Ector County ISD trustees reached consensus to wait about a month to begin the process of filling the District 7 spot formerly held by Nelson Minyard.
During a workshop Tuesday, Superintendent Scott Muri said redistricting is going on, so the district will have more information on board districts at the end of February or early March.
All the board members were in attendance and Vice President Steve Brown attended virtually.
Muri said it would be a disservice to appoint someone and then have the district change.
Mike Atkins, attorney for the district, said the district has 180 days to fill the spot.
An Austin attorney was hired to help all the entities with the redistricting process.
Minyard had been on the board since 2013 and his current term expires in 2025.
Atkins previously said that anyone that is appointed will serve until the next election cycle, which would be May 2023. If that person chose to run, or anyone else chose to run, they would fill a term from 2023-2024.
The board also heard from Darrell Pearson of PBK architects and engineers on options to reduce the amount of a proposed bond.
The recommendations of the bond committee were to build a new comprehensive high school ($183 million), a career and technical education center ($70 million); technology upgrades ($15 million); and facility life cycle repairs.
Also, Priority 1 lifecycle needs, $52.8 million; and priority 2 lifecycle needs $122.3 million.
The committee also recommended keeping the bond under $400 million and having the election in May.
The board recap said Priority 1 and Priority 2 are definitions from the firm evaluating the conditions of all facilities.
Priority 1 are projects that should be addressed immediately in the next one to two years.
Priority 2 are projects that should be addressed in the next three to five years. With district leaders and architect, Trustees reviewed three different options for reducing the cost of the life-cycle needs and the overall cost of the bond package.
Option 1 would remove athletic items, Frost/Greenhouse and miscellaneous paving and sidewalk items, roofing HVAC, electrical, plumbing in ancillary facilities; bond cost would be reduced to $420.4 million.
Option 2 is Option 1 plus removal of all Priority 2 scopes of work except mechanical, electrical and plumbing; things like roofing/waterproofing, paving, signage; bond cost would be reduced to $398.2 million.
Option 3 is Options 1 and 2 plus removal of Priority 1 architectural and civil items like paving repairs, and millwork plus all Priority 2 scopes of work in Option 2 above; bond cost would be reduced to $397.6 million, the recap said.
The board seemed to be leaning toward option 2, which was $398 million.
Option 3 would be $397 million and Option 1 would be $420 million.
From a process perspective, Muri said, the board would have to call an election by Feb. 18 to have the election in May.
The next board meeting is Feb. 15.
Muri said he and his team will look back and see if there are additional adjustments they can make.
He said they don’t want to make “any adjustments that could cause harm,” but it becomes difficult when you try to decide what to cut because the district has older buildings that need repair.
On a separate item, the board got a quarterly update on the progress of ECISD’s strategic plan.
The board recap said the report started with an update on two of the Indicators of Success that are tracked regularly.
The first, Attendance Rate, is down (90.7%) which is attributable to the high number of COVID absences to start this spring semester. Positive cases have been declining rapidly over the past two weeks and that is good news. The District’s attendance goal for this school year is 94%.
Kindergarten readiness is a key factor in a student’s academic success, and that number is up considerably (13 percentage points), rising from 33% meeting kindergarten-ready thresholds in October 2020 to 46% meeting those thresholds in October 2021.
The 46% hitting kindergarten readiness standards also exceeds the district’s goal for the 2021-22 school year, the recap said.
In 2020-21, ECISD changed 4-year-old prekindergarten from half-day to full-day and, this year, greatly expanded 3-year-old prekindergarten to include many more children, the recap said.
This presentation also highlighted the implementation of equity-based funding which provides more dollars to schools with higher percentages of economically disadvantaged, special education and bilingual students; use of learning management systems, Schoology for grades 3-12 and Seesaw for grades prekindergarten through 2, for providing online access to assignments, activities, and discussions; and high-impact tutoring which shows strong evidence of being one of the most effective ways to increase learning gains for students, the recap said.
The recap said the district has designated $6 million in federal ESSER funding this year to support approximately 6,000 students with weekly virtual tutors who personalize their learning and help them recover the COVID learning losses.
In his opening comments, Superintendent Dr. Scott Muri congratulated the Permian High School football team for being named a state finalist for the National High School Academic Excellence award sponsored by the National Football Foundation. He visited the team earlier in the afternoon to congratulate the players, coaches, and teachers on this incredible accomplishment.
In public comment, David Munger, a counselor from Odessa High School, offered five observations he feels are reasons why smaller high school campuses are better for student success than the large, comprehensive campuses that have been traditional to ECISD.
