that wouldn't even be in time. Correct? No. It wouldn't. Because they they won't we wouldn't be able to use them next year at all for testing Gotcha. At all. The iPads, for sure. Okay. Kinda have the same question with our, staff devices. Are these leased or are they purchased? We we own the iPads and the staff devices outright.
They were purchased well before I got here three years ago, but we're in a position now where there are some of them are seven, eight, nine years old. We can't update them to Windows 11, which makes them not secure for our environment, and the functionality of the systems that that our staff use aren't be able to work on them as well. So they're just they become end of life as well. Gotcha. Are these desktops or laptops? Most of them are laptops. Laptops? Mhmm. Okay. And so the laptops themselves, there there's no update. It can't be, like, a hard hard drive update or something like that that we
could then put the new software on it to where it would be effective and useful? No. The bulk of them are similar to the iPads where they've reached into life. You can't update the you put Windows seven on them, so or Windows 11. To give you an example, some the majority of the laptops that we have that staff have that are Windows, they're, four gigs to eight gigs of RAM. Mhmm. I'm trying not to get too technical, but No. I know exactly what you're talking about here. It takes eight gigs to run Office and Windows 11.
Just the OS. Right. So they're already Macs, so any other thing that they wanna do on those devices will not work or perform. So that's where we're at now. We're trying to stream them as long along as far as we can, which is the end of this year, technically. So Yeah. There's just no way we can do anything else. You know, you can't add hardware to them. It just they're just at that point where they just need to be outright replaced. Yeah. Well, and that's what I was questioning because especially for, things that I've done in the past as being a designer, I've actually popped open my laptop and changed RAM myself. We've been doing that. We've been stringing them.
I mean, technically, they should've been replaced two years ago Yeah. In a traditional replacement cycle, but we didn't have that in place when I got here. So I've done everything I can with the fleet that we have with iPads as well as staff devices to bring them to the point where they we're we're into life now. We don't have we have no choice but to, look at leasing and put us into that permanent replacement cycle plan that allows our business and finance department to have a fixed cost on what each year, what what are we paying for our devices in our system.
Gotcha. Now and I appreciate that, you know, especially in the financial environment we're in. Mhmm. You know, just just hearing that we're actually doing some of those things to make sure the devices can work as long as possible. Because I mean, that was one of my suggestions where I say, okay. Let's pop them open. Let's put some more RAM. Let's change out the hard drive and let's go. Absolutely. But, I mean, if if that's if you're saying that that's not possible with the A site, I understand. Yep. So okay. Thank you. I've just, excuse me, just a couple of questions for you, John. You mentioned the ADA was at 96%?
That's where, our last six week, update was. Now, we know it always drops in the spring, and typically a little before the holidays because of flu season. So we're trending a little bit higher than we have the last couple of years at this same snapshot date. Do we know kind of where we are on a year to date? Year to date is at that '96. Okay. Perfect. And correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we budget at 94? We budgeted, at 94 for this year. Yes.
Perfect. So we're ahead right now if the flu doesn't come in. So so far. So quick question on the technology, I guess, a little bit to the follow-up, to miss Kelly's question. When do we move from, since this is gonna be part of the budget, when do we move from TBD to a number? I should have a a rough number, rough estimate for you within the next two or three weeks. I've I've getting some finalized quotes, so I can put some numbers together for you, and then I'll share with that with you before we would even take it to
the dias for, for an approval. Okay. So that'll be included in the updated, budget slides. No. I I will say something, Matt. Well, Matt knows this, he didn't mention it, so I'll mention it for him. The longer we wait on iPads, the longer we wait on technology, the more expensive it costs, the items are, is we're competing with all the data centers and everything everybody else for, rare earth elements and the infrastructure and all of the all of
the things that make technology tick. And so those costs are rising rapidly just because there's so much demand out there, so he's work he's working hard to get that to us because that's something we definitely need to to take action on here sometime in the future to lock that down or, sorry, our prices are gonna go up even more. Yeah. Right now, they're in it's every 90 days we're seeing Windows PCs, whether they're laptops, desktops, doesn't matter. They're going up 20 to 30% in cost every 90 days.
And that's been pretty steady since October because AI, all the add all the data warehouses, all the data centers that they're putting together to compete with AI, all of your all of your companies that produce laptops are competing for those same resources. And so it's just driving cost through the roof. So the longer we wait, the the more expensive it's gonna get, unfortunately. So will we see this as a separate, purchase acquisition here, obviously, before the budget then? Correct?
