The Dumb Zone FREE - Business Wednesday - Jake talking schools

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Jake has a roundtable on some of the goings-on in Grapevine ISD ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hey guys. There's a story that I'm interested in and it has to do with the school board where I live, where my family lives. It's a story I've seen a lot on the local news and I had questions about it. I didn't want to take up any of our sweet, sweet dumb zone time. So here we are. Skip on past if this is an Easter basket's topic for you. I get it. However, there is a lot going on here. The plan here is to close two elementary schools in our district without. really any discussion about it at all and the tone and the disposition of the people making the decisions has been super dismissive at best people are pissed i'm pissed uh it kind of feels like the lucca trade in a way that there's a few people who don't really know what they're doing that are making decisions that affect their public without really much consideration for that public unsurprisingly uh the way they intend to do it this would disproportionately affect lower income you know lower socioeconomic level students so while this may be something that only directly applies to a small number of us i think this is probably just good info in general and it's uh it's

strangers working together for something they care about uh so i thought it was cool the uh ice water in the bottle in this episode is not me i'm trying to be better about that i am sorry um so this is the story of Chip Gaines sister taking over our school board as told by the parents involved. Sure, I'll start. I'm Ashley Johnson. I am a mom of four. I have three kids at Bransford Elementary. I am also a graduate of Great Vine High School myself. So I'm one of many, many families that when our oldest was starting kindergarten, we wanted, we had to move back. You know, my husband, if you were here, would tell you what is so magical about GCISD. And I could spend the next couple hours telling you that,

but it always had to be GCISD. So we moved back specifically for the district that raised me before our oldest started kindergarten. That son, our oldest is now in fifth grade. And so, you know, I could never, I don't think any of us could have imagined where we would have been when he was starting kindergarten in the middle of COVID to where we are now deeply disappointing.

but I definitely don't think this is the end. I don't think this is the solution, but that's who I am like a lot of us. I'm here in Colleyville, by the way. It's interesting, too, that I'm at the southern Bransford's the southernmost elementary and Dev is the northernmost. So

a silver lining of all of this is I've really gotten to make really close, really kind of kind of kindred spirits with our brothers and sisters in grapevine at Dev. Lots of similarity. So that's me. I'll go next. So I'm Courtney Frey. I have a daughter at Dove. She's in third grade. We've lived in Great Vine for about 11 years, and I'm

married to a Dutchman, and we moved from the Netherlands, and we had to find the cutest town for him to agree to move to Texas. And we found it in Great Vine, the Christmas capital of Texas. So this has really become our community. We're both involved with the Grapevine Heritage Foundation. You know, we saved that foundation, saved the Palace Theater and Nash Farm. And so historic properties and, you know, having that rich history and character was really important to us. And when we started school here, you know, my daughter is eight now, we were hesitant. about Dove. We didn't know what Dove was like. We thought, oh, Cannon, that's a STEM school.

You know, it says it right outside the building. We need to be there. But we were zoned for Dove, and I am so glad that they didn't allow transfers that year, actually, because I have really been impressed with Dove's culture, their test scores, and with the teachers. And I will go to bat for that school because they are doing something right. They have a culture that is really healthy. And anyway, I'll do anything for those teachers. So my name's Alan Thompson. I grew up in the area but didn't go to GCISD. And we currently live up near the lake and we have two kids in GCISD. Our oldest went through pre-K, kinder in first at Dove and is a now at Glenhope and Aspire, which is the GT program offered for GCISD students.

And our middle child is currently in kindergarten at Dove, and she did pre-K there as well. And so, yeah, we're local. We're business owners in Great Vine. We've lived here since 2013, and we've run our business here ever since we moved here. So I really feel like our passion for this particular issue is twofold, because, you know, we chose Grapevine because it is in the middle of everything in DFW. We can get anywhere. We can get to the airport. It's been very successful for our business for the last 12 years now that we joke.

We keep trying to run into the ground, but we can't. And so, you know, if, you know, we are worried that if, if, you know, this area becomes less desirable because of school board politics and everything that's going on, here, you know, is that going to have a negative impact on our business? Is it going to have a negative impact on our home values? And is it going to have a negative impact on our children ultimately? So, you know, it's really, it's a multifaceted issue from my perspective and from my family's perspective. And so whether we want to be in the fight or not, here we are, because there are just such ranging issues that it doesn't seem like are being consistent. considered by the key decision makers.

Yeah, so I'm Renee Hart. I have two kids at Dove, a pre-K student, and a first grader. You know, I got involved by accident. One of my neighbors told me that she was texting with a group of parents concerned about the consolidations and the possibility of school's closing and if I would be interested in joining.

And, you know, at first I said, no. I don't really have time or capacity for this, and then I got pulled into the group chat anyway. And the rest is kind of history. I mean, I've kind of become someone that has really pushed for transparency, but also, you know, I have a background in construction and facilities, and so I understand the feasibility, capacity, really just the operational components of a school and running any kind of course. business. So I understood what I was looking at when the numbers weren't matching up with capacity studies and maximum capacity versus, you know, feasible capacity and operational capacity.

