BY CHARLES McCLURE

Lake Travis Independent School Board Trustees approved five new staff positions during regular session last Monday. LTISD saw an unexpected influx of new students who enrolled after school started, according to Deputy Superintendent Dr. Diane Frost.
While the administration was given authority to hire five new instructors, it currently anticipates it will only employ three, all at the elementary education level. State law requires all elementary classes maintain a ratio of no more than 22 students per teacher.
“We had an unusually high number of students who registered late for some reason,” Frost said.
Frost said staffing was complicated because of the addition of Serene Hills Elementary School. The school has no historical data to base its hiring calculations since this is the first year of operation for the campus.
“The truth is that we can’t predict the future,” said Superintendent Dr. Rocky Kirk. “As a general rule, we wait until the tenth day of school to see where we are [enrollment wise in relation to state staffing regulations]. Our principals, in general, do a very good job of managing these situations.”
Complicating matters are 16 student refugees affected by Hurricane Ike currently attending LTISD classes until basic infrastructure needs can be restored in those Gulf Coast communities hit by the storm. At presstime, evacuees from Galveston Island were only being allowed to briefly return to their homes to assess the damage left in the wake of the storm. Much of the area remains without electricity.
“We can automatically request a waiver from the 22-1 required ratio from the Texas Education Agency if necessary,” Frost said. At presstime it was uncertain how long those refugees would need to attend classes at the Lake Travis school district.
“We don’t know how long any of those students will be staying here,” Frost said. “We don’t know how long the schools in Galveston will be closed while they make repairs.”
While the storm had little impact on the Texas Hill Country from a weather standpoint, hundreds of evacuees found refuge in the area as the hurricane made landfall. Several LTISD staffers, including Frost and Kirk, volunteered at an evacuation center set up by the Eanes Independent School District.
“Although Central Texas may have escaped a direct hit from Hurricane Ike, many area school districts, including Lake Travis and Eanes, experienced its ripple effects as evacuees moved inland seeking shelter in Austin-area schools,” said Marco Alvarado, LTISD’s Director of Communications. “Ike caused LTISD to alter or cancel several regularly scheduled extracurricular events and other school and community functions over the weekend. However, there were no interruptions in the instructional day at any LTISD.”
LTISD was not included as an evacuation destination due to the extensive construction at several district campuses, Alvarado said.
“Eleven Lake Travis ISD central office administrators and campus principals volunteered to help out in neighboring Eanes ISD,” Alvarado said. “EISD operated two shelters, Hill Country Middle School and Westlake High School, from Thursday, Sept. 11 through Monday, Sept. 15.  Many EISD administrators and support staff worked around the clock without relief to accommodate several hundred evacuees.”
The two school districts worked in close cooperation in advance of Hurricane Ike’s landfall to offer assistance to evacuees seeking shelter from the storm.   
“In anticipation of the hurricane, we mobilized our District’s Emergency and Crisis Management Team early last week,” Kirk said. “We took the necessary precautions to protect our students and staff and communicated our plan in a timely manner.  We felt it was our duty to assist our neighbors in Eanes ISD during a very physically and emotionally trying time. When it comes to aiding those who are in most need, there are no district boundaries. We must reach out and assist each other, especially during times of crisis.”
However, the majority of late enrollees are not refugees, so the district needed to hire the additional personnel to meet state ratio requirements, Frost said.
In other action during the session, LTISD were briefed on a recently completed a security audit of its campuses, Frost said.
“They looked at the outside of each building, access controls, the safety and security of the interior of the building, the monitor and surveillance systems, communication and information security, the development of an emergency operations plan and how it would relate to the safety and security of the students,” Frost said. “We found some areas that need to be addressed at each of the campuses. Nothing that is huge, just some small things.”
Campus security has become a major component for every school in the nation since the Columbine shooting and other similar security breeches on school campuses. Details of how the district deals with security are not made available to the public to enhance the safety of each campus.
Safety audits are required for each school district campus every three years.