No! A Permanent 18% Property Tax Increase Does Not Help Kids Learn!

 Why You Should Vote NO al All 5 Cy-Fair ISD Bond-related Propositions on the Ballot

There are 5 propositions at the end of the ballot, here in NW Harris County, for the Cy-Fair ISD (Independent School District) bond election. One is to approve the VATRE (Voter-Approval Tax Rate Election), a permanent tax increase of 18%. The other four are the various categories the bond money is slated for. But NOT what the money has to be spent on; it adds up to be essentially a $1.63 billion line of credit to use for any maintenance and operations project they might come up with.

NONE of it improves student learning in the classroom.
And the schools will not collapse if we say no to this unnecessary spending at this time. They can wait, and then justify specific projects as they are needed—without a permanent tax increase.

DECLINING NUMBERS

Let’s take a look at some numbers.

Since 2014 to now, the district has added 10 schools. That’s 17,000 seats for students. We did not need 17,000 new seats. There was a projection that year that we would reach 131,000 students in the district. We actually peaked at around 118,000; then we started decreasing, by about 2000 a year. And the people deciding to take your tax dollars haven’t adjusted.

By 2016 the writing was on the chalkboard; kindergarten enrollment was 700 less than 2015. They didn’t adjust. They just kept spending as though we were growing to that erroneous projection. By now, they’re off from their projection by 15,000+ students, in a district that is not growing and has no room to grow. The revenue they assumed would come from those 15,000 students is not there. And since schools are allotted funding based on students in the seats (ADA is average daily attendance), that’s a budget deficit of around $92 million, based on a per student allotment of $6160.

People this bad at math should not be anywhere near the education of our kids.

They want you to permanently raise your property taxes to pay for their bad math.

Who are they? Ultimately the blame falls on the school board, elected by the community. Also involved are the superintendent—the only employee hired by the school board—and then his administrators. The administrators are the ones who put together the package and then presented it to the Board for their vote, which was accepted and now goes before the people as propositions on the ballot. That happened at the August school board meeting. One Board trustee voted against the package: Christine Kalmbach. Kalmbach is in real estate, so she’s maybe more aware of the demographics and the decrease in students than the others are.

Cy-Fair ISD Board votes for the bond, August 10, 2026, meeting; Dr. Killian in the center
has no vote as superintendent, and Christine Kalmbach, second from right,
is the lone vote against; screenshot from here

No one else had enough understanding to question what was presented to them. But the presentation was slick, and it glosses over plenty of questions, some of which we’ll go over below. Or it could be that the “they” we mentioned, with the one exception, feel entitled to your property to do with as they please.

The state overall has lost around 75,000 students this year, so our district is not that different. We can’t grow out of it. The district is considered essentially fully developed, at 91% developed land. There are 10 Texas districts facing similar lower enrollment. Only Cy-Fair is asking for a bond, to pay for future growth they know isn’t coming—or you might say to pay for the calculation errors they’ve already made.

found on Facebook here

Only a couple of schools in the district are near capacity. Others hover around 60-85% full. We have so many empty classrooms, we could close multiple schools next year, and lay off the teachers and staff, and by my back-of-the-napkin math that would just about cover our deficit. They may do that, and they just don’t want to tell you before you’ve given them the bond money, although Dr. Killian, the superintendent, says they’re not going to close any schools or lay off any staff. Because, keeping staff hired is more important than sensible spending of your property tax money.

This year we have 1,000 fewer students than planned for in the June 2026 budget for this school year, which leads to about $8 million short in revenue. That means the known $80 million budget shortfall is already actually $88 million. So the chart below is already off. There aren’t 112,000 students in the district this year; there are 111,100 students.