I mean, it just, it all wasn't coming together the way that it should. And, you know, I know Huckabee has done a really great job of trying to compile everything and present it in a way that made sense but it just wasn't and it wasn't whether Huckabee is the architect that was can they were contracted through the district to serve as the really kind of compiling all of the information needed for revenue generating ideas which was the original driving force of the educational master planning committee so they were looking at ways to boost enrollment and increase revenue for the district and then in the summer they shifted to a consolidation plan so they the entire committee shifted their force and their mission

to looking at consolidations for the district versus revenue generating ideas and so Huckabee is partnered with them they've done a lot of the facility assessments They've taken a lot of the information that was already compiled with the district and pulled it all to a presentation that could be presented to the EMPC in a way that people could understand. But it became clear that a lot of the information the district already had and the information that Huckabee was presenting did not align with what the public was being told. And so that's when a lot of us really jumped in. We tried to understand kind of what we were looking at. And then we created a group of parents and families, and we created we are G-CISD families. And that's when we decided that we were going to host forums for the community.

We were going to make sure people understood what they were looking at from the financials, the capacities, and really just the overall plan of how we could not consolidate and still function as a district. and that there were options out there that the district wasn't even looking into. A couple of quick timeline questions. When that shift in the goal happened during the summer, were people made aware of that at the time? No.

Okay. So we didn't even know the committee existed before that announcement came out in late August. And it actually came out because someone PIRD the information and heard that the committee, was happening. And so a parent went out to the district and requested all the information and said that this needs to be made public. Any committees of this magnitude need to be public to the community. And that's when it was posted on the website. The mission statement

was introduced and all of the backlog was uploaded to GISD's website, GCIA website. Okay. That's important. I think that is important. Even dating back further than that, Have you guys had concerns about consolidation in the district over the last couple of years? Was this a top? I'm very green here. Was this a topic that people were, what was the level of concern? You know, are we got to find some ideas here? Like, how big of a shock, I guess, I'm trying to capture.

Well, I'll jump in. So last year, I started getting more involved when I realized the narrative that, again, when I started in 2020 with my oldest in kindergarten. And I heard a lot of national politics, the current board's doing this, we need to flip the board all of that back in 2020. Oh my gosh, yes, absolutely. And then when I got in school and started realizing what the reality was, I realized what I'm being told and all of the narrative out there of this side versus this side really

wasn't at least our experience at my children's campus. So the last couple of years, I've had two friends and fellow parents at Bransford run for school board. And so I got to kind of see behind the scenes a little bit and what was at play, things like that. It was last fall for me about this time last year, right after the Vader passed that I remember saying, I think at a PTA meeting, we're good because it was then that really things started heating up with. I think Capel had just made the news for closing a campus or two. And so there was definitely a murmur, at least on the south side of the district, Is that going to happen to us?

And we were some parents that I don't remember if we'd comment on Facebook or send emails. And there was a, there's a current A.J. Pontello, one of our current trustees posted a letter from our superintendent that said this is not happening. This will not happen in GCISD because we just passed the $6 million vater. And then AJ also called us fear mongering. And so I really kind of felt like, oh, well, I was really just asking the question. Is this a reality? Because we're really similar to a lot of our local districts.

This is something that could happen because I think we've always felt vulnerable down here at Braynford. And so to be called fearmongering publicly, the post that's still out there felt very, okay, all right, well, we're good. So all of last spring, I think I speak for a lot of us, maybe the whole district where most of us felt like, okay, we're good. The pass evader, things are turning around. Maybe at that point we thought maybe the state will cough up a little more money. knew there was a lot of hope. In June, we heard about the auditing error as a $5 million auditing error. So then my radar started going up. I definitely didn't think, oh, we're going to have to close schools. But kind of my bubble was burst of things aren't maybe as rosy as they seem.

The school board race in particular last spring was pretty contentious as they have been the last few years and the board majority wanted to pay this everything's great and rosy and so I think that a lot of us kind of fell for that and then when you hear about multi-million dollar auditing errors you realize maybe things aren't so rosy and then about that time is when I think it was June I'm not sure but around that same time is when you know the state gave us more money but they had stipulations and it wasn't even near not even a drip in the bucket to what we needed what most districts needed And so over the summer, I think there were a lot of us that were uneasy. How we found out about the committee, I think it was one of our parents that did the PIR.

And I just, I remember getting a text. Did you see this website or this page? And it had a bunch of random data that we were kind of left. You know, it was just quietly posted on the district's website. It was a little page. And that's when things really started snowballing and becoming more public. And then it felt like for Bransford, it felt like it was always us, especially from the beginning and the first few scenarios that were posted. It felt like it was always Dove and Bransford.

