JAMES WILLIAMS, DDS:

Jim Williams was almost a permanent fixture on the Katy ISD school board.  He held Position 6 from 1967 to 1985.  He did not seek re-election, but then, when he appeared to not like the direction the Board was taking, he came back and reclaimed his seat three years later.

Dr. Williams had lots of good sense, and when matters regarding the academic education of children were on the table, he most always did the right thing, in my opinion.

It was only his bias toward "Old Katy" that sometimes got in the way of his good sense.

Dr. Williams, as the story goes, was enticed to come to Katy by Dr. Bing.  Katy had a physician, but it also needed a dentist.  Also Dr. Bing owned lots of vacant land, and that land wasn't going anywhere for decades unless the school district bought it. I don't have to spell it out.  FYI  Rhodes Stadium is built on land that was owned by Dr. Bing.  KISD has been doing land deals with friends ever since. Nothing illegal about it--but it just doesn't look very good.

If we were to walk in his shoes, we might have more sympathy for the way Dr. Williams conducted himself as a board member.

He was "old school" and didn't think too much of outspoken women.  He would argue if he didn't like something.  He was always a gentleman (except the one time when the Board went to Lake Conroe for an off site board "retreat," and he really raked me over the coals for statements I made in the election that I had just won. He didn't like that I had questioned his position on the Waller County Appraisal District Board while he was serving on the Katy ISD school board.  I suggested that he had a conflict of interest as the best interests of one of those governments might not be in the best interests of the other government. He also was not happy that I defeated the incumbent, David Frishman.

His wife told a relative of mine, that the Board met before this "retreat" to "decide what to do with me."

I find that amusing to this day. (Lots of people over the years have tried to "decide what to do with me.")

In the first place, I have no way of knowing if that report is true, but if they did meet for such a purpose, they were breaking the law mainly because I was already a board member, and they didn't invite me to their meeting!

In those days, school boards and other local governmental boards would vacate to a nearby county for a "retreat" (which meant that the guys were going to play golf while on the school district's dime, and if they needed to discuss things that they couldn't discuss in a closed meeting, it wouldn't matter anyway because there wouldn't be anyone there in the open meeting audience to hear what they had to say!)

Fortunately after a few years, the State of Texas shut down those kinds of activities by government boards.

But that weekend at Lake Conroe, I took my licks, stood up for myself, mostly harbored ideas of returning the favor down the road, and lived through it. My takeaway from that meeting was that I decided that I should be the best board member that I could be, always abide by the law, and only serve the interests of the students first and the teachers second.  I believed that if I kept that perspective, I could serve well.

1.  Williams to Leave KISD Board