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Plano ISD trustees renew District of Innovation plan, preserving class‑size and teacher flexibility exemptions
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Summary
Trustees unanimously renewed the district’s five‑year District of Innovation plan March 10, retaining nine exemptions that give Plano ISD flexibility on start dates, probationary contracts, attendance and teacher-certification rules; trustees discussed class-size waiver frequency and administrative efficiency.
Plano ISD’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously March 10 to renew the district’s District of Innovation (DOI) local plan for another five years, preserving a package of exemptions staff said the district has relied on to add operational flexibility.
Dr. Courtney Gober, assistant superintendent for student success, summarized the renewal and described nine exemptions staff are seeking to keep in place. She said the plan’s posted draft has been on the district website since Feb. 4 and that most of the exemptions are ones the district has used since 2017. The exemptions discussed include flexibility on school start dates, allowing more-than-one-year probationary contracts for certain teachers, adjustments to the 90/10 attendance rule for course mastery, local teacher appraisal methods, flexibility in teacher planning and prep time, waivers for state K–4 class‑size caps, ability to revoke student transfers under specified circumstances, a clarified definition of business days in district procedures, and targeted teacher‑certification options for hard‑to‑fill roles.
Trustees asked clarifying questions about how often the class‑size cap waiver would be used and the administrative burden the waiver process previously entailed. Gober responded that the district has roughly 800 kindergarten through fourth‑grade classes districtwide and that staff estimate about 4–6% of those classes have needed to run above the state cap of 22 students; in many cases the overage is one or two students. "It is about efficiency," Gober said, describing the DOI exemption as a time‑saver for HR and campus staff who otherwise would file individual waivers for each small overage.
Trustee Catherine Goodwin asked whether the proposal had been reviewed in public-facing committee meetings; Gober confirmed it had been discussed and voted on by the district’s DBIC committee prior to the board item.
Why it matters: The District of Innovation provisions give local administrators limited discretion from certain Texas Education Code rules to reduce paperwork and react more quickly to enrollment shifts and staffing needs. Renewal preserves that flexibility for the district for the next five years, but the board and staff noted that exemptions are tools to be used case by case.
Next steps: Following the board vote, staff said they would file the renewal with the commissioner’s office and complete related administrative steps. The board recorded the unanimous vote on the renewal.
