If a committee is used to make decisions on those “needs,” it must arrive at its decision without manipulation. The insertion of a paid facilitator for the Committee (at $28,000) suggests unnecessary control. Let’s give the Committee credit for being smart enough to function on its own particularly if the selection process has been competent.

A Bond Committee must represent all the nationalities and races in reasonably accurate proportions of those who live in our school district as well as significant points of view that exist here. It should not include those with a vested interest in the outcome of the bond election.

The size of the Committee does not have to be unwieldy. The Committee must be given a list of actual, not inflated, “needs,” not “wants,” from the District’s departments as a point from which to start.

Let honesty be key to all bond proposal deliberations and presentations.

Most of us can no longer abide the “cheerleader” approach to such a weighty issue as a bond referendum. Katy ISD needs to be the first large school district in Texas to step up and create a bond proposal that is based on true and factual information and which addresses true need. If the bond is defeated again, we will send a clear message that we are fed up with being shrewdly manipulated by the District’s administration and our School Board.

ALL of us as residents of the District want what is best for the students. ALL of us want a fair division of tax dollars among all schools. ALL of us are ashamed that some schools have apparently been neglected severely for years and years, while other schools were built and glamorized. ALL of us want ALL of our students to be fairly served.

SOME of us see the facts of the bond creation more clearly than others. It is easy to become enamored with the school where one’s children attend and to disregard other schools while maintaining a rather one-sided point of view.

That is not fair to all of the students.

I would ask KISD taxpayers to reflect on the inconsistencies of KISD bond matters and consider the impact of those on students.

A fair bond referendum is all I require and should be what everyone who lives here requires.

To be fair, the District must not enlist the aid of local media outlets to perpetuate myths about the District that are, upon research, obviously overstated if not fabrications of the truth. The District should not flirt with the law by sending out tons of “informational” flyers, hold meetings to “persuade” teachers by threatening them with loss of their jobs if the Bond does not pass, imply that they “know” how employees vote (they don’t), and use other legal but unfair actions to affect the vote.

A major problem in our District is the evolution of the status of the superintendent to the point where he gets a $27,000 raise after the last defeated bond issue for a salary now of $315,359.52. This kind of financial compensation insulates the superintendent from the consequences of his decisions making the position even less accountable to the citizens.

For example, one of the major decisions of our superintendent and Board is to select architects for our school buildings. They have hired one primary architect, PBK, to the exclusion of others for the last fifteen years to help guide and shape the district’s planning and construction which has included our high schools and other major district facilities.

The PBK architectural firm has had serious ethics charges and fines levied against them recently by the Texas Board of Architectural Examiners, and yet that same architect seems to still be calling all the shots for KISD’s building program.

This same firm designed a football stadium in Allen ISD that had to be closed down for this entire year for repairs, but our District’s leaders are still considering PBK for more work–including the November bond’s proposed new stadium.