State Representative Ron Reynolds (D. Fort Bend County, District 27) recently filed a bill (HB717) to create single member districts for Fort Bend ISD. His chances of getting it passed are slim and none, but that should not be the case.  Single member districts are a good thing, in my opinion, if one is of a mind to allow equal representation of all groups. 

I organized a Single-Member District petition drive in about 1988 (when I was young enough to stand at the polls for 12 hours and gather signatures!), and I needed about 5,000 signatures on petitions.  With the help of a handful of friends, we stood at three or four polling places on an off year November election day and got all the signatures we needed in one day. (That was also in the days before the school district ran people off "their" property on election day.)

The reason we don't have Single Member Districts in Katy ISD today is that the night after the signatures were collected, my friend, who had her set of petitions from Memorial Parkway Junior High in the back seat of her Chevy Suburban, had her car stolen!  It was found the next day in a seedy neighborhood in downtown Houston with not a scratch on it, but all the signature petitions were missing! 

Just shows the lengths people who support Old Katy will go to in order to keep the power of the school board within their confines!  That was my first taste of Old Katy politics.  Didn't take long to learn THAT lesson.  Old Katy has always been protective of their turf.  They see all of us who live outside their city limits as intruders.  Not much they can do about the increasing numbers of people who have moved here, and they like your business and taxes, but please know that they really don't like you! That's why they got angry with Ann Hodge for moving the Katy Chamber out of the City.  That's why they elected their own two school board members three years ago, and two more again last year. (One doesn't have to be a resident of the City of Katy to be a "Katy person.") (In days gone by they used to have more tied up board members than they do now. That's why they wanted that second stadium in the City of Katy--they're afraid someone is going to find out that our school district could be split into two or more districts (and that would be easier if there were already a stadium on the south side), and then their secure and protected KHS football team wouldn't get to be a state champion contender in a classification where they don't really belong. Connect the dots.

That's just the way it is.

KISD would be better off with single member districts.  The Katy school district area in Fort Bend is much more populous and active than the area in Harris County. With single member districts, a majority of the board member districts would be from Fort Bend--and that's how it should be.  There would be probably two reps from the north side of the freeway and five from the south side.  But even with superior numbers, north Fort Bend County is unorganized and so SMD's can not happen easily.

Of course as the District builds out its north 40 territory in the coming years, all of that population situation could change.

The point of single member districts is to give everyone fair representation on the school board.  Right now, "fairness"  isn't the case. 

Fort Bend ISD has this ethnic/racial composition:  African-American 29.27%, Hispanic 26.65 %, Asian 22.46%, Anglo 19.08%.  Fort Bend ISD has only one minority member.

Katy ISD has this ethnic/racial composition:  African-American 10.92%, Hispanic 34.79%, Asian  15.09%, Native American  .32%, Pacific Islander  .13%, Two Or More Races   3.06%,  Anglo 35.69%.  Katy ISD does not have a  minority member.  If one looks at the ethnic/racial composition, there should be one African-American, one Asian, two Hispanics, two Anglos, and one member who would either be Hispanic or Anglo.  Maybe someone needs to call the Justice Department.

In Katy ISD, the  Anglo population is declining by percentage of the total yearly. When they tell you that KISD will have 100,000 students in the next twenty years, a great majority of them will be Hispanic.  If the other ethnicities are going to have a school board representative when that happens, they would be wise to endorse a single member district system now.