Snyder trustees to vote on charter school partnership

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At its meeting Thursday evening, the Snyder ISD school board will continue the process of forming an innovative partnership with Responsive Education Solutions (Responsive Ed), the charter education company that is poised to take over operations at Snyder Junior High School in the fall. The partnership is in response to Texas Education Agency sanctions for chronic low test scores at the school.
Trustees are expected to approve three items related to the partnership.
First, the board will vote whether to approve updates to the district’s policy on charter school operators.
“The current policy, we have to do some updates to it to reflect some of the new changes. To make our process align with what the new changes are as far as identifying a charter operator,” said Snyder ISD’s Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Dr. Rachael McClain. 
The board will also vote on the innovative partnership application submitted by Responsive Ed. 
“The evaluation team made a recommendation to the district as to which charter operator they would recommend us selecting,” McClain said. 
Of the three charter school companies that expressed interest in Snyder ISD, Responsive Ed is the only one that meets the Texas Education Agency requirements to keep Snyder Junior High School under at least partial local control. 
Finally, school board members will vote whether to retain the education-oriented law firm Thompson and Horton, LLP, to negotiate the contract with Responsive Ed. 
“Obviously, when you’re building a contract, we are needing some legal advice on what we need to put into the contract and establish between us and the operator partner,” McClain said. “So that’s an action item to retain that law firm to help us with the contract part. I know that the attorney has a good deal of experience in this area and that was one of the reasons we were wanting to retain him.”
The board will also consider a resolution to pay district employees for missed days due to bad weather on Feb. 5-7. 
“We had to be out last week. We have enough minutes built into our schedule that we do not have to make up those days as far as for snow days or bad weather days, but we do have employees that are on contract,” McClain said. “This will be a resolution that we will still compensate our employees without them having to take personal leave or whatever.”
Trustees are also scheduled to vote on retaining the accounting firm James E. Rodgers and Co. PC to provide financial auditing services for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. 
The school board may meet in closed session during the meeting to consult with attorneys, discuss real property, discuss a prospective gift, discuss personnel matters, discuss an employee complaint, discuss a student discipline complaint, and discuss security matters. 
The board will return to open session to take action on items discussed in closed session.
There will be a time for public comments at the start of the meeting.