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| image previously used here; original link no longer available |
There’s a school board election this coming November—yes, in an off-off-year election, when that, and possibly some propositions for state constitutional amendments coming out of the current legislative session, will be all there is on the ballot. And, as much as you’d prefer not to think about elections again after the previous season, this is the time to be seeking and vetting candidates for those positions.
I think our local school district is a good example of what parents and community members can do to change out “woke” school boards. A few years back, during COVID, parents became aware, and alarmed, at the things being taught in our district—similar to what was happening elsewhere around the country.
Background
We’re in a relatively conservative section northwest of
Houston, much of it suburban. And while much of the area is middle to
upper-middle class, more than half of the student body are on free or reduced
cost lunch. It’s a mixed demographic area, with a lot of Hispanics, and a
significant need for ESL. My particular neighborhood also has a high Asian
population, mainly Vietnamese, along with some Indian. Among students, I
wouldn’t say we have significant racial problems. But our previous Board acted
as if we did.
Curriculum aimed to teach the LGBT agenda, SEL, ESG, DEI,
and the various acronyms that those letter combinations morph out of and into
as community members become aware of them—those were a problem. Porn and LGBT agenda books are still a problem in the schools, despite policy
changes.
Anyway, this new awareness culminated in something of an
uprising, at Board meetings—which led to no changes. So we worked in 2021 to replace Board members. That year there were three
positions on the ballot. As I recall, the incumbents were all running. Through
a good vetting process and sheer grit and determination, we managed to replace
all three of those positions on the Board. But that left us still in a minority
on a 4/3 Board.
Then in 2023 the other four positions were on the ballot—and
we were able to replace three of them. One incumbent remains. So we have only had a conservative majority Board taking
action since January 2024, after they were sworn in and got to work.
Simultaneously, we got a new superintendent, after the previous one retired at
the end of December 2023. We had been concerned about the timing of that
change, because it put the old Board in charge of the hiring. But they did
include the newly elected Board members in the process, and all of them approved
of Dr. Killian, who has, I think, been better than we expected, despite the
dire circumstances we were left with just over a year ago.
The Catastrophic Budget Problem
At that point, in January of last year, the district faced a
$138 million deficit for the 2024-2025 school year budget, which had a deadline
for approval of July 1. So let’s be clear: that entire budget debacle was the
doing of the previous, “woke”-majority Board and Superintendent.
We are a huge district, with around 118,000 students. We’re
the largest district with a Limited Optional Homestead Exemption (LOHE). This
is a property tax reduction on school rates for residents occupying their home,
a benefit offered since 1983, which is significant, since maintenance and
operations budgeting comes from property taxes. The problem is that the state assumes
our district (and others that offer the exemption) could get the full property
tax amount. We’re missing about $63 million a year. But the LOHE has been baked
into property purchasing decisions here for more than four decades. You can’t
simply stop giving it.
I did a little math. According to the CFISD
(Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District) website, the exemption is for 20% plus $100,000. If I understand correctly, then, the
amount exempted is 20% of the full value of the home, plus add $100,000 to
that. For example, for a home that is worth $300,000 (a bit below median home
value in the district), 20% would be $60,000. Add $100,000 to that, and the
exempted portion would leave $140,000. That would be the amount that would be
charged the school property tax rate. This year (2024) that rate was $1.0869
per $100.
There are 1400 units of $100 in $140,000; multiply that by
$1.0869 = $1,521.66. It’s paid annually, but for household budget purposes, our
hypothetical family in the $300,000 home would be paying essentially
$126.81/month in property taxes for schools.
If you took away the LOHE and charged property taxes on the
full home value of $300,000, that would be 3000 units of $100; multiply that by
$1.0869 = $3,260.70; if this were paid monthly, then, it would be $271.73.
You’ve more than doubled the cost for that family living in a home in the
district.
Let’s just admit, you can’t do it. No Board is going to
suggest it. So our alternative is to get the state to stop penalizing us for
offering the exemption that we have virtually no choice about. This year, because
of the efforts of our new Superintendent, we did get a one-time half payment
from the state, to help with our budget deficit. And they’re lobbying the
legislature now for greater relief, which may help with upcoming budgets.
The Superintendent tells us we have the fourth lowest
administrative cost ratio in the state. So, while cutting administrative costs
was a first step, it didn’t make much of a dent in the deficit.