I would hope so. Yes. Yep. And I'm just waiting on on final numbers so I can put put together more concrete data for you to look at. By the February meeting? Yeah. I'm hopeful. Yes. We should have it up to eight between now and then. Mhmm. Okay. And is that cost then gonna be burden to the current budget or to the forward looking budget? It would be on next year's. It wouldn't not nothing that would be approved this year would be we have to pay Even though we approved the purchase Correct. February, March ish. Yeah. It'll be it would go on to the forward coming budget, which is numbers.
We would pay for them upon delivery, which would be, because the lead time would be in our next budget. K. Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah. I just wanna say that, you know, when we're going through budget assumptions, it can be extremely challenging. Right? I think, you guys kinda sit here and I know there's a lot of it. It's an assumption. It's an educated assumption as much as you can. I get that. You know, I've in fact, we just did the budget summary for one of my companies on Monday. Not near as large a budget as this, but, you know, it's interesting that a
lot of assumptions that we have to make. So I appreciate the work you put in here. I understand that, sometimes there are unknown variables that you just can't, you know, calculate for. What I can say for, members of the general public that haven't been involved in these discussions, have never done anything like this before, if you notice whenever we're, I don't think it's lost on anybody, that whenever we're putting these budgets together, at least over the past three years, it's been pretty consistent that, you know, we're pretty close to, you know, this is what we know what we think we're gonna get.
My biggest concern over the past couple of years was all is the revenue numbers accurate? You know, there's the gentleman's spreadsheet that no one seems to know who he is, but seems to be right all the time. I don't remember his name, but, that we were using. Omar. Omar. That's right. Omar's spreadsheet. And, you know, what's what's really been happening is over the past several years, knowing the public is hyper focusing on how we're spending. The budgets always tend to be, you know, be a little bit more in revenue than we have in expenditure. But with in the back in the back end having conversations about but we also
know there's some overestimations on some expenditures as well, which is a welcome change from what we had in the past where we saw budgets being presented where, you know, our transportation cost was substantially less than it historically has ever been in the budget. And then we come to the board for a bunch of amendments to make changes, and really that's just hiding costs. And so, we've done a really I think the district's done a really good job over the past couple of years changing things. And to that note, I mean, if you look at, '25, '26, there was 77,400,000.0
gain in gap accounting, the general with the general fund increase of about 4,200,000.0. Is this accurate? And before that, there was, there's some changes to the fund balance, unassigned available of 4,600,000.0, because of some reclassification to stuff here and there. And I think it's important to note as we go into this next budget because we we did have a speaker mention about these deficits these deficits that he, believe existed, that just aren't haven't been there over the past couple of years. But as we move into the the next budget, I just want us to be cognizant of, trying to maintain what we've been done over the past two in two
or three years. So thank you. So I will I will thank you for saying that, because that has been a that has been a big effort and it it takes an entire district, it takes our teachers understanding, because, you know, we're having to we're having to be extra judicious with every dollar. It takes our community understanding but also takes a team around you. This time this is the time of year where mister Allison is coming into my office and giving me news that I don't wanna hear but news that I appreciate
of here's how much is going up, so where are we gonna find it, we're gonna have to pull it from somewhere, what do you wanna do? And then that that is, that mindset is goes down the system as well and so, I feel good about the numbers that they're bringing even if I don't like them because I want those calls to be less and more available revenue but, they're doing a great job and so so I appreciate that. Thank you, John. Our next report So, we were gonna have our facilities report and and we're we're
not going to and the reason being is because I think this is, this has related to do with all of the MEP study that's taken place over the past and it's extensive. So that's one that I would like to schedule at some point in the near future, a workshop for us to sit down because we need to engage in more dialogue and because it's so much and it's so important for the future of our district. I prefer to have it in that setting and try to instead of trying to jam it into this. So, for that reason, we won't have it tonight, but we will skip off to
the next one. Thank you. So we'll move on to, mid year map performance reviews. Miss Price? We're gonna spend just a few minutes giving you an academic update on MAP. So just as a reminder, MAP is an online assessment. The beauty of this, it's not like STAR where it's one time a year. We can track data at beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of the year. In the fall, we talked about new norms were established. This is something, MAP does.
