If the Mertzon air has seemed particularly fragrant lately, it's because the native Agarita bush is in full bloom. We had a warm winter, and the bushes are unusually full of flowers this year. The berries, though difficult to harvest, make an excellent jelly .
The most recent update was on March 20, 2024.
Here was the agenda for the March 18, 2024 Board meeting with my agenda analysis and my meeting analysis.
Agenda analysis:
Be public about your appreciation of teachers. One reason to regularly read agendas is to spot the trends and learn the calendar. Each spring, for example, Texas school districts go through the process of renewing the contracts of their teachers, and tis the season at items 11b and 13 on this agenda. Something I recommend (and that I did when my own children were in school) is that parents attend this meeting in particular. Consider this: have prepared comments for the Open Forum which state your approval of your child's current teacher, your recommendation that their contract be renewed for the following school year AND that they receive a pay raise above any cost of living increase. Leave behind a copy of your comments with each board member, the superintendent and principal at the meeting. Then, immediately following the meeting, email a copy of your comments to your child's teacher and just tell them "thank you" and that you are in their corner. You do these few simple things and you will be absolutely amazed with the good will you generate and how that will positively impact your child's education. Particularly these days when our public education teachers are under attack from our Governor, public praise is exceedingly rare. (One reason I promote the use of open forums at public meetings is that I also see them as a positive tool for change, not a gripe session to tear down government.) Teachers need and want parental approval, and school board members, superintendents and principals gravitate toward positive interactions. This sort of approach makes its own gravy, if you know what I mean. Caution: I do not, do not, recommend using the public forum to recommend that a teacher not be rehired. I highlighted board policy BED relating to public comments in red above because I doubt that it is constitutionally robust enough to protect negative speech of this sort. Regretfully, I have personal experience of being called out of order by the previous leadership at Irion County ISD (Superintendent Ray DeSpain and board President Vicente Flores) for speaking critically in open forum on matters related to the 2019 bonds. I urge caution to anyone wishing to criticize anything during open forum. The law may well provide you with 1st Amendment and Texas Government Code 551.007 protections to speak critically of a teacher during contract renewal season, but how your speech might be misinterpreted on the fly without a lawyer in the room advising the school district is anyone's guess. (State agency board meetings have a lawyer present to immediately guide the the executive director and chair away from pitfalls, which is what I did professionally at the Texas Attorney General's Office. Texas school districts do have have such counsel available at board meetings, so at times their meetings are wildly unpredictable.)
Budget Amendments on property and communications a. Property - item 8a calls for a budget amendment for a "property purchase". "What kind of property and where?" are my first two immediate questions. One can assume this is a real property property purchase, but if you are making assumptions then your next question as an advocate for open government is: Is this adequate notice under the Texas Open Meetings Act? For the moment, I'm going to take a pass on that question and leap to a guess: the District is about to purchase the old Lindley property immediately across the street from the new parking lot, the GMPL, at 5th and Fayette. Here is the listing for that property. If this is the property and if the 2024 bond election passes in May and if the District intends to develop this newly acquired property such that even more stormwater runs off onto 5th and Juanita streets and beyond, I will have much, much more to say about this purchase. In the meantime, some background reading on Takings by flooding (aka inverse condemnation) is this fascinating currently pending US Supreme Court case, Devillier v. Texas, in which the State of Texas' Texas Department of Transportation is making a questionable argument to get out of liability for flooding some farmers after some revisions to Highway 10 near Houston. Here is an interview of one of the attorneys representing the farmers in Devillier that nicely sets out the issues. More on Devillier later after the Court releases its opinion. For now, it is good background info for the proposition that, yes, taking property without just compensation can occur by flooding caused by government construction. This is consistent, by the way, with what Coach Sid McCown taught me in high school civics class at ICHS back in the day. One need not attend law school to be taught and understand basic constitutional law. b. Communications contract budget amendment. Item 8b is on the radar because these days communications contracts are likely part of school security, and thereby part of our legislature and governor's unfunded mandate that is a response to the Uvalde school shooting. Billions of dollars are being spent statewide on school security, so don't be mislead by the property breaks being given to property owners. We are all paying for protection from mass shooters at schools. This amendment may be as simple as renewing the service provider for the telephones, but I'm not going to miss the opportunity to alert folks that on agendas "communication" also means "security".
Athletics Report. This is the first time since before Jacob Conner's departure that the Athletics Department has been on an agenda. This is an excellent time to ask: what does the public need to hear about in an Athletics Report? Since the Athletics Department received the lion's share of the 2019 bond funds, I think reporting on facilities and expenses is far more important in a report to the board than wins, losses and schedules. From my perspective of following the 2019 bonds from start to finish, the Athletic Department manages a lot of money in the dark. Board members at monthly board meetings don't need to hear about wins, losses and schedules because by and large they are attending the games or managing social media accounts covering such things. If the Board wants a more academically focused budget, then there needs to be sunlight on Athletic Department's budget, expenses and academic praise of student athletes during this report. The Athletic Director position should of course report on the finances of his/her department during this part of the meeting. Excellence in athletics is more than about wins and losses. Excellence is also about coaches acting first as public servants as teachers, while being good stewards of taxpayer dollars.
Dress Code Revisions - Items 5&6 may deal with the new CROWN act, relating to banning race based hair discrimination. Here is the law passed last year, HB 567. Remember, there's always the local Board Policy Manual that has to be considered when changing the dress code for students. Here are the relevant sections: FNCA (Legal) and FNCA (Local). Neither appear to incorporate HB567, so perhaps the principle drafter of these codes, TASB, needs to consider a policy update. Here is a Tribune article on a school district already being sued over the Crown Act.
