Irion County at the surface is a desert borderland near the Chihuahuan Desert. But, its subsurface is on the eastern shelf of the Permian Basin, a massive oil reserve that is the funding source of roughly 75% of the $21+ million ICISD budget...and a funding source for a $15+ million contribution to poor school districts. One question posed by this site is whether ICISD is squandering that wealth while the State looks the other way. This photo is just west of Cowboy Hill.
Updates: This page was initially posted on September 19, 2023. It is being updated. The latest update, see number 4 "Budget Report", was around 6:00 am on September 21, 2023.
My comments for the September 18, 2023 ICISD regular board meeting are below:
Praise. This board deserves high praise for implementing at this meeting, yes, for the first time in years, a meeting opener that includes pledges of allegiance to the U.S. and Texas flags. I first protested the Board's failure to have this common open meeting practice during my open forum comments back in July 2020, and I was literally scoffed at by certain board members and Supt. DeSpain at the time. I have also criticized this failure on this website. I will be addressing the importance of the pledges in other posts down the road (affirmation of our flags is symbolic for affirming an education in civics and the rule of law), so watch for more on this issue. Now, to be perfectly clear, I have never protested this board's failure to have an opening prayer at their meetings. The Board's opening ceremonies also included an opening prayer for the first time. In a legal sense, it is extremely challenging to do an opening prayer properly under the Constitution, and I have always recommended against one. For more on this, refer to TASB's article, Prayer at School Board Meetings, on the TASB site. A prayer opens the District up for a legal challenge. My own interests, however, are more with the problems inherent with the new "In God We Trust" sign on City Gym than with the prayer. (Now that runoff from City Gym has flooded my property repeatedly during these September storms, I am more certain than ever that the school leaders who approved the sign were not genuine about their "trust". They knew I would be flooded - and that the school would be flooding itself - before construction even started on the gym. Where is God in all that?)
We consent not to discuss. On the heels of my post last month about the budget, the Board used its consent agenda tool at this meeting to approve the checks and monthly revenue to expenditure reports without a single comment or question. In the now 3 years that I have regularly attended their meetings, the Board has never dismissed this agenda item in this way. It was as if they were, in unison, really saying: We consent not to discuss how we spend taxpayer dollars. As I warned here, the "consent agenda" tool is both good and bad. It can move meetings along faster, but it can also be used as an "out" to avoid publicly discussing the elephant in the room. How and where this board is spending money is indeed the elephant in the room. The consent agenda is not a substitute for sunshine. Failing to discuss the checks and revenue/expenditure after the many failings have been publicly brought to light is no solution.
STAAR results. Perhaps not politic but certainly honest, Principal Parker said "Hopefully the Accountability will be washed for this year, but who knows, they are going to let us know in a few months" after disclosing her elementary campus TEA projected Accountability rating of B. TEA is under fire this year statewide for changing the rating system, and some districts are even suing the agency over the matter. (For background reading see this TEA release, this Texas Tribune article and this Education Week article.) Parker gets an "A" here for her straightforward honesty because no doubt the process of washing the results is underway at TEA. The "F" here goes to the Board for failing to even discuss this controversy after Parker's presentation. In fact, there were no questions for Parker after her presentation and no discussion of the ratings change. This board is ill equipped to demand academic excellence from its principals. Their total silence on Parker's performance amid the statewide uproar is deafening. Painfully deafening. I will be updating this portion of this page, to include the audio of Parker's presentation, in the near future. Coincidentally, Principal Chapman's Accountability score for the high school campus STAAR results is projected by her to be an "A". In her report, she went out of her way to point out the significant improvement from last year's performance in 8th grade social studies. Last year I publicly lambasted their failing performance on this portion of STAAR test because the class was taught by an absentee coach who took the basketball team to State. (Coaches, especially, must be held to the highest standards of academic excellence, otherwise their superior facilities look like a sham.) I will also be posting the audio of Principal Chapman's presentation in the near future.
Budget report. It can't get more scaled back than this. Helm's report was, "At the end of August, our total general fund revenue for 22-23 was $21,578,00. That's 97.9% of budgeted, and considering the issue with the 313 agreements that's still hanging in there pretty good. On the expenditure side for 22-23, for expenditures $21,885,000. That's 97.3% of budgeted, and so we really nailed the budget on the expenditure side. Kept it a little bit under what we projected." The Board's silence after Helms' report, like on the monthly checks in note 2 above, was unusual and has never happened before. They know, as I have reported here, that it was dumb luck that the high interest rates saved their bacon in 22-23, and even still teachers were effectively given a pay cut for 23-24. On the backside of the 2019 bond build out (that went over budget and was delayed), the Board certainly can't be proud of these figures. And, talk about washing, I am still getting washed down to Spring Creek, both as a taxpayer and a neighbor, with each of these September rains.
Even more. Pending.