The Dumb Zone FREE - Business Wednesday with Jake - Schools Part 3

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

Jake sits down with three candidates for school board in Grapevine-Colleyville. Matthew White (Place 5) is running against incumbent AJ Pontillo. Lindsey Sheguit (Place 6) is running against incumbent Diana Sager. Darrell Brown (Place 7) is running against incumbent Mary Humphrey. Election Day is May 2. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hey, let's talk about these schools again. So anybody who's listened to anything I've done for the last handful of years knows that I'm very interested in the very active cell phone company, Patriot Mobile. And they have a few candidates that they've supported on the school board in Great Vine Collieville, where I live, where we're closing schools. And three of those people are up for re-election in May. So I sat down with three people who are running for those spots. These candidates, they've been on the.

board for three years. They ran on culture war stuff and they've gotten to the bottom of that rampant litter box problem but the school district is not functioning well and engaging with the community in any meaningful way at all.

These three people are running if you live in the district, check it out. If you know somebody who lives in the district maybe send it their way. We'll have a high team movie review next week but for now more schools. Okay, we are here recording a podcast about one of the only school boards I know of where there's been a podcast actually produced

about it. This is the grapevine, Collieville Independent School District. I'm here with Matthew White, Darrell Brown, and Lindsay Shegett. You are correct. Got it right. So we're just going to start out, jump right in with you, Matthew, just sort of a, why are you doing this? Why now? What sort of goals are you looking to achieve by diving in at this point. Okay, good question. So I have three small kids. I have a 10-year-old, a six-year-old, and a four-year-old, and we're in GCISD, and I got involved when the district started talking about closing the elementary campus that my kids attend. That's not why I'm running, but it definitely got me, it woke me up, and I think that was, it woke a lot of people up, and because it when a school district like ours, GCSD has a legacy of excellence.

We've been, we've referred ourselves as a destination district for a lot of years. And when a destination district starts closing campuses because of enrollment, that is a sign of crisis. And so I got involved along with Daryl and Lindsay and a lot of other people and started, you know, talking about, hey, what's going on here and, you know, how can we help and that sort of thing. And the response that we had, it felt like that leadership, the board leadership wasn't responding to the community the way they needed to. If you looked at the board meetings, there would be 60, 70 people speaking at each board meeting. And if you sort of charted how they were, you know, the things they were talking about, they were concerned and they were upset. And it didn't feel like it was a community effort to address the issue.

And so the reason I'm running is I think that. because of the community we're in, we have a lot of really talented people in GCISD who are educated and knowledgeable and who care about our public schools. And I want to involve them. And I think that that's the thing that we're not doing right now that we could be doing. And so my purpose for running for the board, I didn't want to run for the board. Be real clear. This is not something I've ever wanted to do in my life. It's been an experience. But the reason I'm running is I want to try to bring our community together to address the issues we're facing. And the issues we're facing are budget, right? We have, and, you know, we have, we're running a

deficit, you know, we're losing money year over year. And our budget is tied to enrollment. You know, a school district, their, you know, revenue is enrollment. And if we're losing enrollment, we're losing revenue. And so what we need to do is stabilize our enrollment and then start looking at ways that we can make GCISD desirable to people who've chosen something else. So, that's the short answer. You know, my desire to run for school board really came from a simple place is I want to help.

I want to help create stability in the district. I would help regain trust in the district, which I think has suffered under what Matthew was talking about, just from the lack of engagement from the board of trustees to the people, who spoke about the school closings. To me, I have two grandkids in the district. My grandson started here as a grandparent transfer. And so we chose this district.

