WFISD Board of Trustees holds routine meeting

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) - Tonight’s Board of Trustees meeting at the WFISD Education Center was quick but impactful; Superintendent Dr. Donny Lee explained the key items and their impact on the WFISD area.

After taking care of general business, one of the first major topics was the purchase of new wrestling equipment, something Dr. Donny Lee says has been a long time coming.

“We’re always looking for ways to engage a variety of students and we know that there has been a need for a long time for many years based on the public feedback that we’ve got. We’ve had multiple parents for multiple years ask us, ‘When are you guys going to create a wrestling program?’ because this was something that was promised years ago as the high schools were being developed and built,” Superintendent Dr. Lee said.

After years of community feedback and funding recently becoming available, the program is finally moving forward in what the Board says will offer students something that teaches life values such as discipline, resilience and other valuable skills to improve academic performance.

Another topic that drew a lot of attention tonight was incentive pay for early retirement or resignation notices.

“The why behind it is: we incentivize them to go ahead and tell us that early. If we give them that thousand dollars or their stipend to go ahead and early resign or early retire and they tell us, we can already begin looking for their replacement,” said Superintendent Dr. Lee.

The district says the goal is to avoid staffing gaps, so students don’t miss out on the support and instruction WFISD works to provide every day.

The Board also voted on representation for the Wichita Appraisal District and approved a related resolution.

“Well, we’re the largest one in the entire region, so we account for the majority of the percentage for those particular board seats on the appraisal board district board,” said Superintendent Dr. Lee. “So we have so many votes, we have over 500 and so we want representation and so on the appraisal district and so our board voted tonight to lock those two places in that we have.”

With those key decisions now on the table, the community could start seeing some of these changes in place as we head into the New Year.