This and many of the images below come from the Cypress Conservatives group on Facebook.
This image was found here

By 2019 they knew how far off their projections were. And yet they asked you for yet another record-setting bond. That was $1.2 billion in 2014 (it had never been a billion before), and another whopping $1.762 billion in 2019. They used it for that new administration building you see along Hwy 290—seven stories high, for administrators who DO NOT WORK IN THE SCHOOLS. It’s made of first-class materials. It’s lovely (except for the name on the building, in huge letters, honoring the former superintendent who helped put us in this financial mess while simultaneously pushing a woke agenda in the district). Maybe their old facilities were insufficient and something new was needed. But they built this huge facility without the capacity, somehow, for some essentials that must still be kept at the old facility on Jones Road.

image found on Facebook here

Nothing is too good for the people in charge of spending your money. They guilt you into voting for these extravagant bonds saying, “It’s for the kids. Don’t you care about the kids?” And yet their ability to meet the educational needs of our kids is shockingly low. Around 40% can’t read on grade level. They have one task! Any progress we’re making seems to come from state-issued requirements (like returning to phonics for reading, instead of treating every student like they’re learning disabled). The previous conservative-majority board had initiated tracking of every student not reading at grade level, so they could gauge improvement and make individualized adjustments accordingly. This new board removed that tracking.

And now they’re asking for another $1.63 billion—which isn’t going toward better educational outcomes.

Did we mention that only 27% of households have kids in our schools? So 73% of households are paying for schools without any benefit except, hopefully, an educated next generation. That’s already pretty generous.

This is at a time when families are struggling. Gas and groceries are high. And Harris County just raised our property taxes 7.6%. Emergency service districts and water boards add to our property tax takings. But Cy-Fair thinks this is a great time to increase our school property taxes by 18%.

image found on Facebook here

HOW MUCH IS IT GOING TO COST?

The current bond debt is $3.9 billion. If you’ve ever bought a house or a car, you know that the principal isn’t all you pay; over time you pay principal plus interest, and depending on how long you spread out the loan, you could be paying as much in interest as your original principal debt. So assume that $3.9 billion is considerably higher, depending on interest rates and length of loan, something closer to $4.9 billion, and that would jump to something more like $6.7 billion outstanding bond debt if this passes.

A selling point they’re using is that they’re lowering your interest payments and stretching out the debt time, so that your payment won’t look that much higher. But holding debt over a longer time (even at a lower rate, if they can get it) means paying more interest over the life of the loan. It’s just hidden.

At the board meeting, they estimated the debt at $58,000 per student. The response was that we shouldn’t think of it that way, because the students that come along later will also benefit. They fail to mention that the students that graduate don’t keep benefiting from that infrastructure spending; so dividing the debt by number of students benefitting at any given time is the right metric. And the number of students is going down, which means the debt per student goes up.

That’s debt only, not the cost of educating each child. Debt does nothing to educate the child. It’s just an added cost.

If we don’t approve this bond, then existing debt will eventually decrease (I&S is interest and sink). Debt would be retired. But if you approve the VATRE tax increase, it doesn’t matter whether debt is paid off; you’ll keep paying that higher rate.

They’ll tell you it’s a minimal increase for your household. If you have a $350,000 home, it’s only $168 a year. You just need to cut your family vacation by one night’s stay at a low-budget motel. Or give up eating lunch out once a month all school year. If, however, your appraisal goes up, so does that $168.

image found on Facebook here

But actually, that’s just the VATRE tax increase—the permanent amount of assessment from now for forever. You have to vote for that separately, because, in Texas, if a school district adopts a maintenance and operations (M&O) tax rate that is above what the state calculates for the district, voters must approve the higher rate. You’re granting that permanent tax increase so that CFISD can take in more revenue in perpetuity, even after paying off this extravagant bond (which it won’t do before coming to you for even more bond debt in a few years).

Back in 2011 the district had a similar budget shortfall. They made necessary cuts and managed—without asking for a VATRE tax increase, or threatening to take away the LOHE (local area homestead exemption), like they’re now threatening to do in 2028.

image found on Facebook here

 BUT THE MONEY IS NEEDED, RIGHT?

That depends on who’s trying to convince you that they want it. And, by the way, they have unspent tens of millions of dollars remaining from the 2019 bond, because there were projects they decided not to do. If a project is essential now, they could use that money from debt you already voted for.

Here are some of the things they want the money for:

Bus seatbelts and cameras. They have 1000 yellow school buses. They use ±700. About 300 buses need seatbelts. Do the math; they have enough buses with seatbelts to meet the needs. They want bond money to retrofit 300 unused buses with seatbelts.