It picks up where the students leave off, can project state testing. And one of the things we love about this test is we can look at achievement and growth. So math is a a different assessment where students can never get a 100% of the questions, correctly. And so where, we're looking for a sweet spot is when students start to answer about 50% of the questions correctly. So, that that is something that differs in than than STAR.
Growth is possible even for our highest achieving students. So, we want all students to make growth. And students do see concepts that they have not been taught yet. So in the fall, we talked about a data protocol process, that we, started with principals and assistant principals. We just, finished our principal meeting in January, and MAP was one of those conversations, that we had with principals, because we can look at midyear data and make course
corrections, where where if we see a a dip in data or we celebrate successes that we're seeing right now. So I wanted to show you this data view, and it's something a a little bit different than we've done, with you before. So if you think back to the the fall, we looked at five different buckets of performances. And so if you look on the left, you'll see the grade levels, and we've chunked our low and low average performing students.
So those are students, where, there is, a need for intervention. And then we can look at our average, our students are performing in the average range, and our high end of performance. So when we look at our beginning of the year data, we can compare that to the middle of the year data. And what we wanna see is when we're looking at our low and our low average percentages at the mid year, we wanna see those percentages go down. So if you look at kindergarten for an example, at the beginning of the year,
our low and our low average students, we had about thirty one percent of kindergarten students scoring in that range for achievement. That has decreased at the mid year, and that's what we want to see. Let's take the high and the high average, we're seeing an increase from beginning of the year to the middle of the year. So those those are data trends we're looking to see. Are our lowest achieving students? Are the percentages going down? And on the right, hand column in the high and high average, are those going
up? And and if if they're not, then we course correct and that's the beauty of our midyear data, that we can do that. And so, this gives us our first glimpse at reading. And we can also look at our math. I want to point out, like, third grade we are seeing some great gains especially with our our high performing students. We can see, there are some areas, and we've talked about fourth grade that continues
to be an area and a grade level that we're focusing on. So an example of a mid course adjustment is, bringing in teachers for professional development. And we made that course change, starting in November. And so we're bringing teachers in more frequently during the year, to do bite sized professional development before instruction begins. So another thing that we love about MAP is growth. So we can look at and not only, the achievement of students, but we can
look at growth for students. And we can look at who are what's the percentage of students on track to make growth. And we wanna see that that number high for reading and for math. So this gives us the glimpse of what our reading growth is looking like, and we can see what our math growth is looking like. You're gonna see higher gains on the math side just because, the the skills are dependent upon the the skills from the prior year.
And so, that that is, what our growth is looking like. And so, we're excited about the data trends that we're seeing. We talked about fourth grade with STAR, and we're talking about fourth grade again. And so, this allows us to make make those mid course adjustments so we can change our course, when we see that that data not trending in a way that we wanted to. So I'm gonna end, we don't just look at map data.
We look at a whole bunch of data when we're looking at, student performance. So a lot of your parents, so you hear about unit assessments. We implemented our phonics assessments, so we're looking at that. We also look at grades. What's the percent of students that that are passing each nine weeks and what are their grades? We also look at discipline referrals, special ed referrals, and attendance. And so one of the pieces that, the assistant superintendents and I will be working together is looking at when we look at all these pieces of data, what indicates
grade level, that student is on grade level, for each of our grades, that we teach. And so that's a a project that we are working on, taking all of these assessments and data points, what indicates grade level performance. So and that's just an update on MAP and what we're working on. We'll bring to you, at the end of the school year, how everything trended out over the year. But, that is our update and I'll take any questions that you have.
Is there any concern with, in the reading and the math with the ones that lost between beginning of the year and middle of the year? So where the conversation becomes is who were those students that may be going backwards and what are we going to do to turn that around? And so there were there was great conversations with the principals on what are the skills, have we taught it, do we need to go back and reteach it, who
were those kids, what tutoring needs to take place, what small groups, and so that's the work that they're doing right now. And then I know as a parent I received an email and said, hey, your MAP scores are updated on on the website, but if if those kids were identified as as losing percentage points, were there meetings scheduled with parents to discuss what was being done and what the parent could possibly do at home? Yes. So, I mean, we we we need that partnership with parents. Always say you can't you need us and we need you.
And so, academic concerns, teachers are reaching out. If we're seeing kids going backwards, let's sit down and figure out why that is. So, yes. It was just a quick glance, but on the beginning and middle year reading, it looked like the older grades had more where they slipped back. Is there something that you've identified with that? You know, with our acceleration, so especially with fourth and seventh grade on the math side, we tend to see that.