And when we became a lot more vocal collectively as a Dove community and as a Brantford community, it felt like, whether this is reality, I don't know, but it felt like they threw a lot of random scenarios. Again, with no explanation, every couple of weeks, they'd have a PDF posted to make it look. look like they were considering other things as what I think, kind of a smokescreen. It felt like it was always us. And here we are in December and all the things, kind of conspiracy theories really have come true. I'll turn the mic over, but I will say to you

that one thing that last spring, when we talked about timeline, that really raised eyebrows for us at Bransford is we have an arts integration program, that we have more out of district transfers than any other campus, A lot of which come for that program specifically, and they cut off transfers out of district transfers last year,

last spring in May, only to us. There's a STEM program, which are probably aware of at Canon, and they left those out of district transfers open, but cut them off. And at the time, again, this was last spring, late spring right of schools getting out. We thought, why? Personally, I've got a tremendous amount of friends,

probably a dozen that I can think of that are out of district transferred in for our program. And they're some of the best, most vocal involved families. And so at the time, it was just, why would you want to cut that off, especially when the district gets revenue from every child that comes from out of district? So that was certainly eyebrow raising,

that it wasn't a unilateral, we're not allowing out of district transfers, period. We're only not allowing them a transfer. So anyway. I'd like to chime in on the timeline, you know, because I think what we witnessed that's the most jarring is this rewriting of history by the district.

We have been fed details here and they're told these are facts. And then, wait, we didn't tell you that. Those aren't facts. And so we've created a timeline that starts in March of 2024 where a former trustee leaks it online. And that's where school closings are mentioned. And she said in her post, and here's what else they're not telling you. They're already discussing about closing campuses. And so then the superintendent, a few days later, on April 1st, 2024, said,

you may have heard the other districts closing campuses next school year. You may have heard, yeah, you may have heard of other districts closing campuses next school year due to large deficits and declining enrollment. This is not the case in GCISD, bold, underlined, from the superintendent. He's telling everybody this April 1st, 2024. And this has been the biggest April Fool's joke. I think I've ever with it. And so that we are surprised because our own superintendent, school board trustees,

they called it rumors, fear mongering. Then we passed a $150 million bond. We've got lots of money. And then they say, you know what? We need six more million. Let's pass the Vader. This was in June of 2024. for. And the superintendent literally said, if the Vader were to fail, the prospect of consolidating

schools would also have to be under consideration. So pass the Vader, so we don't have to pass to, so we don't have to close schools. And so what did we do, November 24? We passed the Vader. Yay. Finally, we have money. We're good. The very next month, December, 24. 24, December 16th, 2024, Dr. Schnautz signed a $94,000 contract with no bid process, with no board vote, and behind closed doors with no public knowledge. And he hired Huckabee, an architectural firm to lead this EMPC process. It stands for Education Master Planning Committee. And they are the ones that were looking at this situation and they're hired to come up with school closure recommendations. So a month after we just passed the Vader, we have $6 million more in the bank.

A month later, he signs a contract to get an architectural firm to make these recommendations to close schools. Why? Why? And so and and then in January of 2025 of this year, that's when the EMPC was formed in secret. It was not even known to the public. They met for eight months and they received two charges within those eight months that they met in secret. The first charge was provide a recommendation on current future educational programs that impact. programs and facilities for the needs of the next generations of whatever then they're then you know six months later yeah February they received that charge then in August whatever that is how many ever months later their change charge or their charge changed to reducing facilities and closing schools so all of this was done in secret and it wasn't known to the public until set of this year when the superintendent dropped us all in email and shook our world and said this committee has been formed and we've explored a range of operations to address our

challenges this does include but is not limited to potential for elementary school consolidation so that is what we're all here to understand what happened in those eight months? What happened in the last year? Why was it so secret? Why did you hide it from the public? And why didn't you involve any of us in this decision? And why did you lie to us on April 1st if that wasn't the case? So I guess the angle I'd like to take next, Alan, is it seems to me that really there are kind of two, I don't know, a best worst case scenario or one of them's Ackham's Razor here. It seems like, based on the outside view of the way the school board's composition has changed,

one would have to think we have some level of amateurism in roles that used to be filled by people who had a lot more experience and professional background. So to the degree that you're interested in talking about that, not to be a political shot thing, but it's a fact if people who don't have a background in management, are mismanaging something, their lack of background becomes important. And then the other part of it is I guess I've always assumed just that there's some level of brother-in-lawing between districts and cities and businesses and the like. But that's part of the why that I'd like to know is that, you know,

if it's just as simple as mismanagement, then I'd like to know that. If there's more to it, I'd also like to hear about that. Yeah. So, I mean, I am as green as the next person in this. You know, I have certainly been involved in voting and understanding who's on the school board. But as far as the nuts and bolts of everything, you know, I'm in this new since September as well. So I say all that to say, take what I say some with a little bit of a grain of salt. But, you know, our current. school board is comprised of people who have all been elected since 2021. So prior to that, Becky St. John just rolled off the school board in 2024, and I believe she had been on it for 15 years, I believe. And so obviously had a ton of experience on Texas, on how school boards work. And none of the issues we're facing now are new. School boards have been dealing with budget shortfalls since schools were invented.

And so the way that the school board is approaching this, they're making it sound like they are the first board in Great Binds history that has dealt with a drop in attendance or some sort of budget shortfall or challenges to state recapture, also known as Robin Hood. But these things have been on the table for more than 30 years at this point. And we just, you're right, we don't have the experience on the school board that sort of understands that and can see the bigger picture besides just the here and right now. So that's one thing. As far as the school budgets are concerned, you know, the state, it is true that the state has not raised to the per student funding.

since 2019 in any sort of meaningful way. So every child that goes to G-C-I-S-D, we get about $6,100 from the state of Texas for that child. And it's based on, it is based on attendance, not enrollment. So when the school board makes budgets based on how many kids are enrolled, and that number inevitably comes down a little bit because attendance is lower than enrollment, you know, that can cause, you know, issues with your budgeting and not, and, you know, all of a sudden your balanced budget looks pretty bad.

