Part I

by Mary McGarr

Katy ISD taxpayers have been getting the soft sell for a new football stadium for almost a year now. We all knew it was coming. They wanted us to get used to the idea. Hopefully, the residents here are smart enough to see through the hype. KISD does NOT need a new stadium of the grandeur that is being proposed, if at all.

Katy ISD is proud of its Katy High School football team. On the surface, so are we all. They have a magnificent coach who knows how to build a program and sustain it. He labored unknown as an assistant coach for a while until the head coach retired. He apparently wasn't even being considered for the head coaching position (a testament to the perceptiveness of the Athletic Coordinator at the time.) Only when Coach Johnston insisted, did the administration decide to give the current coach a chance.

Those decisions were all a while ago. We all know the record of the KHS football team, but how did they maintain that superior status? Did they get a little help from their friends? And if they have, is that what should be happening in a public school system where every student is supposed to get a fair shake?

We must look at the KHS record over time. They were not able to consistently win at the large school 5A level, and they saw that. In order to avoid such confrontations with the stronger teams, some people who live in the KHS zone conspired to elect their own local school board members to make sure that KHS remained at the 5A small school level so that the team COULD consistently win by making certain that KHS didn't have any more territory removed from its zone as it did a few years ago. Those two board members in the last year, when the School Board rezoned for the new Tompkins High School, made sure that the boundaries for KHS remained the same. They DID give up some streets  (but there were no houses on them).  It was simply a gesture to make their actions look legit!

But other things have been done over the years to keep KHS boundaries the same. The Beckendorff Tract to the north of KHS was purchased in 1982 for the purpose, supposedly, of building another high school. But what would another high school so close to KHS do to the local football team? To solve the problem, former superintendent, Leonard Merrell, orchestrated a barn building scheme. Of course five or so barns on 125 acres doesn't take up much space, and so just in case any future board were to get the idea that they wanted to put a high school there, we find ourselves with a NEW Katy Agricultural arena on the agenda.

The school district also bought, in the past, the Porter Complex. It was also too close for comfort to KHS, and so the property, complete with a lake, was sold to Faith West.

I personally believe that this manipulation of resources and land is unconscionable. That is not why we have public schools! That is NOT what school boards are supposed to be doing with OUR money behind closed doors. They don't even tell us what they voted to do about purchases and sales of land after the fact! We have to submit open records requests to find out what land they've bought or sold.

But back to the topic at hand. In a major pronouncement by the Facilities and Planning Department on March 30, 2009, it was stated that the Katy School District Facilities and Planning activities should "Plan, design, and maintain facilities which are functional, safe, and cost effective that promote a learning environment conducive to academic excellence and which support student growth and success."

No quarrel there!

It was also proclaimed that " In the development and implementation of bond programs, [KISD should] engage the community by way of committee participation and communications/information dissemination."

And yet, when the push for THIS bond started again in earnest last winter (they've tried to get it off the ground for years) there was NO COMMITTEE!!!! Only when I pointed that out, did they hastily round up Dr. Tommy Harrison, their chief spokesperson where bond passage is concerned, and organized a committee.

According to an Open Records Request that I made, there were two committee meetings held regarding this bond issue. One was on August 7th, 2013 and the other was on August 12th, 2013. These dates were well after KISD had started it's push to convince the public that a new stadium was in order. Surely the people who agreed to serve on that committee realize by now how they were used. In my opinion, if they had been smart, they would NEVER have agreed to serve in such a capacity. Their names appear below, so my readers can know who they are.

The push for this bond started last spring with one District press release after another soft-peddling the issue. The releases were gladly published by area newspapers far and wide that no longer gather news for themselves.

In May 2013, and this is a quote from the Chronicle, "The district does not have a price tag for the proposed stadium but school officials looked at possible sites ranging in price between $24 million and $40 million before choosing a parcel owned by the district."

That's pure baloney! What they didn't tell the public is that they had already purchased land for a new stadium right next to the new Tompkins High School, and a couple of years ago, when they decided that Katy High School, with all its winning ways, needed a grander place to play closer to home, they SOLD THAT LAND (next to Tompkins High School)!!!! Symbolically in the middle of the night, they were at the same time buying a big piece of property in the City of Katy from Power House to take it's place. That would be the current site which cost $160,060.06 an acre for a total of $2,665,000. And then they bought ANOTHER smaller parcel to go with it.

Is there anyone out there that thinks any land in the Katy area not on the freeway is worth $160,060. an acre?

Mind-boggling as it may seem, it appears to me that the coaches at the southwest side high schools who got cheated out of a new stadium close to their schools (Cinco Ranch, Tompkins, and Seven Lakes) have gone along with this scheme to the detriment of their OWN STUDENTS!!!! Why is that? Well, I suppose they want to keep their jobs. That's the only thing I can think of to explain their lack of outrage and courage. And the parents who should also be outraged want little Johnny on the team, so they go along with the scheme as well. No one else seems to care.

So the ploy that they looked around for the best possible site for a new stadium is bogus. They HAD a site, sold it, and bought another one--wasting tax dollars while they played games with the public trust. [And now that their bond has been defeated at the polls, they will be spending yet another tidy sum to buy land back where they had some that they sold!]

Such shenanigans by our "leaders" is outrageous, and their phony plea for a "needed" bond for an extravagant stadium needs to be defeated at the ballot box when it comes up again in 2014.