KISD'S RESPONSE TO MY ASSERTIONS ABOUT GROWTH PREDICTIONS AND MY REPLY:

Planning for Growth: 2014 Enrollment, Capacity and Programs (FROM THE SCHOOL DISTRICT'S WEB SITE WWW.KATYISD.ORG)

First, I would urge everyone to hit the "CLICK HERE" and look at what they are offering as "proof" of their need for more schools.  They make my case!  On my computer, their PDF files come out in black and green and in teeny tiny print.  I'm guessing they don't really WANT to be user-friendly and let you see their information.  Maybe it won't do that on your computer. 

But let's address some of their hokum.

It is unbelievable to me that in order to address MY concerns and to fool the voters, KISD would attempt to suggest that they are not responsible for the "design" capacity of the schools they build!  To try to say that "Well, after we get them built, we realize that we will have to do thus and so with them", come up with a "functional" capacity number, and then go back and fix it or change it."  How hard would it be to do all that analyzing and planning BEFORE they build a school?  Don't we pay architects handsomely for "preliminary design work"? The only word I can think of is one I don't like to use because it gets me in trouble, but there's not another one that fits.  STUPID.

As I have explained elsewhere (See "Glossary" on this web site) the school district's educrats have a penchant for redefining words so as to confuse.  We are seeing how "capacity" has now become "design capacity" and "functional capacity."  I just have to laugh.  How long and how expensive was it to come up with these explanations?

The most obvious retort to this stuff is, "if you are going to this much trouble to explain yourselves in order to get a bond issue passed, why wouldn't you go to this much trouble when you are designing a school  in the first place?  Which idiot cannot do these calculations with/for/inspiteof the architect that you have hired over twenty times in a row to build KISD elementary schools?

So let's address the statements:

Yes, "the District continues to grow,"  BUT not at the rate the superintendent and the Board members throw around.  The District is growing by less, percentage wise, than it was in the 1990's!

Here is the paragraph where I addressed that issue under "Elections" on this web site:

" In 2006, in Katy ISD, the student population increased by 3,596 students over the previous year.  The next year the amount was only 2,917.  It went up slightly in 2008 to 3,037, but since then there has mostly been a decline. In 2009 the number was down to 2,429; in 2010 it was 2,253; in 2011 it was 1,816; in 2012 it was 2154--up slightly, but in 2013 it was down to 1,835 back down to the increase of 1999 (1,896). What is also of note is that these increases per year by PERCENTAGE of the total student population are not as high (or "fast growth") as they were in the 1990's! (In 1997 we had 5.4% growth.  While in 2013, the growth percentage from the previous year was 2.9%) So stop with the "fast growth" baloney, please!"

KISD should be able to handle 2.9% growth without half a billion dollar bond issues every three or four years if they plan correctly in the first place, and IF they do what they say they are going to do with the bond funds. Don't ask us for bond funds to build a Williams Elementary three times before you build it!  If the school district did as many of us used to try to get them to do--itemize every bond, let the voters decide what we need in the way of construction, and have a REAL Bond Oversight Committee, then there wouldn't be so much waste of our tax dollars, the vendor pimps wouldn't be drooling over every bond referendum and supporting it with mega bucks, and our students would be much better served.

Yes, "KISD has diversified growth and programs," BUT that should not be an excuse for not knowing what that growth is and what those programs are going to be BEFORE they design a building!!!!  Who at the ESC (that would be the administration building) can't figure out the answers to these questions in time to have them part of the design process?  Is it Peter McElwain whom we pay $147,750.47 every year as the school district's "architect"?  How about Scott Dunlap, the in-house demographer who gets paid $98,366.23?  And those amounts are in addition to Ms. Guseman, the PASA demographer who is on retainer for thousands of dollars. Perhaps it's the superintendent who makes $288,400.00, and who is supposed to make sure that this information is known.  It's just a bad excuse to suggest that the school district does not know these things about who will attend the school and how it will be used before they build a school building that costs twenty million dollars!

What voters/taxpayers need to be asking is WHY DON'T THEY KNOW THESE THINGS BEFORE THEY DESIGN A SCHOOL?  Why does it seem to come as a surprise to them with every school building that there are special populations that need to be accommodated?   And then of course, because they are so inept, they get to use their ineptness as an excuse to ask for more bond money.  I am incredulous with their audacity!

"Many new campuses are above the published design capacity."  So why is that?  Is it because of the faulty design by the same architect that's been used for every elementary school since 2001?  No, it is because of the faulty instructions being given to that architect by the KISD administration and by a School Board that lets it happen.

