Chronicle Article by Lisa Gray

 

 

Here comes the latest propaganda.  Looks like the liberal Houston Chronicle is going to help out with passing the bond.  Nothing like overstepping your traditional boundaries! Nothing like putting an opinion piece on the front page of the Sunday paper and calling it "news."  You MUST read this article if you missed it.

 

  "In Katy, the future starts now" by Lisa Gray. http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

 

In the comments section for this article, these sites were recommended:  http://instantnewskaty.com/2011/09/07/26103 and http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=8055028  I also recommend these sites so that the reader can remind himself of a couple of things that happened earlier under this superintendent's watch.

 

Let's look at this article and some of the prevarications that are in it!

 

First, the endearing picture of the superintendent hugging a parent is just too much. I'm sorry, but the only person who hugs me is my husband, and if Alton Frailey had hugged me, I would have slapped his face, superintendent or not.  He needs to learn to respect "personal space."  That's what his teachers are teaching kindergartners--maybe he needs to attend a class.

 

Who in their right mind who is getting ready to scam the voters would be so dumb as to put all his cards on the table, five months before he needs to do so?  Now the bond election of November will become an issue in the May board election.  All right! (But wait, I just saw the slates that have signed up to run for the Board, and I take back that last statement!)

 

Please know that I've asked through Open Records to get a copy of the participants in the "Parents' Roundtable."  It will be interesting to see who this year's duped parents really are! They are "duped" only if they don't know yet that the superintendent that we have now doesn't give a hoot what they think.  He's just using them to make it look like he took their input before he goes ahead with the next bond election.  [Katy ISD used to have a Parents' Advisory Committee (it was my idea!) that was made up of people recommended by the principal at each school.  There was a committee for secondary schools and another for elementary schools.  It was a way for the superintendent to hear the concerns of each school community.  I was the representative on the first committee from Taylor High School. It was a good idea at the time, because there was a superintendent who would listen to parents.  That's the only way one of those will work.  That situation does not exist at the present time.]

 

Evidently Mr. Frailey sent some Katy ISD administrators to Harvard or Rice to hear Petri Darby. On this occasion, Mr. Darby was evidently telling his audience of public school administrators how to win elections as he is identified in the paragraph previous to his comments as a "political consultant"  whose organization gives "basics-of-marketing" presentations to school leaders. He is quoted in the Chronicle article as saying that "elections aren't about winning minds; they're about winning hearts." 

 

Now I'm not sure about anyone else, but that's an insult to me.  I don't decide issues about spending my tax dollars based upon my "heart."  And "heart" here clearly means emotions!  I look for facts and supporting data, and intelligent presentations of which there aren't too many when it comes to a KISD bond election. What the District is most likely suggesting here is that not having buses for your children to be transported to your neighborhood elementary school is an emotional issue for parents.  Au contraire!  Having buses for elementary students to keep them from having to walk in the streets, in the cold, in the traffic, over ditches, through standing water, and in the dark, is NOT an emotional issue!  It is a serious concern of parents and should be treated as such.  The five million dollars that Mr. Frailey decided to spend on the STEM center that voters rejected convincingly just three months ago is a clear example of the disregard Mr. Frailey holds for parents and their young children. Those five million dollars from the M&O side of funding SHOULD have gone to train more bus drivers and buy more buses. The District could train people to drive buses and pay for their training and extract an agreement that they would stay with the district for three years.  How hard is that? When I first moved here, most of the bus drivers were mothers of students. I refuse to believe there is not a solution to the lack of bus drivers.

 

Petri Darby has upbraided George Scott on his blog for calling him a hired consultant for KISD, and Mr. Darby has said he wasn't hired by the Katy school district.  But it would appear that our tax dollars have helped to pay for his services. If nothing else, we paid for our administrators to go to "Harvard or Rice" to hear him. SOMEBODY from Katy ISD heard him say all this or it wouldn't have been a quote in the Chronicle!  We also "paid" when those administrators were not back in Katy doing their jobs.

 

Of more import is that fact that our administrators are listening to someone like Mr. Darby.  Mr. Darby is a dual citizen of Finland, one of the ten top socialist countries in the world, according to an Internet blurb, and the US.  One has to wonder why he doesn't want to be JUST an American citizen.  Mr. Darby is a vice-president at Raise Your Hand Texas.

 

Raise Your Hand Texas is the latest step in the evolution of the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, TBEC (Texas Business and Education Council), the Texas Association of Business (see my article under Non-governmental Organizations on this web site), and all the other groups that have organized over the last twenty years to push the liberal agenda of replacing an academic education with workforce training at the expense of students.

 

So please know the agenda here.  You can Google 'Raise Your Hand Texas' and read policy papers, et cetera.  http://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/advocacy/legislative-agenda/ 

 

Also the president of that organization is the very recent superintendent of the Cy-Fair ISD, David Anthony, our neighboring school district that had the great sense to build a stadium of the mega variety that cost a fortune and which excess was unnecessary, and which school district is further along in the dumbing down efforts of their students than Katy ISD.

