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A regular EISD school board meeting was held Wed. Feb. 25 and Wed. March 31.  A new breed of meeting a “Board Study Session” was held Wed. March 24^th.  Some of you have asked why there was no Feb. update – the reason being that budget issues consumed about 45 secs. of that Board meeting.  I will first give a short summary of the fundamental changes that have occurred in the management of EISD and the budget process.  Then I will provide a short summary of the substance of where we are at.  Finally I’ll give some details on various items of interest.

 

The New Management

 

As I noted in January’s report the new Superintendent, Nola Wellman, was quickly taking charge.  She showed her first impact in January when she stated that she was taking off all agendas the discussions on the merits of closing an elementary school this year.  [I sense that she will revisit this issue next year when she has more time to evaluate the matter – I did not take this to mean that she has an opinion on the substance of the matter – just that she doesn’t want to discuss the merits as her arrival late in the year will not allow her time to make a decision, thus, really rendering moot the need to start at this time a discussion of the merits of the idea]

 

Supt. Wellman’s impact on governance of the district can be seen by the length of the school board meetings.  In Feb. and March both meetings ended at 9PM (starting at 7:30PM).  Since Sept. 2002 the shortest regular meeting that I can remember lasted past 11PM.  It seems clear that the EISD administration is governing the district now and not the Board.  Gone are the round and round discussions about policy, procedures, budget items, building plans etc.  It appears to be a combination of a firm hand at the helm of the district and the board’s willingness / confidence to let Supt. Wellman run things.  At least for now it looks like any micro-management by the Board is a thing of the past.

 

As a further indication of these changes, the old Board structure of committees (Finance, Facilities, Program, etc.) is also gone.  In the past, separate Board committee meetings were held during the month to discuss in even more detail the various areas within each committee’s scope.  This has been replaced by a full Board “Study Session.”  The format of the study sessions appears to be that several topics will be selected each month and the Administration will present to the Board a status of the various matters.  Again, this appears to be the Administration informing the Board of what is going on as opposed to the Board deciding all issues.

 

[In my opinion it seems clear that the EISD Administration will be calling the shots.  The impact of this will be that there will be less discussion in public of the various issues because Board debate was generally required by law to be in a public forum.  Though some may not like this, the end result is that the professional educators that we hire will be making most of the decisions.  We may not like all of the decisions and we may not feel that we have as much input as before, however, with regard to decisions that I may disagree with I think I will feel more comfortable if the decision was made by the professional staff]

 

 

So What Is Going On

 

Supt. Wellman has a Budget development calendar in place.  Big ticket items that seem to be baseline assumptions that the administration is working from are that there will be a need of about $2.47 million in budget savings (i.e. cuts or more revenue from somewhere) and about $1.5 million in fund balance available for use.  This compares with the 2003-04 budget which needed $8 million in cuts and $3 million in fund balance.

 

Currently each school is preparing a staffing plan based on “instructional ratios.”  This means that the total staff – teachers, teacher aids, counselor, nurse, secretaries, etc. (excluding some areas such as special ed) to student ratio is set for each level (elementary, middle school and high school).  I can’t remember the numbers but it was something like 14.5:1 at elementary; 15:1 at middle school and 16:1 at high school.  Each campus will then submit recommendations as how to best allocate the staff resources amongst the various tasks for each campus.  These recommendations I believe are suppose to be reported by the Administration by April.  I have heard that this could mean about 45-50 position cuts district wide.  For example, at Forest Trail I have heard projections that this could be upward to 3 positions depending upon the enrollment and transfer student numbers.

 

The last calendar I saw indicated that campus staffing plans would be finalize in April along with proposed salary schedules and a review of expense/revenue projections.  Preliminary tax appraisal data is to be received in May and revised revenue and expense estimates made at that time.  Budget workshops and final revisions would then carry into June.

 

 

Various Details

 

From the Board Study Session:

 

The district now has a permanent Asst. Supt. of Business Affairs (finance), Susan P_____, unfortunately I did not copy down her last name.   Tom Zimmerer who filled that role on an interim basis came back for this meeting to help with the transition to Susan.  In his typical self, Tom cut to the chase on some of the vagaries of the Robin Hood rules by noting about our esteemed legislators – “They were all smoking dope when they set up the Robin Hood rules.”

 

Next year’s tax rate will drop about 10-11 cents due to a drop in the portion of the tax for the bond debt.  

 

The Eanes Education Foundation (EEF) will organize a Keep Eanes Exemplary campaign seeking cash donations taking over the campaign that the School Board organized last year that raised about $350,000.

 

Approximately 130 new transfer students (students not in the program this year) have applied already for next year.

 

Topics for the April Study Session include middle school schedules, bond project updates, security needs at the school campuses, and a potential survey of some form to get feedback from within the district.

  

From the March Regular Board Meeting:

 

A revenue generation task force is being proposed to consist of a variety of citizens to analyze revenue enhancement ideas.

 

Latin in the middle schools:  It was stated that the number of students that requested Latin will drive whether it is kept at each school. The big question being Latin at 7^th grade.  Supt. Wellman stated that the District can not afford to have exceeding small classes. [I have heard at other meetings that the number of students that signed up at West Ridge will allow for a 7^th grade class but that only 7 kids signed up for 7^th grade class at Hill Country so it will not be offered there – anyone out there that is a Hill Country parent ought to check into this because I have heard from some Hill Country parents that the parents were not aware that Latin was available as a choice]

 

Supt. Wellman said that when the administrators propose their staffing projections and budgetary cuts, there will be an opportunity for the public to comment.  Board member Ellen Balthazar noted that last year a good deal of the budge process was done by the Board and that this year the process is being driven by the administration and individual Campus Leadership Teams.

 

From The Feb. Regular Board Meeting

 

A presentation of was made regarding the district transfer policy.  It was noted that generally when evaluating a transfer student EISD can only consider a student’s attendance and disciplinary records and the space availability at a particular school/ program.  It was noted that a survey of the relatively small number of transfers in 2003-03 showed slightly lower TAKS scores, better attendance and less discipline referrals.  It was noted that the number of students in the program at that time made the numbers almost statistically insignificant.  The larger numbers from 2003-04 should give more data.

 

Finally, a note to the English majors out there – I am not one of you.  In addition, I do occasionally hit “send” before “spell-check”