HISD bond proposal changes: Too little, too late?

HISD has announced it will make changes to its bond proposal in response to community feedback. The question is, will that be enough?

The concessions include renovating, rather than replacing, a few campuses and abandoning plans to create prekindergarten- through eighth-grade campuses in the Fifth Ward.

The district also vowed to comply with environmentally conscious standards as it builds new schools and to use tougher building standards to construct at least five new campuses -- one in each of HISD's geographic regions -- strong enough to serve as hurricane shelters.

The revisions are "not based on the loudest voices in the community, but in the quiet voices of our children," Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra said. "HISD will not abandon the needs of our children. We will not allow the outside influences to derail us from our commitment."

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The upswell of community concern prompted the Greater Houston Partnership to issue a letter late Friday saying that the group of Houston businesses won't take a stand on the bond until the district resolves some of these community concerns. The partnership endorsed each of HISD's last two bond issues.

"Unfortunately, the number of uncertainties and the lack of consultation and engagement with the Partnership in a timeframe that built understanding and acceptance were factors in this outcome," the group's statement said.

Partnership President Jeff Mosley said Monday he's optimistic HISD can address those concerns. The partnership could issue an endorsement as early as this week, he said.

"What we've really heard is just mainly questions from the community ... on how the money's going to be spent," Mosley said. "There's nothing there that can't be resolved if HISD opens a dialogue."

[...]

Joel Goza, an associate minister at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in the Fifth Ward, applauded Saavedra for listening to the community.

"The adjustments he made to the bond proposal display a vastly heightened level of 'street wisdom' than the original bond proposal," he said, adding that he's glad HISD opted to keep some campuses open and abandon plans for prekindergarten- through eighth-grade schools in the Fifth Ward. But simply improving the plan isn't enough, he said.

"The weaknesses of the original bond proposal still leave a long road to travel before truly addressing the woes of education in areas like Houston's Fifth Ward," Goza said.

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HISD's changes didn't win over [State Rep. Sylvester] Turner or other community leaders.

"I've got some concerns still," said Kathryn Griffin, a member of the Ryan Middle School Parent-Teacher Organization. Under the new plan, Ryan, which feeds into Yates High School, would be renovated, rather than consolidated into a new campus.

"It isn't about the exterior of the buildings," Griffin said. "It's about what goes on inside the building. ... I'm tired of seeing children graduate and still not have any reading, writing and arithmetic skills."

Getting the endorsement from the GHP will help, but I still don't see how this thing passes without the support of people like Sylvester Turner and his constituents. It seems to me that these folks are still unhappy about what they perceive as HISD's overall level of commitment to schools like Ryan. Having a modern physical plant is a fine and necessary thing, but what the school has to offer the students is still very much at issue.

It's been suggested to me that HISD pull the bond off the ballot for this November in order to give them time to more fully engage the community and make their case for what they're doing. The risk in leaving it up for a vote this year is that if it fails, HISD must wait five years to try again. It would be better to wait till next year than to have to wait till 2012. I think HISD still has some hope of winning enough support to get this passed, but needless to say time is running out. Since I don't think there's a realistic chance of the referendum getting pulled, they'd better keep at trying to convince folks that what they'd be getting is sufficiently better than what they've got now that they should vote for it rather than hold out for something substantially different. We'll see how that goes.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on September 18, 2007 to Election 2007