Planning for the 2017-18 school year is well underway as Frisco ISD school board members and leaders discussed various topics at Monday night’s regularly scheduled Board of Trustees meeting, including a proposition for a Local Innovation Plan, the calendar for the 2017-2018 school year and a report on priority-based budgeting.

“We’ve had six stakeholder meetings,” FISD Chief Financial officer Kimberly Pickens said. “We got all of our stakeholder feedback and recommendations last week at our workshop and now we’re in the process of analyzing all of those recommendations for savings options, balancing budget trade offs which basically means making sure any recommendation we do move forward with as a proposal doesn’t have any unintended negative consequences, and building our balanced budget for next year.”

The 2017-18 school year could also see Frisco ISD becoming a District of Innovation.

“If the plan is approved, some local policies will adopt and there will be a corresponding legal policy with it, but just within the scope of what will be brought tonight,” FISD Director of Assessment and Accountability Gary Nye said. “For example, one of the policy changes is just adding a policy that simply states that we will become a district of innovation, so they’re very simple, basic policy additions.”

The Board of Trustees also discussed a resolution regarding the A-F accountability rating system for Texas public schools.

“The commissioner acknowledges very problematic flaws in the system and it is a very, very select few who can explain how any grade is arrived at within any domain within this system,” superintendent Jeremy Lyon said. “In regards to the sought after transparency, it is not there. I think our local commissioner would be the first to acknowledge that as he continues to try and find solutions. If you want any evidence of that, when you consider that Highland Park High School received a C minus for college readiness, it shows you the amount of work to be done on this thing.”