Coppell Chronicle Vol. 1, No. 18

Coppell ISD Staff Get Modest Raises • Students’ Skills are Certified • Federal Raid Remains a Mystery • On Paper, This Doesn't Add Up

Coppell ISD Staff Get Modest Raises

Despite the budget deficit that Coppell ISD is still working to resolve, the Board of Trustees has approved a compensation plan for the 2021-2022 school year that includes raises for all employees.

The raises are based on 2 percent of the midpoint for each pay grade. For teachers, librarians, and nurses, that means an increase of $1,400. To see how much of a raise other employees will get, peruse the PDFs on this webpage.

Because of the rising costs of housing, insurance, and other essentials, district officials acknowledged that $1,400 is not much.

“While we call it a raise, in reality, what we and other districts are looking at is really a cost-of-living adjustment,” said the Assistant Superintendent for Administrative Services formerly known as Kristen Streeter.

(She recently got married, and her name is now Kristen Eichel. I was going to refer to her as “[EYE-kull]” or “Streeter” in this article until I happened upon the proper spelling of her new name on the CISD website.)

This is the second consecutive year that raises were based on 2 percent of the midpoint. Eichel and Chief Financial Officer Diana Sircar said they have been comparing notes with other area school districts, and some of them are offering raises based on 1 percent of the midpoint.  

“We have been working really hard to take care of our employees that have been here and will continue to be here,” Eichel said. “We wish we could bring a recommendation that’s higher. If we could, we would. It’s really balancing all of the different constraints.”

The board voted unanimously to approve the recommended compensation plan, after trustee Leigh Walker offered this:

“I know we all up here wish it could be, you know, 75 percent, particularly after this year. So just to say – out loud, again – thank you to every single educator, staff member, every part of this Coppell family that made this year happen. This is just a small token, but one that is more than deserved, and not nearly enough.”

More money may be on the way, however. Eichel and Sircar want to provide a one-time bonus to returning employees that would come out of the district’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds.

(District officials and trustees refer to these funds as “ESSER,” which sounds like “Yes, sir” if you lop off the Y. I imagine many teachers will pronounce it with the Y if it means more money in their wallets.)

Eichel described the one-time bonuses as a “retention tool” and a “thank you for being a part of our district last year, as we had to pivot all year long, each grading period, as we determined students in-person versus remote, and just hanging in there with us through all of that.”

The timing and amount of the bonuses remain to be determined. District officials are going to figure out what they can afford and present that information for the board’s approval later this summer.

“We want to be appropriate with what that amount is,” Eichel said, “so we didn’t want to just rush and bring a number tonight.”

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Students’ Skills are Certified

Two years ago, a sweeping piece of education legislation called House Bill 3 was signed into law. Among many other mandates, the law requires Boards of Trustees to “develop and post College, Career, and Military Readiness plans that set specific annual goals.”

In accordance with the career aspect of that requirement, the Coppell ISD Board of Trustees received a report last week from Kristin Petrunin, the district’s Coordinator of Career and Technical Education. Her report was a revelation to me, and it may be to you as well.

Did you know Coppell ISD students can earn the following industry-based certifications before they receive their high school diplomas?

• Certified Solidworks Associate*

• Microsoft Office Specialist Word

• Microsoft Office Specialist Excel

• Microsoft Office Expert Word

• Microsoft Office Expert Excel

• Microsoft Technology Associate Cloud Fundamentals

• Microsoft Technology Associate Database Administration Fundamentals

• Microsoft Technology Associate Software Development Fundamentals

• Emergency Medical Technician Basic

• Certified Pharmacy Technician

(*Full disclosure: I had never heard of Solidworks until seeing it on Petrunin’s slide deck. Our corporate overlords at Google helped me figure out that it’s a program used in computer-aided design and engineering.)

