 So I'm going to turn it over to Patty Radle, who's the president of the SAISD School Board. Thank you, Diane. And thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak. And I know some people in the room have been sleeping and breathing the TRV and the bond that we thank you for that support. So, you know, when I finish formal presentations and questions and answers, fine. There's probably more than one of us can answer, plus we can help give each other ideas of how to help explain this within our community. So I want to start off with a presentation that was done with the help of a couple of students from Maverick Elementary. They have a film project, a report for daily news and weather at their school. And our persons communications got together with them and put together a presentation on the basics of the bond and the TRV. So, Jim, I noticed you were helping with that earlier. If you want to roll that, I appreciate it. Thank you. Should I do anything to this meeting? Yeah, we'll talk it over. It's just about 18 minutes. Hi, my name is Erica, and I'm a computer attendant from the OISD. And I'm Ms. LeBron Griffith, a computer attendant from the OISD. We're here to tell you about the 2016 bond and tax certification elections on November the 8th. And how these proposals would impact students all across our school district. But first, we'd like you to know something about our district and its important role in shaping the city. We are proud to call home. For more than 100 years, OISD has educated some of the 7-20-20s finance citizens. Today, the district is home to nearly 54,000 students and about 7,400 employees, of which more than 3,200 of them are teachers. As a large school district, we cover 79 square miles. This is close to my room, the heart of downtown and cemetery central core. The parks are full of water, Balcony Heights, and Eastburn County as well. San Antonio ISD is the third largest school district in the county. We're also its oldest. The entire generation of family members have attended the many schools in SAISD. We love our schools, but Asian and African school buildings present challenges. The district is based on the needs of reviving and functional school buildings, and learning environments that make 21st century educational standards. The district also wants to provide more academic programs for students in need of additional instructional support. Last spring, our Board of Trustees appointed a 16 member who will be task force of community members to analyze the district's facilities and academic program needs. The task force visited numerous schools and also received briefings from district administration. On August 1st, they presented their recommendations to the Board to pursue a $450 million bond election and to produce the district's readings and operations tax rate by $100. The Board agreed to put both proposals on the November 8th ballot, and now it's up to you, our voters. We are asking that you become a full voter as you consider the two ballot propositions in your neighborhood. Together, they would provide funding toward extensive school building renovations, upgrades for 21st century classrooms, and programs for expanding learning opportunities outside of the normal school day. Let's take a look at each and every vote, starting over the bottom. Let's hear from our announcer. The $450 million bond would fund renovations at 13 schools, at 7I schools, 4 middle schools, and 2 elementary schools. These schools were identified as priority 1 schools based on the age of installation of air conditioning systems and in related infrastructure that caused the biggest maintenance problems. All but one were either built or equipped to have air conditioning with funds from the 1968 bond. Those systems are more than 40 years old. These systems are well past their life cycles and routinely malfunction. Extensive renovations would involve replacing the heating and air conditioning, electrical plumbing, and structural elements, as well as addressing accessibility. It would also include upgrading science labs and expanding other classroom spaces to meet recommended state guidelines and modifications to the school's front end trees to improve security. Now let's take a look at the 13 schools that would receive the major renovations under the bond 2016 proposal. Bracken Ridge High School, Irving High School, Edison High School, Box Tech High School, Sandington High School, Jefferson High School, Linnean High School, Davis Middle School, Irving Middle School, Rogers Middle School, Tafoya Middle School, Vowel Elementary School, and JT Bracken Ridge Elementary School. The renovations would enable the district to provide facilities that are more equitable with what is being offered in neighboring school districts. The second ballot proposition is the tax eradication election for TRE. School district tax rates in Texas have two parts, the maintenance and operations rate, which pays for day-to-day operations such as salaries, utilities, and supplies, and the debt service tax rate, also known as the interest and sinking tax, which is used to pay down bond debt used to finance school construction and renovations. Those bond funds may not be used for daily operating costs. A tax eradication election is a way for Texas public school districts to generate additional revenue from the state to pay for day-to-day operations through an increase to the maintenance and operations or MNO tax rate. Any Texas school district that adopts an MNO tax rate above $1.4 must hold a tax eradication election to provide voters the