One of the things that I find interesting is that with the funding staying the same, we know what it's going to be. That makes up about $35 million of our annual budget is from the state. The rest of that is funded by GCISD taxpayers, and that brings the budget to close to $200 million for GCISD. So we're complaining about the state not raising funding, which they absolutely need to do. But it's less than a third of our actual budget that we're dealing with. And there are some mechanisms that we can use that would increase the recapture to Robin Hood, but would also increase revenue. And there's also options with some of these special programs to recruit students in. And so the other thing that's with whenever you're looking at the budget and tell me if I'm rambling and this makes, doesn't make sense.

But we also know that there are about 1,500 school-aged children living within the zoning of GCISD that do not attend. GCISD schools. So do the math, $6,100 per student across 1,500 students, that's a lot of money that we are not getting because the landscape of education is so much more competitive. I think when we were all growing up, you know, we just went to the schools we were zoned for. I didn't even think that like transferring to another school in the district, I never even, I didn't even a thing that people could do, you know, and so, but now that's completely different. And then, you know, we still have no idea how vouchers are going to impact school funding for public schools. We still have no idea, you know, if that's going to drop enrollment, how the funding's going to work, what the costs are going to be to that.

So there are all of these different variables that make it incredibly complicated to fund the district. And then you start getting into bonds and debt servicing that the district has to do versus, you know, just the operations budget that the district has to do. And it is genuinely confusing. What is not confusing is that for the last five to seven years with some of these school board members is we have been told that the budget is balanced. They come out and they make a big deal out of it. And we have an A plus and financial transparency and the budget is balanced. And every single year for the last however many five, six, seven years, I need to actually do the math on it. you know we run between three and five million dollars in deficit each year and that is not a balanced budget like whenever you are running those sorts of deficits and at no point in those five years did the school board come to the community and say we are running this deficit our our emergency savings fund is depleting to the order of five million dollars a year

you know if this doesn't turn around we will be faced to consolidate schools or take really drastic measures to get the budget back in line we need the communities help and and what we've seen one of the really cool things that we've seen in this process is that the energy is there from the parents to step up and to find solutions and the board keeps denying us opportunities to be involved time and time and time again. But if the time to act was three years ago to say, hey, if we don't correct this $5 million deficit, we need creative solutions, you know, or we're going to have to shut down your neighborhood schools, I guarantee you we could have found that money. We could have found creative solutions. We could have figured out how to get even half of those 1,500 students back into GCISD to solve this problem. But what they've come out with is just school closures. That's the only thing. I think we still can, too. Absolutely. Absolutely. Can I put on my tent oil hat for a second, too, to go back to what you were talking about about, Alan, a bit ago, is I think, and I'm just going to go there, because I think that

it's relevant to the conversation. And again, I've kind of been a little more, I alluded earlier that when my first was starting kindergarten in 2020, I had a friend that I grew up with all through middle school, high school, and even in college, who later became the school board president. who said, oh, my gosh, Ashley. I'm generally speaking pretty conservative. And he said the school board is just unhinged, left, you know, all that. And I'm going, oh, my gosh, you know, and just believing all of these things.

And that national politics should play a part in school board. And so I was a part of voting for a lot of the people that are in there now because I believed this narrative. And if you think about, so again, going back to 2019, 2020, when the world was sort of on fire. And I think that's sort of the beginning of this very devices left versus right. And that was playing out in Texas. And if you think about when Biden won, again, I'm going to go there. You may edit me out.

That's fine. I'm going to go there. Texas was kind of purple, right? And a lot of people that had nothing to do with school districts or even care about school districts that care about keeping Texas. red, and they've said that hashtag that over and over the last couple of school board elections. I think is when you start getting those types of people that brought vouchers and all of that, their main goal was keeping Texas red.

And there is, I think it's called the Leadership Institute in Florida that literally train, and some of our school board members have been there, train how to keep your state red. I think it's pretty much that simple, and it's taking over school boards and taking over communities. And so that is what we have seen play out. You've probably heard about, you know, Patriot Mobile over and over. They're one of the largest donors. And when you look at last year in particular, I think they looked at GCISD as a really important race because the last year, the Patriot Mobile candidate lost by 27 votes. And that's one of our minority current school board trustees. And so they put more money into our local GCISD school board race last May than I think

any other we might have been second but top three of any district in Texas that they donated to for that one race like 140,000 I think to our current trustee again the second one on the minority raised I think 30,000. And so you think about why was this election, I think they see GCISD as sort of a conservative hotbed. It's really important to maintain that majority. And so I think it goes so much deeper than just absolutely everything else that the poor management, It feels intentional in a lot of ways, exactly what Alan was saying. We've asked, we want to be a part of the solution. We understand the challenges.