We believe in this district. I've lived in the district for almost 16 years. And it's important to me. I care about this district. So when we were seeing all the school closings, I offered my assistance. I have 30 plus years. and administration. I've worked in school districts that have faced financial difficulties,

and I offered my assistance both through email and through speaking at the board and offering my assistance, because I believe that there were alternatives. Now, anytime that you're cutting your budget, it's painful, but I do believe that there were alternatives. And when no one responded to me and no opportunity came, well, it was just a natural conclusion that I'm I need to run for the board because I want to help. I want to make this district a return, really, to the glory that it was before we had to see this decline. And I agree with Matthew that the enrollment decline is something that we have to really keep our eye on and her hand on. And also, we have to reengage with those students who are making and families that are making choices that they're not.

going to put their kids in GCI estate. And I think that's a key, key factor. It's interesting you bring up that lack of communication. I've had a couple of conversations like these over the past few months. And, you know, I end up in my day job typically talking sports. And it's tough to be bad and rude. If you think about like Bill Belichick, you know, he's rude. So, you know, you reference the talent in the district. I think Darrell is kind of what you're talking about, a guy who had decades in that lane. And if you're not going to listen to people, then you have to win championships. You have to be performing at a very, very high level. The formula of not answering emails from people and underperforming doesn't usually work.

Lindsay? So I grew up in the district. My family moved here in 1990. I attended Bear Creek Elementary Heritage Middle School and I graduated from Colleyville Heritage. in 2000. My mom taught in the district and I have a long history here in this community. My husband and I moved back specifically so that our kids could go to GCISD. I have an eighth grader in the district and a second grader. So I have a long haul to go in this community and in these schools. I have been invested in this community, you know, from the get-go. And as a process,

My calling was the child abuse unit. I sat down with kids and I asked them to be bright. I asked them to walk into a courtroom to tell the truth and to face their perpetrators. And I have done that day in and day out in my job. And so when all of this started kind of coming to a head, our kids, I've watched for the last six years where they have gotten lost. in the fold. They are not thought about when the leaders in this district are making decisions. They are not considered, in my opinion, when the leaders are making decisions that affect our kids every single day. And so the reason that I decided to run is that if I'm going to

sit down and we as a district are going to ask our kids to be brave, we are going to ask them to, you know, not go to the school that they grew up in, that they're going to have to move schools or even the kids that are in their same school, we are going to ask them to be brave while we change their environment, then I need to do the same thing and I need to be brave. And so what I want to do to kind of piggyback off Matthew and Daryl is that we have to have leadership that listens. And we have to have leadership that is compassionate, over the chaos that is going on in our district right now. We really need to get back to that.

We need leadership that is not going to be a victim of the circumstances that they created. And so I think that as a community, if we can come together and if leadership can actually listen to people who offered help, who have the experience, we can fix this. We can dig ourselves out of this hole, but it's going to take all of us working together and listening to each other and, you know, coming together to make sure that our kids have a safe place to go to school, that they have the type of education that they deserve and that our educators are respected. And so I think that part of the reason that I am running is to get us back to that decency that we have lost. over the last six years. Yeah, and I definitely want to talk about that a little bit as we go on here because it's certainly a theme that's present.

Darrell, you mentioned something offline. We were speaking about this. There's three seats available here, the three of you running, about the urgency of this and about, you know, obviously we've got a couple of elementary schools that have already closed. You don't have to read the tea leaves too much to see they're planning on more. So regarding the urgency, you know, I think you probably hear every policy. politicians say this is the most important election of your life. But in terms of the context of our

district, what makes this one particularly important in your mind? Well, I think we are at that crossroads, and I think that we're at a turning point in the district. And if we stay with the current board, majority that we have is that their goal is contraction and reduction. They've already cut programs. They want to cut more programs. They've been open about that they may close another elementary and maybe a middle school. That is the direction that we will go in the next three years. But if we're elected, we're looking for a new vision. We're looking for the district to create a sustainability plan, comprehensive, because this district needs to have a plan on how we're going to re-engage with those families that are choosing not to go to GCI-St. We need a plan that

provides respectful engagement with our community and we need a balanced budget. The budget deficit the last two years is $7 million. They're anticipating $1.4 million this year. We cannot continue on that decline. We need to balance the budget so that we can move forward. And I don't know that that necessarily means that you have to close additional schools. I think we have to look and we have to increase the number of students walking through our doors every day. So yeah, one of you guys mentioned something the other day when it comes to if you're closing an elementary school, then you're closing a junior high, obviously downstream of that at some point.

