Melissa Semmler, Conroe ISD Board of Trustees, Position 6

09/09/2026

Educators, check out this Woodlands Art Council grant:

The Woodlands Arts Council is excited to announce that applications are now open for the 2026–2027 Microgrant Program!

The Microgrant Program enables and supports artistic projects throughout the Montgomery County community, with more than $210,000 in impact since 2021. Awards ranging from $250 to $5,000 are available to help bring meaningful and innovative arts projects to life.

Two funding opportunities are available:
The Dr. David Gottlieb Arts Education Microgrant supports arts educators and organizations in funding projects that would otherwise be impossible.
The Performing Arts Microgrant, in partnership with The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, provides funding for performing arts projects that further accessibility in the performing arts.

Applications are open through October 5, 2026, and applicants will be notified of funding decisions by December 4, 2026.

We encourage eligible educators, organizations, and individuals in Montgomery County to explore the program requirements and apply.

(Link in comments! 👇)

09/01/2026

CISD is closed tomorrow due to weather. Stay safe!

UPDATE | Conroe ISD is open for Thursday, September 3rd

WEATHER UPDATE | Conroe ISD Closed Wednesday, September 2

Following a meeting with the National Weather Service and Montgomery County Emergency Management, the latest forecast indicates Tropical Storm Edouard is strengthening and is expected to move farther into our area this evening and directly impact our school district.

As a result, Conroe ISD will be closed on Wednesday, September 2. All schools and district offices will be closed, and all after-school activities are canceled.

We understand that weather conditions and individual circumstances can vary widely across our community. Conroe ISD spans 348 square miles, and while some areas may see relatively minor impacts, others may experience heavy rainfall, flooding, power outages, or hazardous road conditions. We must also consider that many of our bus drivers, teachers, and employees commute from areas that may be more heavily affected.

We know closing schools can create challenges for our families and employees, and we do not make this decision lightly. We appreciate your understanding as we make the best decision we can for the safety of our entire Conroe ISD community.

08/31/2026

This year's budget gets called balanced, and that's technically true, but it's only part of the picture. That label only applies to ONE of the district's THREE funds. The General Fund really does show revenue matching expenditures dollar for dollar. But the debt service fund and the child nutrition fund are both currently running shortfalls, covered by drawing down savings rather than new revenue. Saying "the budget is balanced" without that caveat doesn't fully describe the districts financial position to tax payers.

Out of a total combined budget of roughly $998.3 million across all three funds, the shortfall as originally proposed was about $7.79 million, or 0.78% of the total. BUT the board ultimately adopted a lower I&S rate than those original numbers were built on, $0.28 instead of the $0.2825. So, the REAL shortfall is larger: closer to $9.2 million, or about 0.92% of the total budget.

Under 1% sounds small, and in the context of a billion-dollar budget, it is. But that number is concentrated almost entirely in two funds with far smaller reserves than the General Fund, which is exactly why the percentage understates what it means for those funds specifically. The debt service fund currently holds about $23 million in reserve. Based on projections built from the district's own numbers, holding the rate flat means those reserves are likely to RUN OUT within roughly TWO YEARS. Once that happens, the district doesn't get a choice; it's legally obligated to make its bond payments regardless of the fund balance. So, the I&S RATE will likely need to RISE, to somewhere around $0.31, an INCREASE of roughly 3 cents from where it sits today. Taxes will be slightly lower this year, but based on current projections, they're likely to increase by far more than the quarter-cent decrease we saw this year, when the district faces a rate correction around 2028-29.

Here's the part I think is easy to miss in all of this: I&S is one of the only tax rates the board actually controls. M&O is set almost entirely by state formula. I&S isn't. This year, in a budget cycle where staff explicitly flagged a growing structural shortfall, the board had a real, discretionary lever available to it and chose not to use it. I'm not raising this because the dollar amount is dramatic. I'm raising it because it's a telling data point about how the board weighs a known, flagged risk against visible short-term relief on a tax bill.

08/29/2026

Friday night lights are back! This kiddo has been waiting to go to a game all summer. TWHS v. Bridgeland

08/25/2026

As the article (linked in comments) notes, state law does offer some protection against late deliveries; publishers are required to deliver materials at least 10 days before school starts, and the State Board of Education can impose penalties for missed deadlines. However, because Bluebonnet does not hold a contract with the state, there is no publisher to hold accountable. As State Board of Education member Pam Little, a former Houghton Mifflin Harcourt executive, put it: any other publisher would have faced serious consequences for delays like this.

We are fortunate to have dedicated staff in Conroe ISD who are stepping up to fill the gaps, and the district continues to take the necessary steps to address material shortages locally. That said, our team’s time and talent are best spent supporting students and strengthening our district, not tracking down thousands of missing materials.

Looking ahead, I’m hopeful that districts will gain the ability to select their own printers, allowing market competition to help prevent issues like this from recurring.

The agency said demand for the Bible-infused curriculum it has pushed districts to adopt "significantly exceeded original expectations."

08/19/2026

Tonight the board adopted a $769 million budget and a lower tax rate. Here's what that decision actually means for taxpayers.

First, I voted against lowering the rate, not because I want people to pay more, but because the numbers we voted on didn't hold together. I think you deserve to know what we're actually exposed to. A budget that closes to zero on paper for one year isn't the same thing as a district in good financial health.

The debt service fund is already short, and it just got shorter. Our own presentation showed a $6.2 million shortfall in debt service this year, even under the original proposal, but the revenue and shortfall figures we voted on still reflected the higher rate. The math presented to us didn't match the rate we adopted, on debt we are legally obligated to pay.

Property values missed the mark, badly. When we planned the 2023 bond program, we assumed 6% annual property value growth to support it. Actual growth this year: 0.58%. That's not a rounding error. Two years running, actual growth has come in far below what we planned for, and it directly affects how much room we have to cover both debt payments and day to day operations.

