IC ISD Board Meeting April 14 2025
- G. Noelke
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 15
Agenda Analysis | Meeting Review | Board Documents | Commentary | Last Meeting
This fieldhouse is going to be extended for storage as part of Phase 1 construction. You can see the plans here.
A. Agenda Analysis 1. Meeting location: Cafeteria. 2. Administrative reports, item 6 d, 2nd quarter investment report: Ms. Lakey is a regular at nearly all the meetings now, but she isn't often listed on the agenda. To put this in context, this meeting is being held only 12 days after President Trump implemented the Liberation Day tariffs. Her report is not likely to be positive...and a lot is riding on investment returns. The District gets to keep in its own coffers the investment interest off unspent 2024 bonds. 3. Bond construction, item 5: This is the standard posting for the Board's construction. 4. Teachers, employee contracts, item 14: This item comes at the end of the meeting after the closed session session and action items from closed session. 5. Closed Session, board training, item 11b: If all the Board members are Guardians, I suppose there are instances where board member training can be kept private. Otherwise, I don't know of an instance where training would be confidential.
Again, here's one source of our community's stormwater problem. This is on the south end of the District's campus. Each successive engineer has to address stormwater that originates at the beginning of this blue arrow and travels several blocks away, across my property and the private property of other landowners, to the fieldhouse pictured above. Thus far they have each built upon the errors of the ones that came before, while all have taken full advantage of the fact that the City of Mertzon does not have a stormwater management plan. Then they leave town. Well, mostly. SKG Engineering is out of San Angelo, and they worked on the new gym and are currently working on the 2024 bond projects for Parkhill.
B. Meeting Review 1. Bond construction updates: From Supt. Moore's report, item 6c, the construction fencing and abatement around the old elementary building will start this week. The District received 50 bids (through Gallagher), and those are currently being evaluated. The acceptance of any bids will be done at next month's board meeting. 2. CTE dollars, item 6 c: Also from Supt. Moore's report, the District is more strategically targeting CTE dollars. The District has increased its revenue from $2500 in Perkins funds (Title 1 from the Dept. of Education) to $62,000. These dollars are not subject to recapture by the State, meaning the District does not have to return anything to the State. Here's more about CTE, Career and Technical Education, from the TEA website. Kudos to Supt. Moore for being more strategic about these dollars. My read is the the District has been leaving significant dollars on the table until now. Time will tell with the current administration in Washington (responsible for gutting the Department of Education, without congressional approval) whether these Title 1 funds will continue to flow without major concessions from states. From my vantage point, President Trump and Governor Abbott are both not friendly to education. My public information requests in the background include trying to get at whether the feds are already in the process of withholding money. 3. Investment Report, item 6d: I read this item to be an anticipatory report about the 2nd quarter, but this was a report on 1st quarter earnings. It boils down to this: there's a lot of interest earnings that stays with the district when there are millions of bond dollars. Indeed, Ms. Lakey reported there was $157,000 in interest off of $30 million in January alone. There are two reasons why these dollars matter. First, as has already happened in this bond cycle, the Board can on the fly adjust for construction budget shortfalls with projected interest earnings. Refer to item 2a in my Meeting Review where the Board approved additional square footage to the elementary totaling $1.7 million to be paid for out of anticipated interest earnings. Second, these interest earning matter when there is a budget mishap, as I wrote here where the District paid down a $800,000 budget shortfall with investment earnings. (Coincidentally, I learned from a recent PIA request that one reason for that shortfall is that the State and Board approved a very favorable tax abatement to the wind farm in their 313 agreement, but more on that later.) Here's my concern about this part of the meeting: Not a single board member dared ask what the projected earnings for the 2nd quarter might be. The economy, which is transparently in a downslide, was not discussed. There are potentially some troubled times ahead, and the impact is not readily known. The Board needs to worry about the future. 4. Census, item 6a: Principal Parker reported 210 in elementary and 134 in high school, totaling 344 for the district. Why am I monitoring this? Again, the District will not be able to afford an influx of new students. And, Texas, with its favorable business climate, is certain to grow. Consider this response to Pres. Trump's tariff war on China: Nvidia is going to produce its AI computers in Texas as part of a $500 billion US investment. Texas is going to continue to grow, and that means more and more pressure on rural areas. 5. Fairview, item 8: The Board agreed to join the school cooperative Fairview, associated with Wall ISD, for its DAEP (Disciplinary Alternative Education Program) for $39,000 for 250 days of services. I will be learning more about this in the future, so stay tuned. 6. All the rest: The Board, at AD/Asst. Principal Morrow's request, approved a roughly $10,000 subscription for sports video services with HUDL. Hold the thought of whether AI will be used. The Board approved the probationary contracts at item 14, and there were no other closed session items voted upon. Otherwise, Board member Ashley Hill was the only member not present at this meeting. And, finally, don't forget to visit my updated Documents page. I've been neglecting it until this last weekend. I will post this meeting's documents in a few weeks after I receive them in my next PIA request.
It is spring in West Texas, and one sign - if you are lucky enough to see it - is a horse crippler cactus in bloom. This one is at the Mertzon Cemetery at the grave site of my Great Great Grandmother, Alice Patterson Blackwell Noelke, 1847-1912. I have posted photos of other horse cripplers in bloom here and here.
C. Commentary
Democracy is an ideal in progress made possible in part by an intangible faith that a rising tide should lift all boats. When our leaders, be they national or local, intentionally anchor some boats so that they necessarily flood at high tide, then it is only free and fair speech that can return the democratic ideal that we are all created equal with inalienable rights.
Our Founders never promised us a democratic tomorrow.
Speak up, speak out, be heard.
Copyright 2025 G Noelke
