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ICISD Special Board Meeting August 26 2024

Sign that reads Irion County Prayer Fence Tie a ribbon in prayer for the students, staff, and community! with an elementary playground in the background.
What are your thoughts about the new prayer fence sign at IC ISD? My commentary is below.
 

There are two meetings in one this time. Below are the two agendas with my agenda analysis and meeting analysis underneath. Go here for my commentary on the prayer fence pictured above.

First meeting agenda:


Second meeting agenda:


A. Agenda analysis for both meetings:

  1. The first meeting at 6 PM is the required open forum part of the annual process of ad valorem taxation. If you wish to complain about the tax hike by IC ISD, this is where and when you would do it.

  2. Second meeting, items 3 and 4: These items should be read together. The budget amendments for 23-24 are “clean up” for the current fiscal year. I have previously blogged about the need for more sunshine on budget amendments, as previous practice for the District has been to create a sort of invisibility cloak so that it was hard to understand the reasons for amendment. I think there would be more accountability in governmental budgeting if each amendment were specifically identified on the agenda.

    As to the adoption of the 24-25 budget, item 3, if a citizen wanted to take issue with how the Board proposes to spend their tax dollars before a final vote to approve, they would be hard pressed to do so. I haven’t done an exhaustive search, but I can find no Texas law out there that requires that the entire proposed budget of a school district be posted publicly before it is voted upon by the Board. There ought to be a provision that school districts must post their proposed budgets at least 3 days before they vote to approve it. Without such disclosure, citizens really have no way of protesting the budgetary decisions, and the public meeting and open forum portions of these meetings are meaningless. Please let me know if I have overlooked some already existing provision.

  3. Land purchase, item 5: In a similar vein, citizens can’t protest (or encourage!) in an open forum the expansion of school district campus boundaries when an agenda notice like this one does not include the location of the property. What land?!

  4. Closed session, personnel update, items 7 a and 9: Section 571.045 of the Open Meetings Act provides that this closed session is allowed to “deliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee; or to hear a complaint or charge against an officer or employee .” Section 551.144 addresses the penalties for having a closed meeting that is not permitted. If there is one thing I could revolutionize in Texas school law it would be to require publicly paid attorneys to be present at all school board meetings, especially during closed sessions. So many abuses of the Open Meetings Act could be prevented with legal representation present. This is the model used by the Texas Attorney General’s office and all state agency governing boards.



 
Frontier is installing fiber optic cable in Mertzon, and their contractor has tangled with the water lines more than once.

B. Meeting analysis

  1. Tax hearing, first meeting. Other than myself, no one from the public was present.

  2. Open forum, item 2, and 24-25 budget adoption: No one from the public, other than myself, was present. I did not speak because…well, I’ve covered that before. I don’t have a paper or digital copy of the specific budget (yet) but this one is going to be in the neighborhood of $22 million, folks. Almost $8 million is being recaptured by the State because IC ISD is a wealthy district, yet the District is managing a deficit budget for 24-25 of about $426,000. I am always amazed this time of year when no parents or taxpayers attend this meeting and, at the very minimum, complain about the loss of the recapture payment. It’s a sad state of affairs when the public is so disconnected from the school board that there isn’t any concern about how awful the funding mechanisms are for public education. I think it is also dangerous. The District, I predict, is eventually not be able to afford its upkeep of its massive capital investments without ongoing tax increases.

    That said, I’ll do a PIA request for the board meeting documents soon, and after that review I’ll dive into the weeds a bit on these pages. To their credit, some Board members were more engaged in their discussion of the budget than in previous years. I have criticized them in previous years for their silence during meetings and failing to understand that their engagement on funding is what creates accountability of the Superintendent and CFO.

  3. Budget amendments, item 4: I’m going to keep beating this dead horse. The Board approved the budget amendments “as presented”. I'll state my objection to this a bit differently: any motion that includes “as presented” when the governing body fails to provide the related documents to the public at the beginning of the meeting is nothing less than a cloud screen. Contrast this with the City of Mertzon, who regularly makes a few copies of meeting documents, including budget matters, available to the public at the beginning of the meeting. A taxpayer wanting to know where the City of Mertzon is spending its money could readily figure it out, but not so at IC ISD.

    Like the budget adoption above, I’ll do a PIA request for these amendments soon. Now, to be fair, the District’s new business manager, Kandra Lakey, went further into the weeds on some parts of the amendments than CFO Robert Helms ever did. Treating board members like they are supposed to know and understand the budget is the best way to keep board members accountable AND to relieve exposure on the staff, who is not responsible for the final budget approval. But, even more financial transparency is needed, especially when it come to budget amendments. Stay tuned.