Closed session on health insurance - see below at # 6.
Meeting Analysis. I attended this meeting and was the only person from the community to stay from start to finish. Here is my analysis:
How much? Probably the most troubling part of this meeting was that a dollar amount was not stated for any of the 3 budget amendments or for a total dollar amount. Generally, the amendments relate to the purchase of two vacant lots behind the former child care center (not the Lindley home I described above), finishing the elementary playground (a project started with 2019 bond funds but not finished because the contractor went bankrupt) and contracting for a new communications consultant. There's no reason for the Board and Supt. Moore to be discreet about these dollars. These are public funds, and failing to state the amounts only lends an appearance that there is some hidden financial exigency. The public ought to be able to hear how much (as in a specific dollar amount) of their tax dollars are being spent any time a vote is required on a budget matter. In addition, as I have argued in other posts, any budget amendment motion that includes the phrase "as presented" is too vague and does not provide sufficient notice to the public. (All that is required to remedy this situation is for the superintendent and board president to confer in advance of the meeting to craft proposed motions so that the president can guide the members on specific wording that will be needed for motions during the meeting. If anything, using "as presented" in a motion shows a lack of advanced planning by the president and superintendent.)
Athletics no show. The department commanding the largest amount of our tax dollars, Athletics, did not have its interim AD present to give a presentation after all. The board is missing an opportunity to show that it values academics over athletics when there is no board meeting presence by this department. There needs to be standardized report each month by this department, regardless of the AD's whereabouts. Student athletes excelling in academics need to be added to the student recognition portion of the meeting so that community (and especially the other students present receiving recognition at the meeting) can readily see that academic excellence is especially valued by the Board. There remains a long road to recovery for the District to have not built any classrooms with that last injection of $18 million in 2019 bond funds. Those funds were largely spent on athletics, and with each passing month in Jacob Conner recovery the silence becomes more and more deafening.
Government growth. One thing that came into focus during the meeting is that the business purchasing the lots (discussed in 1 above) happened in the background outside of ear shot and not in an open meeting. My understanding of the last meeting on February 14, which I did not attend, is that the only public meeting business conducted was the vote on the bond election. Necessarily, this means that the board's agreement to purchase the lots occurred since that time, without a public vote, and all that was left to do at this meeting was to move the money in the budget. This is troubling because the public had no notice that the District was even in the negotiating stages of purchasing land. It might not have mattered a whole lot as the Open Meetings Act allows for an executive session for real estate, But, the Board might have at least given the nod to the community that it was expanding its footprint. As I discussed above, the reason to be concerned is that the more impervious cover the District puts on its land holdings, the more our community floods. In my 2019 presentation to the District prior to that bond election, I urged the governmental stakeholders to meet and address how large the District could be and still maintain the park and football stadium without flooding. (There's mutual interest in City Park between the City of Mertzon, Irion County and Irion County ISD.) That never happened, and there appears to be no interest in it today. So, if you ever wonder years how the District's footprint got to be so large and how its environmental impact went unchecked, the purchase of these lots is a case to study. The government is growing, even under conservative leadership, and no one is noticing.
Communications contract. The District approved a contract to hire a communications consultant. I generally think this is a good idea. As I've said before, the Board appears to me to be tone deaf on issues related to relations with its neighbors and those who are not tied into the District with school age children or staff. The District also has a long history of being athletics, not academics, focused. (The District's college signing day last year was limited to the coaches' kids playing ball at Sul Ross.) And, if the bond passes, there will be a lot of issues to message. I hope to be learning more about this new contract.
Teacher contracts and pay raises. The District's annual budget is $21-$22 million, and according to CFO Robert Helms 80% of that is made up of salaries. The largest part of those salaries are teachers, and all of that budget money got committed last evening without as much as a whisper of community engagement or concern. The apathy is painful to watch, frankly, and nary a one of the board members took a position. The meeting ended after executive session with President Carlile requesting a motion to "approve the contracts as discussed and presented in executive session". The motion was made by board member Rey and seconded by board member Rainey, and it passed unanimously without discussion or even an utterance that these were teacher contracts. Not a single teacher was named. It was all done in the darkness of executive session. Troubling.
Insurance. "I am shocked by Region 15's promotion of a hair brained scheme to entice not only this school district but other school districts in this area to leave TRS Care," is what State Representative Drew Darby said when he visited the District back on February 23 when he was asking for votes. In fact, last year Supt. DeSpain and the Board opted for the TRS Care alternative plan with the understanding at the time (I recall the board meeting when this was done) that it would be cheaper. Apparently the plan either wasn't a legitimate plan or there is some insurance fraud, because the plan has entirely failed. The consequence has been that the District has essentially become a self-insurer for its employees health care expenses. According to Helms, the total owed to Shannon by Spring Break for healthcare to ICISD employees was $302,00. He negotiated that down to $120,000, meaning that for the moment a budget amendment would not necessary. This rivals the snafu last year over the blown 313 income projections, folks.
Dress code revisions. An enlightened discussion was held with the Board and a number of students from the SSAC. The students, in coordination with Supt. Moore, accomplished a number of revisions to the student dress code. Supt. Moore and the students had a great rapport with one another, and the students' presentations were well thought out and reasoned. I've never seen this board so engaged. It was refreshing to see. That said, the Crown Act that I mentioned at #4 above did not come up in any discussion. Here is the difficult truth: the entire county was comprised of only 1.8% African American in the 2022 census. The white population comprised an astounding 94.2% of the total in that census. All of the students present at this meeting were white. They likely had no basis to consider the cultural significance of hair as it relates to the dress code.
2024 Bond election. Crickets. No news to report.
Copyright 2024 G Noelke