The Desk · August 22, 2026
Where the Board Spends Its Time: SBISD Never Cleared TEA’s 10% Focus Floor
One hundred eighty meetings. Almost three hundred hours of video. Student outcomes, goals, and results-accountability took 1.4% of the agenda and 2.9% of open-session time. Lone Star Governance says 10% is the floor. This Board never cleared it.
This is not a district-published scorecard. Percentages are a coding of public BoardBook agendas and Swagit chapter timestamps. If a line disagrees with the live agenda or video, the live record wins. Every focus item below traces to a BoardBook agenda.
Meetings coded
180
Jan 2021 – Aug 10, 2026
Agenda items
2,928
40 coded as focus · 1.4%
Open-session time
2.9%
~296 hours of video
LSG floor · 10%
Never
Best year: 2024 at 6.6%
Public business should be done in public. That includes how the Board spends the meeting — not just the check register.
Texas Education Agency Lone Star Governance sets an “Approaches Focus” floor at 10% of discretionary time on student academic outcomes, goal-setting, and public results-accountability. Instructional-input items — literacy curriculum, IMA contracts — do not count. Required TAPR hearings and external audits were excluded from the focus counts (six TAPR hearings, about 13–21 minutes each).
Over 180 meetings, this Board never cleared that floor. 2023 was the nadir: 0.0% of discretionary time. 2024 was the high-water mark at 6.6%. 2026, through the August 10 workshop, sits at 4.3%.
Kids first is not a slogan if it is 1.4% of the agenda.
Year by year
The red mark on each bar is TEA’s 10% floor. None of the bars reach it. 2021 and 2022 have no item-level Swagit timestamps; those years are counted on the agenda, and the time share is estimated.
The 40 focus items
Every coded focus item is below, with the BoardBook agenda. Search a year or a word. Then open the agenda yourself.
| Date | Meeting | Item | Agenda |
|---|
What this is — and what it is not
It is a content analysis of public records: SBISD BoardBook (organization 889) and the Swagit video archive. Closed session cannot be scored. Swagit item timestamps are empty before about August 2023, so 2021–22 time shares are estimates. 2026 is partial, through the August 10 workshop, and labeled that way.
It is not an accusation of a crime. It is a measure of what the Board put on the clock. If they want a different coding, they can publish one — with the videos and the agendas still public.
Sources: SBISD BoardBook (180 agendas, 2021–2026), Swagit video archive (chapter timestamps Aug 2023–2026), TEA Lone Star Governance Integrity Instrument (10% Approaches Focus).
The check register is already on this site as Spending. Money is one clock. The meeting is the other.
God bless America, and God bless Spring Branch.
In the fight for transparency and accountability,
Matthew Cone
August 22, 2026
Matt@MatthewTCone.com · matthewtcone.com