Regarding DSISD’s underperformance on the 2019 STAAR testing/TEA Accountability Ratings—the latest complete and official available due to COVID-19—former Interim Superintendent for Learning and Innovation Joe Burns described DSISD’s performance as “not acceptable”.

Regarding these TEA ratings:

• Just TWO of DSISD's schools received overall A grades in the TEA's latest ratings, which down from four receiving As last year and a 50% drop. 
• DSISD's overall score fell from 92 last year to 91 this past school year.
• DSISD's overall score of 91 places DSISD's performance closer to Austin ISD's 89 than the districts that our district typically consider peers like Lake Travis ISD that received a 94 and Eanes ISD that received a 96. Even Blanco and Wimberley ISDs also scored higher than DSISD, with Blanco receiving a 94 and Wimberley a 92.
• Additionally, DSISD was the ONLY school district with more than 2,500 students and less than 15% of students who are economically disadvantaged to fall under the Texas Tribune's graph trend line of TEA overall scores by percent of students who are economically disadvantaged. DSISD's performance on this metric is ranking last among peer districts statewide. 

And a July 2021 District Report further showed declining trendlines from 2016 to 2021 for DSISD students Approaches, Meets, and Mastery reading and math performance on STAAR testing for the last, 2020-2021 school year.

Recognizing this continued educational under-performance, what will you do to improve the quality of our children's education and close this performance gap?

Over the past nine (9) fiscal years, taxes levied by DSISD on an average residence have increased by nearly 60%—58.9% exact, from $3,853 for the 2013-2014 fiscal year to $6,126 for the current, 2021-2022 fiscal year.

Who is responsible for those tax increases: the Central Appraisal District or the DSISD School Board?

The compensation of Dripping Springs ISD teachers lags behind many area districts. In fact, at the April 2020 DSISD Board Meeting, a TASB study was presented to the Board that showed that DSISD continues to pay teachers less than market rates. The six categories analyzed and DSISD's respective rank are as follows:

• First-year teacher pay ranks 13 of 17 (@ bottom 24%) 
• Fifth-year teacher pay ranks 13 of 17 (@ bottom 24%) 
• Tenth-year teacher pay ranks 15 of 17 (@ bottom 12%)
• Fifteenth-year teacher pay ranks 13 of 17 (@ bottom 24%)
• Twenty-year teacher pay ranks 9 of 17 (@ bottom 53%)
• And Average teacher pay ranks 12 of 17 (@ bottom 29%)
• Across all six categories, that's an average rank of 12.5 of 17, and at bottom 26%

And a recent TASB study, presented at an April 21, 2022, workshop meeting once again reaffirmed that DSISD continues to pay an average teacher nearly $1,500 ($1,454 exact) less than the Austin-area market average salary— and meaning one-half (1/2) of Austin-area teachers earn more!

Many believe DSISD's noncompetitive compensation is failing to attract or driving away too many high-performing teachers each year—because they cannot afford to live within expensive DSISD (expensive, in part, due to DSISD's rising property bills), which necessitates burdensome and discouraging commutes, or cannot afford to live on less than market rate pay.

In order to keep and increase the number of high-performing teachers, does DSISD need direct additional funding to students and teachers in the classroom, including increasing teacher compensation?

If so and in order to increase teacher compensation, will you seek new dollars primarily in the form of additional tax revenues, or will you primarily work to re-prioritize DSISD's current expenditures?

For the 2nd year in a row, DSISD's state-required financial audit found "significant deficiency"/"material weakness" (each year respectively) accounting failings because "Personnel in key accounting positions left the District".

In 2020: "Condition: During the audit of the District’s financial statements, several misstatements were identified in various general ledger account balances. This resulted in numerous audit adjustments".

And in 2021: "Condition: During the audit of the District’s financial statements, several misstatements were identified in various general ledger account balances. This resulted in numerous audit adjustments, some of which were material to the individual funds. The material adjustments to the individual funds included approximately $7.5 million of expenditures that should have been recorded in the Capital Projects Fund and a net approximate $92 thousand of revenues and expenditures in a Special Revenue Fund for textbooks received."

At a special meeting after the Board and District Administrators spent over an hour "explaining away" their accounting failings and after attempts to bully and threaten the independent auditor, the Board after two secret/closed sessions lasting over an hour and one-half (1 1/2) voted to reject this independent auditor report.

Is the or a primary fiduciary duty of an elected official for a local taxing entity like DSISD ensuring proper accounting of receipts and expenditures of public dollars?

And since these material misstatements of the District's finances amounted to millions of dollars, would such accounting failings have been acceptable had the independent auditors not identified them?

