2023 State of the District

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

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Dayna Hernandez:
Thank you, Klein community. We sure are glad that each of you joined us today. You'll be hearing from our superintendent up shortly. The information that we're excited to share with you is all about what's happening in Klein ISD. 

First, on the agenda for today, we would like to share with you the family satisfaction survey results. You all, as families, told us what's most important to you, and that includes academic excellence, school safety, and, of course, information regarding our high-quality educators here in our Klein family. 

We also have a lot of great information to share with you regarding the 2022 Bond. There's a lot of progress happening as a result of many of you who showed up to vote for the Bond in 2022, and we want to say thank you. Thank you for showing up to vote. This is allowing our school facilities to be upgraded and many great things happening for our teachers and our students across our school district. So, we'll be showing you a video and getting you caught up about what's happening across the Bond 2022 program. 

And then, finally, we'd like to share about what's happening next here in Klein ISD. 

We also know how important it is to stay connected with you. So, if you haven't heard, we are very active on social media along with our superintendent, Dr. McGown. So jump on Facebook, Instagram, or X, formerly known as Twitter, so that you can stay connected with us and continue to remain informed about the facts, the events, and, of course, all the great celebrations. We sure do love to brag on all of the people in our Klein family, and we love to do that through social media. So don't forget to stay connected to Klein ISD and our superintendent as well. 

For those of you who are not connected online do know that we like to communicate with our community through publications that we send out annually. As you can see, we call these our Klein magazines. We had one come out just this past summer, and another one is probably in your mailbox either today or this week sometime. We like to use these publications to keep our community informed, especially the community who may not have children in our schools. This information is quite helpful to share the facts and keep you updated about what's going on, and the most recent Klein magazine that will be coming out is also one that includes our annual performance report. So stay tuned and look in your mailbox for information coming from Klein ISD. 

We also have every Sunday what we call our Klein Insider. The Klein Insider is a digital newsletter that comes out every Sunday afternoon to give you a highlight of what's happened this past week. We also like to keep you updated not only on what's happening around the district but our schools as well. You can also see that our superintendent provides quarterly updates and the quarterly updates will be provided through our Klein Insider. So if you have not yet subscribed to the Klein Insider, we encourage you to do so at KISD.US/KleinInsider. 

We are so privileged to get to serve in this wonderful school district where we have a shared vision that we deeply are committed to where every student enters with a promise and exits with a purpose. We work tirelessly as a Klein family to ensure our students have an awesome educational learning experience, and we appreciate all the partnership, support, and time that you all are giving us, especially today, so that we can share more about Klein ISD, our shared vision, and all the things that are happening. 

We are so fortunate in this school district to have the absolute best leader at the helm of our school district. You will not find a more dedicated, devoted, brilliant, hard-working, and committed leader than our superintendent Dr. Jenny McGown. We know that in Klein ISD we have the best across the state and across the nation and we aren't the only people who think she's pretty awesome. She was just recently named by the Houston Business Journal as the most admired CEO, and y'all, the cool thing about this is that she was the only public school educator to be nominated for this prestigious award.

We are so fortunate to have the absolute best leading us in our school district so I'm going to turn over the remainder of this presentation to Dr. McGown, and then I'll close you out at the conclusion of her presentation. Dr. McGown. 

 

Dr. McGown:
Thank you Dayna. 

We are so blessed to have Dayna and her joy and love for Klein ISD and our Klein family, and hello Klein family. We're so thankful you've made the time today to join us for our annual State of the District where we're going to provide lots of information about what's happening here in Klein ISD and Klein, Texas. 

In fact, I know we're all getting ready to prepare for the holiday season, and I want to make sure everybody knows you can actually use Klein, Texas if you live in any of the zip codes that are within the boundaries of Klein ISD, you can use Klein Texas. We're so proud of our heritage here in Klein, Texas and we definitely want to share what a wonderful place this is to call home with everyone. 

Not only do we love Klein, Texas, we also love our great nation, and I want to make sure you know coming up, we have our 23rd annual Veterans Day ceremony. You are going to see if you show up and just participate in this super special event that is led by our students. You are going to see a phenomenal demonstration of patriotism by our JROTC students from all five high schools as they honor our nation's servicemen and women. I hope you'll join us over at Klein Memorial Stadium for this great opportunity and this great Klein, Texas tradition. 