opportunity to approve or ratify the higher rate. SAISD trustees have voted to set the MNO tax rate at $1.17 up from its current rate of $1.4. If voters approve the $13 increase, it would generate an additional estimated $15.6 million in tax revenue, which the state would then more than manage with an estimated annual $16.5 million contribution for a total of $32.1 million. The revenue from the TRE would initially fund two major initiatives, 21st century classrooms and expanded learning opportunities outside the normal school day. Let's start with the first one about upgrading classrooms to meet today's educational standards. Technology is a key component in 21st century classrooms. The TRE would enable the district to replace old computers with newer models and schools across the district and purchase handheld learning devices, interactive whiteboards and other equipment, providing opportunities for students to develop 21st century skills in the college or the workplace. Classrooms would also enhance to support the increased technology with additional data and power access provided along with other improvements to the classroom and bio. And classrooms would be equipped with interactive furniture that facilitates student engagement and collaborative learning. The TRE would also provide additional funds for teacher compensation for after school and some of the programs. These programs would target the approximately 40% of students in need of additional academic support and instruction time beyond the school day. It would also fund expanded extracurricular offerings for students across the district. The goal is for all of the districts 6 through 12 graders to participate in programs such as Fine Arts, Athletics, or ROTC. Let's talk about the estimated tax impact of these proposals. The average taxable value of home in SAISD is $70,000 and $23. If both proposals pass, the impact to the average homeowner in SAISD would be an initial increase of $7.59 a month in 2016. In 2017, the INI Act is estimated to be $8.75 a month, which would incrementally go up to $14.59 a month by 2020. Under Texas law, in 2017, the board could adopt an additional $5,000 home study exemption. If that exemption is enacted, the monthly tax impact for the average homeowner in 2017 would be $2.37 instead of $8.75, and then it would go up incrementally to $7.79 a month by 2020. SAISD property taxes for senior citizens would not be affected by either of the two proposals. As long as a homestead and over 65 exemption application has been filed with the Bear County Prison District and a homeowner as of January 1st, 2016, for more information about homestead and over 65 exemptions, you can call 242-2432 or visit www.bcad.org. The district is committed to remaining good stewards of taxpayer dollars as seen with SAISD bond 2010. That bond has been financed by a property tax rate that has, through effective financial management, been consistently lower than what was originally projected. We invite you to learn more about the two ballot proposals for the November 8th election. Please visit our website at www.saisd.net. 4-slash-Bond-TRE 2016. Election Day is November 8th. Early voting months are up to under 24th from November 4th. Two ballot questions, and so I don't forget to say it. They are at the end of the ballot, so when you go to vote, I hope you will get all the way to the end of the ballot, even if you're one-on-one but one pusher for a certain party. You will not have voted on these, but you need to go to the end of the ballot and you'll find these two. Trying to bring these two items to the public, they've found that the bond, of course, is the easier one because people have seen bonds come forward. They've supported bonds and they've seen the results. And the bond is running for the building, for the building improvements. In SAISD, we have 89 campuses. In the last bond, we were able to improve 22 campuses, and in this one there's 13, so you see that that is a lot to go. And our superintendent will tell you the people that we've heard complain the most of the campuses that didn't get into the bond because they know how bad the schools are, but we have to say, but you know what? It's not as bad as this one we hear. The schools that we have in this bond have not received any benefits of a bond, except in one of them, since 1968. And some of our systems within the schools are so bad, like the heating and air conditioning, that they don't make the parts that we need anymore and we have to manufacture our own parts. And hope that they work, and if not, go back to the machinery department and try again. So there really are challenges. You saw some of the very worn out infrastructure in these firms that can be repeated through this. I have to say when you go into us, it was like JT is on the list. You're in that school, it's beautiful. You do a pretty good job of keeping it clean and polished and shiny, but air conditioning is a real challenge as the system, environmental systems within the school are challenged. So the bond is easier. The TRV is not the easy piece to explain. And we've actually talked about doing a TER, about TRV and sorry, about three years ago, but by the time we were having heavy discussions on it, it was already into August, and you have to vote on doing it in August. And it's taken us along with board members and administration to understand this. We can't expect that we're going to go out to the public so quickly and expect them to get behind it. So we didn't do it then, but we brought it up with discussion for many months now. It's been