If this philosophy doesn't change, you could be closing a high school. And I didn't really consider until one of you said something about it. So I grew up around here. And I was, I'm graduated in 2003, a time when we added a. the third high school to Birdville. And that was the only reason that I was able to play sports, you know, as much as I was. Now, all three of the teams couldn't compete, but so many more opportunities were created for kids, not just in sports, but in band and theater and all sorts of other extracurricular

activities. And that I'd never dawned on me that that's a choice that GCISD has always made as opposed to some other districts. That's an actual philosophical thing of we want to preserve. these opportunities. You know, it sounds like those were at risk a little bit with you guys in this particular election. And I agree with you, Jake.

That's part of the reason why when we moved, we moved back to GCISD because there were multiple opportunities for kids. There's two high schools. That means two drill teams. That means two football teams. It means two baseball teams. It means, you know, two theater productions and musicals. opportunities for kids in fine arts.

And I don't think that when we're talking about our children, winning's great, right? Everybody wants to win a state championship. Everybody, you know, wants to be the best. But when we're talking about our kids, what we need to be thinking about is the opportunities that we are creating for because we don't know what is going to spark a child and where they are going to go once they've been sparked, right? And so that is part of the reason why my husband and I moved back is there are multiple opportunities for kids to be involved. How do you guys feel morale is in the district regarding teachers? Let's start there.

Matthew, I saw a survey. It's anonymous, obviously, but I saw a survey in the last couple years. It's just teachers filling out cards. Spoiler, it wasn't super positive. But how do you view, I guess, the role of the board in engaging with the teachers? Well, I think, you know, having been an administrator in the district, if you look at the teachers, you know, people don't quit companies, people quit people. You know, and I found that of all the things I've ever found to be true, I think that's it. And if you look at it from the point of view of a teacher or a campus administrator, they're looking to the board for leadership and direction, right?

And people will stay, people have chosen to teach in our district for years and driven through districts that pay more to get here to teach here, right? That's been happening for as long as I've ever known. We don't, we, because we're a Robin Hood district, because we give back this year, I think we're going to give back $34 million to the state. You know, we can talk about that in a minute too, right? like we're giving up $34 million in closing two schools because, you know, we can't, because of budget issues, right?

There's something wrong there. But those teachers have chosen to be here. You know, you can go from here to Irving or here to H.E.B. and make more money. But we have really wonderful people in our district who've chosen to be here. And so, you know, I think when we think about what's at stake here, you know, board leadership matters to a campus teacher. And I think that there are.

people who are concerned about talking about that publicly. And I get that, right? You don't want the retaliation. You know, you don't want to be seen as somebody who's speaking ill of your board leadership. But it matters. And there's a lot of teachers right now looking at our district and looking at this election and perhaps can be making a decision about whether they stay or not. So, yeah, that actually gets into something I wanted to talk about just from a global perspective, which is just the role of the board in general. So obviously you're saying, the engaging with the community engaging with the teachers but also the more I learn about this I know a lot of this stuff is at the end of the day step by the state a lot of the you know the

allotment and things of this nature what what's the board does the board have any role in you know advocating representatives or the say how does that work how can what does the board do on that front is there a role for the board there so can I answer this one too that's a I always think of it as POV point of view, right? Policy oversight vision. Those are the three things the board does. They set policy for the district. Now, when they set policy, they set it in the parameters they're allowed by the state.

Sure. Because our policy can't deviate from state guidelines and state law, right? What sort of things can? Like, what sort of things are subject to, like, local? You know, surprising? I spent so much time last night just trying to find, and this may just be like bad interneting on my part. I spent so much time trying to find just, hey, what are the, what's something these people vote on? Like recently, like there's obvious ones like closing a school or putting

a tax on maybe about, I don't know, but I couldn't find anything. It was like, I don't even, I don't know what to ask these people how they would vote on X or Y because I can't even find A or B from from before as an example. Most of the policies that are set by the state give a framework. So within that framework, a school district can come in and they can set their own parameters. For example, anything that's state related has a lot of purchasing rules and regulations. But within that, the state doesn't necessarily say you must buy all of your office supplies from ABC office supply. There's a district internal process that is developed. So boards have discretion over that.

