How many of you seen state of the districts before with me? Okay most of you, well almost all of you, oh
my goodness so you know the pattern two parts: points of pride, then just some stuff that I talk about
Okay so points of pride is pretty short. We always mention that we have Trustees.
This is our governance model. Community elects them, they set some strategic priorities and direction,
they hire a superintendent, one hiding in the back over there and then that person tries to
then implement what the community hopefully wants. That is kind of represented through them. We have
Heather here, Kim and we have Ellen I believe and I think that's it but at least three of them are
here and we have Jack in the back, Jack is a teacher over at the high school he is shadowing me
Okay why anyone would want to do that, I don't know either but that's what he's doing today.
A couple of things, this is just this is like the yelp of rating systems. It's not scientific
but it's what people think of you and it's better to be thought of well than to be thought of poorly
and so that's a good thing. EEF, I will talk a lot more about them later but we just always want
to give out a big shout out to them. 2.5 million in the middle of a pandemic is pretty darn good and
when you could hardly do...it was pretty darn pretty darn hard to do a gala in the middle of a pandemic
but two galas, yes hopefully not a third but we'll hope the pandemics are done.
This slide is here because we're going to give some information about - one more trustee coming in -
about Westlake High School but the point for teachers and the community is kids don't get
smart when they get to Westlake High School, they get smart along the way and every school
has a part and has some pride in some of these numbers
Those are our numbers on the class of 2021. Those are as high as any public high school
out there. They're very very high and I mean not just Texas, I mean nationwide those are pretty
remarkable. We had eight kids get perfect scores on the ACT last year and that's impressive but what's
more impressive in my mind is this number 29.2. That was the average ACT score at Westlake High
School last year, the average and that was the highest in the school's history so academically
we're pretty darn good. I mean we really are. We're also pretty good in some sports. This is our golf
team. Number one in the state, four times! Our B team, our second team, was number three in the state.
so our kids can golf but they also do other things we're really good. State champs in robotics
a little different skill set but awfully good. Band, we were 10th in the state and when they
take all of the things and combine them all of the UIL stuff: sports, band, debate, all of those things
we wound up being third in the state last year out of all the high schools in the state of
Texas and there's a lot of high schools in the state of Texas so that's pretty darn impressive
Football - we're good! This was our old slide when we were back to back. Now we're
3-peat state championships. Jack was part of the part of this group that made that happen
I've told Dr Arnett unless he makes that a four he's in trouble - so sorry Jeff
but he's hiding there back there because and he's hiding because he's got to run out for another
meeting at some point, so when you see him sneaking out that's why. Here's where our kids went. Okay
People like this data at least to know what it is. We had 86 percent go to four-year colleges,
we had about 10 to two-year and we always have some kids take a gap year or go in the military.
There's nothing that - one of these choices is not necessarily better than another
in my opinion. It's just what works for you and it was a really interesting thing for the class of 20
and the class of 21 you know going off to college in the middle of a pandemic had its own challenges.
So but they're getting into college and they're doing well and they're going to the
best universities in the world and I mean that you ever look at the universities our kids go to
they're they're going everywhere. I'll mention a few things about the bond that passed
The last bound that passed in 2019. It was for 80 million dollars. 83% of the community supported
that. Bonds are good for a lot of reasons. There's some things we would never have had
if we didn't have the bonds. We kicked off a bunch of projects in the summer of 2021. These are some
of the projects listed, by the way, this will all be on the web anyone wants a slide because i'm going
fast, you can always get it from Claudia. I'll mention just a few of those things these type
I just came in here today and saw this we didn't have. The screen we had here before was not as
good as this, okay, this is much better. It's clean. We're putting this type of thing in our classrooms
which is wonderful. We could not get them all done in one year. There were
supply chain issues but we will get the rest of our classrooms
in those four schools done this summer. So it'll all get done and that'll be great
and we'll be up to date we also put in LED lights throughout our buildings I'll talk a little
bit about the money that has saved us. About five hundred thousand dollars but we're now
putting dimmer switches on those as well. So you can dim them down if you want to and that allows
for a lot of things. 1 - it helps the teacher create the atmosphere what they want to create
2- it saves us another fifty thousand dollars in electricity a year so it's a good thing.
That's what the robotics building and classrooms were supposed to look like. That's what it does
look like. So it's built was operational we had that done in the fall of this last year.
Opened up. Kids love it, teachers love it. It's a great facility. High ceilings because they can
practice their UIL competitions if they have a high ceiling and that was important to them so
that's why we did. It's a beautiful building. I hope sometimes people get over to see it
This is the multi-purpose room what should have looked like, that's what it does look like
again a great building. When it was under construction, it didn't look so hot
but when it was done, you've got beautiful views of the football field, of downtown
austin. It's a great space for kids. Wouldn't have that without a bond. That's what the pool
aquatic center is supposed to look like. This is this is an old picture, it's
actually looks even better than that right now the fences, are gone the landscaping is coming in
this is what it looked like right before they put water into it, that's water going into it and
there it's now full. I mean as soon as they get the chemical balance right, it's ready to go
so it's eventually going to look like that with kids in it. So we're really excited about that
that's where it is if you want an aerial view. It's over near the administration building
across the street from the high school and this will be with us for a while eventually
things go as planned we're not paying to run this. So we're not paying the electricity bill,
the chemical bill, none of that and eventually it produces revenue for the district, so that's also
a good thing in the end plus our kids our swim team, our water polo team, our little kids can
swim in the pool, so that's good! That's state of the district points of pride. Done.