They also want cameras on 300 buses—at a cost that is four times what this expense should be, according to industry standard. They are planning to replace cameras on buses that are too new to need replacements. Again, these are people who don’t math well. If these items are what they call necessities, can you trust them on the whole bond package?

found on Facebook here

Chomebooks. They want $85 million for new/additional ones. This includes an allotment of $18 million for K-2, who don’t use or shouldn’t be using screens in the first place. The district gets them for $679 each; they’re military grade. Similar ones can be bought at a local store for $270. The more expensive ones also need replacement costs when lost or broken, damage insurance, replacement charging cables (because they get lost at home a lot), and a few other upgrades. BUT THESE ARE DETRIMENTAL TO LEARNING.

I know; I’m shouting. I will try to calm down. But school districts everywhere are removing Chromebooks. Even LA, Seattle, and NY schools have figured this out. Student learning has gone down significantly with the use of screens. Students need to learn first tactilely. They need pencil and paper. The cognitive learning doesn’t transfer as well from a screen. (Read Digital Delusion, by Dr. Jaren Cooney Horvath. Also read The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt.) We’re not just talking about kids learning a bit slower than before; we’re talking about them growing up with less cognitive ability than pre-tech learning produced.

There could be a discussion about using such devices in the upper grades, where students may be learning specific computer-related skills. But that should come after the brain has developed well enough without the tech interference.

Note that we were told digital textbooks, such as you get on Chromebooks, would cost less; they didn’t.

In addition, regardless of filters, kids work around them and use their Chromebooks for gaming and porn. Principals admit that they see students are logged in during the middle of the night, when they should be sleeping.

We also know that the devices are used for data mining (including voice recordings) of our children, and are already used to track children. (Technically, the Chromebooks are what is being tracked, to prevent loss. And they can be used to find a child who, for example, didn’t get off the bus as expected, so for safety reasons. But, still, tracking our kids seems a bit invasive.)

It’s also notable that a Chromebook is not a device regular people outside of schools buy. There are plenty of other superior tablet products. Chromebook was a failed company; but then they turned to schools and cornered the market there.

You might want to look into an organization called Schools Beyond Screens, which is attempting to inform people about the dangers of screen use in schools. Note that $85 million for Chromebooks is about equal to our deficit. I don’t think budgeting works in a way that we can say, “Don’t buy the Chromebooks,” and we wipe out the deficit. But a small thing like teaching kids without screens would be that much less costly.

image from Megan Davis of School Beyond Screens Cy-Fair

 At the very least they ought to remove this item from the proposed bond. During discussion before the Board voted, Trustee Todd LeCompte said he’d like a study to see whether screens were causing harm. Good for him—but he voted to spend this bond money anyway, and then do a study later, even though evidence is already available and the harm is already being done.

Since they don’t know better than to claim this $85 million “need” is for the kids, say NO to the bond if for no other reason than to protect our kids from this very real harm.

Refurbish empty buildings. You know those portables they put up, years ago, when growth was faster than expected? They used them as classrooms. They don’t need them now, because very few schools are even at capacity. There are empty classrooms inside the schools. Most of these portables are at buildings with under 85% capacity. This bond will spend $16 million to refurbish these empty portables, which will remain unused. They won’t move them. They won’t sell them. They will fix them up to sit empty. With $15.9 million of your tax dollars!

Again, if this is what they’re calling so important that they must permanently raise your taxes by 18%, can you trust them on the rest of the bond package?

image found on Facebook here

 Band equipment buildings. There’s this weird “equity” rule that says, if one school in the district gets something, all the schools must get it. This has led to such stupidities as new gym floors—needed in some buildings, but put in all buildings, even one that was only a year old. So, if one school gets a band equipment building, they all get one. Except—no school needs a band equipment building. They have empty classrooms they can dedicate to that use. And—read above—they already have empty, unused portable buildings. But for some odd reason, they can’t use any of these solutions; they must spend $4 million more of YOUR money to build additional, unneeded storage buildings.

Rumor worth telling: a woman (an admin person? I’m not sure who she is in this story) was worried that this bond might not pass, and expressed concern, because the schools are not getting the donations, for scholarships and such things, that they used to get from the building contractors.