"There are 274 portable buildings in use for classroom and program spaces (i.e., Title I, ESL, G/T)"  Well, that's an interesting number because in the October 25, 2013 Enrollment Report that I got through an Open Records request, there are 320 portables placed at our schools, so that means that 56 of them are sitting empty somewhere!  And it appears they don't know where or how they are being used, if at all?  We taxpayers paid dearly for those portable buildings, their outfitting, and their placement at a school (probably at least $50,000+ each) and yet there they are, sitting empty, while the District asks us for more money !  Funny too how they asked in a 2010 bond referendum to spend 23 million dollars on "buses, portable buildings, and bond fees."  Since they did away with buses the very next year for almost ALL elementary students, surely they didn't buy more buses with that bond money!  So how many portables did they buy with the 23 million dollars that they allocated?  Hard to tell.  If anyone can find that number, I'd like to see it!

The point is, they stretch the truth, they don't plan ahead, and they have no earthly idea how many students are going to be here--even next year.  And yet the Board  wants money to build schools to entice more people to come--to help their cronies the builders and developers who give them campaign contributions out the kazoo.

"Some older campuses may indicate enrollments under the published design capacity where in actual fact there is no surplus available."

Now how can that be the situation?  Perhaps it's because they are busing in Bilingual students to fill up the building.  Perhaps it's because they want to get those students OUT of  some of the sacrosanct  neighborhoods in this District, (and don't swoon and act like I am suggesting something that hasn't happened in the past, because it has.)  Perhaps it's because they bus in students from other neighborhoods (like the students from the north part of KISD on Hiway 6 to Wolfe Elementary) simply to justify having a school at all,  (There are less than 300 students that actually live within 2 miles of Wolfe.)  

"The District is often asked "Why can't we backfill our 'under capacity" campuses?"

I know what they said in their propaganda, but the truth is that rezoning makes the School Board anxious because the voters don't forget if their children have  been rezoned, and some of the people, like Joe "RoboCall" Adams, might get voted out of office.  Recall that Adams only beat Wayne Dolcefino by 66 votes last year! He can't be upsetting the applecart any more.

"There are few empty classrooms across the District."

Oh really!!! I know of 56 empty portable buildings that evidently the school district doesn't know about. (And remember, that while the District doesn't like to tell this, those 56 portable building house TWO classrooms that hold 35 students each.  Go look at Wood Creek Junior High where they have eleven portables stacked next to a busy thoroughfare and go count the doors--there are 22 doors leading to 22 classrooms.

Or how about Tompkins High School?  It opened last fall (with a capacity of 3,000) with only about 830 students;.  That would leave about 2,170  spaces that are not being used.

Nottingham Country has a capacity of 1,053, but there are only 588 students there.  (There COULD be more students if all the students that are bused out of Nottingham Country to Pattison where there are 801 students in a school "designed" for 1053 were put back at NCE. (Note that not all the students at Pattison are from Nottingham Country).)  That brings to mind the story I like to tell about how the school board  saw fit to divide Nottingham Country many years ago into two elementary schools because they decided that Nottingham Country had too many people trying to get elected to the school board.  Fixing it so they couldn't know each other so well, made it hard for anyone living in Nottingham Country to have a political base.  They did the same thing with splitting up the junior high populations from Nottingham Country also.  And all that at about the same time they built Mayde Creek High School before it was needed so that they could eviscerate Taylor High School's population. That way Taylor couldn't keep fielding football teams that beat Katy High School's football teams, but that's all history.

"Available space is geographically dispersed."

Not sure what they are saying here.  What does that have to do with anything???  KISD has 181 square miles of space.  Of course the "space is geographically dispersed," and that's why they are paying so much for  demographers --to tell them how to use and place schools wisely within that space.  I could go on here about all the land we've bought over time that the District did NOT need, and how they are still doing that.  Does anyone besides me think it's a waste of tax dollars to buy land for a second stadium, sell it, but land in another place  for that same stadium and then have to go out and buy yet another piece of land for that same stadium because they couldn't get the voters to pass the last bond? And isn't it strange that when so many are just dying to move to Katy ISD for the schools, that they can barely PASS a bond referendum, and in the last eight years have LOST two of  them?

And how nice of them to give me the opportunity once again to say what I said to a KISD school board in 1989 BEFORE I was on the school board, "You've never built a school in the right place at the right time, ever!!!"

"There are a large number of programs that support our student needs that occupy classroom space." 

Is this just another way of saying the same thing they just said in two of the previous points they tried to make on this same subject? Did they have a hard time thinking of things to say in their own defense?

Yes, we know there are special education students that need to be accommodated, but do you have to put their programs in the schools that are already crowded?  Doesn't make sense to me.

"A comprehensive study was initiated in January as a follow up to PASA's recommendation."

Well, that's pretty interesting.  The PASA recommendation WAS the comprehensive study!!  What did they pay for anyway if it wasn't?  PASA has said themselves that their predictions are plus or minus 9% correct.  That means that in a school district with 67,000 students they could be way off with their predictions and have been over the years!  Perhaps the Demographic Study IS the problem.

Voters!  Please see this statement from the school district for what it is---just another attempt to fool you into voting without asking hard questions.  Now is the time to ask those questions.  I've been asking them.  I hope all of you who read this will start asking some too.