And since the District's official rebuttal they inserted into this audit report noted "In addition, heightened rates of turnover challenged the central office staff. The district had three different superintendents and two Chief Financial Officers during the course of the school year. In fact, the end-of-year close and audit began with the exit of two key business office staff (CFO and Director of Finance), who left the district on their own accord in the middle of the process. The timing of their departure at the close of the fiscal year made the end-of-year close process more difficult and audit reporting in the following months especially challenging."—who is responsible for this turnover that began after the 2019-2020 School Board allowed former Supt Gearing to exit his contractual position outside of his contractual window for doing so just days before the start of the school year?

Also recall, the District is currently on its seventh (7th) CFO/Business Office Head in less than three (3) years, and fifth (5th) Superintendent in less than two (2) years.

At the November 2019 Board Meeting, Board President Carrie Kroll admitted that the new $35+ million Walnut Springs Elementary School is:

• Not what the Board envisioned in crafting the 2018 Bond; 
• Not what was promised to voters and other stakeholders before, during, and following the 2018 Bond's questionable passage; and
• Neither the design nor project implementation was how the Board envisioned due to the Superintendent transition.

Kroll also noted that in this combined new WSE and Dripping Springs Middle School campus project that DSMS is a "red-headed step child"—Kroll effectively acknowledged that this current plan is putting lipstick on a pig!
Interim Superintendent Wellman then responded that the Board merely need to decide that despite those many failings if the new WSE's design was "sufficient" rather than "ideal."

Then, despite the new WSE project's major systemic deficiencies and widespread community and teacher opposition, the Board nevertheless decided to bulldoze ahead with this new WSE project, despite its barely passing grade being apparently undisputed by the current School Board.

While this was perhaps the most stark, similar situations of broken promises have occurred throughout the implementation of DSISD’s 2018 Bond:

• DSISD officials had repeatedly suggested that Elementary #5 would be near Headwaters, and it was instead built on Darden Hill Road due to delays in DSISD’s secretive Headwaters Land Deal (which has detrimentally affected elementary and middle school attendance zones for much of the next decade)
• In order to avoid split feeder patterns, the 2018 Bond developed a new Long Range Facilities Plan, Path 2, that was projected to cost taxpayers an extra $53 million across the 2018 Bond and the next one—and even more over time. Yet the DSISD School Board appeared ready in April 2021 to approve a new attendance zone plan that sent roughly one-half of Sycamore Springs Elementary Students to Dripping Springs Middle School, while the other half attends Sycamore Springs Middle School.  But instead of split feeder patterns, the School Board rejected their paid experts' advice for best utilization of school facilities, transportation logistics, etc., and overcrowded both SSMS and WSE.
• Dripping Springs Elementary students had to attend school in a construction zone for over FOUR MONTHS after the contractor stopped regularly showing up for work and both School Officials and the School Board failed to ensure that the Project’s contract included a common-place, and common-sense, Liquidated Damages Clause, which would have required the construction contractor to pay specified damages for failing to substantially complete projects on time—and would have required the contractor to continue to repay DSISD and accordingly taxpayers until the project was substantially completed.
• The apparent doubling, or more, of the construction budget for an opulent and unnecessary Administration Relocation/Renovation to the current Walnut Springs Elementary (that a DSISD employee admitted at a March 2021 Board Meeting had its TRUE COST deliberately misrepresented and underreported in the 2018 Bond, while at the same time the Board began planning for multiple classrooms of portables for Sycamore Springs Middle School (for up to 350 students or more!)—instead of building brick and mortar classrooms onto a middle school that was already designed for and intended to be cost-effectively expanded to 1,200 students (or at least such is what was sold to voters for the May 2014 Bond).

To the point:

• Do you find DSISD officials’ many broken promises and brazen disregard promises made in order to barely and only questionably pass the 2018 Bond troubling?
• Do you believe DSISD should revisit and revise its current Long Range Facilities Plan and seek to prioritize student needs and optimize efficiency and effectiveness BEFORE spending any excess 2018 Bond Funds, such as on new Administration Facilities?
• In addition to student needs—is paying down existing bond debt (thereby saving taxpayers payments for unnecessary bond debt interest) or otherwise refunding that excess to taxpayers also an acceptable alternative use?
• Or in the interest of prioritizing bond dollars for student needs and avoiding the need to go to voters for a new Bond Proposition, should DSISD Administration Staff have stayed in their current facilities at the former high school until a plan for disposing of property previously planned for the recently-cancelled Town Center was developed?