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It looks like we may have some common ground.
First, can we agree that when it comes to students who participate in on-campus extra-curricular activities that they be required to participate in school on-campus for the 2021-2022 school year for the obvious reasons Trustee Vessa mentioned?
Second, I want to underscore that there is currently no choice between virtual school and on-campus school. Specifically, regarding the middle and high school on-campus experience: on-campus, face to face instruction is currently not available to our students. The choices are virtual learning at home or virtual learning at school. This is not choice. In both cases, students are required to look at a computer screen all day and cannot participate in labs or other proven hands-on pedagogy methods in their classes. Furthermore, being on campus is an arduous, unpleasant experience for these students. Can we all agree that this has got to change and we must provide the real choice of on-campus, face to face education as an option for our students? And can we agree to provide guidance to the administration on a timeline for this?
I really appreciate the dialogue here.
Thank you so much Trustee Harrison for adding your comments here. This helps me look at this differently and provides hope that a direct connection to meeting the needs of students could come from having a RRISD rep on the Chamber BoD. I am grateful that you are willing to take this on and have a firm understanding of where the opportunities are. I support you as our rep on the Chamber for 2021 and am hopeful that a year from now or so, you can brief us on progress that was made and share your thoughts and observations.
I agree Trustee Xiao. Perhaps the answer here is to decline to appoint someone to the RR Chamber Board for 2021 and see how it goes. In Jan 2022, if a negative impact on RRISD students can be demonstrated as a result of this, I would be amenable to considering appointing someone at that time.
Thank you for adding your thoughts to this post Trustee Vessa. You stated “it will likely be thousands” of students who would leave for Texas on-line public school if RRISD ends virtual learning in May 2021. I don’t want to misunderstand you so please clarify if this is what you meant. I ask because this is a bold statement and I haven’t been presented with any data (survey or otherwise) that suggests this is the case. Do you have information that hasn’t been shared with me?
What I do know is that 3,000+ (mostly K-5) students fled RRISD back in August 2020 and haven’t returned as of Jan 2021. Anecdotally I have heard from several parents of these students who reported leaving in search of on-campus, face to face school (RRISD only offered virtual learning for the first several weeks of the 2020-2021 school year) for their children or on-line learning vendors who have a proven track record of success in the highly technical on-line learning delivery model.
Please take a look at a CNN article that was posted on 11 Jan 2021 titled “How Miami-Dade Opened All Its Public Schools – and Kept Them Open”. Miami-Dade is the fourth largest school district in the US with 350,000+ students. Their superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, stated in the article, “There is no substitute (for in-person school), regardless of how great the technology may be. You cannot Zoom effectively into a full understanding, a full level of engagement for students.”
*Message board rules prevent me from linking to the story here.Parents plead with me via e-mail, in public comments at our board meetings, and when I am running errands at the post office and the local library to end virtual learning. Many high school students chose to continue virtual learning not out of fear of the coronavirus, but because it is appealing to sleep in, watch videos and play games, participate in academic dishonesty and a number of other unhealthy, unproductive and damaging reasons.
In defense of these students, I have to admit that the on-campus experience for them is very undesirable with so few of their peers on campus, having to wear a mask all day, assigned seating at lunch and accepting the academic disadvantage of competing with “virtual learners” at home who can cheat so easily. Our students deserve so much better. I hope that meaningful improvements are made to the on-campus experience for the few high school students we have on campus in this Spring 2021 semester.
I hope that more trustees will join me in recognizing that the time to end virtual learning in RRISD is May 2021. Over 100 Texas ISD’s have already ended (starting in Oct 2020) virtual learning (except for medically fragile students with physician documentation). In their announcements to their communities, they all provide the same explanation. They cite damage to the mental health of students and significant learning loss. On-line learning requires expertise, attention, focus and resources. RRISD does not have the resources to provide both world class in-person education and world class virtual school. Continuing to do both past May 2021 will only erode the thing that has attracted families to our community for a long time: top tier in-person education.
Thank you VP Vessa for your thoughts on an audit and the update from Comptroller Hegar.
I have found that when we find ourselves in the middle of storms (personal or professional), it’s helpful…imperative actually, to know where you are first. We have to know where we are in order to know where we’re going. I get lots of questions from community members, staff members and parents for which I have no answers regarding where our money is going. I refer them to staff and sometimes they get answers, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they are reluctant to ask district admin questions about money out of fear that their jobs or the reputation of their children would be at risk. As a trustee, I should know more than I do about where the money in RRISD (in general) is going.
We are between superintendents which presents a tremendous opportunity to learn where the opportunities to eliminate redundancy are, where the waste is and to ask ourselves if all of the spending we’ve inherited is consistent with the values of this board today. Resources are finite and I prioritize our dollars going to our classrooms to meet the needs of students. It’s healthy for large organizations to undergo scrutiny from time to time to demonstrate transparency to stakeholders and to make adjustments, ensuring the success of the mission.