Well, everybody knows that Klein, Texas is a special place. Klein ISD is a wonderful place to live, learn, work, and I think that all of us continue to think of this school district even though we're now the 15th largest in the great state of Texas as the biggest little school district on earth. We love our small hometown feel, we love to treat each other like Klein family, and we're just proud that after decades of fast growth, we continue to be a place where you feel like you know everybody by name and you love being able to raise your family and work here in this great community.

One of the reasons this place remains such a great place to raise your family is because we are surrounded by incredible families, and parents of our students. I'll just tell you as a fellow Klein ISD parent, as a Klein ISD mom, I've always been a big believer that our students' parents are their first and most important teachers, and we absolutely could not do what we do here in Klein ISD if it was not for the phenomenal support of our parents and our families and getting to work in partnership with all of you. To all the Klein ISD parents, grandparents, and families out there who are joining us for the State of the District, let me just say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you do to help us ensure that every student finds that purpose for their life that's gonna make the world a better place for all of us. 

One of the things that we're very proud of along these lines of valuing our partnership with our parents is that because of your support, Klein ISD just officially became the highest parent-rated school district in the greater Houston area. Thank you so much for showing up and speaking up to tell people about the great place that this is to raise your kids. We're honored to partner with all of our parents and their families again to help our kids achieve that purpose for their lives, and this also extends to all of our grandparents and our seniors who provide so much valuable support to our community. I know my kids are blessed that their grandparents live here in Klein, Texas, and we love when our grandparents and our senior citizens engage with us and continue to partner with us for all of our students in Klein. 

I want to make sure you see there's a couple of ways if you're not yet connected or if your senior citizen loved ones in your life are not yet connected, I hope you'll take note of this information. There are lots of ways that we love to connect with all of the seniors and grandparents in Klein, Texas. First of all, at the bottom of this screen, you can see KISD.US/GoldCard. You can go to this link and sign up for our Klein gold card, which also gets you on the list to receive what we call the Golden Gazette. So our Klein Gold Card enables community members who are 65 and up to receive a free ticket to attend athletic and fine arts events, so that's lots of fun. You get to see our talented kids in action for free. For the athletic tickets you can go to the Athletic Administration office and for fine arts events, you can contact the school directly, but for more details, the easiest thing to do is just go to KISD.US/Gold Card for all the instructions you need to get those free tickets. Plus, when you sign up for the Klein gold card, you receive the Golden Gazette and the Golden Gazette is a monthly newsletter where we share information and events that are happening across the district and then if you're on Facebook, which you probably are since that's how you're joining us today, the Klein gold Facebook group is a wonderful way for our senior community to stay in touch with each other and to learn what's happening in the school district. 

If you're not already connected, I hope you'll get connected and you'll tell those that you love. These are great ways to keep in touch and to be proud of the great things that our kids continue to do here in Klein ISD. 

In fact, just last month, I had the privilege of getting to meet with some incredible folks at what we call our Golden Lunch, and at the Golden Lunch, we are so proud of our Advanced Pathway of Culinary Arts here in Klein ISD. Our students from Klein Caine served up a delicious meal to our guests, and these were all folks again who are subscribing to that Golden Gazette that's how they knew about this opportunity, and they got to see not only our culinary arts students but also we had our floral design students and many of our other career and technical education pathways spotlighted and getting to showcase what they're passionate about part of their purpose with the senior citizens in our community. So, again get signed up, and you can find out about other great opportunities like these for our grandparents and senior citizens in Klein ISD. 

I also want to say a huge thank you to our volunteers. We have the absolute best folks who continue to show up and give selflessly of their time, their talent and it makes such a positive difference. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We have thousands of registered volunteers in Klein ISD, and they contributed last year alone over 200,000 volunteer hours. Now, that is an engaged, supportive community, so thank you for partnering with us to make great things happen for our kids. 