We've talked about, like, our seventh our seventh on level students. We we do see that slip back and I don't know specifically why that happens at the mid year for our middle school students, but that is a trend that we have seen over the years that our mid middle of the year scores on middle school students tend to dip down but we typically see it come back. Up at the end of the year. So if if you look at especially how the TEKS are categorized, a lot of
them are k three and so you're looking at you're looking at a different level of complexity or performance standard that changes when you get into fourth grade and that changes again when you get into middle school. So at k three you're really when you go back to reading, you're teaching kids to read. After fourth grade then you're it's more about the application of reading, and the skills within it, but you're not actually teaching kids to read anymore.
And so that's a challenge when you have a kid who you hear the goal of third grade, you want your students on grade level by the end of third grade or the likelihood of dropout increases. I agree with that, the research is there. You know, I my preference is we have 90% of our kids there every year regardless. And that's I don't even know if I'd be happy with 90, just because I want student analyze I have two principals here. We had principals the other day and my conversation is performance matters.
Student performance matters. And we have to take that perspective and we have to make sure that we're looking into this as much as we can. The challenge for teachers is sometimes in elementary especially it's a class makeup. If I have a kid if I have 10 students who are struggling and I have three students over here who are high performing, how do I how do I divvy up my time? And how do I make sure, because the system is set up, that you're teaching to a to a floor and not a ceiling. I I don't want there to be a floor, I just want us to push
past that. But that's a that's a shifting mindset and our accountability system is not set up to push that. Our system is set up to make the floor. And so you this and and I will tell you a map is not designed to make a floor, it's to push beyond and go as far as you can with each kid. And that's where we need to get to. What Jennifer's talking about, data is data and it doesn't tell us why, it tells us what we need to have conversations about and work with our staff on.
And I want to be very transparent with data. I want data to be part of everything we do with our teachers. Data is to help them get better. And it doesn't it's not a our staff that you're a poor teacher or you're not, that has nothing to do with data. Data is something needs to get we need to help you in some way or there are tweaks that we need to make and sometimes they're very minor. The majority of the times they're very minor. That can transform that. And then if we don't know where the help is needed then Jennifer and her
team and our campus principals can't then go back and support that. And so, this is, you know, this this is something I want you to be able to see every time so you get used to seeing data like this and that our our community used to get used to seeing data like this and then they can monitor that and say, okay, this makes sense. Now where is my child or where is my campus or where is our district? Are we going? Are we are we we want with these numbers you want them to move to the right. You want the percentages to go up and decrease on the left and go up
on the right. And so it's a we're trying to make it as simple and easy as we can, but we're gonna be, like I said, very transparent with our data as well. Can I actually ask a question pertaining to something that you just stated? It's, it's on the same page, just not the same paragraph. Sure. But, so when it comes to our map data, do we utilize any of that data to kind of even out the classrooms? Is that something that we do? Not mid year. I think it a lot of our data is used to even out, remedial groups,
but not not the classrooms just because it's hard to move a kid who's established a great relationship not only with his teacher and the teacher with the family but also the kid with the peers. Probably not the peers. I mean like whenever our campuses are looking at placement. You try. You try your best. And the beginning of the year there's nothing like those kindergarten teachers when you look at 22%, nothing they could have done with that. Right. Not a thing. Those first grade teachers, nothing they could do with that beginning beginning because that's how
they come to them. But you do see dips over the summer because you do have regression and sometimes it's the standard is usually six weeks to pick that back up, Sometimes it's less, sometimes it's more, which is an alternate other reason you see that midyear as a little bit different just because how long does it take that learning loss to catch back up. Doctor Wilson, can I add something right here? I do wanna add that while we don't use the data to necessarily build classrooms midyear, what we do use the data for, what we've asked our principals is to
take that data during their professional learning communities with their teachers. As you're looking at data, is can we pull small groups so that when we're looking at data, who is at the lower end? And so therefore, when we're thinking about interventions during class, is this the group that we can pull together? Where are they not mastering? Where are they struggling? And we use that to high performing, low performing, fully small groups. In addition to that, what we've charged our principals is there's different reports that map is really useful for for principals and teachers. So, I'll give you an example. There's one report that we call the quintile report or quadrant.