I’m puzzling this over. So, the contractors were donating in order to get contracts? And with us declining in enrollment and not building more schools, they’re not donating? Were they only donating as a bribe? And—btw, this bond doesn’t build any more schools, so why does it need to pass? There are those unneeded band storage buildings, though, and maybe they’ll come up with some other construction projects as yet unnamed. So we should all pay higher taxes, so the contractors are more willing to make donations, so they can get lucrative contracts wherein they receive more of our tax dollars? Should people who think this way be involved in teaching our kids to think?

Another rumor: during the district’s long-range planning committee meetings in which they discussed this bond, there was never any question about whether they would put forth a bond—only how much and for what projects they could come up with to make the need seem convincing. They were quite proud of themselves for knocking down the total amount from $1.7 billion or so to only $1.63 billion; that makes them feel so frugal.

Are there any projects on the list that ought to be done? Maybe. But this bond package—with a permanent 18% tax hike, is not the way to get those specific things. This is an outrageous misuse of the community’s trust. And, if you’re paying attention, they’ve lost your trust.

SAY NO! LOUDLY.

Say NO to this bond package—all 5 propositions. Let them come back with something reasonable and well justified, something that shows they comprehend the enrollment shrinkage, something that already fits our budgets and doesn’t permanently raise our property taxes.

Have them come to us after 2028, when they’ve taken away our LOHE, as they’ve told us they will be forced to do—even after this 18% tax increase. Let them come to us then, when we’ve had another sudden 20% rise in our property tax, because of their failure to budget. Ask us then.

 

If we say no now, maybe, just maybe, they’ll consider doing what it takes to improve educational outcomes with the money we’ve already entrusted to them to do that very thing. If they can prove they’re serious about educating kids, then we’ll consider their requests. First things first.

Bonds tend to pass, because—guilt. So, if you are now convinced to vote against this bond at this time, make sure your neighbors know your reasons. Schools use their resources to push for the bond (within legal limits, we must assume, but multiple videos and mailers, and all their online pro-bond “information,” are at our expense, to convince us to pay even more). And PAC money is going toward pro-bond propaganda. There isn’t money behind preventing the bond, just taxpayers saying enough is enough.

So, you can have higher taxes without better education. Or you can vote NO—and make sure everybody you know understands why and votes NO with you.

_________

My name is Linda Nuttall. I’ve been writing the Spherical Model blog since 2011, on the interrelationships of the political, economic, and social spheres, which I moved to Substack in June 2025. I’m a writer/editor, former homeschool mom, grandmother, musician, devout Christian. The blog is always free, including for subscribers, but if you’d like to support the work, you can choose to become a paid subscriber ON SUBSTACK.

Economy and the Ballot

We’re a week and a half out from the beginning of early voting. It’s time I went through the ballot.

The short version is: vote Republican all the way down the ballot.

In this post, I’ll talk about why that’s the wise choice, particularly this year. And then I’ll go through a handful of races here in Texas and Harris County.

WHY VOTE REPUBLICAN

In the Spherical Model, Democrats are—and have almost always been—down in the statist tyranny quadrant of the political sphere. (Read more about the Spherical Model here.) I would say they hovered just below the equator most of my life, but the last couple of decades have slipped further and further southward (south is toward tyranny; not related to our geographical earth).

Republicans are a mixed bag. Our platform, particularly here in Texas, is up in the freedom zone. That is what the people want: a government limited to its duties of protecting life, liberty, and property, and defending (not granting) our God-given rights. Republicans who understand that and act accordingly give us the kind of government we want. Those who try to “give” people what they think they want in order to win votes and maintain power, but just less blatantly than the Democrats do, are also below the equator into tyranny.

Sometimes it comes down to two candidates, both below the equator, but one further than the other, and also aligned with a party that will pull the country southward. In such a case, we vote for the one more likely to do our will, and get someone better later.

There aren’t actually many examples of that on this year’s ballot, particularly in statewide races. So that’s good news. The bad news is that, according to polls (most of which cannot be trusted, but they’re the only information we have) Dems are neck-and-neck in some crucial races. Texas is a target, with big money flowing in from out of state.

The Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) are giddy about the possibility of taking over Texas. We absolutely must not allow that apocalyptic outcome to happen.