They have discretion over teacher's salary. There is a state minimum that as long as you're paying above that. they also have the ability to set parameters for board operating procedures so they can determine how they're going to operate as a board within the framework that the state sets. So most of the state policies are a framework and then the district comes in and has the ability to adapt those to meet our local community standards. Got it. and then I spoke to a guy named Chris Roby. He's from Raise Your Hand, Texas as an advocacy group

and he mentioned to me the idea of in his mind a big part of the role of the board is to hold the superintendent accountable. What sort of relationship, what is the relationship between the board and the superintendent for the lay person? Like how does that work? What is your general So the board

has two functions, basically to pass a budget and to hire and, you know, supervise the superintendent. I think that... Can I stop you there? What's like the legal authority behind that? Like, do they have to listen to you? Yes. They do. Okay.

So the superintendent has... They're an executive taking out. Okay. Yeah, your superintendent is your CEO, right? And your board, you know, as a group, tells the superintendent what to do. individually a board member doesn't have any authority of our superintendent. Right.

Like, you know, board member A can't go to the superintendent and be like, hey, I want you to do whatever, right? Does they all vote? Well, they shouldn't. Correct. They shouldn't. I mean, does it happen? Sure, it probably happens, but it shouldn't happen.

You know, the super, the board, when it directs the superintendent, it should do so as a board, right? And so, you know, that happens. they, the superintendent is, you know, the board sets the goals for the superintendent, right? And they evaluate the superintendent's progress on the goals the board has set. They make, you know, renewal decisions on the superintendent's contract. But really, your superintendent is, bless you.

It's totally fine. Sorry. It's totally fine. You should keep this in. That's great. So your superintendent is the point who is the person who leads the district. And that person has seven bosses, you know, working together but not individually. Got it.

And I've had the opportunity to see superintendent's evaluations. And they're very long. And they're usually very specific as to what the goals would be. And so the superintendent really has his marching orders from the evaluation document that the board creates. in conjunction with the superintendent for the upcoming year. Got it. So you mentioned the Robin Hood thing. I was honestly pretty shocked when you learned that the state of Texas,

some years ago when you learned the state of Texas actually has some sort of a recapture, redistribution program. But as you say, it's tough to make sense of when you have an entity like GCISD sending so much money back while also closing schools. it's tricky because if you're the state you could make the case well yeah but you're in this situation you knew you were doing recapture you're in this budget situation of your own accord um you indicated it seems like you were you had something on this uh i don't know if there's a reconciliation there that they're allowed to like how does that how does that make how does that

how does that work in practice well you know it part of it so one of the things the board does is they set local tax ever right they set your tax right and Within a certain, it's... Yeah, they can... So you've got golden pennies, and boy, this is more complicated than what we could probably get it to. But the board can only raise taxes so much, but they choose an amount within that range. So you've got what's called golden pennies, which are the rate you can set that's not subject to recapture, which is Robin Hood. There's a certain number of copper pennies you get above that that you can raise your tax effort above the golden penny rate.

But if you get into copper pennies, those are subject to recapture. So to raise 40 cents, you're, you know, in revenue. you're going to increase taxes by a dollar. You're going to collect a dollars with a tax. This is a luxury tax in the world of sports for those listening. I feel like we're playing Zelda. That's great. So silly.

The board right now is very allergic to copper pennies, right? They don't like the idea of recapture, so they're trying to, you know, roll that back. Okay. But my attitude is I don't like recapture, but, you know, you have to do what you have to do to make budget. right yeah you do and that's that's really boy that's interesting because they have obviously from a political philosophy standpoint you're dealing with a lot of people who are as you said anti-recapture so they i would imagine we'll spend like right up until the level of boy that's i never really

thought that that's they have to consider that as well when balancing the budget so um you guys also mentioned something about just hey we want to get this back to being about about about the students. I think that was you that said that, Lindsay. So what happened? Like what have the last few years been like? Obviously it's been something that has resulted in the four of us sitting here right now. But how do you get it if you're going to describe,

we want to get it back to the way it was. How do you do that? What is that? Well, I think you've got to get it back to local control. And not outside influence influencing the leadership in the district. You've got to get back to what are your parents saying? What are your kids saying? What are the needs of your educators versus, you know, this outside political force that has come in and made this district a political battleground?

