At tonight’s Plano ISD board meeting, trustees approved the district’s legislative priorities for the 85th session of the Texas Legislature, which is now underway.
Here’s a breakdown of the district's eight legislative priorities:
- Transparency in taxation: The district supports transparency for taxpayers by “modifying the required public announcements, notifications and property tax statements” to show how much of the district’s maintenance and operations tax revenue is retained locally and how much is sent to the state.
- Property tax relief: The district said it supports "a school finance system that provides automatic adjustments to the basic allotment and each of the weighted property wealth values relative to the rates of inflation and population growth in the current or any future public education funding systems utilized by the state.”
- Assessment and accountability: The district supports assessment and accountability systems that value student growth and achievement but said the system should focus on measuring and rewarding a variety of metrics developed. These measurements should include student growth, rather than the labels used through the Texas Education Agency’s A-F rating system.
- Early childhood and prekindergarten education: The district supports complete funding for full-day early childhood programs, including prekindergarten education, for students from “at-risk populations.”
- Provide flexibility regarding interest and sinking fund portion of the tax rate: PISD would like the option to maintain the same tax rate for this portion of its property tax rate as the previous year and use the excess tax revenue to pay off debt.
- Funding-related priorities: These priorities include supporting sufficient funding for public schools to ensure students have access to an education that prepares them for postsecondary success.
- Termination of Chapter 21 employees upon felony conviction: PISD wishes to empower districts to immediately terminate educators, or Chapter 21 employees, upon felony conviction without delays due to the current notification requirements.
- Excuse attendance for students who are exempt from final exams: The district also supports excused attendance counted as if the student attended school during final exams for students who are in good attendance and have high grades. The district supports this exemption for the purposes of calculating the average daily attendance of students in the district.
Additions to Plano East Senior High School include 21 new classrooms and a presentation room.[/caption]
PISD trustees also approved the hiring of
Candence McShane Construction to add 21 classrooms and a presentation room to Plano East Senior High School, located at 3000 Los Rios Blvd.
The new classrooms will replace the 16 portable classrooms located on the southwest side of the school.
Construction on this addition is expected to begin in late spring or early summer and be completed in May 2018, Executive Director for Facility Services Juan Ramos said.
