IC ISD Board Meeting July 14 2025

Agenda Analysis | Meeting Review | Meeting Documents | Commentary | Last Meeting

There is a reason the City of Mertzon has closed Fleming Ave. between 3rd and 4th streets. It floods! Here is what it looked like on the week before this meeting with only ~1" of rain.

---

Agenda for Irion County ISD board meeting

A. Agenda Analysis

1. Meeting location: note the new location - Hornet Gym. (I sometimes refer to it as "City Gym" because I contend some of the land the gym was built on is still owned by the citizens of Mertzon because the land was unlawfully transferred to IC ISD.)

2. Administrative reports, item 3 a- d: This is what the full house looks like when all department heads are reporting.

3. Bond projects, item 4: this is the stock language used each meeting.

4. ADA football stand modifications, item 5: I always question ADA modifications, and not because I'm against inclusion. Seems to me they sometimes serve as a pretext to accomplish some discretionary renovation, without a finding of actual noncompliance from the state. I don't know whether that is the case here.

5. Special Education MOU with Sonora, item 6: This appears to be the District's decision on choosing a Sped provider. As covered elsewhere, an "MOU" is a memorandum of understanding, meaning a written non binding agreement between government entities.

6. Staff raises, item 7: So, this needs to be called out for the shameful hostage taking that it really was. I have railed against this in previous posts. This appears to be the end part of the quid pro quo of Gov. Abbott's demand for private school vouchers where he withheld his approval of teacher pay raises, for years, until he got the bill he wanted. If you get nothing else from this blog post, get this - this is a terrible way to treat government employees, particularly teachers, who should never have been considered pawns in a game of satisfying large campaign donors. (Yes, this is an example of why we need campaign finance reform and term limits.) To dive into the weeds, here is what TEA has written on HB 2, the recent law that is the foundation for these raises. In time, I think our state will regret this privatization of public education, and no wonder seeing how this has shamelessly come down. We all should have done more than relying on our local legislators.

7. Closed session and action on closed session, items 10 and 12: I encourage reading about any closed session. Even if something is not listed specifically, as nothing is here, the Board can discuss matters in closed if the matter is on another part of the agenda and qualifies for an exemption. They may then be able to vote on it in during the open meeting portion. Formal votes cannot be taken in a closed meeting, of course.

---

At one time the now raised building here housed 1st - 4th grades, principal's office that sometimes substituted as a school board meeting room (my father met there when he was school board president), and boys and girl's restrooms. Gone forever is the breezeway between Mrs. Bridges' and Mrs. Scoggins' first and second grade classrooms, where Mrs. Scoggins would paddle unruly second graders with "Ol Henry". The doors on the breezeway were left open during such teaching events, so that the rising first graders knew that Mrs. Scoggins really was as mean as she looked. Across the hall, fourth grade teacher Mrs. Wolfenbarger kept "Big Red" (her paddle) hanging from the door frame so that it was the first and last thing you would see when you entered and left the classroom. If I was ever unruly, it had passed by then.

B. Meeting Review

1. Staff raises, item 7: Clearly the most important part of this meeting was this part. The Board did a good job with their analysis. They are undoubtedly between a rock and a hard place financially because they are already running a deficit budget and the Legislature and Gov. Abbott have them out on a limb. In the end, they approved the HB 2 increases for the teachers and, though not mandated by HB 2, also gave raises to the support staff. They should be commended for this support of teachers and staff. It's impossible to drill down here on how much each position is going to get without an updated pay scale. The larger picture, though, is that the HB 2 increases will add $250,000 to $300,000 to the budget to be used for teachers, while an additional approximate $100,000 unfunded money will have to be found for the support staff pay increases. These are for certain more than cost of living raises. "Huge" raises is the way Supt. Moore described them. But, there's a hitch... As President Carlile described it, what the legislature did in HB 2 is "buy some time". The funding for the HB 2 raises is only for the next two years, and according to Supt. Moore, there's no going back to the previous pay scale. By law, the legislature can only budget two years at a time, and that's all they did here. What they failed to do is create a long term funding solution for any of this.
   

2. Open forum, item 2: Emily Allen, a counselor at the school, spoke to encourage the Board to give raises to support positions at the District. She was well spoken and appropriately deferential to the Board.
   

3. Bond projects, item 4 and Consent agenda, item 8. There was no bond matter to approve, and the Board approved the consent agenda. What's the connection here? See my commentary below.
   