Let us be a part. We've got a lot of really talented people and not even parents, just parents. People that have been here for a long time, we had a retired assistant superintendent from a local school board that has literally, or a local school district begging to help with this process because he's been a part of similar processes. And it's been no, no, no, no speaking at us, not with us. And so it makes you think, again, putting my 10th wool hat on, is it because they want to destroy the district? Is it because there are nefarious motives?

I don't know, but I do know that the last two races in particular that I was pretty involved in campaigning for our candidates. We keep seeing, keep Texas red or so-and-so is unhinged or he voted for, you know, as if that matters. And it wasn't why he'd be good for the board or why she'd be bad for the board. It was all about national politics and keeping tech. this red. So you look at what's happening with vouchers, what's happening in Austin. I think it is so much deeper, which is why it's really critical for all of us to get involved. So yeah, just let me say this real quick, Alan. I think, you know, a lot of people listening to this know where I stand, and I've talked about Patriot Mobile quite a bit on our show. I guess, so you have the element

where one of their goals is obviously based in a morality push, a culture push, not even providing a value judgment on that. It's obvious that that is one of their aims, be it perceived or real, the threat of this, you know, the Marxist in the school. I get that. What I don't necessarily understand is how being opaque about closing a school aligns with the goal of we have to push this certain way of thinking and i think this is probably the part where to anybody listening to this who's not in the district i can tell you what i thought of great bind collieville when i was growing up um there's like that's just that's that's a that's rich kids and uh and i'm not saying that this is not a fluent area relative to the national average yeah um but this is also not

South Lake. There are a lot of low-income families in the district. There are a, there's a lot of kids on snap. There's a lot of kids getting food, you know, free lunch. You know, there's a lot of people at the poverty line and below in this district. And, you know, they tend to exist actually at these extremes, you know, in some instances. Like, for context, I live in a very nice neighborhood, but because I live near subsidized housing, I believe we would be going to Collieville. high school under the old map because they want to get some of these kids from lower income neighborhoods, you know, to the other high school. So there are dynamics at play here that are not at play in every district that you think of as like, frankly, that's a lily white, uppity,

you know, type. There are things happening here, which is why I wonder to what degree that is at play in wanting to close the schools, because other than possible business relationships, somebody had mentioned to me if they don't want to talk about it now, that's fine. but that the property for example that the school sits on particularly one of them is very valuable and there's possibly a relationship with local builders there i guess i'm just trying to find out how i'm really worried about what i perceive is sexual imagery and books in the library aligns with i also need to make sure that when we close this school we're going to be as secretive and opaque about it as possible i don't get that part

I mean, there's a lot in this process not to get that the deeper you dig, the crazier you feel. It's just, you know, we have it, we have a school board president now who, to my knowledge, has never held a job. Like she's had the blessing of being a stay-at-home mom for her life, but has not managed $200 million budgets dealing with taxes and state funding and everything. And so on some level, never ascribe nefarious intent when, you know, just flat out not knowing can explain it. And it's just clear that she's in over her head at this point. So when you have people with that lack of experience facing these problems, like you said some of these deeply entrenched issues, somebody who just flat out doesn't understand or seem to care about. those issues you start wondering why a woman who ran on we need to keep GCISD parents empowered and it's better when parents are involved in his education to she sent an email saying I don't work by committee it's counterproductive and I'm not going to ask parents how we should educate their kids like those are two mutual exclusives two mutually exclusive polarities. And so to your point, right, we want parents involved making sure kids are using the

correct bathrooms and not reading supposed pornographic material in books. Their kids have iPhones and unfettered access to the internet. So that's a whole different issue. But to, you know, we want parents down in the minutia of that versus we're not going to ask you about which buildings we should use and how we can raise money and how we can keep our district solvent into the future. I've got that all taken care of. So sit down and shut up. And is that email representative of the disposition here? Absolutely. 100%. So not too long after this news broke, parents obviously at Dove, we're closely associated with Dove. I'm only speaking from Dove's experience here. But parents for Dove were up in arms because all of a sudden there's a map

that doesn't have Dove on it. And that's all the context that we have. And so to the school board's credit, three of them came out to our school to meet with our PTA. Everyone was invited. It was done, they were invited through the PTA to come and ask questions. And this is back in September. This is a week after sort of these things went out there. And I can I can tell you, from my perspective and the perspective of almost every parent that was there is we were condescended, we were lectured, we were insulted, you know, we have incredibly intelligent families there that were asking very legitimate questions. We were called emotional, and we were just utterly dismissed for an hour. And from the sounds of it, there have been a few more of these meetings

around the district with other schools that went presumably the same way or not presumably but through the rumor mill anyways we've heard that that they went pretty similarly we've been dismissed via email we've been told that we're just emotional or we're just complaining or we're just you know be part of the solution we're like that's what we're trying to do it's to be part of this and you guys keep it's sort of the like they're stiff arming us they've got us out at a stiff arm and they're like why aren't you guys helping like you guys should really be solving this problem but the whole time you're just being shut out of these places that

you know the room where it happens as it were and rene uh you you are more familiar with like the technical or the spec side of this so i know that you had mentioned that there was something and again i think this gets back to the why i'm curious why they would use misleading data why they would use inflated numbers why they would use data that misrepresents i guess once you have in mind we're going to close these schools you're sort of just massaging the data on the way up to that but you would mention that they were taking into account like hey look this this classroom's not full well this is a lab it's not full around the clock you know uh some of the technical stuff that that showed up for you yeah i mean i think you know to allan's point too it all really

started at our pta meeting because you know all of our all of the scenarios that have come out the entire time have included Dove and so Dove families have been heavily involved from the beginning and so when we had that first PTA meeting where our our school board president Shannon Braun trustee Matt Faust and AJ Ponatillo came to the meeting you know we it was a very it was different because trustee Fouse was very wanting to hear us, wanting to talk through things. I asked a lot of, you know, facilities-related questions because I said, you know, Matt, you've been in the corporate world.

