REMARKS I MADE TO THE BOARD IN 2005 ABOUT THEIR OPENNESS:

My name is Mary McGarr. I am a Charter Member of the Watchdog$ citizens group, and I support their stated purpose of providing oversight of the Katy ISD.

My remarks tonight have to do with the openness of the Board.

You as Board members often find yourselves being criticized for your lack of openness.  Beginning last July, I have regularly attended most of your meetings, and I can see that not much has changed in the nine years since I resigned my Board position:  you still like to keep the public in the dark.

You are allowing the superintendent to control everything you do.  Your failure to discuss important matters openly and in public at either the Work Study Meeting or the Regular Board Meeting attests to your capitulation to the Superintendent. 

We elect Board members to provide governance and oversee the management of the district.  I don’t see you doing either of these things.

You vote 7 to 0 on every issue.  You ask few if any questions.  Surely you cannot believe that Dr. Merrell is so perfect that he cannot be subjected to a few questions.

You have many powers that you seem not to exercise.  One of them has to do with the Budget.  Board Policy gives you the power to “adopt and file a budget for the next succeeding fiscal year.” Education Code 44.004, 44.005 [See CE]  I realize that your former power of creating the budget was taken away from you by the Texas Legislature in 1995.

Unless things have changed, the Board will begin discussions of the Budget for the 2006-2007 school year in the next few months. It has been traditional in this District for you to hold all of the budget deliberations behind closed doors.  This procedure is the exception rather than the rule among Texas School Districts.  You need look only as far as Spring Branch to see their Board conducting all of their budget discussions in open sessions. 

I am asking at this time, so that you will have time to prepare, that all Budget meetings of the Board be held in Open Sessions. It has always been your practice to hide these discussions by meeting in groups of three or less with the superintendent and the Chief Financial Officer. The purpose of such closed meetings includes hiding factual information from the public and keeping board members like me, who asked too many questions, under control and out of the public eye. Meeting with less than four Board members at a time allows you to circumvent the legal Open Meetings requirement. Most other Texas school districts hold their budget meetings publicly. In fact when I served on this Board and told other Board members at the State School Board Convention one time of your actions, they were appalled!

The information contained in the Budget is public information. Individual school budgets are public information. Alief ISD places their budgets for the last four years on line. Why can't Katy ISD do that?

To always be so secretive about public matters indicates to me that you have something to hide. I would also ask that you utilize the school district’s web site to provide openness on other matters, including publicizing the crime statistics that are generated.  I’m speaking not just of the list of activities, but also the enhanced version that you receive monthly in your Board Packet. That information is public information. I also believe that you should do as Waller ISD does and itemize bond spending for each expenditure covered by bond money and place that information on line as well.

You are charged with the governance of the school district.  IF you have nothing to hide, you should make every aspect of what you do, open and clear with regard to the public.