For lack of a better term. Sure. And I think that we've got to get back to that local control of these are parents in our district. We have, you know, Matthew and I have kids in the district. Daryl has a grandkids in the district. He's got a daughter who teaches in the district. And people that are listening, board members that are listening to actual community members, stakeholders versus potentially listening to outside forces.

And I want to be clear about one thing, too. I'm not running to raise taxes. Yeah. That's not, you know, that's not the first priority. If you look at, you know, part of listening to the district and looking at the district, right, it's, you know, when you engage with your community and you do what your community wants, you'll increase enrollment, right? And when you increase enrollment, you increase revenue.

You know, we get $6,160, is that right? $6,160 in the basic allotment per kid. And, you know, there are about 1,500 kids who live in GCSD who aren't attending GCSD schools right now. You know, the enrollment we need, the revenue we need are kids living in our district right now. And that has to be our first priority is we have to stabilize our enrollment to stop any further loss. And then we have to figure out what, you know, we have to listen to our community and we have to respond to the community's need and and offer the kinds of things that make people say, I want to put my kid in GCISD.

Because even with everything going on right now, my kids are in GCSD, and it's still a great place. Sure. Like, I'm not sitting here saying, boy, it's terrible,

and, you know, it's a great place. We have wonderful teachers. We have wonderful administration, you know, and I think it's on us as a community to realize the situation

the states put us in and come to the aid of the district. Yeah, it's not a given, right? Just because it's always been a great place. It's always been a place people wanted to move, you know, it's no longer a set it and forget it type of type of operation.

Well, and that's been our attitude for a long time. Like, and that was, you know, I think that that's what happens. You know, if you look at the trajectory of the district, when we had our last long-term vision, you know, our lead 2021 was established in 2011. And when we established that in 2011, we did that in the middle of a financial crisis. The state had decided they had pulled like, I want to say, six million dollars out of our budget for that year. And the district all of a sudden had to be, all of it, we had to figure out how we're going to deal with that issue. And they created

a 10 year vision, a 10 year plan. And that's where we started adding programs. Aspire, I-University Prep. Like this is what the district did. The district was facing a financial situation that was pretty dire. And they decided to create I-University Prep, an online school that they were told, the board was told at the time, would not, would lose money for the first three years of its existence. And in the fourth year, it would make money. And the board at that time said, and I've talked to some of the board members about that,

and that was not an easy decision, right? You know, you imagine the situation we're in now, the idea of creating an I university prep and losing, you know, we're going to do something here that's going to cost us money for a couple of years before it starts paying us back. But the board made the call to do. do it. And that was that was a gutsy call. In our university prep, they have, I think,

what's their enrollment right now? Several thousand students that are participating. And those students are statewide students. Students in El Paso students in Houston. It's a revenue generator. Revenue generator, right? It's a profit center. And it's a great school. It's something that allows kids who want to, or Olympic hopefuls to get a high school diploma when they couldn't attend a regular high school. But we made a hard decision. that's a hard decision. You know, there's been talk of hard decisions, right? Closing a campus is a hard decision. You know, how about creating an online university, you know, in the middle of a financial crisis? That sounds like a hard decision to make. Yeah. And they did that, and that has been something

that's paid dividends for us since then. And, like, when I think of where we're at, that's the attitude I think we need to have. And, you know, I'm not trying to go back to 2011 and saying we need to, you know, re-implement everything we did then. We need to start now in 2020. and say what do we need to do now looking forward to 2036? You know, where do we need to be? Because we live in a different world than we lived in 2011, right? We have AI, and AI is changing everything very rapidly. And so when I look at where we're at now, I think we've got to adapt,

we've got to figure out how do we prepare kids to live in an AI world and to be productive. And, you know, I'm the kind of guy that, you know, when I was in 2015, I'd have a kid tell me that they wanted to be a YouTuber as a career. And I'd be like, kid, you know, what are you talking about? You know, you need to, you know, that's just, you know, that's fun. But look at what YouTubers are doing now. I still think that's the proper response, by the way. Yeah.