So we ask principals the last meeting is to task our teachers of which students do we see are either high performing, there's different quadrants, high performing low growth. And if they're very close to, hey. They're about one or two points from meeting that, can we do some different interventions? Can we focus on those students' student conferences? Because a lot of it also comes with students' accountability. So we charged our principals this past week with your next step is when you're having conversations with your teachers of are we having goal setting meetings with our students
so that they can see what is my goal. But then also if you have a low performing, low growth student, how close are they to that growth mark so that we can then really focus on on those students as well. So there's a little bit of things that while we don't move their classes like doctor Wilson said, we at least use that data for that. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you for that. And I know, I mean, our sole purpose here is to to ensure our students are educated, and they are successful when they leave here. So I I love to hear, that whole process and and how, the teachers were
charged to do that stuff and hopefully they felt empowered after that. So I really appreciate that. Thank you. The other thing I wanna add, we brought, NWEAN in January. And so on our, back to school on January 5, I believe it was, campuses were able to send teachers about five per campus. And so that is one of the things that they focused on is that quadrant report where we're focusing on, students.
We want to see high growth no matter what achievement bucket you're falling into. Right. So Awesome. Thank you. Just to, to close out, I agree with doctor Wilson. We're in the academic business and, we're fortunate to have, this MAPS. I was disappointed that the state didn't, approve MAPS as the accountability standards, but, the ability to monitor students' progress and pull them up from where they are by using
this data, I think with the team is is great and what sets this district apart. So thank you for all you do. Thanks for the report. Next, we have the, consent agenda. Any item pulled from the consent agenda consent agenda, sorry, will be pulled for a vote during the action part of the meeting. Do I have a motion for the consent agenda? So moved. I'll second. Any discussion? Just real quick. I wanted to give, a huge thank you, to the Keller Education Foundation and their
community partners who donate and sponsor events to help support, Keller IC and educators. And I'm specifically talking about the, the approval of a donation from the Keller Education Foundation. It's been an honor and a privilege to see Amanda and her team, what they accomplished for our district, and Amanda and the team have a vision for the Keller Education Foundation. And without our community involvement grants, some one fund can't happen. So I just wanted to mention some ways real quick on how you can help
with the Keller Education Foundation. I just wanted to tell everybody to mark their calendars for March 7, at 06:30 for the Rooted Gala, held at the Bowdoin in, Keller. Tickets and table sponsorships are available, plus they are looking for items to donate. And then also too, I will post a link on my trusty page tonight just so, people can see that event. Also too, I wanted to just mention that the Keller Education Foundation also does, a one fund which focuses on ongoing needs and essentials in our classrooms, and also gives
grants to our teachers, in the fall. So, Color Education, is amazing. They need all of our support, and they also have sponsorship opportunities. So, again, just wanted to say a huge thank you to the Keller Education Foundation. Thank you, miss Kelly. I also, agree a 100% with the work that they do. You won't see it, probably if you haven't seen the board packet, but I think the exact amount, if I'm not mistaken, $124,500, that was granted to the district.
So congratulations to Amanda, Magura and her team for that, and thank you for calling that out. Any other discussion on the consent agenda? Yeah. Just real quick. On the the book purchases, that has been listed on the website and everything. Correct? For thirty days? Yeah. It's on you. Thank you. Yes. It is on the website. All in favor, approving their consent agenda. All opposed, six zero. Thank you. Now move on to our action items. First action item this evening is approval of a resolution concerning the sale of surplus
real property. Doctor Allison. Thank you, president Burt. Before you, you have a resolution that is required by the Texas education code whenever a school district looks at the potential sale of property. In the the resolution, it, it outlines for you let me pull that up here real quick so I can walk you through it. It, provides the the properties listed. Those are include part of their, legal descriptions. In the resolution, once the board approves, you're basically stating that this is excess real
property, that the district does not have, a a reason for it now or as you can see in the foreseeable future. It required that it be publicly advertised in the newspaper, and that, you will receive, offers or the district will receive offers on January 29. They are seal sealed bids. In the resolution, it also authorizes, for me to function as your go between as
we work with our broker, JLL. You will see all the bids. You will see all the information. But if there's any clarification or negotiation around earnest, those types of things, it allows me to to speak on your behalf. The board must approve any sale. So by virtue of this resolution, you are not accepting the highest bid. You are not accepting any of the bids necessarily if you would determine that none of them were acceptable. That would be the case, but it requires you to declare excess property and, for
us to be able to to accept those bids. So that's, that's the gist of the resolution. And, I the administration recommends that the board of trustees approve the resolution concerning the sale of surplus real property as presented. I have a motion. So moved. Second? Second. Any discussion? Again, all in favor? All opposed? Six zero. Thank you. I do wanna add one thing. We do have four properties up for sale. The one on the large one off Wind Triangle was not listed. It's because, John, correct me if I'm wrong, but we've already done Yes.