Right away, the Superintendent set up methods for community
input on how to decrease the budget deficit. The goal was to cut that deficit
by a third. The rest would be balanced out of the fund balance (the district’s
rainy day fund, used to finance the beginning of a school year until the tax
money comes in after calendar year’s end). And then there’s hope the state will
increase per student allotments during the legislative session, which I’m told
hadn’t been done since 2019.
Part of our sudden deficit had to do with the ending of
COVID grants from the federal government. These were given for specific
purposes—to help pay for additional COVID-related health issues, and to add
tutors and other personnel who were to help bring students up to par after the
loss of learning caused by the COVID shutdown.
It appears in our district the money, at least a sizable chunk of it, was spent on buses. (You could claim the COVID money was for safety, and added buses are for safety; it’s a stretch, but I guess that’s how they justified it.)
As I understand it, since COVID, bus routes were added, offering buses to nearly
all CFISD students. This wasn’t exactly new. Back in the early 2000s, we had
friends living on a street right behind the elementary school; they were required
to be bused. They got picked up first and dropped off last—a 45-minute bus
ride, rather than a 3-minute walk—which would have meant literally just walking
across the street from the bus stop to be on the grassy field property of the
school. This was one of the insanities I rolled my eyes at as we pulled our
kids out of the district to homeschool. But around 2008, with another budget crisis, bus routes were cut to what is something of a state standard, and had only gotten more luxurious again
since 2020.
The COVID funds were intended to be temporary. Schools knew
when they were ending. They should not have had those funds attached to
anything that was expected to continue beyond the need for making up loss of
learning and temporary COVID safety precautions (now long past).
Transportation Budget
Transportation was one of the areas in which there would
need to be cuts to the budget. I wrote about the budget crisis in some detail last May,
while budget decisions were underway. So we can see what the Board recommended.
But I think there’s more that needs to be added to that story now.
A year ago, in January, the Board and Superintendent became suddenly
aware of the huge deficit—after not a hint of it in the months leading up to
the election and turnover. If we’d known, we’d have used that issue as part
of the campaign. I don’t know whether the non-conservative Board members all
knew but remained quiet. But then Board President, Tom Jackson, who retired and
didn’t run in 2023, is a numbers guy. An accountant, I believe. There’s no way
he didn’t know. Julie Hinaman, who was the only incumbent holdover, I assume
also knew about it. Our conservative members apparently didn’t know—and that
may be because of the lack of subcommittees we now have as a mechanism for
Board members to gain more detailed knowledge on specific issues without
violating the open meetings act, and then they can share that info at Board
meetings. So, lacking that information source was a disadvantage for the pre-2024 Board.
Anyway, this was dropped in the laps of the new conservative majority Board without warning. I can’t emphasize enough how wrong that is: “Congratulations! Here’s an impossible problem to solve. And the community will think it’s your fault if you fail"; laughing as they walk out the door.
Right away the Superintendent set up a Budget Reduction
Advisory Committee (BRAC) to get community input and to give recommendations.
So let’s look mainly at their recommendations regarding
transportation.
I had two friends on the BRAC. One of them talked with me
about it recently. According to him, most of the BRAC committee consisted of
CFISD personnel or those closely connected to personnel. In a committee of
maybe 70, made up of teachers, principals, district administrators, parents,
and Board-appointed community members, the guess is that probably only 20% were
parents and Board-appointed community members. (At each table of 5-6 people,
usually only one was a non-employee.)
There were three transportation plans the BRAC voted on. The
least draconian was to essentially bring back the bus routes of 2019—before
COVID. That would save about $4.7 million out of the $68 million savings they
were targeting to achieve. The most draconian—which may have been to eliminate
almost all buses—would have saved only $11 million. The BRAC committee—not
including my friends—voted “the more draconian the better.”
That didn’t make sense. Unless—and this is speculation—it
was a setup to make the new Board look bad, so they could have leverage in the
next election. And they claim school board elections aren’t political!
My friend warned the conservatives on the Board. He thought
actually it would be better to leave the buses as is and find budget savings
elsewhere, just because of the PR nightmare. In hindsight, he was probably
right.
The Board actually went with the least draconian option, which was a return to pre-COVID routes, despite the BRAC recommendation to cut more. Safety considerations were part of the deal. This solution is no worse than bus routes in surrounding districts.