Good, so I'm done and I'm going to turn it over to Dr Arnett. No I'm not going to.
I just want to see if I can get a reaction out of him but I will not do that, so I'm going to go
through, if you watch these for several years, you know that when I first got here I had a
fixation on this man. I think you actually still think he's a pretty good actor, I kind of like
he hasn't done any crazy things that i'm aware of, so that's nice but there was a picture of
him in a tuxedo looking pretty sharp and he had a bandage on his hand and I said this reminds me
of our district. When I first got here, you guys look really good but there's always a little
room for improvement, you know you can always got to think in life you can always get a little
better and that was a great picture to kind of give that image and then i always used Einstein
because he has a bunch of numbers. I like numbers. He likes numbers and there's a lot of numbers in
this, good, after a while i switched off of George Clooney, I retired him and you know who I went to?
I hope if you've been here, I went to Mr Rogers and I know some people don't like Mr Rogers
I am going to like Mr Rogers to the day I die. I think he's a good guy
I think his message was fairly simple: be nice to people, respect people
I don't know why that's a hard thing, okay, for some but I like his message but I'll
never give up on Einstein, he's my numbers guy, okay, Mr Rogers is not my numbers guy
and so this year I knew when I was putting this together that this would be the last one
of these I would do which is fine with me, it's all good but I was trying to think of somebody
to use and I was thinking of different people and there's so many there's so many personalities and
outstanding people out there that I would like to really use and I debated and debated
I thought about this woman and I know most people don't know who she is but if you get a
chance google her, her name is Rita Pearson. She died about 12-15 years ago. She was a first grade
teacher in Houston ISD. She did a Ted Talk and I play her Ted Talk every year for the new teachers
and I have done that for the last eight years. Her message is pretty simple, well she's got a
couple messages but the one I really focus on is that if you are going to teach kids and connect
with kids, I'm sorry. If you're going to teach kids, you need to connect with kids. You need to
form a good relationship with kids and she has a line, 'Kids don't learn from people they don't like'
and I believe that. Think of the teachers that have the most influence on you, so you had some
kind of connection with them, you something was going on with them, whether it was a teacher or
a coach and I believe that, so I like that message. A couple other messages she has and you'll see some
of those later. I thought about this man who was one of my heroes when I was teaching AP calculus
that's Jaime Escalante. If you saw the movie, Stand and Deliver, he was the guy who taught in
in impoverished neighborhood in LA and he had scores that were outside of the roof
in AP calculus. He was just incredible, what he accomplished. I took a class from him at Northern
Colorado University a long time ago okay and I'll give you a little bit of his messaging that I
thought was really important, I really wanted to do these two gentlemen, Desmond Tutu died recently
about a couple months ago I believe and the Dalai Lama and I don't think I brought it, let
me just check. I know I'm off camera right now, I usually bring a copy of it if I did, okay, you
know the last last school year was a tough year for everyone but for teachers, administrators,
it was not an easy year and I gave a copy of this book to all the Trustees
and to all the administrators and this is called the Book of Joy and it's by Desmond Tutu
and the Dalai Lama and it's an interesting book. It was the Dalai Lama's 80th birthday
and he invited Desmond Tutu to spend a week with him and while they were spending a week, they had
tea together and they had breakfast and dinner and lunch together and a psychologist sat there
and he would throw a topic out at them and they would just talk about the topic and that's what
it is, it's just a series of conversations between the two of them on different topics
and message in this is fairly simple. The message in this is there's going to be suffering in the
world, bad things are going to happen, you will have failures and disappointments in your life
get used to it, there's going to be hurricanes, there's going to be earthquakes, there's going to
be pandemics and there's going to be people doing bad things to other people, people are going to get
sick who you love, people are going to die who you love, it's going to happen and what you need to do
is be able to find a place of peace and stability in yourself and be able to have a sense of joy
throughout that and have resiliency to move on from it and keep going and it's a really nice
message and I think it's a good message, it was a good message not only for the administrators
who had been through quite a bit but it's also i think a really good message for kids
you need to be resilient, so I thought about that and I just could not decide
to pick one person and I started thinking since this was my last one I thought I'd, okay, I'll
go away from that and instead of talking about choices, I'll give some reflections on what I think
are the biggest challenges that we have but I just don't want to tell you where your challenges are, I
want to tell you what I would reflect on and say are some of the opportunities that you might have
to deal with those challenges life is full of challenges just like they said Dalai Lama, Desmond
Tutu, you know you gotta find some way sometimes to get up the darn mountain before you can have
you know the joy of going down it
this is a quote by the Dalai Lama, I'm not going to read it let's give you a chance to
it depends on how you look at challenges in your life okay and I believe you look at a challenge as
an opportunity, I mentioned Jaime Escalante, this was not in the movie but he said this in the
class I took and I wrote it down. He had this sign above his chalkboard, they did chalkboards then
okay, determination plus discipline but hard work is the way to success that's what he told the kids
so I wrote the same sign put it on my chalkboard in Illinois and I believe it and I believe it's a
decent message for kids, work it doesn't guarantee success but hard work, discipline, determination,
grit are valuable and I do believe they're valuable so let's talk about some of the
challenges we have and what I think some of the opportunities are, if that's okay
In my belief the biggest challenge we have is going to be to attract and retain, really attract
retain and develop staff that's our biggest challenge and by the way, this is a nationwide
challenge right now. It's not just Eanes ISD, trust me. This year in August the school year in august
I tried to hire a fourth grade teacher at Forest Trail to reduce class size, we couldn't find one
Pflugerville has 10 or 12 secondary math positions unfilled right. Now they can't find anyone
I mean it's it's hard! Special ed staffing you know, Diane's shaking her head, it's hard to find people
right now so we've got to attract good people develop them and keep them. Does that make sense?