And speaking of some of the greatest parents, grandparents, and volunteers in our Klein family, we are blessed with the best Board of Trustees anywhere. These folks are either current or former Klein ISD parents, grandparents, these are folks who half of them are Klein ISD alum, homegrown from elementary all the way on. We have retired educators on our board, but what puts all of these people and unites them all together is a sincere love for our Klein kids and our Klein community and again, these folks are volunteers, so they have to win an election to have this volunteer position, and they lead our district with such care such kindness and I'm so proud to have each of them leading and setting the direction for Klein ISD. We are blessed with the best. They do so many important things, things like. For example, during the October board meeting at the beginning of this month, our board adopted the lowest tax rate in 31 years, dropping it by 20 cents from last year to $1.03 this year. Their leadership in voting unanimously to lower that tax rate is part of our tradition of conservative fiscal management, and you can see here there is a litany of recognition from external agencies about the years and years and years of financial accolades that have showcased our practices of being fiscally conservative with the resources that are entrusted to us. We are very blessed by the leadership of the board and helping to make that happen. 

We also know that when it comes to funding, funding for public education is a big topic that you've probably been hearing because we're once again in a third special session of this legislative session which started months ago, although our legislators have not yet addressed the inflationary costs that we're all feeling because, we certainly know that here in 2023 we are dealing with some historic inflation, even though that has not yet been addressed by our legislators with additional funding our Klein ISD Board of Trustees they continue to support our Klein family with well-deserved pay raises. But, while we're on that topic, I do want to just hone in on a couple of the legislative priorities that our board has set and that they've been working hard to advocate on behalf of Klein ISD during the legislative session and the special sessions and I know many of you have come alongside Klein ISD and been aware of these priorities and have really spoken up on behalf of our school district and on behalf of public education in general and we thank you sincerely for that. 

But, I could spend just a moment talking about the legislative priority of the budget and asking our lawmakers while they're in this third special session to make adjustments for inflation and to increase the funding for our per-student allotments in our Texas public schools. This is so important. Right now, school districts, the amount of money we receive per student is set at the state level. The basic allotment, that's, the basic amount of money we get per student at the state level, has not been increased by the state since 2019. And here we are y'all, of course, in 2023, and I don't know about you, but there aren't many things today in 2023 that cost the same amount of money as they did in 2019. What we've been asking for is just an inflationary adjustment so that we can keep up with the rising costs that everyone's experiencing, and school districts are no different. 

We think that this is a very logical ask we know that there is a multi-billion dollar surplus at the state level available and so we are just asking for continued investment in public schools that serve over 5 million kids in the great state of Texas and, of course over 50,000 students here in Klein ISD. We want to just make sure that we can continue to offer excellent programs, excellent choices, and excellent opportunities to all of our students and that we can continue to take care of our Klein family, over 7,000 employees, we're the largest employer in this area, and we just want to make sure that our state recognizes that just like everybody else school districts are dealing with historic inflation. We're asking them to make that adjustment from what they allocated in 2019 to give us a 2023 basic allotment that makes sense in light of inflation. I want to encourage you to reach out to those people who represent us, I know they love to hear from their constituents, and I think this is an issue that we can all agree has a tremendous impact on our kids in Klein, on our 7,000 employees in Klein, and ultimately the success of the school district is the success of the community. When we invest in our schools and we have a school district we can be proud of, in turn, we end up having a community that we can be proud of and a community that we can continue to celebrate. Anything that you all can do during this third special session to lift up your voice and to make sure that our representatives know that we really do need that adjustment for inflation so we can keep good things happening for kids and for Klein and not only for Klein ISD for public education in Texas, in general, it would be so incredibly appreciated. 

One of the things that we've heard a lot about related to this session is the idea of parent choice, and I just have to say again, as a proud Klein ISD mom, I could not be prouder of the choices that are available to me as a parent, and of course ultimately to our children to our students, we offer in Klein ISD so many choices for our students to discover that unique pathway for their success. In fact, we offer over 50 industry-level certifications and over 250 pathway courses, y'all in our high schools today, you can earn an associate's degree before you even walk across the stage at high school graduation, that's pretty amazing, and we have more students today than ever enrolled in and earning college credit than we've ever had in Klein ISD history. Again, that's because of the many choices, the many pathways the many offerings that we provide. If we want to have a good opportunity to continue to invest in parent choice, investing in public schools and investing in Klein ISD is a worthy investment of the multi-billion dollar surplus that we have in the great state of Texas today. 

Not only are there advanced pathways available for our high school students as I continue to focus on choice and the opportunities that are available for all here in Klein ISD, we also have options available for our elementary and our intermediate students. 

