GISD receives superior rating by FIRST

The Gonzales ISD School Board met for its regularly scheduled meeting Monday, Oct. 9 at the administration office.

One of the big topics from Monday’s was the reveal of district’s financial accountability rating by the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST).

Chief Financial Officer Amanda Smith said, just like the academic accountability rating, the Texas Education Agency assigns a financial accountability rating to each school district in the state.

“This is the 21st year of School FIRST, and the rating for this year was determined using data from the 2021-2022 fiscal year,” Smith said.

Smith informed the board that GISD has received a superior A rating by FIRST.

“The primary goal of School FIRST is to ensure quality financial management practices, and improved performance and the management of resources in school districts. Also, it's to ensure the maximum amount of dollars are allocated for instructional purposes,” Smith said.

In other school board business, board tabled an agenda item regarding policy EIC (LOCAL) academic achievement – class ranking.

Gonzales High School principal Jon Basha requested the board to amend the policy due the grading periods changing from a six-week schedule to a nine-week schedule.

The board was presented with two options:

--Option 1: For the purpose of determining honors to be conferred during graduation activities, the District shall calculate class rank using grades available at the time of calculation at the end of the third nine-week grading period of the senior year. The third quarter grade shall be used as the semester grade for this purpose.

--Option 2: For the purpose of determining honors to be conferred during graduation activities, the District shall calculate class rank in accordance with this policy and administrative regulations by using grades available at the time of calculation at the end of the fall semester of the senior year.

“So typically, when you are going to run calculations for graduation honors, you want to do it at the end of a term. So it needs to be discussed on would you rather have the calculation calculate at the end of the fall semester, or at the end of the third nine week grading period?” Basha said.

The high school ran into a problem last year; the school ran local graduation honors on the fifth sixth week. Basha said what they did last year at the end of the fifth sixth weeks was they ran the average and that became the grade for the second semester.

“We had a situation where in that last six weeks, grades that were taken for our senior class, there was enough fluctuation because the students were close enough that that six weeks grading period, the last six weeks ended up changing the rank,” Basha said.

“But based on the policy we had to go with, you know who we had at the end of the fifth six weeks for graduation, which was different after completion of their high school career.” Basha added.

The board made the decision to table the item for next meeting to have better understanding of the options that were presented.

The board approved the following agenda items:

--approved an Interlocal Agreement with the Harris County Department of Education to Facilitate Participation in the Choice Partners Purchasing Cooperative

--approved the 2023 Tax Roll Per Seciton 26.09 Texas Property Tax Code.

--approved to Accept the Annual Investment Report and Approve a Resolution Related to Review of Investment Policy and Investment Strategies.