 

Mr. Darby is quite qualified to suggest a "basics-of-marketing presentation" scheme to push this bond issue because he appears to be an expert in the  use of social media to hornswoggle the naive voters amongst us.  That's his stock in trade.  Communications and digital strategy is just TQM on steroids.  It's just another clever ploy to fool the public.  Frailey is pretty good at that by himself without listening to the likes of Petri Darby.

 

But let's just look at quoted statements in this article.

 

Alton Frailey has a "firm conviction that the district needed to build new schools."  Why is that, do you suppose?  Is it because we really need them?  Well look at these stats.  As of February 27, 2014, There are 67,417 students in Katy ISD. On October 25, 2013, there were 66,924 students so in that interim, the district has increased by 493 students.  At the elementary level the number of students in February is 32,450 and in October 2013, it was 31,882 an increase of 568 students. At the junior high level in February 2014 there were 15,663 and in October there were 15,579 with an increase of 84 students.  At the high school level in February 2014 there were 19,304 students and in October 2013 there were 19,463 students indicating that at the high school level, there is a loss of 159 students. Now adding up 568 and 84 and then subtracting 159, the number 493 is the increase.  Got that? Elementary schools and junior highs increased, but high schools lost 159 students in the last four months.

 

Looking additionally at the numbers, KISD has seven high schools with one of them (Tompkins) opening with only about 830 students last fall and lacking the 11th and 12th grades.  That school has a capacity of 3,000 students, so it has a way to go before it is full.

 

The seven existing high schools (including Tompkins) have a stated (by the school district) capacity of 21,000 students, but there are only 19,304 students, making the high schools UNDER capacity by 1,692 students.

 

The thirteen existing junior high schools have a capacity of 17,028 with only 15,663 actual students, leaving the junior highs UNDER capacity by 1,365 students.  Ten of the District's thirteen junior highs are under capacity. (Junior highs mostly have a capacity of 1,400 so the District is almost ahead by an entire junior high.)

 

The thirty-five elementary schools have a capacity of 31,060, but there are in February 2014 31,882 students.  However what is also a factor is that the school district has built two new elementary schools already that will open up next fall with a joint capacity of 2,060 students, so then the District will be UNDER capacity by 1,238 students. Actually at the present time (March 2014) the elementary schools have 24 of them UNDER capacity, so the statement that "we need to build new schools" would seem to be quite FALSE--unless of course your philosophy of building public schools is, "If we build them, they will come!"

 

What we need is rezoning so that the schools on the east side of the district that are emptying out with the advent of an older population are filled with the overflow of students in the overly crowded schools of the west side. When my family moved here 32 years ago, we all expected to have our children bused to a school that could accommodate them.  The builder/developer of our subdivision did not have the luxury of having a school district that would build schools BEFORE they were needed in order to encourage purchases of homes and growth. However, rezoning is anathema to school board members.  They're afraid if they rezone, they'll get voted out of office.  I am of the opinion that if they did it in an open and forthright manner, that might not be their fate.  But open and forthright are not words in their vocabulary.

 

No one seems to have learned the lesson that was clearly presented by Spring Branch ISD--the darling of the '60's and 70's (and where coincidentally OUR Katy ISD superintendent served as an Assistant Superintendent for several years in it declining years). The lesson of course was that if you OVER BUILD, the time will come when you have to TEAR DOWN many of those schools that were built,  and the taxpayers will get mighty angry about the waste of their tax payer dollars and throw you out! (Spring Branch had to tear down a brand new high school that they built almost as soon as they built it, their superintendent and their board were so inept!)

 

The next statement that we need to examine is the statement by Frailey, "You are in Katy ISD, one of the fastest-growing school districts in the nation." 

 

Well actually, we are NOT a fast growth school district and have not been since 2006 which was eight years ago!  Anyone know the definition of a "fast growth school district"? No, you don't, because there isn't one!

 

 In 2006, in Katy ISD, the student population increased by 3,596 students over the previous year.  The next year the amount was only 2,917.  It went up slightly in 2008 to 3,037, but since then there has mostly been a decline. In 2009 the number was down to 2,429; in 2010 it was 2,253; in 2011 it was 1,816; in 2012 it was 2154--up slightly, but in 2013 it was down to 1,835 back down to the increase of 1999 (1,896). What is also of note is that these increases per year by PERCENTAGE of the total student population are not as high (or "fast growth") as they were in the 1990's! (In 1997 we had 5.4% growth.  While in 2013, the growth percentage from the previous year was 2.9%) So stop with the "fast growth" baloney, please!

 

All the while these numbers are going DOWN, our superintendent, Alton Frailey, is out proclaiming that "KISD is a fast-growth school district"!  Why would he do that?  Well, in my opinion it has to do with a really cozy relationship with PBK architects who have been allowed free access to KISD at whatever level they want.  They are allowed to recommend when and where to build schools, put on new roofs that we possibly do not need, and anything else that they are selling that year.  They help with bond elections (see what they did with Judson ISD in 2006 at the same time they were in KISD pushing two bonds that year.  Google 'PBK and Corpus Christi ISD' and see what you find.) They also orchestrate the bond so it is padded by 30% which George Scott discovered when he looked at their books at the school district offices.  He accused the District of letting that happen, and they never once denied his charge!

