The SAISD Board of Trustees did not do itself any favors by approving use of the Bluebonnet Learning Curriculum for K-5 at its meeting on March 10. Despite little apparent enthusiasm for the curriculum from administration, and much opposition from the public, the Board approved it by a vote of 4-3.
That vote alienated some of the biggest supporters of our public schools. It is entirely possible that vote could send the Bond election down to defeat.
In recent history, the margin between victory and defeat in school bond elections has been razor thin. Some elections have been decided by fewer voters than you have fingers on your hand.
SAISD needs every vote they can get to pass the largest bond measure in San Angelo history. They can ill afford to lose some of public education’s strongest supporters.
Regardless of the legitimate and rational reasons that existed to approve the curriculum, people do not vote based on reason. They vote on emotion and feeling.
Democracy and The Stockholm Syndrome
Right after the vote took place Trustee Gerard Gallegos, who voted against the curriculum, said this was democracy.
Only if democracy has a gun held to her head.
Democracy requires a real choice.
The true blame for adoption of the curriculum, and the current state of our public schools, is not the school board, or the administration. It is the government in Austin that is holding a metaphorical gun to our head.
What school district wants to be the next Houston ISD?
The SAISD Trustees are our friends and neighbors, and a couple of our doctors. They are doing their best in a very trying and constantly changing educational environment. It is like trying to build a house on shifting sand.
The blame lies with the Governor, Lt. Governor, the state legislature and the grasping tentacles of an ever expanding educational bureaucracy in Austin. Local control is dead. This Central Authority has taken all the power away and given school boards a Hobson’s choice. It is the pretense of a choice that in reality is no choice at all. This is especially true for poorer school districts like San Angelo’s.
The Opera Ain’t Over
The citizens who opposed the curriculum were undoubtedly disheartened. Shortly after the vote took place Trustee Dr. Kyle Mills was overhead saying, “I am glad that is over.”
I understand the sentiment. But I am here to tell you it is not over. Not by a long shot.
Some comfort can be taken in the fact that there are good, professional, well-educated teachers who will be the ones using the curriculum. These too are our friends and neighbors.
But the District still has to certify the decision, approve a transition plan, order, print materials and get them to the teachers.
There is waiting to see what the “parent portal” looks like, if it works, and how it works. They are still changing and revising the curriculum. We do not know what it will actually look like in its final form. In fact, the state’s whole intent with the state owned curriculum is that it will be constantly updated and changed. None of this is set in stone. There is a lot that we don’t know, and won’t for quite some time.
The point is that if you oppose the curriculum, do not be disheartened. There is a lot of road left to travel, more battles to be fought, and a lot more chances to make your voices heard.
A curriculum is nothing more than a road map, a guide on how to get to the destination. But it is the driver who determines the best route to get there, and where to stop along the way. A curriculum is just words on paper. Without teachers it is nothing.
Curriculum Choice Is Temporary
It would be a mistake to use this curriculum decision as a reason to oppose the school bond, and vote against it.
A school curriculum is a temporary choice. It may have its faults, but it is not forever. Curriculums come and go. I am reminded of this by the set of McGuffey’s Readers sitting on my bookshelf.
What curriculum schools teach changes all the time. SAISD has changed curriculum several times over the last several years.
It is also worth reminding ourselves that the current people in charge of state government who are bent on destroying public schools, and privatizing education, will not be there forever. Their time will end, maybe sooner than even they realize, and the curriculum will change again.
Buildings Are Permanent
School buildings on the other hand are permanent. They belong to us, the voters. They are a capital investment in our community, in our children and in our future. We don’t change buildings like we change underwear, or curriculum. At least not in San Angelo.
San Angelo Independent School District has a great track record of maintaining its facilities and getting more miles out of them than any other comparable District. We are only now retiring some school buildings that have been in service for over 118 years. SAISD has used and overused our buildings for 60, 70, 80 years or more. They have certainly maintained them well and gotten way more than our money’s worth out of them.
We live off the sacrifices made by generations of San Angeloans who believed in the future enough to build schools. Those schools were not just for their own children. They have been used and loved by their grandchildren. great grandchildren, and even their great-great grandchildren.
It is time this generation does the same. We have put this off long enough.