You understand when there's a decrease in revenue, the first thing that you do is you look at ways to boost revenue. You look at ways to, you know, bring that back to the table before you start dissolving any teams or closing any campuses. You don't close a manufacturing plant because it's underperforming immediately. You look at why it's not performing, and you look at ways to repair it versus immediately closing it. And so, you know, I was very dismissed in that meeting. Trustee Ponatello told me that, you know, I'm being emotional.

And I was like, well, actually, I have 14 years of construction and facilities experience. I've been in the corporate world. I've been on the education side. I have a master's in education. I'm married to a teacher. I understand this realm more than you're giving me credit. And so I actually reached out to him personally in an email, and I said, look, I go, I want to help any way I can.

I said, I'm interested in just being a fly on the wall for the EMPC meeting. You know, can I attend? I won't give any feedback, and he immediately shut me down. But then he asked me, and this is something that I haven't shared publicly, but he asked me to do really an assessment of the district. I focused heavily on the north side of the district because I wanted to give him feedback on traffic patterns, feedback on, you know, what classrooms are being utilized,

what should be included in capacity studies and what shouldn't. And our sped classrooms, our music labs, those should not be included in your overall capacity studies because their specialty use rooms, they should not be considered gen ed classrooms, and unfortunately, Huckabee did include those. So we're now looking at consolidations of schools and utilizing every single space. So we're not going to have the same classrooms for breakouts, for, you know, special classes and music and specials, and, you know, you name it. We're going to lose those rooms because they're all going to be full with gen ed classrooms.

And so, you know, I told him about the traffic struggles with Silver Lake. I told him my concerns about safety for that campus and really getting in and out and adding 250 additional families. I told him my same concerns about Cannon. You know, the traffic patterns, the residential homes around, it's not set up for that much influx of families and busing. And so, you know, he really took my feedback. He said, you know, that's great feedback. can you look at now the southern portion? And I did the same thing.

I broke everything down by campus. I told him which sites had the best possibility for residential development. I mean, there's a couple of our campuses that residential housing developments are coming up all around. Why not rezone those from governmental to residential and sell them out for development? And, you know, I did all of this work behind the scenes. He took it all, said it, you know, I'll relay it to the EMPC. thank you so much and then crickets you know I I challenged him on a lot of things that really wasn't being shared by the EMPC we weren't seeing traffic

studies we weren't seeing you know additional busing and they say that those things were happening but when they say that Doves consolidation plan does not require any additional buses I say false We have so many families across the street that live in the apartments that specifically rented those apartments so they can watch their kids from their balconies walk to our campus. You know, we don't have buses running to Silver Lake. It's in this capacity for adding this many additional families. Yes, we did have dual language kids that were pulled out and transferred there, but they've dissolved dual language.

So having that as a resource is eventually going away. And so we're having a hard time even onboarding bus drivers currently. We can't fill routes. We've had to eliminate routes in the last couple years because we just don't have the same, you know, a level of want in a bus driver position. How are we going to add additional drivers now in a time when it's absolutely mandatory

to have those positions filled when we can't fill the vacancies we currently have already? And so there's just so many holes and so many things that, you know, have come out of all of this process, that someone that understands those types of things should have been called to the table for this committee, and someone that was a representative of Dove Elementary should have absolutely been called to order for this.

I mean, I immediately said, Dove has no representative. Why is that, why are you immediately saying that we're part of the scenario, and we're eliminated, but we've had no one to stand up and vouch for our school. But when AJ can come to the table and say, oh, no, O.C. Taylor can't be on the table. That's our homeschool. How is that fair? How is that opportunity to fight for your own campus as part of that committee fair when Dove didn't have anyone? And Dove didn't have anyone ever. So it's just been a huge struggle and a huge frustration for our families because we've always,

been a part of the consolidation we've always been considered yeah and I I do want to point out that the school in question dove there are apartments that they're referring to right there's a lot of kids who are walking to school there there's a lot of people who move there it's affordable housing within great fine it's across the street there you know I would I don't know the numbers but there are a lot of walkers at that school they will be they will need buses but I was also told that again to bring this angle up again, that, like, the property of that school is worth a lot,

which is interesting because it is also a school with a lot of, you know, lower-income students. So it's kind of this weird, you know, dynamic where they're almost killing two birds with one stone in their mind. But is that a consideration normally in school closures? It probably is just part of the game, right? Yeah, it's definitely something that comes into play. play. Whenever you're first looking at the overall, typically a long-term plan, you look at all of your campuses, you look at the value of the property that they sit on, the assets that are around the property, you know, you really take the full picture into play. And one of the things