because I believe that you can have great ipads, you can have comfortable chairs
if you don't have great people in your system you have a problem and I see a lot of heads
nodding. I think we all believe that so you got to get good people and you got to keep them
you also have to pay them. You know they do like working in this district, they do like
working with your kids but they also have rent and mortgages and college payments and those
things so that you've got to pay them, you've got to compensate them and that's a challenge
because our budget is a challenge and I want to talk about that a little bit and then kind of
lead into the opportunities for the budget that lead to the opportunities to basically help staff
make sense so these are recapture payments that we've been making to the state of Texas and
it's a lot of money it dipped a little bit in 2019 but it will continue to go up
quite a bit if you look at the total payments. Since recapture started, in the first 22 years,
this small community sent a billion dollars to the state of Texas that is accelerating it will
only take us nine years to send another billion, so it's we're sending more and more and more
remember recapture is set up so wealthy districts in theory will give money to districts of poverty
there's about 1.4 million billion, I'm sorry 1.4 billion
that is being taken from the wealthy districts, that is not going to public schools of poverty
a lot of that now is being siphoned into charter schools
which is really interesting and that was never what recapture was designed to do
there's a great website, if you get a chance go to recapturetexas.org if you're interested more
information you go there they have great videos it kind of talks about what this is about I'm not
going to take the time here and talk about some of the flaws in the system right now
but that's a lot of our money that is going in that direction. We also get federal money
esser was money that came from the federal government to help schools cope with covid
and they gave more dollars to schools of poverty than schools of not poverty now
and I get that to some degree they've always done that, with title one schools of poverty
always got more money than schools that were wealthier but covid was an equal opportunity mess
our teachers were in the building in person as fast as anybody and stayed there the whole time
other school districts got proportionately a lot more money than we got and I want
to show you the numbers a little bit we got about 416 dollars per student
Lake Travis got about 54 percent more per student, Leander 83 percent more per student and Austin ISD
732 more per student. We all were dealing with covid by the way, you know their teachers, our
teachers were both dealing with covid but when you're getting five hundred dollars per student
versus four hundred and sixteen dollars with per student it gives you more opportunities
and would give their board more opportunities. If we would have been
funded proportionately the same as some of these other districts that surround us
if we were funded the way Lake Travis was we would have got about 5 million
Leander about 6 million and if we were funded the way Austin ISD was funded this district
proportionately would have gotten 27 million dollars, 27 million dollars that we would have
had the ability to use over one to three years. So what did these districts do that got a lot of
money, what they did was they supplanted that into their budget they put that into their
budget to pay for what they legally could pay for out of esser money and then they took the
money that they weren't paying for those things and put it into bonuses or salaries for staff
our Trustees didn't have that luxury in that they didn't get 27 million dollars
at the same proportion if they got 27 million dollars they could have done a lot for that
for staff and this worries this is where things start getting tricky in terms of compensation for
a district such as ours take a look at um this chart first of all this is the one-time bonuses
that came from a lot of the supplanting that districts use their esser funds for
this is just the regular raises that they gave but look at this Lake Travis, you know they started out
with about the same raise that we had two percent but then mid-year they added another three for
teachers, so that in essence that's a five percent raise guys, it really is. Others did one-time
payments that was much harder for our Trustees to contemplate because we just didn't get that money
even if you forget esser for a second this is still a problem long term because if I was
showing, I've been showing these numbers for a long time they always hover roughly around two percent
okay the last eight years they're roughly around two percent, if you look at the averages
see some years a little higher, some years a little lower. That's what we pay per employee
compared to the other districts around us for health care that covers individual coverage
a hundred percent for any employee it does not cover family coverage so if you're doing family
coverage it's going to cost you more. That makes sense and that's that's what it is
Let's take a look at try to put yourself in the shoes of a teacher who's been here for
a while, okay. So we're gonna, we're gonna go back to 2011 and we'll look at a first year
teacher, a fifth year teacher and a tenth year teacher. At that time a first year teacher in
2011 was making 41 thousand dollars starting if you account for inflation okay that teacher
today in real dollars would be making 42,700 which if you look at a raise per year that would equate
to less than a half a percent raise per year after inflation
Now I'll show you the other number.s That's a fifth year teacher. I'm just going to put these
up here quickly. A teacher who now would have 20 years with us, right, a teacher who has 20 years
with us for the last 10 years, their average increase has been almost just a little over
a quarter of a percent after inflation. That's not sustainable particularly right now. Remember
inflation was running roughly around two percent. Do you know what inflation is running at now?