You approved a resolution almost a year ago for the, for us to begin the market, the Golden Triangle property, so it's it's not included on this resolution because you've already approved. It is excess. Same resolution that that you approved for that property is what you've approved tonight for these three. Okay. Our section at our second action item is approval of revisions to local policies, Tasby update one twenty six. Bryce? Right. On pages 50 through one fifty two of your board packet, we have recommended revisions
to local board policies from Tasby update one twenty six. As we discussed last month, Tasby has updated a 141 legal policies, mostly in response to new laws from last year's legislative sessions. Less session yeah. Multiple sessions. They also suggest changes to 29 of Keller ISC's local policies, which were previewed last month. Since being previewed, we have only had one change, made to the recommended revisions. Our board our policy review committee actually identified inconsistency in Tasby's original recommendation for changes to CV local.
We confirmed this with TASB, TASB policy consultant and have provided the updated version, for consideration tonight. I'll be happy to answer any questions, but the administration recommends that the board approve the TASB update one twenty six local policy revisions as presented. I have a motion. So moved. I'll second. Second. Discussion. Just had a real quick question on TV. What was the issue there? So, there was one part of what Tazmi was trying to do is go through these policies and find, clean clean them up a little bit and and then additionally other changes. And one of the things, they choose a policy a while back that basically said
the superintendent has the authority to designate a designee for things. And so any place within policy where it says superintendent or designee, they're trying to remove the or designee because it's redundant. So we caught one of those in the in CV, but we had some customized language, that we passed previously that they had missed, but our policy review committee caught that. So, we've made that revision. It's covered in there. Yeah. I also had a real quick question on BE. So am I under the understanding that we can't even do executive session now before
5PM? So that's the wordage or the the language that was removed. That's my understanding. Any part of the meeting before five now. Like, the meeting, yeah, has to be outside of typical work hours. Absolutely. For us, we're eight to 04:30. Just verifying that. I figured that that's what it was, but Yeah. Appreciate it. Yeah. Any other questions, concerns? All in favor? All opposed? Six zero. Thank you. Thank you. Since there is no items pulled from the consent agenda, we'll move into the work session, discussion.
Doctor Wilson? Yes. So we have quite a few things coming up. On January 26, we have our district of innovation committee meeting. They have quite a bit to do, a lot of things to review, some new conversations to have, so we're looking forward to that. Our next long range planning and citizens bond advisory joint meeting is on January I'm sorry, February 5, followed the the next week by our budget committee meeting on the eleventh. Our kids are happy because on the thirteenth and sixteenth, they get, some more student
holidays. Our policy review committee comes back on the seventeenth. We have another district innovation committee meeting on the twenty third. And then just as a, FYI, we did change our February regular board meeting from that Thursday, February 26. We have changed that to Wednesday, February 25, to accommodate some trustees who have some, some kid things that they need to attend. So that is a date change and just as an FYI. Okay.
Thank you. The trustees will now go into executive session for the purposes permitted by the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas government code section five five one dot zero zero one through five five one dot one four six, section five five one dot zero seven one, consultation with attorney, Section five five one zero seven four, personnel matters, appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, dismissal, complaint.
Section five five one dot zero seven six, deliberation regarding security devices, deployment, implementation of security personnel or devices. Section five five one dot zero eight two, school children, school district employees, disciplinary matters, or complaint. And section five five one dot zero eight two one, personally identifiable information about public school students and including attorney consultation on board vacancy and related issues.
And secondly, attorney consultation on legal services and pending legal matters. The time is 07:10. We will return as soon as possible. Thank you. We are back. We are back from executive session at 10:00. Let's see. Do we have any action resulting from closed session? Yeah. At the February meeting, I would like to consider a process to appoint a person to fill the vacant board seat until the next trustee election. I move to direct the board president and superintendent to put this item on our
next agenda and bring a proposed process for appointment at that time. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? All opposed? Thank you. 60. This is the end of our agenda for the evening. I'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. I'll second it. All in favor? All opposed? Six zero.