Elementary students can participate in our dual language program, they actually have the opportunity opportunity to earn high school credit before they even get out of elementary school, which is so awesome. 

We have advanced math pathways, we have advanced science pathways, and we have our ELA humanities pathway. These opportunities are just phenomenal for our students to make sure that every student is known by name, strength, and need and served accordingly. We're very proud that we've been able to make these investments in these incredible opportunities and choices for our students and for their families, and we appreciate anything that you can do as we finish out this third special session to help our lawmakers and our representatives continue to understand what a great return on investment Klein ISD is and public education is for the great state of Texas. 

Well, as we've mentioned before and as you heard Dayna mentioned earlier, we have a shared vision in Klein ISD that every student enters with a promise and exits with a purpose. We are very proud that we just finished recently thinking about that shared vision thinking about our priorities and thinking about what the needs of our students are today and in the future and how we can make sure that this shared vision continues to be achieved. I'm very, very thankful that last school year, even though we originally adopted this shared vision and our strategic priorities back in 2017, we know that so much has changed in our world since then, and so we thought it was time to bring the community back together. 

Our stakeholders, our parents, our educators, our students, our grandparents, and community members here in Klein, Texas, to ask them you know how we are doing and what we can do better to make sure that our students are equipped not only for today but for tomorrow to live out that purpose for their life. We spent eight months gathering input I am sure many of you participated in this progress, and I want to say thank you for that. 

However, the feedback came from over 400 stakeholders who participated in 25 different focus groups as well as thousands of responses that we had to the survey that was given and made possible and accessible for every parent, every staff member, and every community member to provide their input. With thousands of responses to the survey, with over 400 stakeholders participating in 25 different focus groups, we took all of that feedback because we care about working together the collective care that we can show for our Klein kids as a Klein family is what contributes to us not only having a great Klein, Texas community but having a great state and a great nation. 

Along those lines, after we updated and refreshed our strategic plan and priorities, we also, of course, in our annual Klein family satisfaction survey. You all may know that every single year we complete a Klein family satisfaction survey to learn more about our families' overall experience with Klein ISD, and this year we're happy to say nearly 20,000 families participated in the survey. Because of the incredible dedication of our Kleim family, I'm very proud to say that we received straight A's from our families in several key areas, including providing parents with the necessary resources to partner in the children's education, encouraging strong partnerships between the school and the community, providing an engaging curriculum, and effectively communicating important information. Please, always know your feedback is invaluable to us because we use that feedback to strive for excellence and, of course, to make continuous improvements to the work that we do on behalf of our Klein kids, our Klein educators, our Klein families, and our Klein community. 

When we looked at the results from the survey, not only were we pleased with the straight A's in multiple areas, but we also were really happy that we were able to identify what are the priorities for our families and Klein ISD. 

During today's State of the District, what we're focusing on is information that centers around your top three priorities. Which were academic excellence, school safety, and having high-quality educators. That's where we're gonna spend the rest of our time together today, for the state of the district is really just focusing on the things that you all have identified as priorities for Klein ISD.

First, let's talk about academic excellence and our high-quality educators because those two things go hand in hand. Being able to offer the rigorous academics many of those opportunities I mentioned earlier to our tradition of excellence in fine arts and athletics to our career preparation so our students can find that purpose for their life, we are dedicated to providing a well-rounded education to every student. Whether they're aspiring to go to college, whether they want to go immediately into the workforce, or whether they want to answer such a high calling of serving in our nation's military. 

Our educators, of course, they're always focused on our students' success, and they are, frankly, they're at the absolute heart of our tradition of excellence. They are the ones who, through their professional expertise, their tireless efforts, their dedication, they have led over the years Klein ISD to national recognition. 

For example, recently, nationally, US News and World Report recognized Klein ISD high schools for being among the best high schools in the nation for the 22-23 academic year. The kinds of things that they looked at to make that determination included: college readiness, reading math and science proficiency, college curriculum breadth, and the graduation rate. Congratulations, we’re very proud of that.

We're also incredibly proud that Nitsch Elementary received national recognition recently as a National Blue Ribbon School. I just want to celebrate this is the first elementary school in Klein ISD's history to receive this prestigious academic recognition. It celebrates the highest performing schools across the United States as measured by our state assessments, nationally normed tests, and academic achievement and the school's ability to close the achievement gap. Congratulations to Nitsch Elementary.