The last number I saw was seven point five percent I might be off a little bit but it's
high, so if we give a two percent raise this this year and inflation's at seven point five percent
that math doesn't work. Rents in the austin area are going up quickly. In fact, we were the number
one city in the United States in terms of one-year increases percentage-wise in rent
rents in the Austin area went up in one year 40 percent
We are hearing from teachers that they are having real troubles. With us our teachers also,
a lot of them do not live in our district, they live further out so the commute is hurting them
Their rents are going up and the salaries are not keeping up with that. So the compensation
is not keeping up. They're not greedy people I really don't believe teachers are that but
they got to pay bills and when the rent goes up, they got to pay the rent. In terms of
inflation connected to health care, again, if you are a employee
who is just on single coverage you're good. You know nothing really has affected you
but if you're taking our family coverage, you can see what the annual increase has been depending on
what plan you use it's either four percent or almost six percent right so again that's hard
um so that is a challenge. I wouldn't want to just leave you with challenges and walk away
I want to say there are some opportunities you do have a few real gifts in this district. A lot
of gifts, actually, in this district but there's a few opportunities I would pay attention to
First of all, the fact that you passed these golden pennies was extremely
valuable that you did that when we we we were going in deficit spending. Taking money
on balanced budget, taking money out of our fund balance every single year for about
12 or something years before i got here and it was continuing. We had to get out of that
cycle because eventually you don't have any more money. Austin ISD even with the esser funds is
predicting they will be bankrupt in three years if they don't change something. Bankrupt. Nothing
in their fund balance that's what they're saying, that's not my words, that's what they're saying
Okay, so our golden pennies really helped us we finally got in the blue dipped a little bit there
past golden pennies and getting in the bowl and a little bit on the dip here at one point
again when different districts are getting a lot of federal money.
Our Trustees because they were given big raises at that time, our Trustees went from two percent
to 4.5 which was still under a lot of the other districts. If they would have not gone to that 4.5
this number would have been back in the blue as well but they felt they had to do the 4.5
because other people were doing six does that make sense-ish
So but at least we got a little blue a little blue is better than red red
red because if those golden pennies had not passed that's what it would have looked like
we would have had a real problem, make sense?
Just like in your life you want to keep a certain amount of money in your bank account
because you have bills come at different times that the checks come in, does that make sense?
Same with us, taxes come in, payroll goes out it's not all coming in exactly at the same
time you need to have about in a school district situation about 25 percent fund
balance so that's the line you don't want to go under in your bank account right
that's what our line looks like so we're hovering thank goodness we're hovering over the line
a lot because of these golden pennies had we not passed those that would have been our line
that's not a good line that's what Austin ISD's line looks like right now
and when you get to zero you are really in a crunch on what your options are
so we are looking like that and if you look ahead the nice thing is this year and next year
we will likely also have a balanced budget i mean i can't tell you exactly what's going to
happen between now and then but our predictions say that we will have a balanced budget which
would mean if you look at the picture and I'll kind of go out a couple more years now
and I'll just show it with the golden pennies in the next in this series of about five years here
four of those years eighty percent of them will be in a balanced budget and we couldn't say that
for a long time I don't know when the last time they said that it had to be quite a few years ago
so that's good that's an it's an opportunity the other opportunity you have connected to budget
which is such a blessing is bonds in this district and what your capability is remember
61 of our m&o fund goes to recapture zero percent of our bond fund goes to recapture
so that makes a big difference because with bond dollars
for every dollar we get locally from the community we keep a full dollar
on M&O for every dollar we get from the community we lose 61 percent of that dollar immediately
so that has implications if I'm trying to buy that bus
that bus costs one hundred and forty thousand dollars of local tax payer money one hundred and
forty thousand dollars if I buy it out of bond money if I want to buy it out of m&o money that
same bus after I give away 61 costs us in local dollars 230 000 so do you want to pay 230 thousand
dollars for a bus or do you want to pay 140 000 for the same bus this is not nuclear science
this is you want to pay 140 and if you have to buy this out of your M&O dollars you then don't
have those M&O dollars for salaries because you can't use the bond dollars for salaries
does that make sense so why is this help us in this district um these are some of the things that
we purchase out of the 11 bond 2011 2015 2019. those are some of you know it basically keeps
money that you do not have to spend out of M&O on HVAC on roofs on transportation on technology you
utilize those dollars there then those dollars can then be used for compensation and benefits
right you'll see these numbers go up I'll talk about that in a second as well
some of the things that we have had and what we have used these bonds for I'll get to in a second
but I want to show you this because this is really important this is why this community has a heck of
an advantage first of all you're not fast growth so you don't have to build schools left and right
you know you may change some of your schools up but you're not gonna have to build at least not
in the next three months you're not going to build another high school I have nothing to do with that
it's unlikely you're going to have to deal with a a lot of building new schools agree but
look at two numbers see that number eight that's to all the property in Eanes ISD in 2011. that was
our tax rate you multiply that number by that number and you wind up what your capacity is
how much money you actually could do without raising taxes got it it's not card what do you
think is going to happen to the tax base number as I go here in terms of value of property in this
district watch it it goes to 11 it goes to 14 and it's predicted to go to 19 at the rate it's going
it's going up 19 is a whole lot more than eight right so even while we have
lowered the rate we lowered the rate to 12 cents now 12 times 19 billion gives you 200
million capacity I'm not saying you're going to go that high but you have a lot more capacity
and you don't have to raise the tax rate that's an opportunity guys that is an opportunity and I put
23 there I don't know if it'll be 23 or if it'll be 24 I do not know I do not know that's up to
the trustees but I will tell you this it seems like you're doing it every four years roughly
why okay so you passed a bond in 19 you refreshed your technology in 21.
