The Board of Trustees for FISD gathered on Sept. 16 for their monthly meeting. The agenda had multiple acts to be considered and the hearing of a public comment. The first activity on the agenda was the adoption of the 2024-2025 District Improvement Plan. The plan was explained to the room by Kimberly Smith, Chief Finance and Strategy officer.

“Frisco ISD is committed to ongoing reflection and review of our ongoing district practices to better serve our students, staff and community,” Smith said. “In the spirit of continuous improvement, we have replaced the idea of a long-term strategic plan with the framework for ongoing change that we call Dynamic Organization Strategy.”

The plan is required in the Texas education code, but FISD says that they connect it with the “strategic planning process and future-ready framework.” The plan has four goals it wishes to accomplish that follow the 2024-2025 Board Priorities. Smith explained how they will be tracked and what strategies are going to take place. The goals are as follows:

1: “Staff, students and FISD community will develop a shared understanding of our culture of experience and the unique experiences available to students.”

2: “District and campus leaders will develop a systematic approach to ensure the FISD student opportunity model evolves to meet the needs of the school community.”

3: “District and campus leaders will create and refine systems of support to improve the overall learning experience through differentiation and personalization.” 

4: ‘Staff, students, and the Frisco ISD community will consistently respect one another and hold each other accountable to create positive learning environments.”

Each goal has an action team that is made up from the “pantry,” – a group of 70 office staff and district leaders.

“Those teams are cross-functional, meaning there is representation from every district department working on every single goal,” Smith said. “It is very important to us that we all have ownership in these goals.”   

After the presentation, the board did not have any questions and voted unanimously to pass the plan. 

Board Trustee Mark Hill, began the public comment section. Participants needed to submit a form prior to the beginning of the open meeting. It was reiterated that comments should be made to the board of trustees, not to other people attending. This section began with stakeholder testimonies.

Paul Jasson, an FISD resident, was the only speaker of the night. He brought up an issue regarding the powerpoint at the board meeting. 

“In the last meeting I brought up to the attention that the powerpoint slides were not large enough to be read and a number of people commented to me afterwards that they also agreed with me that it can’t be read,” Jasson said. “So I’m just kinda wondering if there was some kinda plan for that, and the answer I got, which wasn’t from the board, the answer I got was ‘hey if you can’t read it sit down in front’ so I did.”

Jasson felt he still couldn’t see once he moved to sit at the front of the room.

“Then I began to wonder ‘is it not the purpose for us to be able to read,’” Jasson said.  “Or do you want us to actually be able to read what’s on the screen? If that’s the case, what can be done so we can read it?”

The board said they would get back to him on a solution to the issue. 

They next moved on to a few more considerations and acts of minutes from different meetings. The board voted to pass the 2024-2025 superintendent goals. 

The goals included:

• reevaluating the district-wide test policy 
• adding or planning new programs for students based on need 
• using feedback from campus staff, students, and community to improve coordination for older campuses 
• expanding recruitment for colleges or universities 
• analyzing data done by district leaders to form a balanced budget 
• prioritizing school safety 
• using workshops to address major issues
• collecting data across stakeholders to improve admin to campus responses to major district issues and to increase communication of student success outside of campus 

This was passed unanimously. They did the same for the 2024-2025 Board of Trustees goals.

Then, they again unanimously passed the act to allow for recommended members to be appointed to district committees. The list with the recommended members included people that were parents as well as nonparents for the specific committees of the District Advisory Council and the School Health Advisory Council. 

Another key part of the meeting was when the board then brought up the budget transfers and amendment documents. This document showcased the previous budget total compared to the transfer budget total for items such as guidance and counseling, social work services and school transportation. The document shows the current budget has roughly $756.7 million with two proposed amendments: a property value audit and the bond and Voter Tax Rate Election (VATRE) for Collin and Denton counties.

According to the FISD website, the bond is meant to help with maintenance to buildings that are reaching 25 years of age. The Bond proposal includes “renovations and innovations across the district and a rebuild of Staley Middle School.” The VATRE is part of the bond proposal. The district claims the purpose of it is to help with low funding from the state. Voters will be voting over a changed tax rate that is meant to give more money to student programs and to salaries of teachers and staff. This increased the total proposed budget to around $757.5 million. It passed unanimously.