TEXARKANA, Texas - The Texarkana Independent School District board of trustees approved the 2021-2022 district calendar and budget calendar in a regular meeting Tuesday morning, which was held via phone call due to inclement weather.
In regards to the district calendar for 2021-2022, the first day of school for students will be Aug. 11 with the last day of school being May 25, 2022.
TISD will release the newly-approved calendar via its website, social media pages and parent/guardian email during the upcoming week.
Surveys and needs assessments for the coming school year have also been reviewed for the budget calendar. Campuses and departments will prepare and present their budget requests from March 29 to April 2.
The board also approved a waiver from the Texas Education Agency for TISD's course review process. A Texas education code requires all courses made available through the Texas Virtual School Network to be reviewed and approved prior to being offered.
The TISD eSchool Prep is seeking this waiver, which assures that the district will review each course offered to determine that each course meets all TXVSN standards and requirements for electronic courses.
Superintendent Doug Brubaker opened the meeting by giving his reports and information to the board, which included a brief message about Hold Harmless updates. Hold Harmless is an agreement that was implemented last year to protect school districts from losing state funding because of low enrollment numbers, due to the pandemic.
"We're still watching to see what's going to happen with Hold Harmless provisions," Brubaker said. "I listened to representative (Gary) VanDeaver talk about some of the new bills that are coming up in the legislature. The ones with greatest interest deal with COVID-19 and how the aid that's being provided by the federal government will be processed at the state level."
Financial Officer Anita Clay gave the board the monthly financial report, as well as some information about instruction.
"We have 97 days of instruction completed out of our 180 days of instruction," Clay said. "That's 54% completion as of Jan. 31."
She said the district is at 83.97% of tax collections on Jan. 31. Total revenue as of Jan. 31 was over $45 million (63% of budget). Expenditures were over $35 million (just over 50% of the budget).
The fourth six weeks also ended on Feb. 12.
Lastly, the board has changed the date for its March regular meeting. With the current meeting date scheduled during TISD spring break, the meeting was approved to be moved to the following week, on March 23.