  4. Land purchase, item 5: The District is in negotiations to purchase, at a cost of around $260,00.00, some additional lots to its northwest. I'll not cover this now while the negotiations are pending.

  5. Bond news: Part of the budget approval process included a $4.1 million early payment on the 2019 bonds. Again, an aggressive prepayment schedule like this is going to be what saves the District in the next oil and gas bust. There was no discussion about 2024 bonds, though, heads up, what might the new land purchase discussed below be used for?

  6. Who wasn't at this meeting, and more: Principal Jessica Parker, Asst. Principal John Morrow, Board members Rick Rey and Tony Martinez, and (former?) CFO Robert Helms. My search for Robert Helms in the District's online directory came up with nothing, so it appears he is no longer on the payroll. No announcement has ever been made during the board meetings. I am covering his apparent departure as yet one more high ranking administrator with intimate knowledge of the financing and build out of the 2019 bond package who has moved on. This, and the other departures I have blogged about (Superintendents Brian Gray and Ray DeSpain, President Vicente Flores and a number of board members, Mayor Bill Taylor, Principal Shannon Chapman, Athletic Director Jacob Conner, and of course Architect Jeff Potter and WBK Construction), underscores the slippery nature of creating public accountability for the terrible decisions made surrounding the construction of City Gym and the expenditure of the 2019 bonds without public oversight.


 

E bike in rugged terrain with a pick axe attached to the front and a chain saw attached to the back rack.
The trails I’m building are to places I’ve never been able to get to before, which of sorts resembles what its like to write this blog.

C. Additional commentary on the Prayer Fence:

My first thought when I read the prayer fence sign at the top of the page was, “I wonder if that is Constitutional?” My second thought was “Who is the community?” And my third thought was, “Who is behind this?”


First, an important fact: the sign is tied to a fence on the IC ISD campus and the background is of the elementary playground. One way or another, it stays there with the blessing of IC ISD.



And I have argued here (at 2 D) that anonymity destroys leadership and advocacy


So where does that get me now? I haven't defined “community”, and the more I address the ongoing new risks created by the 2024 bonds, the less I understand what “community” means. (The 2019 bonds sure taught me a thing or two about community!)


I also think it is worth noting that I have had to intuit that the sign was put up by our local Methodist Church, of whom School Board President Maegin Carlie is a member, because by mere chance I saw some posts related to it on Facebook. Facebook, and all social media, is at best an  illusory community in my day to day life. I don’t care to delegate what my community is saying to a billionaire’s algorithms when I am the product he is selling.


Government In the Sun in part is about encouraging government leaders to claim ownership of their words and actions and holding them accountable when they refuse to do so. However one defines “community”, my experience time and time again is that government leaders and staffers acting anonymously are a negative counter force to our democratic ideals.  The solution provided us by our Founders so that our democracy remains vibrant are certain principles, like the separation of church and state, found in the Constitution. So, the very anonymity of this sign operates as  a signal that its supporters are doing something privately that perhaps they know that they can't do publicly.


If you can’t publicly own your convictions, then your advocacy to convince others is meaningless. Thus, the sign, to me, has the opposite effect of what was likely intended...because in fact I don't know for certain who owns it.


I would rather pray in private and keep all my stuff between God and myself.


Is the sign constitutional? I don’t know, though until recently I could have easily said, “Of course it isn’t”. (Isn't it a different take on prayer on the 50 yard line, like in Kennedy v. Bremerton, given the elementary playground is right there. The playground IS the 50 yard line.) This is a fascinating time for all of us to consider it.  The State of Louisiana is teeing up for a US Supreme Court review of  its recent law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all public school classrooms. That law will go into effect on January 1.  And, it appears from press reports that I read that  the Texas Legislature, meeting again in January, is going to pass the same bill. I would expect Governor Abbott to sign emergency legislation to that effect in early 2025, if anything, to try to get the challenge to the US Supreme Court before Louisiana does.  This is because each state’s elected leadership will want to get to the Supreme Court first to take advantage of its conservative majority, who will likely approve it.


I don’t profess to be  a scholar on the separation of church and state in public school.  I like to cover the issue, however, because with age I am more comfortable with letting people believe what they want to believe, while at the same time speaking my peace with local government. When I attended IC ISD the Supreme Court case of Engel v. Vitale  was new and precedent setting, and it had a tremendous effect on my views.  I was thus absolutely unprepared in my undergraduate philosophy studies when it came to studying the existence of God. Such study was something I chose on my own, however, not something the State forced upon me to study. I consider that a good thing, while I know others will disagree.


 You can read more of my posts about religion in public school by clicking my tag below called “God and School Law”. I don't intend to miss this opportunity to continue covering the issue given the makeup of our Supreme Court and the apparent local interest in pushing the issue. This is a changing area of the law.

 

Copyright 2024 G Noelke

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