Is CISD Short on Funds or Common Sense?

by Harold Gentry

Taxpayers and voters, last year you did what the school district thought was impossible and elected a common sense member of our business community to the school board. But one man cannot do it alone. Is the current school board listening to ALL the taxpayers/parents any more than they did during the TEA investigation? This year we need to be even more diligent in our voting by electing Harry Shaffer and Jay Wilson to serve on the Cleburne ISD school board. Jay is a CPA who owns his own business and Harry, a retired IBM troubleshooter, has been on the Johnson County Water Board for 11 years so both men understand budgets and finances.

As the year goes on we are destined to hear more and more from edu-crats about how it is the state’s fault that public education is going broke. School board members and superintendents claim the Legislature is unreasonable in their demands that the school perform their one basic purpose, which is to educate the children. What’s their number one excuse? Not enough money. Number two excuse is too many unfunded state mandates.

Taxpayers, you and I and all the rest of world do not have enough money to satisfy their thirst for your tax dollars in the name of our children. Cleburne ISD says they are going broke on $52 million a year serving 6800 kids and claiming a $1.4 million dollar shortfall! Have you noticed all the talk about a reduction in force for staff but no mention of reduction in central office personnel or reduction in their salaries?

Once again the ground troops, the principals and teachers, take it on the chin when the real responsibility for poor financial decision-making lies with the school board, the superintendent and other central office staff. They expect full and complete accountability and compliance from the ground troops and absolutely none for themselves.

However, for board members and administrators, it’s more convenient and less damaging to their ego and their political future to lay blame elsewhere. The State is a convenient scapegoat. Rather than admit to their shortcomings in not making sound financial decisions, they blame someone else. To school districts, the State has replaced the age-old Devil as the antichrist of the education community. It’s far more comforting saying “The devil made me do it,” instead of taking the blame for your own actions.

With public perception of the community at stake, most board members feel it would be unsupportive to say no to the superintendent’s every desire. The superintendent meanwhile is building his resume for his next job, boosting his retirement income or hoping to land one of those $75 per hour consulting jobs when he leaves your district. According to www.texasisd.com, about 50 superintendent jobs are up for grabs right now. Most are on what I call the Three Year Plan in which they try to boost their salary as high they can for their last three years of employment. It is the average of those last three years that determines the size of their retirement check.

But for heaven’s sake, don’t dare utter the phrase “We just can’t afford that right now.” That would surely show a sign of weakness to our neighbors. Instead we prefer to pretend that Camelot is unscathed from the pestilence wrought on other school districts around us.

What a school district really wants is for the state and the federal government to give them billions of taxpayer dollars with absolutely no requirements, rules or regulations as to how it is spent. A free hand to do anything they desire without accountability or questions because they think they know what is best for their district. What’s best for the district is what feathers their nest with tax dollars.

When local property taxes rise or new sources of income, like the oil and gas revenues, and the state realizes it, they may cut your funds. For example if you got $12 million in state funds last year and you gained $2 million in property values/oil gas revenues, the state may take notice and say you’re more property-rich so you don’t need as much. How does the district respond? They say the state is underfunding public education.

If what happened at Cleburne ISD is happening to some extent in all 1034 school districts in Texas, is there any wonder that 40% are going broke, with that figure rising to 50% by the next year? Don’t you hear them all pointing fingers and saying, “Well every district’s doing it - we just got caught!” Does that make it right? Maybe President Obama or the Texas Attorney General needs to start an education task force and investigate them all.

I’ll bet if that rumor became a reality, Texas taxpayers would suddenly find that maybe the Devil is not in the State but in your local school district.

We need independent thinkers on the school board. Electing Wendell Dempsey was a good start. Now we need to elect two more – Jay Wilson and Harry Shaffer.

In the past, our school board members have been Interchangeable Rubber Stamps. If we shortened the name to IRS, we could have called them IRS1, IRS2, IRS3 and so on. The connotation of taking more and more of our money would also apply.

We don’t need any more Interchangeable Rubber Stamps on the school board. Let’s elect Jay Wilson and Harry Shaffer.