The Cost of Delay
Today we can’t afford to build a new high school, even if we wanted to, because of our poor choices in the past. In 2008 we could have built a new one for $150 million. We would have almost paid off that school by now. WE voted it down. Today that same school would cost over $400 million, more than the total cost of this proposed bond which will impact almost every school in the District.
If we kick the problem even further down the road, what will be the cost in another ten or twenty years?
Do not believe the lie that voting down the Bond will save us money. Projections are that it will cost the District more to continue to cannibalize existing facilities to keep them in operation far beyond their useful life.
Putting off what needs to be done again will be expensive, both now and later. We would be cutting of our nose to spite our face.
Our Votes Tell Us Who We Are
School buildings are a testament to what a community thinks of itself. They bear witness to what it expects from its future.
In West Texas, we all enjoy the shade of trees we did not plant.
Voting down bond after bond, as San Angelo has done for thirty years, says more about us, and how pessimistic we have become as a city, than it does about the current school board or its policy decisions.
To defeat this bond over a curriculum vote would be one of the most foolish things this community could do.
It sends a message to the world that we think so little of San Angelo that we are not willing to invest a dime of our own money in its future. If we aren’t willing to invest in our own community, why should we expect anyone else to?
If We Build It They Will Come
According to reliable sources in the business and economic development community, right now there are businesses considering locating in San Angelo that would change the face of San Angelo far into the future. They are waiting to see what happens with this bond election to decide if they will.
What company wants to invest and believe in a community that won’t invest and believe in itself?
TXDOT will build two interstate highways through San Angelo in the next 10-15 fifteen years. That too will transform San Angelo.
Growing our economy and tax base is the quickest way to ease the property tax burden on all of us. Good schools suitable for the 21st century are essential to that growth.
Fresh blood, and fresh ideas will remake this town.
The vote in May is not just about new school buildings and property taxes. It a vote to determine our fate as a city. Will San Angelo grow as a vibrant community or will we let it deteriorate, wither, and die?
San Angelo has a great future. But we must make that future happen. We will not do that by voting down the eighth of the last nine school bonds proposed. A bond to fund much needed and long overdue improvements.
If you do not like the people on the School Board, or the way they vote on curriculum, lobby them, or run against them. Do not use that as a selfish justification to hurt future generations of San Angelo kids who have not even been born.
Democracy means that we are responsible for making our schools what we want them to be. That takes constant diligence and hard work. In a democracy you don’t get to pick up your ball and go home. You have to keep playing. Invest in the future of San Angelo. It is what we make of it.
4 Comments
At the end of the day, the school district, city, county and state have made living in San Angelo too expensive, and the school district wants to add to that, with a vision that many do not support. The school board has shown to not be good stewards of tax payer money (copper roofs), not be forward thinking (adding additions to Glenn, but not ones that are useful long term), and placing more value in athletic facilities than education. Looking at the current bond proposal shows lots of upgrades to athletic facilities and very few to academic development.
We will be voting for the school bond. Glen Jr. High is definitely in horrible shape.
So it’s the buildings hurting San Angelo students, and not their illiteracy or inability to do math?
You’ve seen the poor District TAPR (STAAR) scores. Kids aren’t “catching up” to literacy from year to year. Kids can’t afford to lose those foundational years while Bluebonnet works itself out. There is no place in that curriculum for remediation, though the District will have to create some sort of STAAR band-aid.
SAISD’s academic statistics are staggering.
Out of roughly 1000 SAISD students taking the Spring 2024 STAAR exam (I am rounding here):
Reading (5th Grade) — only 400 at grade level.
Math (5th Grade) — only 400 at grade level.
Science (5th Grade) — only 200 at grade level.
Science (8th Grade) — only 300 at grade level.
Social Studies (8th Grade) — only 200 at grade level.
I had to look these scores up. Dr. Gomez conveniently skipped over these 40 pages in her presentation of TAPR to the Board in January. The omitted data between the first and last pages is what brought TEA down upon SAISD’s heads. And it wasn’t even discussed.
Lack of transparency from Admin is a real problem. They keep crippling trust and I watched parents address that issue from the podium.
