crone

Is Krystal like White Castle or Steak and Shake? Tell us about Krystals. Are you going to Fargo to the Latin convention next week?

I understand the topic is renaming 1960. A frivolous endeavor. And, you guys were having fun making fun.

I only speak from my own experience, after many conversations with friends, neighbors and strangers in the grocery store. Nobody I know objects to low income housing in the school attendance zone. The last low income housing proposal close to us , the land was owned by a guy in Huntwick and the apartments would have been his immediate neighbor. It was withdrawn, not rejected. Our problem comes with the schools.

How many low income students can reasonably be absorbed by a school at a time? How many are too many? Forest went from 10% to 60% in less than 10 years. How does that affect curriculum? Teachers? Band? Low income does not equal dumb. Low income does make things different for teachers. Having to raise every cent of money to take the 1 act to regions is going to limit what a teacher can do. What if they win and go to state? Many of these kids are working to help the family. They cannot afford the extra $500.00 a year for band trips. So much for band. Forget about parent groups raising money. The parents are at work. How much is too much?

Yes, this current dust up is about renaming 1960. We are having this discussion because the people who are against the taxing authority started a pissing match so you guys could all join in and they could go to Ms. Riddle with further proof that nobody supports anything.

The 16 signers of the objectionable letter were folks who have spent a lifetime in this community helping to make it better for everybody.

The Woodlands and Kingwood are MPC. Conroe has zoning. Spring is a disenfranchised no mans land just like the rest of us. One of the reasons we moved here was the trees. If I wanted to live in a rice field I'd move to Katy.

Niche and all y'all slamming the 1960 burbs. I have respected your comments on HAIF for years. Your comments are usually reasoned and well thought out. The 1960 area is no longer a 60's white flight suburb of Houston. In the 1st. place, had all of us decided to go ITL, where would you put us? We are here for as many reason as there are people. We are all colors, all religions, all incomes, gay, lesbian and straight. We have oil company executive living 2 doors down from mail carriers. That is just my tiny little subdivision. Those rich racists must have all moved north years ago. From Cypress Creek southward we are as varied as the COH. It was easy to put folks in a box back in the 70's. It is not anymore. Nobody cares about who anyone is as long as they are not hurting anybody. All we want is for absentee landlords to stop trashing the place. We have tried for years to get a state designation for a commercial tax to clean the mess up, but Debbie Riddle says there is not enough community support. It has been a long struggle. The determination exhibited by the Green Medians group raising nearly $500000 in a few months demonstrates the care some of us have for our community. Years ago, the Galleria merchants created a taxing authority to keep their area looking good. That has been replicated all over the state. That is what this dust up is about. The same people who lobby Debbie Riddle are now trying to get support for their side. We will never be the Village or River Oaks, and are not seeking that. We have no objection to a reasonable amount of low income housing. We have no objection to strip shopping centers. We do object to greedy apartment owners who rent to criminals. We do object to absentee landlords renting to spa whore houses. We have no zoning. We have no help from the COH even though they have annexed all of the commercial area from here to Dallas. We just want a semi peaceful place to live and let live.

That is all it ever was. Nobody needs to print new stationary. I'll bet the rent money that the sign changes were also timed to necessity. They are now putting block numbers on street signs. This is much ado about nothing. We are like every body else. 1/3 one way, 1/3 opposite, 1/3 don't give a damn. Neither the commissioner nor the Chamber called the TV. Some people just like to bi--- and blame. I can relate to that. It is my hobby. Check out what Renaissance 1960 is up to. Add in Green Medians and other stuff. This is not Times Square or New Coke rebranding. This is some fed up folks who care about their neighborhood and want to stop the not so gentile decline. Howard Beale is alive and well. I, too was kidding about WalMart.

I'm within a 5 minutes to 2 Wal Marts. Rev. Billy says we should just stop shopping. That what I'm doing. Trashy shopping centers will not get any of my money. Something else is in play here. Many of those places have been here since Nixon resigned. Empty and trashy looking. Their owners are in another country. The folks who want 1960 renamed are trying to create some kind of community, and I say God Bless Them. Ask anybody you meet out here if they intend to stay here and the reply is no. They are here to work and when they retire, they will go elsewhere. The turnover in subdivisions used to be between 5 and 10% a year. Now with everyone cutting back, not so much. It is hard to have community and stability when everyone is gonna be gone in a few years. There is no sense of ownership. We all want stable, crime free places to lived, but not badly enough to make that happen. The 16 community leaders who signed the letter get it. Some of the people interviewed on TV don't, and, they work in ugly strip shopping centers.

There was plenty of information concerning the proposed name change. I saw the articles in the local paper months ago.

Now if they can get rid of all the garish signs and gaudy shopping centers the road might be a more pleasant drive. The landscaped medians will help divert one's eye from the trashy signs.

The one nice spot on 1960 is at the entrance to Northgate. The developer left his land abutting 1960 almost natural. Thank goodness for him.

Boycott any business that has tacky signs or paint.

The new median configuration has improved traffic flow.

So does anyone know how much money was actually raised to make the medians green? Last I heard it was somewhere in the mid 400s ($400,000). Not quite enough, but enough to make some parts nice i hope.

They raised $460000. The money will be turned over to TxDot who will start the work in January. The Chamber will still accept donations. The money collected will be used to hire a state approved landscaper to enhance the medians. Some very nice person did a matching $2 for every $1 collected up to $50000 fund the last couple of weeks. Bless them. It is not too late to send money for Green Medians to the Chamber. If you think 1960 is ugly, send money. Please.