Those 10 certifications are all recognized by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). CISD offers four more that aren’t TEA-recognized, “but we do track to see how our students are doing,” Petrunin said. Those four are:

• OSHA 10 Hour Healthcare

• OSHA 10 Hour General Industries

• American Heart Association CPR/ First Aid

• American Heart Association CPR Instructor

For the acronym-averse out there, OSHA stands for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a division of the federal Department of Labor. I found this on an OSHA website: “OSHA 10-hour training teaches basic safety and health information to entry-level workers in construction and general industry.”

During her report, Petrunin said trustees help her department promote the certification program by recognizing students who earn multiple certificates. Here’s photographic evidence of that:

Petrunin said CISD will offer four more TEA-recognized certifications starting in the fall:

• Certified Medical Assistant

• Certified Personal Trainer

• OSHA 30 Hour

• NCCER Core Curriculum

(One more acronym explanation: NCCER is an abbreviation for the National Center for Construction Education and Research.)

Petrunin said the TEA is looking into more than 900 new certification options, with plans to cull those down into a more manageable list by the spring of 2022. She’s hoping the TEA’s final list includes “things that are becoming more present and more needed,” such as project management, cybersecurity, and the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.)

“We’re excited to see what work they come up with, and we will jump at the chance to offer more opportunities to our students,” she said.

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Federal Raid Remains a Mystery

In last week’s Coppell Chronicle, I told you what I knew about federal agents using flash-bang grenades and a helicopter to raid a house on Ashford Drive. Unfortunately, I don’t have much new information to report.

On Wednesday, I was finally able to talk to a human being in the Dallas office of Homeland Security Investigations. He claimed to know nothing about the June 17 incident, so I forwarded him a copy of last week’s Chronicle to bring him up to speed. (So far, he has declined to subscribe.) When I emailed him again on Friday to ask if he had any new information I could share with you, he replied, “We don’t have anything else to offer for your piece.”

Similarly, I received this email from Coppell police Officer Paul Gonzales on Thursday: “We don’t comment on federal investigations or the frequency with which they might occur in our city. You indicated you have reached out to federal authorities, and they would need to be the ones to answer your questions.”

The only new information I have, courtesy of a neighbor of the raided house, is that these three vehicles were towed from the property on Wednesday:

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On Paper, This Doesn't Add Up

In the first chapter of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the novel’s protagonist, Arthur Dent, lies down in front of a bulldozer to prevent his house from being demolished so a new bypass can be built. While arguing with the official overseeing the demolition, Dent says he didn’t learn of the plans for a bypass until the prior day, when he found them displayed in the local planning office. They were specifically displayed “in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘bulldozer.’”

A few pages later, a representative of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council announces to the entire population of Earth that our planet will be demolished so a “hyerspatial express route” can be built through our solar system. When everyone panics, the representative says, “There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years.”

I was reminded of these ridiculous scenarios while watching a few recent public hearings during Coppell City Council meetings. As far as I can tell, these hearings were publicized only via notices published in the Irving Rambler. Lo and behold, nobody showed up to speak at any of the hearings.

For example, during the council’s June 8 meeting, City Secretary Ashley Owens presented a resolution that would allow a new restaurant, Crescent City, to sell alcohol in the MacArthur Boulevard space formerly occupied by Siena Pasta and Pizza, despite that space being within 300 feet of a daycare. Owens told the council that a notice of the June 8 public hearing was published in the Rambler – which she called “our local paper” – on May 29 and June 5. “Our office has not received any feedback,” she said.

The Rambler became Coppell’s official newspaper in March 2020, after the Citizens’ Advocate stopped printing. Before the council made that official on March 24, 2020, the “citizens’ appearance” portion of their meeting included these comments from Jeff Varnell, the former chair of the Coppell Chamber of Commerce:

“Irving Rambler? Huh? The official paper of Coppell? I think not. Their readership in our town is nonexistent. As a 25-year-plus subscriber and advertiser with the Citizens’ Advocate, I hate to see them go. But if a change needs to be made, with readership over 10,000, the official paper of Coppell should be the Coppell Gazette.”