think about that so that technology is going to get old that stuff that you bought in 21 is going
to get old things get old if you pass a bond in 23 it's probably going to have to last you to 27 ish
by 27ish some of the technology some of the computers some of the ipads are going to start
going on you and you don't want to use M&O funds to replace them does that make sense so i think 23
24 is where the board's going to wind up but that's up to them okay I'm not trying to tell
them but you're going to have a lot of capacity so if you have that capacity what do you do with it
what do you want to think about doing with it well first of all let's think about what we've done
that's what happened in 2011 you would not have the unbelievable playgrounds you have at
elementaries had you not passed that bond they are beautiful um you can see some of the adult
transition services building um technology upgrades look at the next one 2015 the first
bond we passed when I got here middle school fine arts editions I mean that's good stuff
um 2019. we just showed you the picture of the pool, robotic center, wrestling multipurpose room
and a lot of other things that are just the regular things that you pay for again I don't
know what 2023 will be that'll be for other people to decide or 2024 whenever it happens we got lucky
guys when cove had happened a lot luckier than a lot of other school districts why because of bonds
you know it was funny as that pandemic was starting
I was getting really nervous in January and
I kept telling the principles I got a bad feeling and they kept looking at me like I was nuts at one
point I asked them to raise their hand if they thought we were going to finish the school year
and they all raised their hand and then I said raise your hand if you don't think you're we're
going to finish the school year in person and I was the only one who raised my hand I just felt
bad, I was watching other countries I was watching the east coast if you remember we never let the
elementary kids bring their ipads home right before spring break we sent all the ipads home
had a bad feeling governor shut us down but at least we had the ipads to send home
round rock waited eight months before they had one-to-one devices for everyone after that
you can't do online learning if kids don't have a device we were lucky in this district
most of our families the vast majority of our families have internet and good internet
our teachers had that they had used the devices with kids before so we had an advantage that
a lot of other school districts did not have thanks to bonds we were replacing our HVAC we
weren't doing the replacing the HVAC for covid we were doing it to be more energy efficient but by
doing that we also had some of the best filtration systems in place when coveted hit bonds help you
these are some of the things that we have paid for with bonds that we didn't have to use out of our
M&O budget and then in certain cases because of the energy efficiency right have saved you money
to the tune just from the 2019 bond we're saving over 500 000 a year from our M&O budget
get that you're not paying as much electricity
you're not okay I see the heads nodding so I don't have to say much about that that is an opportunity
so you want to build on that opportunity in my opinion when you think about the next bond right
now you're spending roughly 1.2 million dollars in electric bills per year and it's going to go up
this is what parking lots in California look like
it's a possibility guys it can happen
it can happen out of a bond and then it can save you a million plus per year going forward
you want to be as efficient as you can with your buses as as efficient as you can with your
buses and all the vehicles that we have right now you know I when I was a principal and the buses
would be outside the high school and they were all just running and the fumes were coming out
forget energy efficiency there's articles out there about the asthma
issues for kids on buses right now so you might be able to get a twofer here okay if you want to just
start looking in that direction in the future um that's a big opportunity because if we can
utilize those dollars it will help us another thing that we have to be and pay attention to
and we have to pay attention to this right now because it'll affect this year's budget in the
past years because of the pandemic the state tea doesn't require legislative action gave school
districts a waiver they said you got hit in a mess because of covid and your attendance went wacko
and so they gave us a waiver on that that kept the funds flowing in the fall of this
school year our attendance rate came way back came right back to pre pre-pandemic levels we
had 96 percent of the kids in school each day and that's how they determine your funding then
January hit this year January what happened in January this year something called omicron
omicron was a mess for a lot of people airlines everybody right our attendance rate dropped to 84
it's starting to come back up now again it really is but just that drop could cost us two million
dollars this year if TEA doesn't give us the waiver and it's not just us it's the whole state
the whole state got hit with it the whole country world got hit with homie crowd it wasn't just us
so there's you know we really want to advocate with TEA to try to get that waiver through
the other thing is there'll be a legislative session starting in January of 2023
the state does the following they set a certain amount of money per kid
and then they hold it constant it's called the basic allotment so they say you're gonna
get x dollars per kid and they keep it constant typically for four to five years
got it that works for schools if you freeze everyone's salary for four to five years
which doesn't work for schools or teachers so every once in a while the state will bump up
that basic allotment which helps all schools in Texas and our district our board since I've
been here we've always every year we try to come up with our legislative priorities
they'll be working on those soon we're hoping that I would I think they already know where
they're going in their minds but I think they're going to put in please change the basic allotment
because it'll help all school districts and that would help your budget immensely
the other thing that helps your budget is EEF this is how much money that organization has
been raising now yes it was a pandemic it was tough that's the amount of money