in discussion. We're all trying to get solid on understanding it, but it is one that gives us a little bit more freedom. I mean, because we can put it into programs, we can put it into hiring teachers to do tutoring after school. We can expand programming. So this is sort of like the academic piece and this continuous, that 32 million will be every year. So it will make a tremendous impact on what we're trying to do. Again, if you're familiar with SAISD's summer program, as an example, the last couple of years we've only had it for five or seven days, and it's been used to help children pass a test that they didn't pass during the school year so that they can retake it. As opposed to enrichment, and students that want to get ahead, they want to get their algebra out of the way, or they want to go on to something and pursue that a little bit more during the summer. So hopefully we can do those kind of things. Plus, just help children who have really struggled with reading and they're in the fifth grade and they're still at a third grade reading level and helping them to catch up so much that we can do with the TRV related to academics. You cannot do it wrong and it's just tremendously needed. Many, or I could say most of our students enter school two years behind what children in a more real class environment may enter. One of the things is related to the lack of vocabulary that they enter school with. And so research has shown and the superintendent and some of the staff and I were at a seminar at Harvard this summer, and one of the things that they presented, some information that some people here already know, but it was a nice affirmation to say that we have to do more for the students on the other side of the school bell. We need to present more programs and more opportunities. I taught at J.T. Brackenridge for about 12 years, and I know the children there were not taking off to ballet classes after school. They weren't going off to the soccer club after school. They weren't going to the Grand Canyon during the summer. You know, there's so many things that the kids do not get to experience. And field trips are an important thing to expand their world. So many of our students go head to head in a few blocks. The TRV gives us the opportunity to expand those kind of experiences. And yes, it is hard on a ballot to put the word tax and raise in the same sentence and expect people to be enthused about it, but I could tell you we have gotten tremendous support from the businesses who are desperate to have students ready to enter their businesses and be effective. They're anxious that they want to hire San Antonians, but you've heard that even Toyota has had a challenge finding people in the city prepared for what they need. And we've had tremendous support from grassroots organizations knocking on doors, and that's greatly appreciated. And we feel hopeful. But I think one of our biggest challenges right now is just making people aware that these are on the ballot and helping with that explanation of what the TRV is. So, oh, go ahead. Rod, my reminder on things that could be said. There's a lot of things. One thing in particular that one of the things really got you all to that point was what happened with the lawsuit and how the taxes were distributed to the state. So you all know that the school districts, I think SAISD was the first one to step up and say, yeah, we're ready to sue the state because of the lack of education funds coming to the school districts. So many districts were involved in that suit and we felt good because we won at the little court. Then the state takes that for an appeal to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court says, well, you're right, the formulas they use for giving money to the school are wrong. They're old, they haven't been improved in 10 years. You're right, the state does not give enough money to the schools for the needs that they have. But we're the Supreme Court and that's not our business to tell the state in this incident, in this situation, you know what to do because they're not doing anything illegal. So, you know, they just left it so the state can handle things the way they've been handling it. So what does that leave us with? You know, because the state isn't stepping up and taking care of our kids, are we going to abandon the kids? These are our kids, you know? We need to do something about it. And the way we can do something about it is through the bond and through the TRB. The TRB is what makes the difference. And as you saw, if we do raise the taxes, the state won't match us and more than double what we would be getting from the citizens. So that's an extremely important opportunity and it's the opportunity that only comes to the poorer districts. Any district can't apply for the TRB but because of the poverty in our district, we can. And then you also heard it mentioned that afterwards and if this passes, our board is considering raising the amount of homestead exemption so that those taxes can actually come down again. And then the other thing you... The only other thing, you've already mentioned about the business. In fact, two thirds come as well. Yes, two thirds of the taxes that will be raised will be funded businesses. I thought I was so amazed and happy that the chambers of commerce have really come out strong with statements and resolutions and support of what we're doing and a real blessing. Yes, Mike? We know a lot of the parents are working two jobs. There's a part about after-school programs that's going to be enhanced, too. That's right. The