that I spoke about actually at our city council meeting when we first asked Mayor Tate to step in and help us was don't pay to re-turf the park next door when you're planning to close the elementary school that fills that park on a daily basis. And so, you know, the thing that I think is unique about Dove is we have the pool. We have Dove Park. And, you know, as someone as a child that has special needs and has physical limitations, Dove Park is an adaptive park. I mean, it's something that children of all abilities can play at. And so, you know, it's a huge resource for our school and for the community. And so, you know, don't close that pool that fills that park but also put houses there that will make a need for a school even more

prominent and push us all to Silver Lake and to cannon I mean it's just that school is the heart of that community it really gives everyone of all you know all housing income type in just walks of life a home and so we are in this consolidation we're splitting the afflux neighborhoods away from the lower income neighborhoods all of the affluent neighborhoods are now going to be zoned to canon how convenient and all of our lower income housing and lower income families are all going to be compiled into one title one school it's silver lake and so it just seems all too convenient

all to you know planned out and you know we have heard that there is potentially a buyer for the property that does sits on but what are they going to do put more lower income housing there or apartments there it's like what would you zone that for in a way that would benefit the enrollment of our schools right uh yeah so i did see the news my wife sent me a a facebook post that uh like the mayor might be stepping in what is the state of play i know you guys had a meeting last night um just sort of timeline going forward here and than any other thoughts that you have. I'd love to hear.

He did officially share his letter this morning to Shannon, to our president, Shannon Braun, that he is willing to partner with G-C-I-S-D from the city of Great Mine, that he has donors that are willing a lot of, because we, that's the thing, we have the Gaylord, we have American Airlines, we have CSW, like we have all of those revenue-generating companies

that can benefit us from all levels. I mean, you can have, you know student teaching operative not student teaching um internship opportunities with our students at the high school level with all of these major companies i mean we have fortune 500 companies in our backyard we should be leveraging those relationships and so mayor tate has really made sure that that's a possibility for the district and he officially announced this morning and shared the letter far and wide that he is willing to partner with us for that and so now it's really really up to Shannon, our board president, to accept the offer or not.

And so I think that we have a great opportunity to bring some revenue into the district and have those donations present, but it's really going to be whether or not she's willing to take that. I did see one note in reading about this whole thing, and I guess this is not the same as extending a hand to the community, to the parents' themselves, but that the school board's position, their leadership's position was that they offered some sort of seat at the table to the city manager. And this was denied. I'm reading this from a very right-right-leaning newspaper, by the way, the Express. But yeah, that's not true. So we've

confirmed that with the mayor. We've confirmed that with our councilman, Leon Leal. If there was ever an offer to join this committee, maybe it was verbally in passing, and they didn't know, they didn't tell Bruno or city manager what it really was about. There was never an email, there was never a letter, there was no official ask of the city of Great Vine to sit on the EMPC. It just didn't happen. And at that point, it wasn't a school closures issue. It was to, it was to assess facilities to which the response was get a facilities expert

and then whenever it was never re-extended there was no there was no reallocation of seats on the EMPC once it was changed to school closures they just took the same people and did the same thing and what's interesting

is that I mean if I'm before I libel myself here like Dallas Express is owned by Monty Bennett who is good friends with Shannon, who is a developer and a big advocate for charter schools and absolutely has a dog in this fight. So, you know, right wing or not, like, I don't care if it's right wing, but he's definitely charter school wing, and he certainly has ties to some of our current school board

that at surface level is unethical. so yeah all right is there anything else you guys want to add here today um we could who knows maybe we have another conversation in the future but if there's anything that uh beyond just putting this out there that you want people to know do you provide me with some of those documents i can probably put them put them in here i think the thing that that we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that to me is just so glaring with every board meeting we've set through every condescending email is that they're literally planning to decline and to go back to we've been saying we want to be apart because everybody on this call we've got young kids i mean jake you you know i've got

three-year-old you know so i care very much about the district right now but also the district i'm still going to be here lord willing in 15 years and i think what's going to be left one of the first forums that um that we are at UCISD families did we had a former um trustee and Kimberly barbara davis who i was brilliant and she talked about how we were in a far bigger budget deficit I think 15 years ago and they put together a committee to look at and she said we were looking at kids that weren't even born yet what are the students 10 years from now we've got to plan now for them and so when I hear things like I heard last night and two weeks ago and I think AJ probably misspoke but he said when we were talking about capacity so the solution is we're going to be over functional

capacity at all these campuses answer was well in a couple years we're going to continue to decline. And obviously he meant decline in enrollment, but I thought, we're going to decline in every aspect if we don't stop this right now. And so I've got a PR and marketing background and a lot of us do. And we want to be a part of marketing our district. And I think about, I've tried to encourage the Bransford community and that imagine a world where we can keep all of our schools open. I have been from the beginning, I think like everyone else on this call team, no school should be closed. Of course, I care deeply about my Bransford community, but even more than that about GCIC as a whole because are we going to be the district that plans to decline