Yeah. But I take your point, though, for sure. Yeah, I know that this is not something that is said at the board level, but I am interested in what you guys think about this as people who are, you know, going to be very much involved to the world of education, the testing situation. Is that something that you three have thoughts on at all? Because I've recently learned about the, you know, the, what do they call the way they do it in other states?

Not just progress-based, but there's a word for it. But in other states, they're measuring you throughout the year. They have a word for. But the star test basically going from once a year to the same fail-pass test three times a year, my just outsiders view thought on it is you're now expending the resources of doing it three times a year to get the progress results without implementing the progress philosophy like you're still just doing three past fails so um yeah i don't know i i i i that seems flawed to me um i know that it's not something that you guys have any control over but you from the world of education um do you think

that's a good model or or relative to the other one that's the other one that's the other one that's the other one that's there's probably no good one. They're going to have to make major changes to the Star Test in order for that to be something that is actually valid. One of the problems that we have is that the Star Test claims to be a progress tool, but it really has limitations. For example, there is a cap. If in fourth grade math, you miss only one question.

And then in fifth grade, you miss only one question. There's no growth measure because there is a ceiling. Sure. And so it's very difficult to say when they revise the star and they do a beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of the year test, unless those are aligned to the curriculum. Right. Because let's say, for example, in sticking with our math example, let's say that on the B-O-Y, they're testing on fourth-grade geometry, but the teacher hasn't gotten to fourth-grade geometry. So the student doesn't know any of that content yet. and so if by middle of the year,

they still haven't completed the geometry unit because it's in the last nine weeks, they're still not going to get a good measure. So I think there's inherent problems with how they're going to test beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of the year,

because districts are going to have to go back and look, are we going to have to make changes to our scope and sequence to align this so that our students have the best opportunity to show what they really know? And then the other problem is that the accountability system isn't changing. They're still only looking at the end of the year assessment for accountability.

Yeah, which, so I think the reason to bring stuff like that up that is might seem like minutia to some people, might seem like a tired head is what we'd say in the ticket world. That's the stuff that teachers are already dealing with. Like these are the things that are somewhat immutable. You can't really change them. They're at the state level. But that's the way they have to do their job. so then to on top of that deal with being as you said involved in a political battlefield it just becomes it seems like an impossible job you know and and if it's a profession that is done out of love you

can't beat the love out of people and expect to get the same results so it seems it just seems to me that the goal was to close schools it doesn't mean that you definitely could have avoided closing schools by changing your goal. But the goal has to be what else is there before you can avoid it. And that comes with communication. It comes with exploring other options. And for me, it's going to come with voting for you guys. So when it comes to advocating in Austin, there's been a ton of stuff, legislative, hot topics, hot button issues, the vouchers. What is the role of the board there when it comes to Robin Hood vouchers advocating, that sort of thing? Well, I think what we are lacking right now is a strong advocacy standpoint from our Board of Trustees in Austin.

For the 89th legislative session, our board decided not to put on their list of legislative priorities that we were against vouchers. That was absent from their legislative priorities. And so to me, as a taxpayer and as a mom and as someone who lives in the district, I think, well, what does that say to our House representative? What does that say to our Senator Tan Parker? That tells them that that is not important to GCISD. That is not one of our priorities. And so I think that we need to get back to trustees that are comfortable speaking with our legislators,

being in their ear. and sometimes if it needs to be a little forceful, right? These are things that are important to our constituents, to our community, and, you know, whoever is going to be the new House District 98 representative, and then Senator Parker, this is what is important to our community. And we need people who are comfortable in that advocacy standpoint, and I feel like we're lacking that right now. tough to be in somebody's ear when you're in their back pocket that was just jake uh anybody else want to

add anything to this well you know the concern about vouchers right um and vouchers is one of those things that it wasn't an easy lift you know it was it was raised multiple times where they were able to pass it right and um as far as gccccc goes like if our attitude is that you know where i think our attitude should be that we're going to compete right right and um And if we have a competitive attitude, vouchers shouldn't make a lot of a difference. If you look at the private schools around us and the effect that vouchers are probably going to have, it's going to raise their tuition is what's going to happen. And so you're going to see tuition in private schools go up around us as far as the effect it'll have on our enrollment. I'm not sure how big an effect that'll actually have.