after-school programs, they mentioned, you know, doing things on the other side of the school bell, after the clock or 4.30 in the case of high schools, doing more club activities, expanding some of the programs that we have that we can, you know, instead of having this many kids in a choir, maybe you can have, you know, so many more, you can hire another teacher. So it will expand. The money will have available for tutoring after school, as well as added programs. Yeah. About the 2010 bond, did it achieve its goals, and was that financially effective or was there a lot of cost over runs? Thank you for giving me the chance to say yes. Very successful. All of the projects were done on time and it all came in under budget. The only exception is that with Highlands, that's going to keep going at least to the end of this year, perhaps a little bit in the next year, but that's because a decision was made because there's some other money that became available to actually redo the entire school. So that took us beyond that timeline. The children did a beautiful job putting this together. Did they do well? Yes, they did very well. And I noticed that with Cover Band, there were pictures of the band. That's a very extensive program for the families. Usually the schools don't cover that. It is. And even for, you know, those band uniforms of course the district provides them, but there are other things that come in, like just if you have to go out of town to, you know, to a competition, what that might do for the parents. In our neighborhoods, and so many of our neighborhoods, anything that throws off the budget is a catastrophe because so many people on fixed incomes. So it is a challenge. I even had one of my neighbors stop me because their son's point was the Young Men's Leadership Academy. And he loves it, but they had to get an extra shirt for something, you know. And he was worried about the challenge of being at, you know, need to buy an extra shirt for whatever it was, a club or whatever. So again, you know, all of those things that kind of limit this and what we can offer the kids, you know, we can have a great impact for the team already. Yes. I put a notice about this meeting on the neighborhood next door from the WU. Thank you. And one of the questions that I just read was about, well, what series of schools don't improve that charter schools would come in and take over? So how do I answer that? Okay. Well, if schools get rated improvement needed for so many years and they show no signs of real improvement, the state can come in and reconstitute the school, tell us we have to do this or that, or they could send in their staff, people like you've seen done in a district south of us. But they, the, I'm sorry, I just want to train myself. But we, a lot of the things in regards to a school not performing well enough relate kind of individually individually, you know. And we already have our eye on those campuses that are not performing well. Our new superintendent has been aggressive about doing things to improve those schools. This year, we have 29 new principals at our schools. We have unfortunately been satisfied with too little. Our expectancies have not been high enough. And he has good experience in knowing what needs to be expected. So we had a lot of principal changes. We've had some vice principal changes. And of course we have some wonderful, wonderful talent in the district. So we're making sure that that really good talent is getting in the right place. And we're making enough changes that the state has to say, okay, they've been in IR for a couple of years, but they just made these changes. We're taking a look at them. We're not going to rush in and reconstitute them. And so some of these major changes are what's happening in order to take care of that. But it is true that at some point, if you don't improve, the state will step in on you. Now, how that affects the charters, it just kind of depends on what people who serve in the state, what their philosophies are and whether or not they're big charter advocates. And whether or not they're big public, traditional public education advocates. And a lot of it, whatever direction it goes, comes out of a real concern for the students, right? In some situations with the charters, people are concerned that is it just a business? Or is it a real commitment to education, a real commitment to the students? And speaking to the state, could you take a look over all what happens to our campuses when you throw in another charter school? I went to speak at the state this past spring because of a charter high school they were announcing that it's going to be put up in the linear area. Well, we just spent $34 million at linear with this last bond to put the career in technology building and to make other improvements. And so the state is going to give permit for another high school to move in right close to us and drain students from our campus when all of this stuff has been done for their benefit. So my appeal to them was to please make it a point to consider the geography of the presence of different schools in an area before they give a permit. And their public meeting to have people review it and review the possibility was on Southwest Military. And if you know the geography of our neighborhood, you might as well be in Calotas or some other place. It's not our neighborhood. And they were using the evidence of those people down there that said, yeah, I've been to high school to the people in the linear neighborhood who have a very, very strong dedication to that high school