Thank you Pres Weir for addressing my concerns here. It is appreciated.
It sounds as though you are comfortable and it’s not unusual for a non-board officer to sign diplomas. Can you clarify if this trustee would only sign their own student’s diploma or the diploma of all 2021 RRISD graduates? I have full confidence in Trustee Harrison as our elected Secretary and as long as this in no way undermines her role therein, I am amenable to this.
I am glad to hear that you believe staff will be prepared to answer our questions on item D3 (Possible Incentive Payments). As a trustee, it is far more helpful for me to understand the cost of proposals in advance of our meetings, rather than learning that in the course of our meetings. My request going forward is to provide this kind of information (cost of proposals) in advance as we plan future agenda items.
And I appreciate your perspective (and Trustee Xiao’s who has contributed on this thread as well) on Item D5. I eagerly await our LSG training. I will not be supportive of “virtual learning” in RRISD after May 2021. I have explained why. I don’t see any end in sight to the harm coming to our students or the reversal of the loss of 3k students, until we are all back on campus starting in Aug 2021. The number of times a school counselor (and we have many who are fantastic) meets with a student doesn’t matter if that student is struggling with the things I talk about over and over again. For me, it doesn’t matter what TEA decides regarding the funding of “virtual learning” in ISD’s across the state. I believe that the vast majority of RRISD parents (desperately) want their children back on the campuses our community has invested in for a long time with meaningful access to the best teachers in the state of Texas. Also, a likely unintended consequence of pressing forward with a “virtual learning” investment in perpetuity will be a community that grows skeptical of the construction of new schools, expansion of schools and other RRISD facilities for students who learn at home. Our students depend on the community trusting and supporting that their tax dollars are spent wisely. That support and trust rises and falls on their observations of our decisions at the top.
In August the vaccine will have been out for 9 mos. As of 8 Jan 2021, Dr Presley reported (via e-mail to me since I asked him for the data) that 179 of our 269 employees (age 65+) have received the Covid-19 vaccine. The remaining 90 employees in this age group will be getting the vaccine this week or have decided not to get it or have gotten it through other means. I see on RRISD social media that school nurses across the district have been vaccinated. Everyday that goes by more and more RRISD employees (who want it) will be vaccinated. This is a meaningful turning point in this pandemic.
Lastly, I have an error in the fourth paragraph of my original post. I wrote: “To that end, many of our students were not prospering academically prior to March 2021…” I want to correct “March 2021” to “March 2020.”
Thank you Trustee Bone for being in favor of “an audit of the expenses related to the development of the Police Department” as well as Trustee Xiao. I am in agreement 100%. I look forward to a productive discussion on different types of audits and deciding on a path as a board.
In addition, I want to add that I also declined to attend the 8 Jan 2020 meetings of 2-3 trustees. I do not believe that the goal of these meetings was to usurp the Open Meetings Act nor do I believe a walking quorum would result. My concern is limited to what I believe an objective observer might assume.
Thanks Amy and Cory. I am open to a discussion and an opportunity to learn more about a forensic audit as well as the performance and/or efficiency audits mentioned. I appreciate Cory’s addition of efficiencies that were brought to the PIB meeting in Feb 2020. I hope those findings have been acted upon. These kind of efficiencies (light bulb types, urinal types, how best to dry ones hands) are not the kind I am seeking in an audit. I seek to look at operations, expense reports, staffing, pay rates, overhead costs, consultant expenditures and outside professional development investments of both time of staff (days away from the classroom) and expenditures of recourses. We also need scrutiny of legal fees…the number of attorneys that have been paid retainers and the dollars paid for what services. What is the scale and ROI of these expenditures?
I am singularly focused on meeting the needs of students while respecting taxpayer dollars. I need scrutiny and clarity on where our money is going as we plan for the next budget with declining enrollment and a $4.6B deficit the 87th Legislature will be facing in just a few days.I am open to having a conversation about the term “forensic” as a board and discussing whether that is the right type of audit that we need. Can we have that discussion at the 14 Jan 2021 or 21 Jan 2021 board meeting? I am open minded and would like to hear from and collaborate with my colleagues on this.
At this point I know for sure what I don’t want. I don’t want the kinds of audits that are already part of RRISD’s processes that suggest the status quo is sufficient and working well with no meaningful recommended changes year after year. I don’t want an audit that merely compares our operations to other ISD’s operations. I have real concerns about the upcoming budget because of our declining enrollment and the state of TX starting the 87th legislative session $4.6B in the red. We have a duty to truly scrutinize where and how our money is being spent because we may be looking at having to make some hard decisions in short order.