If you look at what the application so far, I think there were 644 applicants out of GCASD. But that I think 70, we don't know. the percentage is exactly, but statewide the percentage is 77 of the 77% of the applicants were already in private school. So run the numbers on it, you know, if we're running the average, maybe we've had 100-something applicants. Yeah, and I heard some people offer like the pre-K, not in school thing. Even if you look at those numbers, it's not, it's not impressive.

I think the number that got me was the number of 3% in the whole state being applicable. I think it just shows a lot of people are still happy with their public. schools, but we mentioned something about sort of, I don't want to say resting on the laurels, but the district being comfortable, things were done a certain way. Even if you don't perceive vouchers as a huge threat, I think it's pretty clear the district needs to sell itself and tell what it has to offer to people, especially now with other options being subsidized. I think that the marketing is huge because the playing field has changed. It is not the same. We're in a competitive market. Honestly, it's still going to be.

get a little upset when I see other school public school districts sending flyers and mailers to our parents to try to get them to do open enrollment. It's like college football coach. Yes, a little poaching. He committed. But we have to be just as aggressive as those people are. We have to be just as aggressive as anyone that's trying to get our students. And I think we need a strong marketing campaign.

I have met people since my campaign that have tremendous. marketing skills who would gladly volunteer their services to the district to design and to help implement a marketing strategy and it wouldn't impact our current communications department at all. They would do it for free. And if we don't start doing those type of things, then we will continue to see a decline because they're going to come after our kids. I don't think basic is cutting it anymore, right? you didn't move to the district Jake

I didn't move to the district Darrell and his family and Matthew and his family we didn't move to GCISD for basic we moved because there were innovative innovative excuse me I didn't say we moved because there were innovative programs in this district

things like Aspire arts integration STEM all of those things are why we moved to this district because those were exciting those were things that we want to our kids in that would make our kids more competitive when they look at being adults, whether that's military readiness, college readiness, you know, trade readiness. Those are the things that we moved for.

And when we start cutting those and losing those and going back to this basic mentality, we are going to lose enrollment. We are going to lose families. We are going to lose kids. And we are going to lose teachers. And we just can't be in that situation anymore. I think that, you know, we've talked about that there's need. for a change in leadership.

And that the thinking that kind of got us into the situation that we are in is not the type of thinking that is going to get us out of the situation. And that's why the three of us are running is that there needs to be a change in leadership. And one other thing to talk about, you know, from a marketing point of view is I would like to see us have a marketing committee, you know. We, you know, Darrell was talking about bringing in volunteers. to market. Like if we had a strong marketing committee that part of that committee's role was active volunteer work, we could do, we could support. We've got a great communications department in

GCST, but they're working, they're trying to communicate for our district, you know, for a big district with a very limited set of resources. But if you could plug in 15 or 20 people who are professionals and had marketing experience to come alongside them and be like, hey, I can help you with this. I can help you with that. We could. get our message out in a ways that they just don't have time to do. And it wouldn't cost us anything. I guarantee you there are people in our district who have incredible marketing experience who have you said, hey, we need your help. Can you give us five hours a week? They'd say yes. Yeah. In many of these cases, it just feels like, you know, you have a very passionate community

and it's just about getting the community back to the people in it. So obviously with a couple of elementary schools closing, we're being told that we're in financial dire straits. The basic allotment as it comes from the state is what it is. But it's on the local leaders at some level to work within those confines and maximize from there. Yeah. I agree with you, Jake. I mean, the state piece is just one portion, one part of the story, right? You know, Austin is what it is. We absolutely need to be advocating at that level to raise the basic allotment and to also change from attendance-based funding to enrollment-based funding. Those things need to be happening.