Here’s a pretty good summary of the differences in the parties, in general:

found on Facebook, here

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Civil Discourse—The Federalist Papers: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial Part 10

This is our tenth month celebrating the Semiquincentennial of the United States.

Here’s the series up to this point, if you missed any or want to review:

·        January: The Declaration

·        February: Preamble to the Constitution

·        March: Article I: Lawmaking

·        April: Article II: Executive Branch

·        May: Article III: Judicial Branch

·        June: Bill of Rights

·        July: Happy Birthday, America!

·        August: Bill of Rights Continued

·        September: Compromises in the Constitution

In our celebration of the semiquincentennial this year, one thing worth celebrating in our experiment in self-government is our ability to debate civilly, to exchange ideas and see which ideas are most persuasive.

This is in the ideal America, not necessarily the one we are currently experiencing. But if you don’t know the ideal, or something close to it, you don’t know what to strive for and what not to accept.

There were examples of this well ahead of the Declaration, well ahead of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Revolutions rarely work. They never do without the ideas being grasped and agreed with by the people. Conversations, among neighbors, after church, or at the pub, were taking place well ahead of any kinetic war.

There are stories about Sam Adams, brother of John Adams, speaking out for liberty in the colonies building up to the Revolutionary War. He had a big dog, I think it was a black Newfoundland. He did not discipline it for taking a mouthful of red fabric from a British soldier’s uniform. Apparently the dog agreed with its master’s ideas during those conversations on the streets.

Some of the best civil discourse we have on record are contained in the two collections of essays, The Federalist Papers and The Anti-Federalist Papers. These were arguments for and against ratification of the Constitution of the United States.

I wrote about them in June 2025, which wasn’t that long ago, but I’m writing about them again today, because—semiquincentennial.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

A Time for Choosing

I got my photo with Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz (left) at the Paxton rally on September 21, 2026;
Trump endorsed Paxton on video at the rally (top right)

We’re less than a month out from the start of early voting in the November midterm elections (Early Voting begins October 19 in Texas). It seems we say this every time, but it becomes more intensely true each time: this may be the most important election ever for our future.

The reason that is more true now is that the Democrats have laid out their plan, if they gain the House and the Senate: impeach Trump, pack the Supreme Court, remove election integrity laws, give statehood to DC and Puerto Rico, and allow in illegal aliens—and let them vote, get rid of the Electoral College, and possible abolish the Senate. In short, it is to remove any possibility of opposition in the future, giving them a total and permanent socialist dictatorship.

The outcome of having socialists and Islamists in power would not offer a better future for America; it would be to offer what Cuba, Venezuela, and other socialist regimes have offered: poverty and tyranny.

They say they are offering better economic and social conditions. But no socialist regime has ever come through on that promise; that is simply the lie they use to get themselves installed in positions of power.

Here in Texas, we have a couple of races that exemplify the existential battleground. There’s Greg Abbott vs. Gina Hinajosa for Governor. And the other is the senate race: Ken Paxton vs James Talarico.

This is Texas, where a Democrat has not won a statewide race since 1994. Before that, Texas was pretty much a reliably Democrat state, but that was back when they were Democrats just because they were in the South (the South was mainly Democrat in the Civil War), and some of them even considered themselves “conservative.”

While, in the wild, you can still find some non-radical Democrats in Texas, they aren’t in leadership positions or running for office.

Texans are, as a people, no-nonsense, common sense, plain speaking, hard working, and God believing. The Democrat Party is none of those things. The Democratic Socialists, who run the party now, are dead set against all of those things—and anything else wholesome and good that could lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

On Monday I attended a rally for Ken Paxton. Senator Ted Cruz also came—and he is an excellent and entertaining speaker. This was in the middle of the day, at a church in northwest Houston. It was packed. I don’t know quite how to estimate numbers, but I’m guessing around 500 (maybe it was double that; I don’t know). It was hosted by Cypress Republicans and was a very positive and well-organized event. That’s a lot of people at a ticketed (but low-cost) event on a workday. And there was a lot of positive energy in the room. It’s hard, after an event like that, to believe that the polls are close, and we could really be facing the possibility of a tyrannical takeover of our beloved state. And, as Texas goes, so goes the nation. This is precarious.

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