Monday’s Coppell ISD Board of Trustees workshop involved a surprising amount of “happy dances.”
“This is incredible,” CISD chief financial officer Dr. Amber Lasseigne said. “I did a little happy dance in my office when I saw this.”
She is referring to 2026-27 budget changes that could result in a net reduction of more than $7.5 million compared to 2025-26, reducing the yearly deficit to $2.4 million. According to CISD Superintendent Dr. Leanne Shivers, these numbers are a conservative estimate.
“Doing that has meant we don’t have to look at eliminating STEAM from elementary campuses, sharing assistant principals, sharing campuses or cutting positions entirely,” Dr. Shivers said. “Being very intentional about how our courses are staffed has allowed us to maintain the programs we have.”
This includes a practice known as co-seating, in which one class has two sections, sometimes of different, but similar, courses. Dr. Shivers notes that this is already a practice at CISD.
However, some of the most efficient changes were less noticeable, such as simply re-allocating funds and changing position titles around.
“This right here is what makes the difference, year after year, day after day, week after week,” Dr. Shivers said.
Despite talks of reducing staff, the district has continued to place importance on maintaining competitive teacher salaries through 2% cost of living raises for educators.
“We know there are districts that will not this spring, but we know we can ensure our staff by increasing their salary locally,” Dr. Shivers said.
Multiple trustees and Dr. Shivers passionately recognized the work conducted by district staff to support this proposal.
“We have teams that are sitting in this room that know these situations by student name, grade level, teacher name, campus, exact room counts and course levels,” Dr. Shivers said. “This does not happen because you have one group of individuals doing something. This happens because this entire community cares about our kids, and they want the very best for them.”
With careful spending in mind, when the Board discussed bond project plans at Austin Elementary School, trustee Jonathan Powers mentioned hesitancy of losing space flexibility.
“Our footprint schools have a capacity of 600 students,” Powers said. “I’ve always viewed part of this renovation process as putting our elementary schools closer to what a modern elementary school looks like.”
With the context of the district’s Cowboys United initiative, the importance of these projects were apparent to the trustees. Three options for renovations were provided to the trustees for consideration.
“Competition with charter and private schools that have nice new buildings needs this,” board president David Caviness said. “We learned that small group instruction works, so we reconfigure our buildings in a method that meets today’s educational needs.”
Even with talk of change, some things stayed consistent at the meeting.
“You can always join me in my office for a happy dance,” Dr. Lasseigne said.
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