Defeating David Frishman:

McGarr Sworn In As New KISD Trustee

by Lyndel Butler

Special to This Week  The Houston Chronicle

Wednesday, May 29, 1991

Challenger Mary McGarr narrowly defeated Katy Independent School District trustee David Frishman by a vote of 1099 to 1070 in a runoff election.

At the May 20 regular meeting, KISD trustees confirmed the election results in the run-off for Position 6 and declared McGarr the winner over Frishman. [Frishman had been first elected in 1988 defeating Jim Miller in a run-off 1,264 to 1,102. In the regular election, he received 1,114, Jim Miller received 1,256, George Scott received 880, and Richard Lorenz received 61 votes.]

Dr. James E. Williams was confirmed as the winner of Position 7 with 59.9 percent of the vote.

Frishman, a local attorney who has served three years as a trustee, took leave of the board and administration with a sense of humor.  He pointed out to all of the trustees seated at their desks that they would all one day stand where he now stands.  He gave an apple to assistant superintendent Fran Sicola as thanks for answering "all my stupid questions."  Then to the delight of the audience, he brought her a whole bag of apples.

[What the reporter didn't bother to report was that Frishman also wheeled in a wheelbarrow full of documents that he brought from home and was returning to the district which was also amusing.  He also handed me his National School Board Association invitation, which I took commenting that I didn't plan to go! He was obviously still miffed that he lost the election.]

Frishman congratulated McGarr and called for campaign rhetoric to be set aside so that the whole board could pull together.  [Which advice every one but me disregarded!] He said he was content to leave the board with the district finances in order and two new schools built during his tenure. [Had I thought I could have defeated him, I would have run against Jim Williams, but I knew that was not possible.  David Frishman was by far the better board member of the two.  He was smart, interested in the District, had a wife who was a bus driver and worked for the District, so he understood employee issues.]

Williams and McGarr were sworn in and seated.  The board then elected Stanley Thompson to serve as president for the coming year.  The new vice president is Joe Adams; secretary, Larry Moore; and treasurer, Ken Burton. [This was my first taste of how matters such as this are all decided before the board meeting ever starts. I thought it amusing that they acted like they were just then deciding who would be elected!]

The board moved to approve the appointment of assistant principals for McDonald Junior High School and Taylor High School and new principals at Mayde Creek Junior High and at Cimarron Elementary.  Assistant principals at the new McDonald Junior High are Aubrey Woods, formerly a math teacher at Katy High School, and Keiko Davidson, presently assigned to Memorial Parkway Junior High.  The fifth grade assistant principal at McDonald for next year will be Ronnie Lee, currently at Pattison Elementary.

The new assistant principal post created at Taylor because of the growth of the school will be held by Steven Shorter from Spring forest Junior High.  Rosa Williams, currently assistant principal at Mayde Creek High School, will be the new principal of Mayde Creek Junior High.

Before moving to adopt the gifted and talented proposal developed by Bobbie Wedgeworth, coordinator for gifted and talented education, the board discussed the needs of the gifted and talented versus the needs of the honors students.  The two groups will be combined on the high school level if the numbers of gifted and talented do not merit hiring another teacher.

[The new found interest in the GT program stemmed from the many remarks about the program that I made while running for the Board.  I suggested that the GT students were getting short shrift, that they didn't allow entry into the program at the proper time for the many students moving into the District, and that I thought the fault lay with the superintendent and the Board! They didn't need another teacher at the high school level because the high school didn't offer any suitable GT coursework, and parents were removing their children from the program.  I removed my son at the 9th grade.]

Hayes assured the board that combined classes have been successful in other districts where the teachers have the proper training in gifted and talented education.  The proposal will also satisfy the new guidelines set forth by the state. [Actually this statement was erroneous, and later on I pointed that out to Dr. Hayes.  As a matter of fact I discovered that MY son had taken an AP physics class at Taylor that was taught by a teacher that had not been accredited by the AP program, and when he went to Rice, they wouldn't accept the course, so he did not get credit. It wasn't that the teacher wasn't competent for she was--it was that administratively no one was causing the approval process to occur.]

Trustee Joe Adams, opened the discussion by saying, "I would vote to allocate money to hire a teacher to keep honors and gifted and talented students in separate programs."  The superintendent pointed out that KISD already allocates $300,000 for the program.  Only $90,000 of that comes from the state.  Sizable grants are being allotted for faculty development in the area of gifted and talented, then at the senior high level.

[What Joe Adams didn't realize was that Hugh Hayes was getting ready to drop the "honors" classes in KISD which he did shortly thereafter without asking anyone on the Board if he could.  Mr. Adams obviously didn't even notice that they were gone. The directive to do so, obviously, at least to me, came from the TEA/TASA combine and was part of education "reform." Can't have smart kids getting something everyone else doesn't get!]

Thompson asked if the combined classes were viewed as a transitional step toward having two separate programs.  Hayes indicated that the present proposal has proven successful in other districts and is not viewed as transitional.

Trustee Larry Moore wanted to know more about how the gifted and talented courses would mesh with the AP and the dual credit courses providing community college credit while still in high school.

[Larry Moore, as I soon figured out, was the superintendent's shill.  Whenever Dr. Hayes needed to push something or get someone to prod another board member or find out what one of them thought, Larry was his go to guy--or at least that's how it appeared to me.]

McGarr questioned whether such AP courses would be transferable to the high prestige colleges that are often selected by honors students.  Hayes responded, "Oh, those hours will be transferable. They are English, government and other basics."  [I already knew the answer to my question.  The next time the matter came up, I called the Admissions Officers at several colleges including Baylor and Rice. I already knew that Rice had turned down the AP courses that my son had presented, and the Admissions Officers confirmed that such was still the case when the instructors did not have the proper AP training. Also combining AP with anything else would have probably disqualified it as a transferable course to a high level university.]

The trustees approved a $5 a month increase in the fees at the Mayde Creek Child Day Care facility.  Since the facility is operating at its maximum of 38 students, additional funds are needed to cover the periods of illness of a week or more when students may not pay.  It will also assure the money to provide adequate temporary staffing when a regular staff member must have a leave.

[I have copied this article for a couple of reasons.  First it used to be nice when the Chronicle bothered to send a reporter to cover Board meetings.  Their write-ups were always much more comprehensive than those of the Katy Times or the Suburbia Reporter--at least in those days.  Also, telling the public what board members had to say at the Board meeting provided some check on what they were doing.  That was new then.]