We need to be in those legislators' ears about that. But we also need to be working within our own confines, right? And figuring out what we need to do in order to get ourselves where we are not running at a deficit. Like I think Darrell mentioned earlier that our district has been running at a deficit for years. under current leadership. And so at some point, we have to look and say, look, the Calvary's not coming from Austin. We have to be the Calvary.

We need to look to our local community, our business leaders to help us come together and get out of this financial situation that we are in. But I don't think that you as board leadership can solely blame Austin for the situation that we are in. the board has made decisions and will continue to make decisions that put you either in a good financial situation or an instable financial situation and as trustees leaders need to own that um that there are decisions that have been made that have put us in this situation you know we've been through

multiple CFOs um that should be a red flag for anybody out there in the community, that we've had multiple CFOs go through this district in very few, in a very small time span. And so at some point, we need to use a different type of thinking rather than just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

Because as soon as... Oops, sorry. You're fine. We need to use a different type of thinking because if you keep cutting, there's going to be nothing left. And people aren't going to move here. Well, and the thing I get excited about, you know, I'm not, if you look at where we could go,

if we take an attitude that we're going to grow and we're going to innovate and we're going to involve the community, those are exciting things. And I want my kids in a school system that's trying to do those things. So I think that we create, sometimes we're our own worst enemy. If we see a drop in enrollment and say, well, we just need to cut programs and eliminate campuses, what we precipitate by doing that is further decline. Because you don't, you know, who wants to say, well, you know, that's a, that school system's falling apart slowly.

I don't want my kid that. I'm going to find something else. But if we say, you know, we're in a situation, but we've got a lot of really confident people around us, we're going to grow. We're going to grow in the face of difficulty. I want my kid in a school like that. I want my kids going to a school district that has that attitude that we are going to involve the community and we are going to seek to grow our way through this. And that's where I want to be.

You know, there's one of the sayings we used to have when I was a football coach is if you're green, you're growing and if you're red, you're rotten, you know. And it's kind of a silly saying, but it's true. And we need to be green. We need to be green right now and our attitude moving forward because if we are, we will draw people in with simply our excitement about what we're trying to do that's different. if we haven't done it yet. You know, if you're a parent that has a pre-K child, right, and you see that we're trying to innovate in ways that are enticing to you, and you realize that, hey, all of this may not be in place for the next couple of years, you're still going to be thinking, do I want my child to start in a program that's growing

because I want them to have peers that they're familiar with and that they know and they have relationships with, you know, as we grow into the kind of place we want to be. And my answer to that would be yes. I want my kids to start in a program, even if it's not where I want it to be right now. I want them in that program now because I see where they're going. And that's my concern. I think if you looked at us right now from the outside looking in, I don't think you see that attitude. I don't think you see a growth attitude.

You see talk of fiscal responsibility. But physical responsibility includes revenue preservation. That's a key tenet of fiscal responsibility is preserving revenue. and preserving revenue for us is preserving enrollment. I think we also have to look at some new programs because the school district, in order to survive in the current climate, we have to engage the student from birth. For example, let's get those students, not future students, but let's get them in the schools. Let's have programs that bring in new moms and let's have programs that bring in toddlers to where they come, to the library and they sit down and they read to their stuffed animal, their little bunnies that

they have. Let's also engage the other end. I know we had the gold card program. It's a great program, but we need to work at bringing in those folks who are older, who don't have any kids at home. So they understand what's going on in the district and what is their tax dollars going to? Their taxes may be frozen, but they're still paying taxes to the school district. So how are we returning on their investment? And how is what happening? in the school district, helping to sustain their property values. And so making sure that we're engaging our whole community, one of the things that you'll hear parents say is that as a reason for why they are concerned about public schools is safety.

We need to talk about our safety plan with those parents who don't yet have a student in the school because we need to make sure that they understand that we're doing everything we can to ensure that our schools are safe. And those type of programs will help slow the drop in enrollment. And that will help us to have more of a sustainability over time. Well, I appreciate you guys for doing this. I appreciate that you do have a vision. Everybody get out and vote Election Day.

What's the date? May 2nd. May 2nd. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Darrell, Lindsay. Appreciate you. It's nice to meet you, and we'll see you.