 

Of further interest is the FACT that when they let PBK in the door, the price of schools went up.  For example, Garland McMeans Junior High which was not built by PBK, cost 15.7 million dollars in 2000.  In 2011 Seven Lakes Junior High cost 32.7 million dollars--doubling the cost of building a junior high in just 11 years!  Don't anyone tell me that the cost of building things has doubled since 2000.  PBK had built every junior high since 2000 with the schools going up by two or three million every two or three years.  (One can see actual amounts by going to Katy ISD and then KISD Schools on this website.)  Also note that the architect, PBK, (as do all architects in most building projects in KISD) gets 6% of the total cost of a new school.

 

But back to the story. Alton Frailey belongs to a non-governmental organization (NGO) called the Fast Growth Schools Coalition.

 

Building new schools obviously is not necessary at this time.  Building new schools to help developers sell homes is not necessary at this time.  Building new homes WILL bring more traffic, stores, wider freeways, more noise, more light at night so you can't see the stars, and more people in front of you at the post office, restaurants, gas stations, Whataburger, Rudy's, and so on.  Is that what you are looking for to enhance your family's quality of life?  I am not.  Enough is enough. You have to ask yourself, "Why would anyone want MORE of all the problems of growth? 

 

What's in it for them?  Why do they insist on having PBK as the architect of choice for every junior high and high school?  Who decided they were the best architect in town?  Rebecca Fox?  Joe Adams?  Henry Dibrell?

 

The Fast Growth Schools Coalition is a consortium of schools that have banded together under the ruse of being fast growth districts in order to lobby and coerce the state legislature into giving them more money. Memberships to this coalition are funded by their school districts' taxpayers, but the people in the organization get to decide how to spend that money. They have a paid lobbyist. They have school districts that belong that have very few students, but relatively speaking, because they add more students each year, they somehow qualify as a fast growth district.  It is a pure scam in my opinion.

 

The next big lie is the statement "In Katy, residents understand that the problem isn't how to stimulate economic growth.  It's how to keep up with it."  That's not exactly true as the Katy Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of Ann Hodge and the Katy Economic Development Council under the leadership of Lance LaCour spend all their time trying to bring new growth to the district and how do they do that?  They've managed to put the school district in the position of being their handmaiden by assuring those they want to move here that there will be schools for their employees the minute they move into a new subdivision if they move here, and that the schools will do everything they can to aid and abet the business. Helping business is the first priority for our school district.  It appears to me that the students and their parents are the last priority of our school district.

 

In my opinion, since they are using tax money to accomplish those perks, that this is NOT the job of a government (school district), and they have overstepped their bounds by a mile.

 

The rest of the article is Frailey pontificating to make his point.  He claims there will be 70,000 new students next year.  That remains to be seen.  What if there aren't that many?  What if the citizens of Katy have given him a half a billion dollars in bond money and he doesn't need it?  Will it be like it was in the early 2000's when they asked for money to build Williams Elementary three times before they ever built it?  How about when they asked for money for a junior high and they didn't build that either?  What it DOES mean is that Frailey will have funds that he can play with.  He  might build 7 more Astroturfed practice fields.  Or how about another Center for the Arts to match the one for STEM subjects (which the voters just rejected last November, but which is now being built with some of those extra funds that he seems to be so clever at finding).

 

We have an out of control superintendent because we have a school board that doesn't provide oversight. I think they are all so self-centered that they cannot see what is happening right under their noses. They obviously don't do their homework. Or perhaps they just don't care.

 

We have a superintendent who appears to be prejudiced against minorities, strange as that might seem. Go to the page on this web site where I list the members of bond committees.  Count the number of minorities on those committees since 2007 when Frailey arrived.  You won't find them in the proportions of our student make up.  The proof is in the pudding. The Katy school district is a minority school district.  There are 42% whites, 10% blacks, 34% Hispanics, and 11% Asians.  Look for that composition on the next bond committee.  It should be there.

 

One of the parents who is a member of the Parent Roundtable needs to ask Mr. Frailey if he might be able to tell us why there is such a gap in the standardized test scores between whites and blacks and Hispanics.  He should be spending all his time addressing THAT problem and forget about building new schools. 

 

It is unconscionable that someone who is supposed to be a leader would, in my opinion, twist facts, misrepresent the truth, and do anything he can to get some more money to spread around to those who are his and his board members' supporters.

 

Then of course there is the matter of the Katy school district being led down the path of "reformed education" like that is a good thing!  It's not.  When you see them putting ability grouping back in our schools, you will know that they are once again, "good" schools.  Until then, a private school or a home-schooling effort is your best bet for your children's education.

 

You can only access this article if you are a subscriber to the Houston Chronicle, OR, you can email me, and I'll send you a copy!  Icemom617@aol.com

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/transportation/article/In-Katy-bus-driver-shortage-leads-to-parent-5360517.php