Three new campuses, flat enrollment. We're opening Arnold, Fowler, and Timber Mill High School. Projected enrollment is 72,800, essentially unchanged from last year. This means more buildings and higher fixed costs, with the same number of kids to fill them.

Next year is already harder, and we know it. Our own presentation flags a known funding reduction coming in 2027-28, when the district's Fast Growth Allotment status is likely to drop to Tier 2, and we do not have a plan for how we offset it.
Reserves are being used to paper over shortfalls, not fix them. Between debt service and child nutrition, we are drawing down fund balance (savings) this year to keep both funds afloat. That's a real tool, but it's not a permanent solution, and it's harder to use again next year if the same pressures are still there.

I didn't vote against this because I think Conroe families should pay more. I voted against it because I don't think we should adopt a budget where the numbers we're shown don't match the decision we're making. The debt service slide we voted on tonight includes a footnote that reads "Based on proposed tax rate of $0.2825," but the rate the board actually adopted was $0.2800. That means the $187.4 million in revenue, the $6.2 million shortfall, and the $17.1 million ending fund balance we were shown all reflect a rate that isn't the one we voted on.

Here's why this matters to families directly. Lowering the rate without replacing that revenue doesn't make our costs go away; it just shortens the amount of time before we have to cover them some other way. Debt payments and special education services are legally required, so those get funded no matter what. What typically gets cut first are the things without that legal protection: extracurriculars, elective courses, campus support staff like counselors and librarians, and deferred building maintenance. Our teachers already went without a raise this year, and the tighter our margins get, the harder it becomes to change that going forward. And if enrollment stays flat while we keep opening new campuses, the conversation about consolidating older schools moves from a distant possibility to a real one, sooner than it would have otherwise.

We need a multi-year financial forecast before we adopt any future budget, so we can see these pressures coming and plan for them, rather than pushing them off to a future vote and jeopardizing our district's financial health in the process.

08/19/2026

Tonight's board meeting ran from 5:00 PM to 11:45 PM, nearly seven hours. The agenda item I brought forward, on establishing a written board policy for trustee training and conference approval, lasted 6 minutes and 47 seconds. Over an hour of tonight's meeting was spent on other trustees grandstanding.

I placed this item on the agenda after the board president told me, in writing (see below), that a fee-based conference expense "needs to go through a board vote per our past discussions," and that she was "glad to add it to the August agenda" if I wanted to proceed that way. Tonight, she said she never asked me to place this item on the agenda. I'll let her own words speak for themselves.

A board president's role is to run fair, orderly meetings, not to decide which trustees get real discussion time and which get rushed through. Every trustee, including me, was elected to represent our community, and every trustee is entitled to the same process, the same time, and the same standard as everyone else on this board.

08/15/2026

There has been a lot of discussion about Conroe ISD’s performance in the 2025–2026 school year, and it's true that many Conroe ISD schools received lower letter grades in our TEA Accountability Ratings. Conroe ISD now has four schools identified by TEA as needing improvement, compared to just one last year. In grades 3, 4, and 5, we saw drops not only in STAAR reading scores, but in math scores as well.

A couple of things in the data concern me. Looking at STAAR Reading scores for grades 3, 4, and 5: 5th graders saw no change in the percentage of students who did not meet standard. Third graders who did not meet standard increased by six percentage points, and fourth graders increased by four percentage points.

This pattern lines up with how much exposure each grade had to our old reading curriculum, which was adopted this year. Our 5th graders had the most years of instruction under the old curriculum, and they're the group that held steady. Our 3rd and 4th graders, who had less grounding in the old curriculum, saw the steepest declines.

Some have suggested this is simply a normal "implementation dip”, which is a temporary drop in performance that happens whenever a new curriculum is introduced, while teachers and students adjust. That's a real phenomenon, and I don't dismiss it. But if this were a normal dip, we'd expect all grades exposed to the new curriculum to dip by roughly the same amount, and we'd expect scores to recover within a year or two. What our data shows is more specific than that: a gradient by exposure. Fifth graders, with more exposure to the old curriculum, held steady; Fourth graders dropped; Third graders, with the least exposure, dropped the most. So, it’s entirely possible that the new curriculum itself is less effective, not just harder to adjust to. This year will reveal whether this is truly an implementation dip. If it is, the dip should resolve, but if it’s an issue with the curriculum, the dip will become more pronounced.

Separately, I want to flag a related concern, with an important caveat. Our districtwide TEA Academic Growth score declined from 79 to 77 this year, and the underlying data shows more students earning zero growth points and a lower catch-up rate among students who started the year behind grade level. This is a real decline, and growth measures are useful because they track the same students' progress year over year rather than comparing different cohorts. However, this growth data is districtwide across all tested grades, not limited to grades 3–5. (Annual Growth can't be calculated for 3rd grade, since it requires a prior-year STAAR score.) I don't yet know whether this districtwide decline is being driven by our elementary grades specifically, or primarily by middle or high school. I'm working to pull more growth data to confirm whether this pattern holds in grades 3–5 before treating it as additional evidence for the curriculum concern above. I'll follow up once that's confirmed.

Taken together, I think the reading data for grades 3–5 raises a real, specific concern that deserves close scrutiny rather than being dismissed as a normal adjustment period.

08/12/2026

Ronald Reagan said, “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets people to do the greatest things.” By that measure, every teacher is a leader. Every day, you inspire, challenge, encourage, and empower the next generation to achieve more than they knew was possible. You are shaping the future, and through your work, you have the power to change the world. Have a wonderful first day of school!

08/08/2026

Here are current CISD audits that have been made available to the public. There is some great information about our district here!