and to that community and that they would review that as an invasive idea. So it's where are people at on this and where are they at on understanding the impact of charters just coming in. You're going to understand that it's a really good idea. Kip just opened a high school not too far from linear but we have a lot of respect for Kip and I love what our superintendent says anyone who's doing well for our students we need to feel good about if they're doing well for our students we should all celebrate. But we do need to be careful about draining each other's resources and draining each other's money and draining the capacity out of the facilities that we build. So it's not a matter of your school better do well or that's kind of a quick view of maybe one scenario but it's a lot more complicated than that. Hope I didn't kill Kip too much about that. What's that? Maybe some of you have heard of that report we got a wonderful grant through the federal government to be able to create a resource of teachers that have master's degrees so that we can improve our ability to offer more dual credit so this grant will enable us to have teachers in training actually be resident teachers at a school while they're in training and going to school at the same time to get guidance to be mentored and to within two years get their master's degree and so then they would be filtered out to other schools. We want to get our students as much as possible to graduate from high school with a license or a certificate or even an associate's degree and we can't do that if we don't have a teacher that can prepare and teach the forces to get them to do credit the advanced placement and all that. This last year I think it was about 80% of the students graduating from Travis I believe graduated with already prepared with an associate's degree and that's one of our early college high schools so we had a concentration of attention there but we could be doing that sort of thing I think one of the best tactics is don't dome and the tax was added on and after a few years it was done paid off and it went away I'm looking everywhere to see when this is going to go away or if it's not going to go away why not you mean with the TR the TR is a forever and why is it paid off it's important well it's just it's a continued resource just like your taxes don't go away the base of the property taxes so the bond does that go away the bond does go away it gets paid off all the money that we got for that but the TRV will continue and the good deal about that is if you understand Texas and the school system and the property taxes the taxes when your taxes go up the state actually grabs that and redistributes it so we here in San Antonio are paying perhaps for the teacher in Lytle, Texas if they don't have enough money you know what I mean it gets redistributed for use but through the TRV that money comes directly to us so we get to have that ourselves so that would be better and so the match you will continue forever as well yes and yeah hopefully we have to hold our breath when the legislature is in session see what else is going to happen to us is the San Antonio district heavy with homeowners over 65? we I would say certainly within the inner city areas yes we have a lot of homeowners over 65 they're exempt and I know that there are people in our district whose homes are considerably more than the 70,000 average but if we have people with houses that are worth 250 or 300,000 we come down to an average of 70,000 and imagine how many homes how many people have homes that are worth so much less than 70,000 dollars and you know so the word is now that there's more bang for your buck over there there's more the Highland Park area yes Highland the Highlands area Highlands district actually has an income that kind of matches the national average of the city average they're the only ones that come close throughout the rest of our district where the national average of family income is around 52,000 for the rest of our district there's more like 33,000 and the average family income in my neighborhood where J.T. Brackridge is located is around 17,000 the same thing with Sarah King theirs is the lowest theirs is also 17,000s in some change so that figure that you showed in 2017 would be like 20 bucks was that that for a house that's worth 70 grand is that for every home or is that for just a few house that was 140 grand would it be 40 dollars per month that would be additional tax I'm not sure which slide you might be referring to but if your house is an average worth 70,000 dollars then your your annual tax per month would be 7 dollars in terms of what it was you know for that amount and then it would go up a little bit as we approached 2020 but if we do the added homestead exemption of 5,000 dollars then it's going to go down not the first year because legally we won't be able to do that but the second year would actually go down to less than 3 dollars before a house that's worth 70,000 dollars so from 36,000 I mean 36 dollars a year you get a pretty good investment you know a pretty good return on your investment Is there a way that someone not living in the district can help? I've heard of grassroots I have a similar question I think that's a good segue to what I wanted to talk about if that's all right so excellent question about how can we get involved in getting out the word getting out the vote even if we don't live in the district I for one don't actually live in the district myself but one of the things we've done here some of our members have been block walking in the