VOTERS HELD HOSTAGE BY POLITICAL PLOYS:

Letter to the Editor

The Katy Times

April 28, 1993

My concerns over the Robin Hood amendments compel me to write this letter.  Representing no one but myself as an individual citizen, I would like to urge voters to take the opportunity this Saturday to vote against Propositions 1 and 3 on the ballot.  The attempts by the likes of Libby Linebarger to confuse the voters with the ballot language and by Frank Petruzielo, the HISD superintendent, to threaten school closure as a way of holding children and their voting parents hostage are merely political ploys.  Voters need to think about who it is that wants to get their hands on more of our hard earned tax dollars.

School districts do not need more money; they just need to spend what they have in a wiser manner.  Edgewood ISD, [which started the Robin Hood matter] the perpetrator of our state's problems, already has almost two thousand dollars more of tax money to spend on each student than we do in Katy ISD.  The Edgewood school district is subsidized by federal tax dollars, but someone needs to remind them that federal tax dollars are also dollars from us, not some benevolent gift giver in Washington.  Local school districts do not need the state telling them how to spend our money or collecting it for us.  If anyone does not believe that "equity" and "adequacy" do not translate as a state income tax, and that is not the hidden agenda here, he is a fool.  And if the money goes to the state for re-distribution, patrons can be sure that local school boards will lose the little power that they still have.  Board members will be figureheads whose main duty will be to hand out diplomas at graduation [actually they can't even do that!].  Carrying it one more step, when the school board is no longer in control, then neither are local voters.  Local voters have no control over the Libby Linebargers of the world, but they do have control, if they vote, of the local school board.

I am often asked when discussing this matter and I claim that the state wastes education dollars what I would change, and I have two favorite examples.  The first has to do with the state law that allows Mexican foreign nationals to attend Texas state universities that are situated along our southern state border without paying out-of-state tuition.  This law in effect means that Texas taxpayers subsidize tuition for these foreigners, and more foreign nationals attend these schools because of the low tuition rate.  If that situation is logical, why aren't we allowing residents from Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico (who also happen to be American citizens) to waive out-of-state tuition fees?  Shouldn't our education tax dollars be spent on Texas students?  The second example of waste has to do with the huge number of school districts that exist in our state.  In all of the United States there are approximately 15,000 plus school districts.  One thousand fifty-one of those are in Texas --five hundred and forty-one of those have fewer than 800 students.  Think of it!  We have whole school districts that must hire superintendents and administrators, build schools, stadiums, gymnasiums, and swimming pools, buy school buses and school books, and fund all of the other things that each school district needs and wants.  To add insult to injury our state in its wisdom gives these districts extra funds because they are small! And these districts are not out in west Texas as is often claimed; they are mostly around Houston and Dallas.  Are you as outraged as I am?

Of course when state legislators talk about school consolidation, they threaten to attach the "poor" district to the "rich" ones in an effort to undermine the desires of the voters, when they should be attaching small ones to larger ones and breaking up the megalopolises like Houston ISD.

When the state begins to do what is right and proper with regard to the education of children and when legislators have the gumption to make decisions without regard to whether or not they will be re-elected, then I might buy into one of their plans.  As it is, I'm voting "NO" on Saturday.

Mary McGarr

Katy 77450

[It finally took a Texas Supreme Court decision to settle this matter of Robin Hood.  We won and "they" lost. MM]