BRENHAM ISD BOARD GETS UPDATE ON STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR GOAL #4

  

The Brenham ISD Board of Trustees met at Krause Elementary on Monday evening to get update on the district’s Strategic Planning for Goal #4.

Goal #4 involves the district using a computerized selection process to decide which student attends which elementary school, based on logic set forth by the district, with the goal of balancing out the demographics of each of the schools.

Assistant Superintendent Paul Aschenbeck and Director of Information Technolgy Kim Strauss announced that they had met with all the schools and with teachers, and got positive response from staff members.

Goal #4 involves a process where placement of students on the elementary level involves several criteria, with the goal of balancing demographics at each elementary school.

Some of the criteria include whether the child needs bilingual education, Special Education, placing students with other siblings, and placing the children of staff members at the same school as the staff member.

Geography of the school is not considered; because a student lives closer to one school will not dictate which school that child will end up.

Brenham’s new police chief Craig Goodman was in attendance to be given a formal introduction.

Officer Dant Lange gave the introduction to the Board of Trustees and Chief Goodman spoke to the trustees and the crowd in attendance about his past and why he was proud to now be a resident of Brenham and to serve the community,

The Board also accepted monetary donations to the District from ExxonMobile Educational Alliance program grants ($6,000), Krause Elementary PTO ($6,4444) and Legacy Field Donation, from Marshall and Leslie Harrell ($3,000).

The amount needed to complete Legacy Field Campaign is $405,000.

Also presented were annual School “FIRST” financial accountability ratings for Brenham ISD.

The District received the highest rating possible, and is working to see that that continues.

Some of the criteria looked at for scoring include complete auditing and no student decline in the district.

Also recognized were the “You Make A Difference” award recipient and Drive One4 Ur School.

Superintendent Walter Jackson presented Merle Picone, Dr. Wilfred Dietrich and Jon Hill with the award for their contributions and service to the staff and students of BISD.

Jon Hill with Appel Ford presented a check to the Brenham Band Parents for the Drive One 4 Ur School fundraiser.

Also discussed was a software upgrade for the business, payroll and human resources offices, which was approved.

The District has been using EdPro since 2007, but the company that makes the product is phasing this product out and moving to a product call Munis, a more advanced program. The current server is not able to handle the upgrade currently and the upgrade to the new software will take time.

The district is currently paying a service agreement of $19,244; the new agreement would be $14,848. This new system would evening enable the district to move to a paperless system.

The Board also heard a presentation regarding the TalentEd software program for the human resource department.

Director of Human Resources Christie Olivarez says that this system will be used in the hiring of new people and streamline the process so that information will only have to be entered one time, automating the process.

This will also allow employees to have access to their files, as well as enabling social media sharing to boost work of mouth recruiting and maintaining protocol

 A special musical presentation was given by the Krause Elementary students.