4. Administrative Reports, item 3: a. Supt. Moore -Band field has been paved, striping goes on this week. -Corrections have been made at the new field so that it is now level. (The latest saga is that ants like the cooling beads on the field.) -Aide positions have been posted. -Newest portables are installed but not set up. -Aug. 11 is the groundbreaking for the new elementary - all demolition should be complete by then. b. Kandra Lakey - Ms. Lakey mentioned that local revenue (from ad valorem taxes) is at 103% and she appropriately credited Joyce Gray, the Tax Assessor Collector for Irion County. Dr. Gray gets very busy in August as she does presentations to all the local taxing entities to help nail down their budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. These presentations are all public and very worthwhile, if how your local government is funded is of interest. Irion County is very fortunate to consistently have a high collection rate, and Ms. Lakey's praise is well placed. c. There were no reports from either Principal Parker or AD/Asst. Principal Morrow.-
   

5. MOU with Sonora ISD for special education services, item 6: The Board approved the MOU, its first with Sonora. The cost is $21,000 per student, per year. I'll be seeking the MOU with a Public Information Act request in the near future.
   

6. ADA football stand modification, item 5: This involved approving a bid to move the ramp to one of the stands, and not the tail wagging the dog kind of deal. (ie, not new stands are needed because the ramp is in the wrong place.)
   

7. Closed session, items 10 and 12: there was no closed session.

---

The new band marching “field” now has its tack coat before it is paved with asphalt. The completed field, really an asphalt area of 60x 40, costs $638,000 according to the documents I recently received in my PIA request. The earthwork done a few days before allowed for some of the stormwater to collect next to it. The costs for the drainage work is excluded from the marching area.

C. Commentary

One of the school bond reforms that I have recommended is that districts need to be required, prior to the bond election, to disclose to voters what the projected M&O (maintenance and operations) costs will be over a period of years after the new project/building is complete.

It's just too easy for the district to discuss only the first half of the finance equation - that half that says "we can build all this without increasing your property taxes". The real meat and potato costs, though, come with the ongoing M&O costs. Those kind of costs are ongoing costs, unlike the bond funds. Bond funds get a special status from the legislature in that they are funds that are not considered in the recapture formula. Which is to say - bond fund money stays here. So, "wealthy" property districts, like IC ISD, can have a lot of money to build, but not necessarily enough money to maintain and operate what it builds.

All this came to light at this meeting with a simple question from Board member Ashley Hill during the consent agenda portion of the meeting: Tell me about the monthly fees being paid to Anthony Mechanical for work on the new gym. So, I've been doing PIA requests for months now on these very expenses. The company is doing specialized AC repair and maintenance just on the AC's for the new gym. They have a contract with the District to do monthly maintenance and repair. Apparently the gym when built has a type of unit that most companies can't maintain, and Anthony Mechanical cornered the market. Without competition, they can charge what they want.

The other part of the discussion during the consent agenda included that a local Mertzon company, Air Tech, is no longer going to be servicing the filters on the remaining units for the rest of the District. This means the District is going to have to go searching for an additional A/C company, or perhaps do it themselves. In any event, what taxpayers should know is that all this A/C maintenance and repair doesn’t come cheap. It’s a far cry from the days I recall when the 1909 building was heated with steam radiators and cooled with open windows.

Now, the jury is still out on the cost savings from Supt. Moore's initiative to centralize the heating and cooling through one system app. Early indications are that savings will be significant. I'm also doing PIA requests on the District's electricity costs, which obviously increase with the added buildings. In the last 10 or so years, those electric costs have exploded from a few thousand a month to $30,000+ a month. Electricity costs, like maintenance of an AC unit, come out of the M&O side of the budget, and they last the life of the building.

All this is to say that it is shortsighted to look at only half of the bond finance equation. Voters need to be told in advance about projected M&O costs as well. Otherwise, the Anthony Mechanicals in our free market system become yet another cog in the privatization of our public school finance system...and the public never thinks about it. It is just a transfer of public wealth to a private company, without which the District couldn't survive.

What's next in this transfer of wealth?! Robots powered by artificial intelligence, programed by TEA, to replace classroom teachers? This door is opening, I fear, and the longer the Legislature and Gov. Abbott kicks the can down the road on financing teacher and support salaries, the wider that door will open.

The Athena Owl, Lux and Veritas steles have been saved from destruction. Supt. Moore has told me they will be added to the new elementary building. Kudos to her and all those involved for preserving them. Read more about them here.

The legacy building was built in 1909 (one year before my home a block away was built), and as a state historic building its exterior can't be modified. It's interior, though, has served all sorts of purposes. At one time the second floor of this northwest corner was a small chemistry lab. The lab chemicals were kept in unlocked shelves, giving students easy access. I don't recall ever being warned or disciplined when several of us played with mercury, yes mercury, Hg, on the lab table with our fingers. More than once. What things are IC ISD students doing today that decades from now might be considered horrific?

---

Copyright 2025 G. Noelke