September 2024

At last week’s Angleton ISD Board of Trustees meeting, AISD presented several reports. One was the facility report given by AISD Superintendent Phil Edwards and consultants from PBK, the architectural planning and design firm the district has paid to assess the current facilities throughout the district. PBK reviewed the condition of the current facilities and broke down potential renovation needs into priorities and cost estimates.

The review started in January 2024, and PBK architects completed site walks with various engineers. In addition to site visits, the firm surveyed AISD staff at different facilities, asking for their input on the sites.

PBK Senior Project Manager Elizabeth Giusti says it is important to consider the usual “wear and tear” on a facility in relation to the age of some of the facilities.

“We found that all of your campuses have been well maintained, but several of the needs throughout the district stem from systems just nearing the end of their life cycle,” Giusti said. “It’s also important to consider the equity of campuses, especially when comparing the existing ones to the new schools being built that will have new, more state-of-the-art structures, resources and systems.”

PBK Principal Architect Sofia Dusek also says the report looked at several factors when analyzing and prioritizing the needs throughout the district.

“We prioritized these needs into three levels looking at the Facility Condition Index (FCI) of each school, which is a tool that measures the condition of a facility and is used to help make decisions about maintenance, budgeting and upgrades,” she said.

Dusek says an FCI of 50 percent or higher indicates a need for more immediate major repairs or improvements, and that there are three priority one facilities that scored more than 50 percent. Northside scored a 68 percent, Southside scored a 67 percent, and Angleton Junior High scored a 56 percent.

“Based on their scores, these three campuses have the highest need for work,” she said. “This is when you start looking at replacing versus repairing because the cost to fix is more or almost as much as building a new facility.”

Edwards continued the presentation. He said the district has been tracking work orders put in for repairs throughout the district.

“This shows where we are spending time and money to fix things regularly,” he said. “What we have found is consistent with the report from PBK. We see more work orders placed for Northside, Southside and AJH.”

Edwards says the report to the board is meant to present the overall facility needs so that the board has a detailed overview of what AISD facility needs are so decisions can be made for coming years.

“The next step is to look at funding sources and overall project lists,” Edwards said. “We will present the final results and costs as well as current bond capacity to the board at the October board meeting. If they approve us moving forward, we will create a small, 15-member steering committee (10 community members and 5 staff members) in November to provide input, determine priorities, and then create a narrowed-down plan. We would need this committee to have consistent attendance. Then, if a decision is made to move forward, in February we would form a larger committee to look at what comes next - a Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) to consider the possible need for a bond to support these needs. This committee would be 50-60 people with 35-45 coming from the community.”

Edwards says after the CAC meets and if they recommend so, the district could consider calling for another bond.

“To do the new things that need to be done, we would most likely need to consider doing a future bond,” he said. “We want to be cognizant of rising inflation costs with construction and to address these projects so that our students have viable and equitable learning spaces throughout our district.”

Edwards also presented a report on the results of the rezoning survey that was open to the public from May through August. AISD administration met with a demographic company to redraft preliminary zones and make appropriate changes based on survey results.

Edwards’ presentation identified three goals with the rezoning next steps: considerations for attendance zones for junior high, considerations for attendance zones for elementary, and considerations for transfer students.

“The preliminary attendance boundaries for the junior high level have not changed much,” Edwards said. “The objective for junior high zones came from input from the bond advisory committee that recommended the 2022 Bond,” Edwards said. “That committee made their recommendation out of an effort to reduce the number of students in the current junior high. These new zones basically split the enrollment evenly into the two junior highs, the current Angleton Junior High and Heritage Junior High.” 

Edwards said the elementary plans are a little more complicated.

“When we looked at the student capacity of the elementary schools, the new Heartland Elementary could fill up quickly based on projected growth, and this would cause the district to either have to rezone again in the near future or build a new elementary school sooner,” Edwards said. “We didn’t want to do this and, thus, have devised a new plan to help address that potential growth. With these new drafts, we should not reach student capacity at any elementary campus for much longer.”

The new, redrafted preliminary attendance zones can be found on the AISD website at www.angletonisd.net under Our District/Attendance Zones. Edwards says these drafts are not final.

“Our next step is to form a committee of about 15-20 people with seven members coming from campus staff and eight to 13 members coming from the community,” he said. “I also want to make sure we have at least five of those members selected from community members or parents who gave us input on the survey. Their voice is very important as we move toward the final stages of the rezoning process. This committee will review the newly redrafted plans and provide input before the final plans are again redrafted and presented to the board for a vote in December.”

Edwards also discussed staffing needs for the new campuses that will open for the 2025-2026 school year.

“It is important that we have a staffing plan that is evenly distributed and equitable for all campuses,” Edwards said. “No school should be staffed with all new employees, nor should they be staffed with all veteran employees. We will start by asking for volunteers to move to the new campuses.”

Edwards also says the district is developing an incentive plan to help identify employees who may retire or resign from their positions at the end of this school year. The financial incentive would be based on how soon the employees let the district know their intentions to leave.

“We want to do whatever we can so we don’t have to require employees to move campuses whenever possible, so we have a detailed plan of action already in the works for this staffing process,” Edwards said.

In addition, Director of Secondary Education Dr. Tyler Press reported on the district’s current cell phone policy as well as considerations for changes to the current policy.

“Legislation may step in and do something at the state level, which means we would have to enforce any state policy, but previous attempts for legislative restriction in the past have not made it off the Senate floor,” he said. “Not knowing what will happen legislatively, we are going to move forward and look at our policy and other districts’ policies.”

Press says AISD is currently looking at other districts in the county and surrounding area to see what their cell phone policies are and if changes are needed to AISD’s policy.

Press also introduced the possibility of Pouches by YONDR. These pouches are assigned to a student who takes the case home. When students enter the campus, their phones are locked into the cases and kept in the office.

“The next step is for us to consider how much of an issue this is at AISD,” Press said. “We want to collect staff and parent input, asking what they want and looking at what parents and campuses suggest as a solution.”

Edwards says the district will need to make sure parents understand what resources will be needed to establish a new policy.

“If we choose to make the policy more restrictive, then we have to be prepared to spend the resources adhering to the policy,” Edwards said. “Not only could there be a financial cost, but the principals and assistant principals will spend time enforcing the policy. So, there is a cost of time to factor in as well.”

Also as part of the meeting, the board approved the following items of business:

• New hires

• Nominating candidates for a position on the Board of Directors of the Brazoria County Appraisal District Resolution

• AISD CTE industry/business MOUs

• 2024-2025 T-TESS alternative appraisers

• An engagement letter from the Fisher Firm for various legal services

• The purchase of mowing equipment