that the community still threw our way now I'm going to change this graph a little bit
because during the 2021 school year we asked the school district asked eef for an advance
because we had we wanted to hire permanent subs we needed substitutes
and they said yes and so they took a little bit of the money that they were going to give us this
during the 20 21 22 school year that money and they shifted it over so that's what the graph
looks like it looks like it's a big drop, it isn't actually as much drop as you might think because
they had that advance does that make sense and from what I'm understanding and from what I saw
at this year's Gala it looks like they're going to have a good year this year so I will bet that when
Dr Arnett does this you're going to see a jump here I believe but I don't know but I believe
so you have this gift that a whole lot of school districts do not have
you have this gift utilize the gift in assessed evaluation you have in the district on bonds
to shift some things to become a little more efficient energy wise
utilize this group advocate with the legislature and you can change the dynamic of your budget
and if you change the dynamic of your budget you can change the dynamic of your compensation
which gets you to your goal which is attracting developing and retaining staff
makes sense at least that makes sense to me another challenge enrollment I'll keep
this fairly short but enrollment can be a challenge when enrollment drops your
ability to sustain certain programs drops so enrollment dropped across the United States
it wasn't just us it dropped everywhere by the way it wasn't people going to private
schools all over the place private school enrollment dropped as well in fact in our
district we had more kids come in from private schools than go out when you look at the numbers
but enrollment drop where'd the kids go well they didn't go to mars parents were working from home
parents were afraid and covered there was a lot of homeschooling that started happening
that wasn't happening in the past that's what the experts tell us and I believe it makes sense
this is our enrollment over time you can see that there are two
significant drops this is the dot-com
situation this is covid
okay we will never just go soaring because we don't have building going on like some districts
we're going to always be kind of relatively stable in enrollment I always show this sheet there's not
a lot here that you really need to pay attention to except maybe a couple of points one where we've
been losing enrollment is at the elementary level not so much at the high school level that's one
as prices go up in this area this is not the easiest area for someone to move into with
young children that would be my analysis of that and then the other thing I always point out is
what's the average class size elementary has stayed pretty consistent high school actually
average class size dropped a bit even though the enrollment stayed up middle school it went up
because we were trying to reduce some staff to try to keep our budget in a good place
opportunity when you think about enrollment and fluctuations, Ellen's been on the board a while,
she lived through some of this when they were having trouble with enrollment and trying to
keep their programs and their budgets stable they well actually I should move these two slides this
is I'm sorry but this don't worry about it, Claudia it's fine it's not you it's me this slide just is,
to tell you um the kids are coming back that was our enrollment in the fall over winter break our
enrollment jumped interesting over winter break this year with omicron our enrollment jumped
people said we're coming back can only home school for so long before it drives you crazy I guess
whatever it might be I'm coming back and one of the things we've utilized when we've had these
enrollment shifts that have kept us stable have been transfer students transfer students help you
a couple ways number one about nine ten percent of our kids are transfers that saves us about almost
seven million dollars in recapture payments that we don't have to pay out so that's helpful number
two it allows certain programs to survive Spanish immersion about 13 percent of the kids are
right now transfer students but that means 87 of the kids are local kids and by the way some
of these transfer numbers also include staff members whose kids go to our school district
and that is a heck of a perk that our teachers say they really like they stay here sometimes
because they want their kids to be able to go to our schools and so this does give you some benefit
both with money in transfer students but also it allows some of these special programs when
the enrollment gets a little low in one of them you can bring in some transfer
students to stabilize it but it's not just an elementary program it's the GT programs it's
the robotics programs it's the AP program your high school drops a little bit and those capstone
classes you don't get enough kids in them and you have to drop the class and you don't and
then you're dropping it for the resident students as well as the transfer students it's gone so this
allows you to remain stable and I just believe stability is a good thing in a school district so
that's a challenge that you do have a way of working it people want to get into our district
this is my second to last challenge but it's probably the most important your goal
is to prepare kids for the future period that's your main goal how do you do that
the opportunity lies in just staying focused just keep your eye on the prize keep your eye
on the goal and we've tried to do that for quite a while in this district here's the first image
I want to show you that was created well before I got here that's what we believe a graduate in our
school district should possess I have been showing this for eight years and I've never had
a parent stand up and say I don't want my kid to be one of those things I don't want my kid to be
healthy I've never heard it in a million years okay this is something we can agree on I hope
we've worked on SEL here for quite a while some people have an idea of what SEL is
this is what SEL is and this didn't come from me this is national
we've had this image for quite a while
SEL is grit, resiliency that's important folks
Angela Duckworth, the researcher, says if you're a parent and you have a choice of a child who's
going to be extremely intelligent high high high IQ or a kid with a lot of grit, go with grit
you want your kids to be have be able to have good relationship skills you