Along those lines, we're super excited that at the helm of that great school, Nitsch Elementary, is one remarkable man, and principal, Frank Ward. We just found out that he has been named the Terrell Bell Award for Outstanding School Leaders 2023 recipient. This is an award that's a national award. It recognizes visionary school leaders who have transformed their schools to become a beacon of excellence, and I will tell you this, not only is Frank the first principal in Klein ISD history to ever receive this national recognition, but he is also the only principal this year in the entire state of Texas to receive this recognition. He's one of only nine in our nation to be lifted up and celebrated for his leadership. I just want to say a huge shout-out to Nitsch Elementary, to Frank Ward we could not be more proud of you for proving what is possible for every student. Congratulations to those great folks.

One of the best ways, I think, to measure our success is when we think about the amount of money that people are paying our kids to come to their institutions, their universities. And how about the class of 2023, setting a brand new record for the total amount of scholarship dollars earned, 57 million dollars they broke the last record by 9 million. Congrats to the class of 2023 very, very proud of you. 

We're also proud to see the success of our students excelling academically, particularly with our AP scholars. We had nearly 700 students earn the 2023 AP scholar award, we had students earning the AP capstone diploma award, and then, of course, we celebrate that we've had National Merit commended students, we've had National Merit semifinalists, and it has been an increase even over last year.  Again we're so proud of our kids and their continued success. 

Of course, we are particularly excited that we have more students than ever in Klein ISD enrolled in and succeeding in advanced coursework in Klein ISD. You can see this on the screen here, we just have more students than ever enrolled in these advanced courses and earning college credit. That is a great opportunity for all of our students as they continue the next chapter of their education.

Then, we also made history recently with our dual language pathway it has grown from 85 students when the program began in 2018 to nearly 1,500 students today. This sought-after program is definitely a community favorite. We have hundreds of applications every single year, and we're very, very proud to offer this dual-language pathway to our students. In fact, our first cohort of dual language students is now in fifth grade, so that means they are earning y'all high school credit this year as fifth graders.  Wonderful opportunity for our students to prepare themselves for success, of course, not only in school but beyond school as they pursue their purpose.

I can't say this enough, I hope every chance you get, you take a moment to thank the incredibly high-quality educators we have here in Klein ISD. You know, there are school districts in our area and our state and across the nation that are continuing to struggle with staffing shortages, but I'm very proud to say that here in Klein ISD, we began this school year with 99.6% of all positions filled and I'm very proud of the way we've been able to recruit and retain our top talent.

I'm also very thankful to our incredible bus drivers, we have a hundred percent of our bus routes covered.  We were able to have a great start to the school year because, again, we have dedicated, talented people across the board in Klein ISD who are making good things happen for our kids every single day. 

I also want to continue to celebrate our success in the fine arts, gosh, I mean 12 consecutive years being a nationally recognized school district for best community and music education. Also, so proud that Klein ISD is in the top 2% of all districts in the state of Texas for the visual arts, and then, of course, we're very proud to be a premier community for theater education that's one of only nine school districts to be recognized. Again, if you've ever gone and seen one of our students' talented theatrical performances concerts, I mean, gosh, they are so talented. It's such a blessing to get to experience them doing what they love to do and doing with such a high level of excellence that's been recognized, again, at both the state and national levels.

Of course, we could not talk about our AAA without honing in for a minute on athletics because we are so proud that for 41 consecutive years, our kids have shown up at the state level to compete, and we are so proud that we continue to have state champions here in Klein ISD.  We've had state champions recently in wrestling. Of course, you all saw that we had the state champion KF track team; gosh, we had 85 student-athletes who participated in the most recent national signing day. They alone earned 7.8 million dollars in scholarships. I'm just proud that we continue to have our kids who pursue that excellence in athletics. I'm so thankful for all of our talented, hard-working coaches who truly work around the clock to help our students realize their potential in athletics. Thank you, coaches, and thank you to all of our student-athletes. 

Speaking of a tremendous coach, definitely want to celebrate another great educator, and this is Coach Smith, who was nationally recognized as the coach of the year after a two-time winning state track and field season. Congratulations, Coach Smith, for representing our talented coaches and for being recognized at the national level for all that you do for our kids. 

