 |
|
Board Notes A Summary of the September 8, 2009, Tyler ISD Board of Trustees Workshop Meeting
Board Approves District Evaluation Procedures (Addendum) The Board of Trustees approved the adoption of the evaluation procedures for the district as amended in V. Appraiser Qualification. During the July Board meeting the District Evaluation Procedures were approved. However, considerations allowing department chairs or other campus teachers whose job description includes classroom observation responsibilities to conduct PDAS Appraisals were not included.
Qualified School Construction Bonds Presented Financial Consultant to Tyler ISD, David Tiffin, with RBC Capital Markets, provided the Board of Trustees information on Qualified School Construction Bonds (QSCBs). The QSCB program provides low-cost or no-cost bond to school districts. Congress appointed $11 billion annually for 2009 and 2010 for this program. QSCBs allow a school district to issue bonds carrying a tax credit, in lieu of interest to the bondholder. The federal government covers the interest in the form of tax credits on these bonds, resulting in a significantly lower cost of borrowing to the issuer. Because the federal government provides for the “interest” payment, the district is only responsible for repayment of the bond principal, in most cases. QSCBs proceeds can only be used for:
QSCBs require compliance with the Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wage provisions. Mr. Tiffin presented this QSCB program to the board for informational purposes.
Accountability of State and Federal Systems Report Presented Tyler ISD Executive Director of Curriculum, Kim Tunnell, and Director of Assessment and Accountability, Dr. Karen Raney, provided the Board of Trustees an update on the AEIS state report and AYP federal report. They shared with the board the following information: The state accountability system measures will increase the passing rates in math in science to 60% and 55% respectively. A campus must score 80% in all subgroups to earn the distinction of being a recognized campus. Another adjustment this school year is that TAKS-A accommodated scores for special education students will count in all five subject areas. Changes in the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) performance standards will increase this school year 6% in reading/English language arts and an increase of 9% in mathematics.
Mrs. Tunnell and Dr. Raney reviewed the preliminary overall TAKS scores in the five content areas including achievement gap and commended rates.
Overall curriculum goals for the year were also reviewed. The core content coordinators will provide individual reports to the Board at future workshops beginning in December. Technology Report Presented Tyler ISD Director of Technology, John Orbaugh, provided the Board of Trustees an update on accomplishments in the department. The Technology Services Department provides the hardware, software and support for all campuses and departments in order to meet the district’s goals. At the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year, Technology Services completed the consolidation of the district’s file servers. Utilizing virtual server technology Tyler ISD consolidated over 40 campus servers down to 7 centrally located servers, provided individual student log-in IDs and secure storage space for their work. Since that time, the number of virtual servers in TISD has grown considerably. We currently support 109 virtual servers in our network. Providing virtual servers has allowed the district to avoid the cost of buying additional hardware. The savings provided to our district by using this technology amounts to approximately $374,000.00, plus reduced costs of electricity and travel time.
During this school year, the Technology Department will again look at virtual desktops, thin clientdevices and netbooks for student and staff use. Netbooks and thin client devices are considerably less expensive to purchase and operate than a traditional desktop PC.
As the department continues to strive to provide more cost effective, proactive and efficient service to our district, the Technology Services Department has begun to implement a Service Desk. The Service Desk acts as the single point of contact for all technology related requests. This relieves our customers of the burden of knowing who to call for a particular need and at the same time allows us to send the request to the single best resource to fulfill their requirements. In order to assist our staff to receive this service, we have reorganized our staff and implemented a new work order management system. The Eduphoria Help Desk application was selected as the new work order software after reviewing several work order programs. Eduphoria was selected because it provides an easy to use web interface that our staff was already familiar with, instant feedback to our users when the status of a work order changes, management reports to staff, optional satisfaction surveys when a work order is closed and there was no additional cost to the district.
###
|