KATY ISD FACTS REFUTED:
"KISD continues to experience unprecedented growth every year. Projections indicate that we will have nearly 30,000 additional students by 2020 (the equivalent of 16 new schools with 1,800 students each)."
The demographer who calculates and predicts growth has claimed to be only within 9% + or -correct on her predictions! That's not very reassuring. In a PDF presented to the public in 2006, she predicted that the "most likely scenario" was for the student population to "continue to grow at the past three year levels" which was about 3,000 students a year.
Population Survey Analysts (the demographer that KISD keeps on retainer in addition to their own in-house demographer) in 2006 predicted there would be 62,279 students in 2010. This was a reason given in 2006 why we needed to pass the bond THAT year!
The Katy ISD total number of students (AEIS data) for each of the last eight years are: 2003 - 39,478, 2004 - 41,690, 2005 - 44,212, 2006 - 47,808, 2007 - 50,725, 2008 - 53,762, 2009 - 56, 191, 2010 - 58,449, 2011 - 60,260, 2012 -62,414, 2013 -64,249 - 1,835. (And please recall that our highly paid demographer had predicted in 2006 when a bond was being pushed that there would be 80,000 students in 2014!) The increases beginning in 2004 are 2,212; 2005 are 2,522; in 2006 are 3,596; in 2007 are 2917; in 2008 are 3,037; in 2009 are 2,429; in 2010 are 2,253, 2011 are 1,816, in 2012 are 2,154 and in 2013 are 1,835. So FACTUALLY the school district population increases have been in decline since 2006, and certainly not growing by 3,000 students for the last five years! In fact in the last ten years, there have been increases of 3,000 in only two of those years. Bet the Bond Committee didn't get those statistics!
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"There is no tax increase for citizens 65 or older. The State freezes taxes on resident homesteads the year a taxpayer turns 65, as long as the homeowner remains in the same residence and does not make major improvements."
This is a no-brainer. NO citizen 65 or older sees a tax increase whether there is a bond or not. This is just a ruse to make older people think they should vote for the bond since it doesn't affect them as their taxes don't go up. What the district is NOT telling those over 65 is that the taxes for these older folks (and older folks DO still pay school taxes as they are frozen in the amount when they turn 65) aren't going to go DOWN either as we will have 1.5 billion dollars of debt if this bond referendum passes, and we'll all be paying the maximum tax rate for years to come! Remember our bonded indebtedness went up over 600% from 1996 to 2010.
"Many of our schools are at, near, or over their intended capacity. Without this bond program to accommodate enrollment growth, options such as double shifts and year-round school will have to be considered."
These are the usual threats made by the district to scare people into voting for the bond. In the last bond election in 2006, young mothers who had obviously never voted before wandered into voting places with babies in strollers because they had been frightened into believing that their children were going to have to go to school in a temporary building if they didn't vote for the bond. I saw that phenomenon myself as I worked at the polls that year and showed some of them how to work the machine. That was also a ruse, because the District already owns 216 [and now 320 as of October 2013] portable buildings (which is 432 classrooms) [now 640 as of October 2013] and they are going to use those portables whether a bond passes or not. In fact, there will be more portables bought with the 2010 bond money as there is an amount of $2,550,000 listed in the bond referendum proposal for the purchase of new portables! [And current numbers from an open records request show that we now have 112 more portable buildings than we had in 2010 that were purchased more than likely with 2006 bond funds.]
Actually, there are lots of things that can be done to accommodate growth if there is any. They can rezone. Schools on the east side of the district are emptying out pretty fast as those neighborhoods age. They can move grades down--as sixth grade to elementary school and ninth grade to junior high to fill up schools that are not at capacity. They can stop accommodating Pre-K and full day kindergarten. People are using those for day-care, and the rest of us shouldn't have to pay for that. State law does not require Pre-K or Kindergarten. Children do not have to go to school legally until they are 6 years old. There is NO EMPIRICAL PROOF that schooling before age 6 makes a bit of difference!
There were 19 of the 32 elementary schools under capacity at the end of the last school year (2009-2010). The high schools have only one school (Seven Lakes) over capacity, and while there is capacity for 18,000 students, there were only 16,646 high school students on May 14, 2010.
In the fall of 2013 we find that of the 34 elementary schools that we now have, 21 of them are UNDER capacity with two NEW elementary schools ready to open in the fall of 2014!
In the junior highs in the fall of 2013, out of thirteen junior highs, 4 of them are over capacity--the other nine are well under capacity!
In the high schools, in the fall of 2013 out of seven high schools, (with one of them having only two grades and with 834 students with the school having a capacity of 3,000) four of them are UNDER capacity.
Notice that no mention in these "facts" is made of the FACT that the proposed price for the new high school is $137 million (and they already own the land) and is more than double the cost of Seven Lakes ($63 million) which was completed just five years ago.
They also aren't addressing the concerns that we all have that since the superintendent has stated emphatically that he WILL build United Nations International Baccalaureate schools in Katy (and apparently ALL OVER KATY) (unless stopped by a new school board) that it would appear that the amounts for the schools are greatly padded to pay for this action on his part. NO ONE IN KATY wants a socialist school in their backyard. The people who want a socialist school are people coming from socialist countries to work for two years at an oil company, and then they are out of here. Why do we want to accommodate these people who will never help pay for these schools that are all about political indoctrination?