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| from the budget presentation at the CFISD School Board meeting, May 6, 2024, screenshot from here |
This was already settled in May. All that remained was
making assignments and notifying parents of any changes. If the district had gotten
this plan out to the community in June, it wouldn’t be an issue. But the
Transportation team somehow couldn’t identify the routes based on these
criteria. (Because they had no record of routes from five years ago? Or no
current maps?) And, even though they’d had enough bus drivers to fill all the
routes up through the end of the school year (albeit with some subs and some workers doing bus duty in addition to other assignments), they claimed they couldn’t hire
enough drivers for the lower number of routes two months later. They claim they had been about 50 drivers short last year; they cut 79 routes. They should have had plenty to fill the unfilled slots plus some. There's no real
explanation for the inability to hire the needed lower number of drivers. Because other districts paid more and siphoned them off? Why suddenly now? That
explanation makes no sense.
Then the Communications team, which was to notify the
public, sent no communications out in May, or June. And of course not in July,
because that’s when district employees take their vacations. It also didn't help that we had Hurricane Beryl on July 8, which caused days of power outages (not as many as from the derecho in May, however). They did put up a warning on their Facebook page in June, just a heads up that some routes would be changing. Nothing on the official webpage. Nothing in texts or emails to parents. They waited
until just a couple of weeks before school started to tell parents that they
wouldn’t have buses in many expected places. These included places that did
not meet the transportation plan criteria for safety.
Of course many parents were up in arms; they couldn’t have
their kids walk those unsafe routes! And how were they supposed to come up with
solutions in only two weeks, when they should have had several months to plan,
if they’d only known?
It was a debacle. Add to that, there were, in the first
couple of weeks of school, several incidents, injuries and near injuries, involving
children and cars in these unsafe places—places, which, I repeat, were
supposed to have buses, and would have had them, if the Transportation team
had done their job and planned routes according to the safety standards set down by the
Board!
And it would not have caused such a public outcry, if the
Communications team had done their job in a timely manner. And really, who
believes they could put out a statement immediately after their vacation—if
they hadn’t prepared it before they left? Why not leave for vacation one hour
later and provide parents at least another month to plan?
Two possible answers: on purpose, or incompetence. Incompetence could explain a lot. But in this case I’m leaning toward on purpose. That BRAC committee had wanted a transportation debacle. They wanted things to be worse—much worse—than the Board required. And they got worse.
I’ll just add one more thought here: The Board does not
handle day-to-day operations in the District; the Superintendent is over that.
Ultimately, he is responsible for the Transportation team and Communications
team and for making sure they are doing their job according to policy. Was
there intentional failure there? I do not know.
Was It Political?
I don’t know who the Transportation and Communications teams are in the district. I don’t know whether they were on the BRAC committee, or in communication with committee members. I don’t know how they vote. But I know they could have prevented this entire PR nightmare, yet they didn’t.
There’s a school board election this coming November, with
three positions on it. So far I don’t know the candidates. I believe at least
two, possibly all three of our conservative members will run again. And I’ll
support them. Or, if not them, then we’ll find another conservative worth
supporting in their stead. But the opposition will be going all out. If they
could oust our three, then they would have a majority “woke” Board again—a Board
that doesn’t care about budgets, as long as they can do their indoctrinating.
Since school started in August 2024, the Board has been
trying to solve the bus problem. They’ve allotted higher pay. They’ve encouraged
recruiting. They keep getting told they can’t find enough drivers. Board
members have hesitated to blame employees; they have to continue working with
them and depending on them. I don’t have that issue. It’s not the Board; it’s
employees not doing the job that they’re required to do: hire drivers to fill
the routes that were set up for safety.
This bus issue will be a club the opposition will use to
bludgeon our incumbents. It’s their doing—people in the district who resent our
conservative voices interfering with their plans. They wanted results to be as
bad as possible; I almost think some may have been delighted if a child had
been killed, because they’d get more emotional mileage from that.
Why else would they want more austerity? More staffing cuts?
More libraries that they could claim were closed (they weren’t—and that was another
decision made by employees, by principals, that got blamed on the Board)? So
they could go to the community, and lie, and blame this Board for taking away
their buses and making their children unsafe, and for taking away other things that
the community values.
What we need to do is better understand what has happened,
and why—so we can better explain it to voters. Because, when we can tell the
conservative story clearly, the voters in our community are with us. That’s how
we got this conservative majority Board—a Board focused on raising literacy
rates, and empowering families to get the education they’re forced to pay for, and
get it free from “woke” indoctrination.
A conservative-led school district is better for the whole
community. Now that we’ve got one, we need to work to keep it.