want them to have compassion to make wise healthy choices I think that's what sells
that's what that's been about it's not been about anything else that's what it's about
I hope we keep working on that you'll see a lot of those words in our mission statement
I'll focus right now though on that picture this is my happy picture
that's a beach on Maui and those are Mr Rogers shoes okay i want our kids and our staff and our
parents when they walk into our schools to feel like that it's a calm peaceful happy place okay
I want them to feel because you learn better if you feel at peace I just believe that
so look at the words here that kind of lead into that do we want our kids to have a great education
absolutely are they getting a great education absolutely let's look at some facts first of all
in the last four years we have had the highest ACT in the history of the school district and that was
last year last school year in the middle of covid we've done well on the s.a.t the highest in Westlake's
history this number by the way is a little tricky in that they changed their scoring system
so you'll see it now it's at 1300 which now is the highest but they change the scoring system
okay but we also had 51 national merit scholars one year the same year Lake Travis had one
and Highland Park ISD had 13. Our kids are doing well academically
that's why all these other groups out there have recognized that
and so covid happened right, covid happened to all the districts in
Texas there are about a thousand something school districts in Texas
these are some of the highest performing school districts in Texas I'll throw Lake
Travis in there just for kicks because they're close and I want to give a comparison but just
for kicks we'll just throw them in there so we can see how we do against them but Alamo Heights
you may know some of these school districts they are some of the highest performing school
districts in the state of Texas they all went through covid right they all took the STAAR test
ACT, SAT they all took those tests last year got it so we have the spring 2020 scores
let's see how we did against not a thousand school districts but just against these ten
is that fair let's just look at the let's just look at the top i don't care about the bottom
so and of course in english and of course at high school you have to take a test on star
our kids were in the 90s there's the rest
english two our kids were in the 90s there's the rest
biology our kids were in the 90s there's the rest
u.s history our kids were around 99 percent there's the rest
we're competing well against the highest scoring schools in Texas you don't see math the reason I
don't do math it's not just high school the math is an algebra test it's middle school
and high school let's look at math there's us 90s there's the rest yeah and there's a couple
districts here once in a while beat us one year we beat them they beat us it's just the way it
is but we're all within a couple percent of one another okay we are doing pretty darn
well if you take all of these scores from third grade all the way up and put them all in one big
package and look at them this is from the TAPR report that will be presented to the board
that's where we are there's the rest
we're doing pretty well in my opinion
so let's get off a star you know how much our you know how much our high school kids care about star
what are high school, Diane what do they care about, what tests? AP and ACT and SAT would you
agree those are the ones they care about see how we did we're going to go from 10
all the way up to number one and we're going to do the ranking by act ready in 10th place
Northwest ISD and by the way if they have multiple high schools we're going to pick their top scoring
high school in their district and only use that score got it Alamo Heights friends would
I'm just going to click through some of these let's get to the top three ready in third place
Southlake Carroll, second place Highland Park ISD and in first place by quite a jump if you think
about that look at the jump in the number it's it's amazing and by the way i ranked him by ACT
who's got the highest SAT of all of them we do
our kids are doing well academically even through the pandemic this is a year after the
pandemic started and i'm not putting up football scores we would have had pretty good there too
why because of this our kids work hard our staff works hard and our parents work hard
in terms of supporting them i believe that I do believe that even when times are tough
and that's what it looks like when we're the only school district in central Texas that
had an indoor graduation which we almost canceled three times
and that's what we want our kids to possess when they get here because that's important we want
them to be smart but we want them to have that as well does that make sense um so let's go a little
more in this mission statement it's brand new I might as well get through it um yes we want to be
smart but we wanted to care about relationships and we want them to have a sense of belonging
I don't care who you are what your religion is what your gender is I don't care, I want you to
feel welcome in our world um because relationships matter i believe they matter connections matter
every kid deserves a champion every kid deserves a champion everyone wants to be treated well
and when we talk about dei this is what this district is talking about this is
from our materials the stuff you're going to see our students are going to live in a diverse world
they are we've had kids for years who've come back way back have come back and said the rest of
the world doesn't look like Westlake it doesn't our kids are going to be leaders in this world
they need to be ready for that world they want to be treated fairly no matter who they are
they want to be treated fairly I'm meeting with some parents this afternoon who are Jewish
and they're just have some concerns and we have to
we have to respect everyone no matter what their religion is i just believe we do um
they want to have a sense of belonging they want to feel included and here I'm going to go back
to a woman who they introduced to me when I first got to Westlake Toody Byrd who was a
counselor here for years started like in 1970 I think a year after the high school started and
she talked about what has been important in this district for decades this is right when she was
leaving quite a just before her death actually a couple years before her death
she said the following to the staff.