Bluebonnet came onto the Board agenda as a whisper in January tucked in as a reference to the remediation plan with TEA. Even as late as the last regular Board meeting in February where Bluebonnet was on the agenda, three of the six board members present had not bothered to read it. I can promise you that even fewer ever read the alternative curriculum offered by SAVVAS. Bluebonnet was approved at a pre-agenda meeting. That’s not supposed to happen, but they couldn’t miss a training window for the new curriculum if they put it off until the regular meeting. Nobody expected Bluebonnet to be plucked from the obscurity it was parked under on the agenda in January as “High Quality Instructional Materials.” It didn’t exactly announce itself.
SAISD could be a West Texas academic powerhouse. Instead, it deflects its responsibility for realizing that vision, and now we are at TEA’s mercy. But can we ever say that out loud and address it? No. At Tuesday night’s Tea Party meeting to sell the bond, Board Member Bill Dendle blamed COVID and added, “We have a parent problem.”
If only 200 Eighth Graders can pass Social Studies, and only 300 Science, we have a literacy problem, and test scores indicate it begins at the earliest grades. Bluebonnet readers released to date for those early grades are a mess. Even you wrote regarding same. This chronic illiteracy underscores the focus on creating more CTE spaces for hairstylists, food preparation certifications, welders, and nurses’ aides. Nothing wrong with the trades, but the District’s vision for San Angelo’s kids is written all over Phase I of this bond.
People may be butt-hurt about Bluebonnet, but most I spoke with were willing to vote for a bond that they didn’t particularly like in exchange for an academic vision and backbone from the Board designed to improve educational outcomes. Few Board members addressed the multiple elephants Bluebonnet brought into the room, and several Board members were just plain wrong about the curriculum, but those who were fell in line with those who had not read it, either. Parents who had spent nights and weekends performing the due diligence their school representatives and administrators should have contributed observed the proverbial emperor to have no clothes. There is no such vision… or backbone… supporting or respecting teachers, parents, student, or their efforts.
Whether people vote for or against the bond, they have their reasons. Just as the Board will say it had its reasons for passing Bluebonnet. And to its credit, they did have ‘$60 per enrolled student’ reasons to pass it. But please don’t condescend to accuse parents who educated themselves and others beyond what the District would discuss with transparency as being responsible for hurting kids. That sort of “us v. them” logical fallacy is over-used on both sides and has played a serious roll in bringing us to this crossroads in the first place. One need only look at the Juvenile Detention numbers correlated to illiteracy, or the felony jail stats on same, to see where real damage occurs.
San Angelo kids deserve better than a school to prison pipeline. You are right. I believe “we must make THAT future happen,” (my emphasis). It won’t happen without prioritizing education first. This bond fails to center itself in changing the paradigm for too many kids who are not offered life choices made possible by the ability to read.
This entire conversation about the affordability of paying for this bond needs to come out of the ethereal discussion points of attorneys, physicians, business owners, and six-figured administrators whose own children will not feel the complete brunt of Bluebonnet. The children of this particular cohort will reap the benefits of private tutors and educational opportunities placing them at the head of the pack.
This curriculum, and this bond, are going to be paid for by people who cannot afford to supplement their kids past the District’s apathy. These parents (the ‘old blood?’) know the price of eggs, the high cost of maintaining insurance on their homes, the outrageous monthly cost of healthcare, childcare, eldercare, and rising property taxes. They have a voice that needs to be heard on whether they want to pay for improvements that entertain, or instead offered a bond promising a solid educational foundation enabling future generations of ALL San Angelo kids to go on to truly great things. They should be empowered to choose their futures.
Perhaps they are not the “new blood” you are wishing for, but they are the ones who have put their life’s blood, sweat, and tears into trying to make this City the place both of us choose to raise our families. San Angeloans will vote for a bond when they see one based in educational realities for their kids’ futures. Perhaps enough people see such a thing in this particular bond. If they do, they will vote for it. Or perhaps they’ll vote for it in spite of its lack of vision. I, myself, remain undecided.
Our votes DO tell us who we are. They reflect our values. Monday night’s Board vote was a referendum on SAISD’s vision of the future of education in San Angelo. Now voters get to place their hard-earned money wherever they wish.
But you may want to share your McGuffey’s Reader. We’re all going to need it.
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