And then there's the stadium that Rusty Dowling has his heart set on. Maybe that's why the high school cost is so high. When they "save" us all that money that they usually manage to "save," I'm sure that will let him have his NFL stadium.
After I wrote this piece initially, George Scott, through an extensive open records request discovered that PBK was directing the administration to place items in the bond that PBK deemed necessary for construction in OUR school district, and that there was evidence of padding of the bond amounts to the tune of 30%! Follow these two links to read his excellent analysis:
http://georgescottreports.com/tag/pbk-architects-role-in-bond-issue/
This program is vital, even if you don’t have kids in school.
"Good schools are an indicator of the economic health of a community. Businesses and individuals considering relocation look for a strong school system. With good schools, homeowners enjoy increasing property values."
Check out your property appraisals. Mine went down last year. Go to www.hcad.org and look at property appraisals just for the homes of people you know. See for yourself.
Property value has more to do with location, size, appearance, and cost. People move here because they get a nice house for the money, and they think the schools are good. They don't find out that the schools aren't so good until they've already bought the house, and then it's too late. The school district and the subdivision developers have great public relations people. [As of 2013, my property value went up, but I would maintain that it should have gone down because when they took bus service away from most of Nottingham Country, people with young children (and that's mostly the market here these days) want those children to be bussed to school. In the bond election of 2013, which was soundly defeated, the taking away of the buses was the big issue that defeated the bond. But the District is coming back with a new bond for next fall, and buses are still gone. Parents and taxpayers are NOT going to forget this strike against the children of the District by Superintendent Alton Frailey!
"Bonds that are sold have no affect on KISD staff salaries. By law, bond money can only be used to fund new facility construction, renovations, technology and major capital improvements."
Actually, the passage of this bond may indeed affect KISD employee salaries. There is a limit as to what the tax rate can be. That limit is set by state law. The tax rate covers both the Maintenance and Operations of the district as well as the bonded indebtedness. If the bonded indebtedness becomes excessive, it can encroach on the amount available for the M&O, thus reducing the amount of money available for salaries and salary raises. [The District and the Superintendent often make this statement and it is an incorrect assessment of the issue.] Also building many more schools will call for much more maintenance, as well as new teachers and other employees, and that cost too will eat into the amount available for salaries. And then there's the excessive number of administrators and aides that this superintendent seems to hire. They too are encroaching on the money available for teachers. Teachers seem to be low on the totem pole with the current superintendent. He has, during this bond election process, insulted them by cross referencing their home addresses with voter lists and then telling them that he will be watching to see who votes in the bond election. In my opinion he has violated teachers' privacy rights, teacher's dignity, and their chances for any meaningful salary increases for years to come. [Jump to the fall of 2016 and make note of the fact that the Board gave the teachers a 1% raise!!! I rest my case.MM]
"Recognized for its SAT scores, graduation rates and state-award winners, Katy ISD provides Pre-K through 12th graders with a high quality, diverse curriculum that positively impacts their educational experience. This bond program offers maximum 'bang for the buck.'"
Katy ISD compares itself to nearby school districts and brags about mediocre manipulated TAKS scores that do not measure anything meaningful at all. KISD never compares its scores to those other Texas school districts with similar demographics. Since KISD has been a minority school district since 2008, we can expect more efforts by the District to cover up test scores. SAT scores for the district were on average at 1093 in 2003, 1092 in 2004, 1100 in 2005, 1099 in 2006, 1088 in 2007, 1079 in 2008 and 1080 in 2009, so no, our SAT scores aren't going anywhere but down over the years and the percentage of students taking the SAT is also declining (TEA Snapshot). We also have fewer National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalists than we've had in previous years (www.georgescottreports.com).
What IS on the rise in our district is homeschooling and private schools!
The main reason for the decline in scores has to do with that "diverse curriculum" about which they like to brag. That would be the one that stopped emphasizing academics (reading, writing, arithmetic, science and history) and went instead for social engineering, eliminating ability grouping thus ignoring better students, and teaching to the lowest level of ability in every classroom.
Passage of this referendum has minimal impact on taxes.
"High-end projections indicate that taxes will increase one penny to 41-cents in September 2011, then to 44-cents in 2012-2013 (after which the rate should decline). Low-end projections, based upon the probability that bond interest rates will remain lower for another one-to-two years, combined with the continued growth of the Katy area, indicate that any tax rate increase will be minimal." [And notice that they didn't get THIS prediction right either!]
What they don't say is that if they pass another bond in three years, which is their intent, the tax rate won't decline at all. And what if bond interest rates sky-rocket? What do we do then? And what if the growth keeps declining--as they don't like to admit? What if the state asks for the Fund Balance back to balance the state budget? What do we do then?
Someone looking to move to a good school district would be wise to look somewhere else besides Katy ISD. I would look for a district with a low tax rate, with a higher number of National Merit Scholars, without an IB program, without a centralized curriculum like KMAC or CSCOPE, and one with ability grouping. Call me if you find one like that!