Toody Byrd: But we had never had a special ed department and suddenly one year
we got 10 little girls with down syndrome and I thought they got to have somebody
pick them up and carry them along that the other school
and the kids here will recognize and accept them because this group did so, guess who adopted
the little girls? The football team. They adopted them, they saved special places for them to sit
during the PEP rallies. When they came time for the homecoming they bought them mums.
They loved those little girls and I think the little girls got so much from them and so did
the boys and so did everybody in school because they were completely accepted. I think that's one
of the honors of this school.
Tom Leonard: In the last couple years Best Buddies to this school district okay
we're doing everything we can do to try to make a kid feel included no matter who they are
whether they're a genius whether they're average whether they whoever they are whatever their
race is they need to feel that they belong it really is these are words that are right off
some of the materials we've been putting out on what our approach is
I don't have any problems with any of those words
I really do not. Those words are here watch this
compassion, empathy, relationship right look at those words look at the mission statement
compassion, empathy, relationships it's all comes together because that's the world our kids are
going to be facing it's going to be coming at them fast the clouds are going to be beautiful
at times they're going to be ugly at times they're going to have as the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu say
they're going to have some tough times ahead we want to be that oasis for them we really do
and we want them to be prepared and we want them to be resilient no matter what hits them we want
them to be resilient this is from research Richard Davidson. If you want a kid to be
resilient or an adult to be resilient the words in white are what you want to instill in them
it's not me this is somebody else is smarter than me came up with this okay that's what we
want them and again see the words gratitude, empathy, inclusion, good communication skills
respectful communication skills um that's all in that all of those words in some way or another
are hidden in there one place or another um that's what you want in this district I believe that's
what their job is as the elected representatives to keep the focus keep your eye on the ball and
we do a summit every year we just finished it we review our priorities the board changes them adds
new takes some away tweaks some every year we do that because we want to keep our eye
focused this is something I brought in I don't know about six years ago, Ellen, maybe so every
year we do that that gives the superintendent direction and you are going to have a transition
thank goodness for me and I know you want to keep things stable I do believe you want
to keep things stable I don't understand why anyone would want chaos in a transition
since march 2020 we have had an interesting time it we've seen things we have never seen in this
country maybe since 1918 but even some things we didn't even see then um read that
that's what's happened in the last two years that's a lot that is a lot I have to unfortunately
keep changing the number of the people who've died um that's my mom and one of her first classrooms
she gave me a lot of messages but one I haven't forgotten and that's me by the way with hair
that was one of her messages leave the garden a little bit better than you found it
leave your bedroom a little cleaner than you found it just little little stupid things like
that that just always resonated I believe she stole it from something from Emerson but that's
okay she's my mom she can steal from wherever she wants to steal okay she got no money for it okay
but she was a teacher and she believed that I believe that
I'm not in this picture but you know those kids wound up doing a lot for the world the
kids that we have now are going to do a lot for the world we've got to keep things good for them
so you have an opportunity in your transition and I am thrilled
I didn't want a new superintendent to start with covid winter break between the 19-20 school
year I was in Antarctica I decided that that year was going to be my last year that's it
done this for 40 years that was enough done saw covid coming did not like the look of it
did not like the look of somebody starting new in the middle of covid so I delayed that about a year
or so ago I said to the board this is going to be my last year last summer I thought we're done
with covid I didn't even know what omicron was and I said this may be my last year somebody's
going to be able to start new it's going to be clean which will be good and you need somebody
good and I want to give you time to find somebody good I had an idea who somebody good was because
I worked with him when I was in Illinois I hired him from New York and brought him to Illinois and
then when I was in Texas after I was here a couple of years I texted him and said I
have an opening you want to come to Texas and he said yes he's a good person he's a good person
I know he believes in the same types of things that the board believes in
and I know he's going to work damn hard I just know he will so that's a good thing
it will not be an easy job for our teachers or for him period it's a tough job
Steve Jobs had a statement that if if you want to be liked don't be a leader sell ice cream
everyone likes the guy selling ice cream sometimes it's tough but educators in this
district in my opinion are heroes educators anywhere are heroes let's keep that in our mind
there's nothing wrong with kindness
yes you want your kids to be smart you want when you're looking for a partner in life you want
them to be smart but you also want them to have empathy compassion and care about relationships
you can be both being kind does not mean being weak a football player can knock a kid down
when the play's over help them up there's nothing wrong with that nothing wrong with that
those are our staff at convocation the green umbrella was representing that we
need to stay resilient we need to stay resilient
your kids are going to have great lives they're going to be
successful but they're also going to have failures
and when they have failures they need to get up and keep going they need the grit um so
your budgets and about the best shape it's been in a while not great best shape it's been in a while
your test scores are darn high and your athletics your football team are holding their own
and the arts and music we're doing well I'm off right now to Cedar Creek elementary to play
saxophone with some kids and the arts were doing well you have a great opportunity and i thank you
and I hope you enjoyed the State of the District, that's it.