or are we going to be the district that plans for the future and innovates and markets and enrolls? We have a lot of things that we could spend hours talking about that we can market, allow us to do that. And that's what we're asking. I think what Mayor Tate saying in his letter and what we're asking, even though our mayor in Colleyville has not supported that, is let us be part of it. Give us a year. And maybe we still end up. I think we're all adults and we understand the reality and maybe we're still back here. But I'd be willing to bet that we can grow enrollment, we can grow revenue in through opening up district transfers, you know, and things like that. And so I think that it's just really sad that our school board president and that our board

majority are literally planning to decline because that's not who we are. That's not what I got to experience as a student 30 years ago. And that's not our kids, our toddlers, we owe it to our toddlers to plan for their future because what's left? You know, what is going to be left? And last night, she made it abundant, Shannon made it abundantly clear. This is only a beginning. We're going to close another school next year. We're going to close the middle school in four years. And again, as a parent of a toddler, what's going to be left? And why would anybody want to come here? But on the flip side, you think about if we're able to pull this off, we flip the board in May. I think I've had so many people, I think like I run this call, I've had so many people to reach out to me

because I have been very vocal and very public throughout this process this fall. People have said, you must really love your school. And you think about, you know, that is attractive to people. What we have is worth fighting for. And I think the other thing, too, that I'd be remiss if I didn't mention is I wanted very much. I think our teachers have been lost in this. And infamously, when Courtney and I first met a couple months ago, which feels like a lifetime ago, I worried that I've upset her because I sought out our superintendent.

and I said, that was the things that just started leaking out. And I said, you have got to get a hold of the narrative. And it was astounding to me that they've been planning this for months and who knows how long. And they had no talking points. Our principals, our teachers were left to field rumors from our young kids. While a lot of them are parents themselves, they're worried about their livelihoods. And I thought, man, they really don't care about our teachers. You know, the fact they didn't have simple talking points.

I think our teachers in particular in GCISD are afraid to say anything. because of the last five years. And so, you know, for them to have to shoulder all of that, it's just so glaringly obvious. But I think the good news here, and there is some good news, is that there is hope. We can get this stopped one way or another. I believe that it will be.

I hope that it doesn't play out in the courts. It probably will. But I think that we can get it stopped. I think you get people who care about all students, care about our district and our communities, work with people like Mayor Tate. to do better, to plan, to be open, to do all the things that Shannon Braun ran on the last several years involve us in that process. And I think that is going to do a lot of the positive

PR in and of itself. This district, our staff, our children are worth fighting for. And I think that is going to be attractive. And I refuse personally as an alum and as a parent to sit back and just allow the majority to plan to decline. I also think there's two things we've got to mention is well and you know Ashley when you and I went to that mayor's brunch and and cornered dr. Schnautz in September he he knew he was already leaving yeah and I think we need to be really open and honest about him that our superintendent has stepped down the wheels have officially come off we you know not only that our wagon is hitched to a horse with no legs so I mean like at what

point do we need to say, stop. Let's get our house in order. Let's fix this wagon. Let's get a new horse. Let's get a new leader. And really figure this out the right way. That is a huge factor in all of this. And the other thing that I think everybody really needs to take note of is that we had a member of the EMPC come out last month to the board meeting and admit to everyone that that committee was a sham. They were fed false information so that they would come to a school closure recommendation. And she got up and she said that in front of the board and in front of everyone, it's on camera. So if a member of that committee said, we did this the wrong way, we got to pause right there. Yeah, that's a powerful public statement.

Courtney, I'm glad you brought up because I definitely think it's worth mentioning. not only is Dr. Schnautz leaving in a couple weeks, but he's the third highest paid superintendent in all of North Texas. So you don't leave, and I think, again, going back to the last couple years in election cycles and the other side, once you think everything's rosy, and here we've got some of the lowest paid teachers and our administrators, our principals, or even below minimum standard, but we've got the third highest paid superintendent in all of North Texas, and he's leaving, presumably taking a much lower pay, you don't leave that type of salary. Right, right?

And I think about instantly, Alan, I think it was you that texted me that night. I think of the image from the Titanic, you know, the Titanic thinking and you see the rats running. I mean, I don't know if I'm going to call Dr. Schnell, it's a rat. I guess I am. But you don't leave something, you know, and I do put a lot of this on him. So I'm glad you brought that up, Courtney, because I think that is a huge factor, particularly in this process. Well, in the previous two superintendents were here combined 30 plus years, and he made it two and a half. You know, now granted, he was here for, what, six years as a, as the deputy superintendent, but we've had four CFOs.

We're now going to go to our third interim superintendent. you know it's it's clear that like Courtney said the the wheels have come off and at this point we're just pushing the district off a cliff because we started a process that like you feel pot committed to like no it's we can pause this there's no there's no real deadline here there's no point in the next three years four years where the district will be utterly insolvent so any deadline and urgency is completely self-imposed there's zero reason why we can't take a deficit hit and get the wheels back on and going the right way versus continuing down this path unnecessarily okay great well i appreciate you guys time this has been awesome uh

I'm super proud of all of you, democracy and action. Thank you. And I thank you for what you've done and for your time today. Thanks, guys. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.