One of the other things you told us in the family satisfaction survey is not only did you want to us to continue to prioritize academic excellence, but you also wanted us to continue to prioritize school safety and security.  I'll just tell you, as a Klein ISD mom and superintendent, I am proud to be in the school district that established the first and what I know as the finest school district police department in Texas. 

We were the very first right here in Klein ISD to have a school district police department. I'm just so thankful that our school board, they continues to invest in safety; they want to make sure that our police officers are available at every single one of our schools every single day. We, of course, have had police officers, full-time police officers, on every single secondary campus for years now. I'm really thankful to say that we're in the process of not only continuing to have our elementary officers who are on every single campus every day, but we're also going to be adding full-time security guards to every one of our elementary campuses. This is an addition to what we've already been providing here in Klein ISD, but I know as parents, we just want our kids to be safe every day at school. We want them to come home safely to us, we want that for all of our educators as well. We are proud to continue to make investments in safety here in Klein ISD. I'm just happy to know that in addition to keeping us safe, our police officers are busy on campus building positive relationships with our students, investing in their leadership skills, working in partnership with our school counselors to help every one of our students be young men and women of character and to be people that we are proud to have as our neighbors and our citizens. Not only here in Texas but in our great nation, as well.

Some of our current safety and security measures in Klein ISD, well, of course, you know we have a very robust and well-trained Police Department that, in addition to the things I've already mentioned it also includes a K-9 unit. You've probably seen K-9 Quinn. He's very popular, especially on social media, quite the influencer. We're very thankful that this is a full-service agency that works 365 days a year, 24-7, to not only keep our Klein ISD students and staff safe but also to help keep our Klein community safe. We're thankful that our Police Department leads other school districts and law enforcement agencies and that just last year alone, y'all they conducted over 47,000 campus checks. Just last school year. They are very visible, very present, very much making sure that our schools are safe places for our kids and our students to learn. They far exceed the state requirement in hours. 

We're also excited about the secure entry vestibules that we've been able to add, card reader access, and the fact that we require photo identification for all of our visitors, and we're also very thankful, again, to our Board of Trustees. They approved the hiring of additional police officers and school counselors, so, today, in Klein ISD, we have more police officers and more school counselors than ever, and we're very thankful for that investment. That is money well spent, and it is a benefit not only to the safety of our students and our staff but, again, to the entire Klein ISD community. 

We're also thankful, of course, that we have registered school nurses, and not only that, but licensed counselors at every single school. That's something, frankly, in Klein ISD, much like being the first established Police Department, we have had registered school nurses full-time on campuses in Klein ISD for over 40 years. This is just how we do business, we want to make sure that our kids are safe in every aspect. We are very thankful for our hard-working nurses, licensed counselors, police officers, and just the team that they are and the way that they work together for the benefit of our students and our staff. 

We love that, for example, one of the collaborations that can be a real lifesaver in an event of an emergency is that our police officers are also all trained and stop the bleed training. They partner with our school nurses on our crisis teams just to make sure that again we can protect the safety and the security of all of our students and all of our staff every single day.

Hopefully, you also know that we have an anonymous reporting tool in Klein ISD called Keep Klein Safe. It is available at the top of every district and campus website, this anonymous reporting tool is monitored 24-7 by the Klein Police Department. This is an opportunity for people, if they need to, to report any threats to request mental health support 24 hours a day. If you have concerns, questions, or you need help, please do not hesitate to let us know.

I'm also so thankful that one of the ways we've been able to continue to invest in safety and so many other improvements that benefit our students, staff, and Klein community is through our 2022 Bond. I just want to say thank you again to everybody who showed up and voted for the 2022 Bond, the largest Bond election in Klein ISD history. The very first thing once the community said yes, that our wonderful school board did, is they accelerated all safety and security projects to the very front of the 2022 Bond program. Again, I just want to say thank you so much; nearly nine hundred million dollars for schools and technology. 

We want to update you on our progress, we're working hard to deliver on our promise of all the great things that are happening and need to happen here in Klein ISD to keep it a great place to go to school, to learn, to work, and to live. 

I want to show you a little bit of some of the work that's underway, this is not everything but this is some of the highlights of some of the things that are happening. 