As an example, I am regularly asked to explain the number of highly compensated employees that work in central administration and defend their salaries. Right now I can’t make sense of these expenditures of so many individuals, who don’t educate any students, earning twice as much (or more) than our teachers. I need more scrutiny on this, and the auditor needs to not just compare our org chart structure to other school districts who may also be top heavy. If all of these administrative positions are truly needed to properly ensure the education of RRISD students, a meaningful audit will reveal that.
Another example: the McNeil High School construction debacle. Bond 2014 passed in May 2014 with millions of dollars approved by voters for a much needed upgrade and expansion of McNeil High School. It’s now 2021 and the work is still not done. I was present at the 21 Jun 2018 BoT meeting (seated in the audience) when an “auditor briefed” the BoT on this project. Lots of “shoulda’s and woulda’s” were offered as well as a recommendation to use something more meaningful than excel spreadsheets to manage the project. No one was named as accountable, the construction firm was not criticized, RRISD leadership was never mentioned. This wasn’t acceptable to me in Jun 2018 as a taxpayer and it’s not acceptable to me in Jan 2021 as a trustee. The last media article I read on this topic cited $14M in cost overruns. Busted timelines and budgets are unacceptable to me. The $14M in cost overruns on that project is money that will never go to another RRISD school expansion that could remove portables from their campus or address valid needs on many other campuses. It’s waste and as a citizen, taxpayer and now trustee, I have no knowledge that accountability was ever brought to bear. It boggles the mind. I don’t want another audit that says our construction projects and expenditures are on the up and up after what I have witnessed for a long time. I want meaningful scrutiny.
Thank you Pres Weir for letting me know that despite the talk of an efficiency committee that would identify areas of duplication, waste and inefficiency, no such data or information has even been brought to the board of trustees.
Finally, I look forward to the resumption of the much needed Bond Oversight Committee as I have called for that multiple times. Hundreds of millions of dollars are on the table for projects. Having citizens on this committee who are truly empowered as a body to do site visits, ask questions, get access to information and be able to communicate officially with the BoT will go a long way in re-building trust in RRISD.
Excellent work Pres Weir. Thank you. I do want to see the continuation of the virtual option for public speakers once we are back to being able to have members of the public present at our meetings in person. Over these past few months many speakers during public comments have articulated the reasons why this makes sense very well. So I am completely supportive of this. To your last question about speaking order, I am inclined to have those who are physically present speak first so that they can get home or to work or another location if they desire to leave after their comments. Speakers who want to speak virtually would typically already be at home, work or a location where they are needed. This is my initial thought but I am open to other viewpoints.
Thank you Trustees Vessa & Harrison for posting on this. I appreciate your thoughts.
According to the data I have seen, schools are one of the safest places for all people and especially students (safe from Covid as well as significant mental and physical health concerns) during this pandemic. In addition, RRISD has a responsibility to educate our students with the resources (top-tier human capital & world class facilities) our community has come to expect and invested in for many years. Though we certainly have some students who enjoy and are doing well in the virtual learning environment, for many of our students, virtual learning brings much harm including significant learning loss and a negative impact on their mental health. These are severe and long-term consequences that I take very seriously. Therefore, I continue to support in-person, face to face education as an option for all RRISD students.
It’s my understanding that RRISD extracurricular activities (including multiple contact sports) have been conducted regularly throughout the winter break since it began on 18 Dec 2020. This includes games, scrimmages and practices. The data we have been presented in Nov and Dec 2020 BoT meetings shows that the majority of Covid transmissions in our schools come from these activities. This might be an area for modification to consider if curbing Covid transmission is the goal.
Furthermore, if there is anything I can do to ensure or advocate further that all RRISD staff has the option to receive the Covid vaccine ASAP, I stand ready to help in any way I can.Thank you Dr Bone for following up with action after last weeks discussion on the priorities of each trustee. I support what you are asking for here and look forward (as I said from the dias in the 10 Dec 2020 meeting) to providing our administration with the guidance they deserve. The reading and math college readiness data (since the onset of virtual learning) that will be presented tonight is sobering and worrisome. And as I’ve said multiple times, I want the downward trajectory of the mental health of our students reversed. What you have stated here directly addresses both of these things. It’s time for the BoT to go on the record as to where we stand as a body corporate on this. Kudos to RRISD staff for working hard to provide the BoT with data that is regularly requested and answering many, many questions for months in meeting after meeting. Your efforts reflect great credit upon you as individuals and RRISD as a whole.
Thank you Cory I am with you! Count me as a YES for these 3 only. And thanks for taking the lead on this.
I clarified with Dr Presley that I am just inquiring about EE’s that were previously not on contract but were put on contract in 2019 by the BoT. These would be only central admin staff, not teachers.