precincts near the church here that are in SAISD so that's one way we can get the word out also Cereo is just talking with me and some folks are going together to vote as a group and they can talk about the ballot beforehand so that you know what's on the ballot if you go to the county election site you can actually generate the ballot you will see at the polls for where you're registered so I always try to do that so if you just go to bear.org you can either go to the election site or elections.bear.org you can see the ballot that you'll be presented when you go to the polls also to get some of the word out I know Mary Grace posted information on next door it sounds like Rowena did too do you want to just talk a little bit about that Mary Grace well I felt like it was important for our neighbors to talk about it and I knew there would be people who were against it because nobody likes their taxes raised but I think it gave some of them the opportunity to say that and it gave me a chance to respond to some of the things they said and hopefully people others who are reading it I mean some people came back again and again and were still mad you know but hopefully others who were reading it learned more about what was going on the reactions that I've seen so far several of them say well good luck we're doing a good job talking about the possibility of charter schools coming in and how this bond election might help that or whether it was anyway she brought up and I think she probably was against the bond but anyway that's kind of the reaction I've gotten so far I just want to say too our church is a member of cops and metro along with 35 other churches and we're getting out the word in our churches at our church we identified all the folks who live since we're a citywide church we identified all the folks that live in SAAS we called them and let them know about the bond there's a lot of people I don't think even have the basic information about what this means to their schools so I don't know if there's an effort to do something like that we're not in the school district I retired from a school and I think it handles something out to them if you're willing to do stuff like that talk to us after we'll get you set up with everything you need does anyone else have any other ideas they want to share about that? I understand that the language for the tax revocation election is prescribed by the state and it looks real lawyering so I don't know whether to say don't read it it'll just or read it and look in it for the information that Patty's talked about and that we've talked about here as much as possible doing the education beforehand is imperative because it is just so little it's crazy and that's when you see the signs the little yard sign for you voting for and it's got a check for t.r.a. and a check for bond and then when you're me you explain what that's all about if you have somebody living one of those battles like this printed in the newspaper today there's no way you can explain it to them I know that Diego Bernal will say yeah it's complicated but just tell them the bond is building the t.r.a. is academics just to also mention because early voting starts tomorrow an easy thing everybody can do is even if you don't live in SAISD most people have some version of a little black book address book or phone book and especially if you're a retired teacher if you can think about the amount of people that you know that probably do live in SAISD and make a goal okay every day I'm going to try to call five people that I know that probably live in SAISD that adds up and you tell them tell family and friends this is why we support it right and we've done that for we're doing phone banking in different places I know the Sisters of Divine Providence had his phone banking training on Thursday and we're handing them these commitment cards that we're doing in the parishes some of the parishes and they're calling people and teaching them about the t.r.a. and on the bond so if you had enough information from this you could do exactly the same thing contact if everybody here contacted even ten people how many more votes does that end up being so that's another thing to think through and think about that's great and there is a lot of information on the back table of course there's the handout that was I hope most of you picked up if not please pick it up on the way out COPS Metro also put together a short briefing paper and this will be up on the website by the end of the day and it explains really in lay language why we support the bond and t.r.e and does actually show what the ballot items will be as well and I also have some legal women voters guides which has all the early voting sites on it and also information about all the other candidates that will be on the ballot so if you didn't sign in when you came in please do so before you leave today and again I'd like to thank you for being here I love holding on to microphones one thing to keep in mind too one thing we found when we were doing our block walking there literally have been a lot of votes already cast the mail in ballots went out a couple weeks ago and people are already filling them in and getting them out and some of the folks we ran into I didn't realize that was at the bottom so the votes were missed so it just means I didn't understand what that was about so it's just the urgency of getting the word out is just really really important I'd like to thank you for being here and if you have any other questions I'm sure that Patty would be willing to talk with you so thank you