December 12, 2016
Belton ISD Receives "Clean" Audit Report

At this month's meeting, trustees received the independent audit report for the 2015-2016 school year. The report included an unmodified opinion, which means that the auditor had no reservations about the district's financial statements. The audit also found no material weaknesses, no significant deficiencies and no noncompliance issues.

In 2015-2016, Belton ISD saw an 8 percent increase in revenue, which was largely the result of the district's fast growing student enrollment and increased property values. However, district officials also pointed out that the state's share of funding for public education has been declining over the past decade.

Belton ISD's expenditures totaled $109.7 million for 2015-2016. For every dollar that the district spent, 57 cents went to teachers and instructional materials and support; 10 cents to principals, counselors, nurses and security guards; nine cents to maintaining and operating facilities; five cents to debt service; five cents to child nutrition; four cents to transportation; three cents to extra-curricular activities; three cents to general administration; three cents to data processing; and one cent to security and monitoring services.
2016 National School Bus Safety Poster Contest

Shivangi Ojha, a sixth grader from Lake Belton Middle School, placed second in her division of the 2016 National School Bus Safety Week Poster Contest. Ojha previously won her division of the national contest in 2014 and 2012. At the state contest earlier this year, Ojha won both her division and the contest's overall prize. This is the fifth consecutive year that Ojha has won first place in her division of the state contest.
Trustees Continue Work on Roadmap to BISD 2025

As a result of fast growth, Belton ISD's elementary and middle schools are projected to be at or near capacity in 2019 and high schools in 2021. To address the need for additional capacity through 2025, the school board has adopted the Roadmap to BISD 2025. It calls for building a new elementary school to open in 2019 and a new comprehensive high school to open in 2020 or 2021. It would also repurpose Bhs9, which is currently part of the Belton High School campus, to serve as a middle school again.

The district currently owns one site that is large enough to accommodate a high school campus. That property is located behind High Point Elementary School near the intersection of FM 317 and FM 2483. While the location of the proposed high school is known, the size of the school has not been decided.

Architects from O'Connell Robertson presented four programming options for a new high school, which ranged in size from 1,600 students to 2,500 students. The estimated cost of those options ranged from $76.2 million to $126 million.

The architects discussed potential cost savings through the selection of the materials and systems used in the school as well as by adjusting the timeline for the project to hold a bond election in May 2017 and/or to open the new high school in 2020. Building sooner would minimize inflation costs, and an earlier bond election could help the district qualify for additional financial assistance from the state.

The school board will hold a workshop on Jan. 11 to discuss building a new elementary school and a new high school. At their meeting on Jan. 23, trustees will likely vote on a preliminary design direction for the new high school including the size of the building.

Association for Career and Technical Education's CTE Month 2017 Video Contest

Belton High School students Sereina Castor and Brayden Smith won second place in the Association for Career and Technical Education's (ACTE) CTE Month 2017 Public Service Announcement contest. Their video was shown to attendees at ACTE's CareerTech VISION conference in Las Vegas and will be online at www.acteonline.org through next summer.
Superintendent's Report

New State Rating System for Schools and School Districts
In 2015, the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring the commissioner of education to assign a letter grade of A-F to each district and campus starting with the 2017-2018 school year. Earlier this month, the Texas Education Agency announced the criteria that will be used to determine those letter grades.

Superintendent Susan Kincannon told trustees that exactly how those criteria will be calculated is unknown but that three of the five criteria will rely exclusively on STAAR test scores. She described that as "just more of the same."

Kincannon continued, "This system is overly dependent on standardized testing and completely fails to capture what is actually happening in our schools. These ratings are a wholly incomplete measure of our students' success. For the most part, they will only capture how our students performed on one test, on one day.

"Belton ISD has a more holistic definition of student success. Our definition includes STAAR test scores, dual credit and Advanced Placement courses, and career and technical education programs but also what students achieve in academic competitions, our athletics program, our fine arts program, in service to our community, and their daily work.

"When the A-F ratings are released, I hope that you'll join me in looking at them in this context: They are just one data point, and looking only at the A-F ratings gives you an incomplete picture of any campus or school district."

District of Innovation
Kincannon also updated school board members on the process of becoming a District of Innovation. That designation was created during the legislature¹s last session to allow school districts to receive some (but not all) of the same exemptions from the Texas Education Code that charter schools receive.

Earlier this year, the school board appointed a committee of teachers, administrators and parents to explore the designation. The committee has proposed a plan that would address three major areas of the Texas Education Code: teacher certification, minimum attendance for class credit or final grade, and first day of instruction.

If adopted, the plan would allow the district to hire individuals without a teaching certification and/or bachelor¹s degree to teach classes in law enforcement, health science, culinary arts, construction trades and automotive technology. It would also support options for online dual credit courses and for courses that blend online learning with classroom instruction by exempting those from the requirement that students must be in attendance for at least 90 percent of the days that a class is offered. Finally, it would include an exemption from the requirement that instruction begin no earlier than the fourth Monday in August, so the district could adopt a calendar that ends before the start of summer sessions at area colleges and still allow students to be off with their families for federal holidays.

The school board discussed the plan this month and will hold a public hearing on the plan in January. They will then vote on adopting the plan in February.
For more photos of students and employees who were recognized at this month's board meeting, please  visit Belton ISD's Facebook page.