Amarillo ISD is proposing a tax hike. This burns me up because the superintendent (who is really a good Christian guy), makes $239,000 a year. If things are so tight, why doesn't he take a pay cut?

Granbury ISD (50 miles Southwest of Fort Worth) is increasing budgets in a unique way. Lake Granbury is growing with lakeside property owners retiring for fishing and golf (no children homes). Therefore the ISD with the property revaluation board are targeting Lake Front property owners with huge tax increases. A target of opportunity. The “rich” get targeted again.
The ISD spends $5,000 plus dollars per student which is almost half the dollar per student of some Texas universities (source: Brooke Leslie Rollins is president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.)
A Granbury home owners group is organized to fight. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LGWOA/

I live in Sealy. A few years ago they decided they needed a new school. My two children graduated from the old school and it was quite sufficient indeed. They skewed the numbers by saying their enrollment was increasing by "x" number of students each year, but never included the numbers of students moving out of the district or the fact that many were pulling their children out to homeschool or enroll them in private schools (mostly Christian based).

The city lied to the people and told us our taxes would not go up. They said we needed the school in order to offer more in order for people to want to move here. Sort of the "you build it, they will come" syndrome. Well at first our taxes did not go up - but our property values sure did. Once they figured out how much it was going to cost to run and maintain the new school, my appraisal value went from $79,000 to $290,000 in one year. We protested. They came back with a figure of $179,000, when in fact they actually used $205,000. This year their evaluation is back up to $300,000. We're protesting again, but, even if they come down, they will still be valuing the property at more than we can sell it for. It seems we are going to have to protest every couple years, but in the end they will reach their goal of $300,000 and then on from there.

We only have one bathroom and want to put in another. We can't because it would up our property values. We have other improvement projects on hold because the school district is slobbering for more money. The school board just gave our teachers an across-the-board pay raise. Our teachers now make, per capita,$50,000, which is more than the average person in the community makes. My husband makes far less than that. The school board apologized for the puny 3% and said they will try to find a way to make it more in the future.

Texas keeps promising to give property tax relief, but the more they promise, the more our taxes go up. Our home and property are paid off. We are 61 and our income will be declining. If these tax increases continue as they are doing, we will have to sell our property because we can no longer pay the taxes. We are already pulling money out of our retirement to pay taxes, because the combination of taxing entities are leaving us nothing to live on.

And then they have the nerve to call themselves "'Independant' school districts" !!!!

The school districts are using a coordinated effort to show budget shortfalls in order to get the next state legislature to give them more money!!! Although our enrollment has dropped every year in Galveston ISD, we still can't find enough money to educate the children without drastic cuts even though we are now a "rich" school district. And just exactly which check register do these schools have on line? GISD has 41 checking accounts! Talk about hiding the pea! They are running a great scam with Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) directing the ruse!

Our superintendent is busy hiring more central administration staff. At the same time, teacher positions are cut, our class sizes are increasing, and important programs are being cut. But the sports programs just get bigger and better. There's always plenty of money for more artificial turf (we have three fields of new turf now) and no limit on administrative travel and raises!

There is also no limit or accountability for school money spent to retain private law firms to battle against children's rights and the public's right to information.

Dianna
www.keepeanesinformed.com

I love your article!! It is so true. I live in Snyder, Tx and a couple of years ago we pass a School bond to build a new Elementary School, the School is awesome. But during that time our tax value's also increse tremendesley. They says it is because supply and demand. Now our commissioners and some citizens are asking for another school bond to fix up all the other school facilities. Now mind you we just passed a Hospital District so our taxes will be going up for that to. What is amazing to me is that we just spent 1 millon dollars to put artifical turf on our football stadium. Needed? No!! but our official's thought so, it must have been more important to fix the football stadium that to fix the band halls, and all the other places that are so bad, but those things had to wait.
This infuriates me. Thank you Sarah Jamison

Money won't cure the problems the schools are having. The kids need to learn discipline at home, before they come to school; and the schools need to be able to discipline the kids, too.

Another problem is that it really is OK to tell someone that they FAILED at something, though it is NOT OK to tell someone that s/he is a failure. If a kid is not told when s/he has failed, how will s/he know the really great feeling of succeeding at something difficult?

This school train is completely off the tracks.