(By the way, this was one of the first council meetings of the COVID era, so Varnell’s statement was read into the record by then-Mayor Karen Hunt. It was quite a hoot to hear his obvious disdain filtered through her “gee willikers” tone of voice.)

The resolution regarding the Rambler was presented by then-City Secretary Christel Pettinos, who is now City Manager Mike Land’s Chief of Staff. She laid out the state law regarding newspapers that publish legal notices:

Sec. 2051.044. TYPE OF NEWSPAPER REQUIRED

The newspaper in which a notice is published must:

• Devote not less than 25 percent of its total column lineage to general interest items;

• Be published at least once each week;

• Be entered as second-class postal matter in the county where published;

• Have been published regularly and continuously for at least 12 months before the governmental entity or representative publishes notice.

Pettinos told the council that the Coppell Gazette – which is published by Collin County-based Star Local Media – couldn’t be Coppell’s new paper of record because “they did not have the permit available for Dallas and Denton County. We offered to them to pay for that. They declined.”

I emailed Star Local Media publisher Scott Wright to ask why his company would have declined such an offer. His response included this: “Completely false is any offer made to me for ‘permits’ to be paid for by Coppell or any other city. I've owned this company for almost five years. That’s absolutely false.”

If that’s the case, I asked Wright, why would the city have gone with the Rambler over the Gazette? His answer: “Perhaps personal agendas? Coppell is our second smallest of 14 newspapers. We distribute to 270,000 homes weekly.”

I doubt jealousy regarding population sizes was a factor, but I guess anything’s possible. I emailed Pettinos to ask who, specifically, declined her offer to pay for a permit. This is what she told me:

“I honestly cannot remember who I spoke with at the Gazette trying to come up with a solution for the paper of record, but I can say that while I was City Secretary, I did approach the Gazette on two separate occasions. March 2020 was a more pressing issue because the Citizens’ Advocate has ceased publication and we needed an ‘official’ paper designated. I do recall having a few interactions back and forth with someone while trying to come up with a creative solution and was told it just couldn’t happen.”

What makes all of this even more confusing is that Coppell ISD pays the Gazette to publish its required notices. Amanda Simpson, the school district’s Director of Communications, told me the Gazette was the district’s paper of record before she was hired in 2017.

I filed an open-records request to find out how much Coppell has paid to publish legal notices in the Rambler since March 2020. The answer: $21,873.

If you want to read these legal notices on paper, you may need to buy a subscription. There are coin-operated Rambler boxes in front of a few Coppell restaurants, including Local Diner, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, and the McDonald’s that’s catty-corner from the future home of Crescent City. However, I haven’t seen any papers in these boxes in quite a while. Some have undated notes in their windows that say copies are being sold only in stores “due to the high potential for theft of this week’s Rambler Newspapers.”

However, your correspondent has figured out a workaround. If you really want to read legal notices – and if you’re reading the Coppell Chronicle, there’s a good chance you do – the Texas Press Association maintains an online compendium of notices published across the state. Click here to access it. You’ll just need to remember that the notices are organized by the city in which they’re published. So to read Coppell’s notices, you’ll have to use “Irving” in your search parameters.

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Community Calendar

Celebrate Coppell: The city’s major Independence Day activities, the Parade Down Parkway and the Party in the Park, are scheduled for July 3. The deadline to register for the parade was June 25.

Coppell ISD Open Enrollment: If you live in Coppell but outside the boundaries of Coppell ISD, your children may be able to attend CISD schools. The application deadline is July 9.

Red Cross Blood Drives: I’ve received multiple emails from the Red Cross touting a “severe blood shortage.” If you’re so inclined to roll up your sleeve and donate a pint or two, you can do so at the Coppell Family YMCA on June 28, Rejoice Lutheran Church on July 20, or First United Methodist Church on Aug. 9.

AMON! The Ultimate Texan: Theatre Coppell will produce this play by Dallas Morning News columnist Dave Lieber at the Coppell Arts Center on July 16, 17, and 18.