First of all, at Klein Cain High School, we needed to address growth and capacity challenges. This includes adding 24 new classrooms with new building additions and providing additional parking for Klein Cain. 

We also now have the Klein ISD Flex school, which is currently hosting the Northampton students and teachers. Northampton, of course, is one of our schools that's over 50 years old, and so while that school is getting the extreme home makeover, school edition, all of our students and staff at Northampton are safely at the Flex school. 

We'll be updating all of these schools that are over 50 years old, so the Flex school is going to be used for many years to come. The next school that will be housed there is Haude Elementary, and we're then going to follow that with Greenwood Forest. We're just going in the order that the schools were originally built, so we’re excited about that. 

We're also working to upgrade our athletic spaces. You can take a look here at the new turf on our high school baseball and softball fields at all five high schools. I also mentioned that Northampton was at the Flex school, and that's because we're modernizing that 50-year-old school with some renovations. But, over at Klein Collins High School, we're also addressing growth and capacity challenges that we've experienced because we're expanding our arts and athletics programs. This school is getting a third gym, a new dance edition. 

Passage of the Bond has also allowed us to provide additional classroom technology for our students and our teachers. Hildebrandt, it's another school that’s over 50 years old; they're getting a comprehensive renovation to modernize the campus. Then we have next door at Klein Oak High School we're addressing growth and capacity challenges by adding 22 new classrooms. We're also closing in the existing breezeway so we can create a more secure front entrance for that school. Then Kleb and Doerre Intermediates are receiving similar renovations to address the growth and capacity and their athletics and fine arts programs. Each of those schools is getting a new gym and a fine arts edition. 

You can see there's a lot happening around Klein, Texas, and it is all thanks to you for showing up as a community and voting for the 2022 Bond. There's so much more to come. Some of the projects that will be getting underway next, Haude and Strack, will be getting that comprehensive modernization and renovation of their schools. Klein Intermediate is going to be getting some updates, and several elementary schools are also going to be receiving those canopies, which will make car riding dismissal, and arrival so much better, particularly on very hot or rainy days. Again, all of these improvements are made possible because of your continued support for Klein ISD, so thank you.

Well, I think that is a lot of information to know about the state of the district here in Klein ISD. I'm so grateful again for your partnership and for the way that we continue to work together to focus on what really matters, which is the success of our kids. 

One of the things that makes me so proud to live here and raise my own family here is the way that we continue to focus on what matters. We continue to come together, and we unite for the benefit of our students so that they can find their purpose and they can have a purpose for their lives that not only makes things wonderful for them but also makes the world a better place for all of us. Thank you for being the most wonderful community anywhere and for continuing to partner with us here in Klein ISD. 

Now I'm going to pass it back over to Dayna, so she can tell us a few important things that are happening soon here in Klein ISD that we want to make sure is on your radar, so you can actively engage and partner with us. 

 

Dayna Hernandez:
Thank you, Dr. McGown. 

We sure do appreciate all the wonderful information that you've shared with us. So, what's up next happening in Klein ISD? 

We have a relief rezoning process that will begin. We had a district press release that went out a couple of weeks ago, sharing the need for us to go ahead and begin rezoning our elementary and intermediate campuses, which will take effect for the 2024-2025 school year. We will begin that process we will have a website that will include all the information for the community to provide survey feedback and for our committee to make the best decision in moving forward to address the capacity challenges at some of our schools and to ensure that we are doing the best job we can with the district resources that have been entrusted with us. 

Also, you all just voted and gave us your feedback. Thousands of you provided feedback on our academic calendar for the 24-25 school year. Thank you, staff, parents, and students for providing your feedback. We will be sharing the calendar that has been selected very soon with you for the 24-25 school year. 

Finally, the election day is coming up on November 7th. We encourage everyone who has registered to vote to please go out and vote on this election day. Many Klein ISD facilities will be polling locations,, so we encourage you all to go to HarrisVotes.com to learn where is the quickest polling location for you to go to. With that, y'all, we just appreciate the time you've given us today. Thank you for everything that you've done to support our school district. Don't forget, each of these Facebook lives that we do, we continue to keep them as recordings, and we will be showing this recording later on through www.KleinISD.net. We sure do appreciate the time you've given us today. Take care. Thank you.