Todays Chronicle has the testing information you need. The TEA or HAR sites will have the demographic information necessary to make an informed choice. My neighborhood goes to Mittlestadt, Wunderlich, and Forest. Some of the kids go to Kleb with their mothers, who work for KISD. My now grown son attended 4 high schools in 4 towns. The day he was to start Webster Groves High School as a senior the morning question was, the minute they discover I am new, and went to other schools, they are going to ask me if theirs is the best. Their school is just like all of the others. To save trouble I'll just tell them ,yes yours is the best.

Kids get out what they put in. The people I talk to daily love their schools. My neighbors are very involved. Wunderlich and Forest have the same generic Texas public school programs as everybody else. Forest kids get into Lone Star college, A&M, THE University, Princeton, Cornell and most any school they want. The amount of helicopter parenting at Klein HS should put all of those kids at Harvard with perfect SAT's.

After years of watching parents and kids, and paying for several Masters degrees and participating in the acquisition on 1 PhD and one on the way, I say find a house you love. Your kids will be fine anywhere you are fine. If you are not O.K. neither are the kids.

BTW, check MLN36092543 on HAR. We can make a deal.

The drop dead date is in April. They already have about $150000. If that's it, we will have grass. The more money raised, the more complete the job. It will take about $600000 for nice size trees and seasonal bedding plants from I45 to 249. Just the thought of nice landscaping to take one's focus from ugly red and yellow signs and strip shopping centers is enough to get my attention. In the 80's we moved from Ponderosa to Maplewood. It was almost a joy to travel 610 through Bellaire after all of those billboards on I45. I hope to live long enough to see trees instead of signs on 1960. Please forgive my soliciting. My bleeding heart overtook my brain.

Will everybody who thinks 1960 is one of the ugliest roads in Texas please send a donation to Green Medians so that we can have landscaping? Barbara Schlattman and the Green Medians committee have worked long and hard to make this a reality for all of us. Money is needed to buy grass and plants. The time is now. Green Medians , Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce, 14511 Falling Creek, Houston 77068. The State of Texas will only put in concrete. If we want vegetation, the community needs to put it in. The MUD's along 1960 will care for the Green Medians.

I see that the one Klein Intermediate school that some folks love to denigrate is on there, too. Way to go, Wunderlich.

Did anyone attend last night? What happened?

There was a guy who kept pointing out that PASA was wrong, wrong, wrong on the data for the 2004 Bond. The people in the Central office and most of the Board treated him like a child molester. Why didn't they hire those guys at Rice. Is anybody at PASA a demographer? DH was a soothsayer for a Fortune 100 co. before he retired. Many things can be determined 20 years out. Some can not. His work group would never go out more than 5 years on any demographic data. That is why I never trusted the PASA numbers. Couple that with trying to determine population growth in an area where, until recently, any fool with funding could stick a pipe in the ground for water and build a subdivision. Kinda hard to prognosticate growth. The 2nd. time Forest missed their AYP I asked Dr. Cain and the Board how it helped Forest to not be a Title 1 school? He said the district would rather handle the needs of Forest. That said to me, that if Forest missed AYP, Dr. Cain did not have to let Forest students into the other 3 high schools. They could apply for Title 1 funding. They do not want to. Hope I saved his letter. You should have been in the Board room the night all those parents showed up to plead with the Board not to put all of those kids from Klein Intermediate into their school. "Please split them up" was the cry. As far as the reduced and free lunch goes. I'm not sure we have that much more needy population as much as people who now know how to work the system.

Hell will freeze over before the area south of the creek of Cypress Creek and north of 1960 get rezoned. The people I know who attend Wunderlich and Forest love their schools. The problem is the perception that they are in some way inferior. That myth is circulated by people who are employed by the District. Several are my neighbors work at Mittlestadt in order to get their kids into Kleb. One even sells herself out as a childcare provider to get her friends kids into Kleb. Some of these people go so far as to think that any parent who allows their kid to go to Wunderlich is a bad parent. So much for ignorance and bigotry. Not much can be done on that issue. My problem is real estate values. We recently had a sale in Woods 2. The appraiser for the loan valued the house at 500K. They sold for 400K just to move. Most of us intend to leave here in a hearse, so value does not matter. Those of us who are transferred have a small problem, but most of the time, the company will come to the party. Those of us who are retired and have to move for family reasons are getting hosed. One of the question I have is when does the district close a school due to declining enrollment? Some of that PASA information had Kleb at 70% capacity. At 1 million a year to operate, when do they send those kids someplace and shut it down? We lived in Webster Groves, Mo. 10 years after the birth control pill came onto the market. They were selling elementary schools to be converted into condos.

The Board knows what Dr. Cain tells them. The Texas open meetings law is very specific about who they can and who they can't speak to, and when. There is little to no discussion at their meetings. In fact, the District wants all questions answered before the meeting. The Board is sent the agenda with all of the backup information. If they have questions they need to contact the person who placed the item on the agenda. There have been times when favored Board members have had their questions responded to and those who are out of favor are ignored. Sometimes the questions are identical. A Board member can only speak to two other members regarding an issue, otherwise, it is a violation of the TOMA. The State wants public discussion, the Administration does not. TASB trains superintendents how to get around open meetings. These Zoning Committees and Bond Committees are a ruse. The district loads them up with sycophants and employees and a couple of people who have had some kind of flap with the district. They are spoon fed what the district wants them to know.Then the district makes the announcement that consensus has been reached. The District just turned the Dec.10 Bond committee meeting that is open to the public into a Public meeting. There is a big difference. My question remains. If Forest can be effectively run at 4000 students, or more, why can't all Klein high schools be 4000? If Forest is good enough for some of us, it is good enough for all of us. I owe all students in the district good schools. I do not owe their parents school choice.

There was a Supreme Court ruling several years ago that pretty much let school district off the hook regarding integration. Dr. Cain stated at one of the recent bond meetings that they did not use socioeconomics as an indicator when deciding zones, only geography. A Harvard study several years ago found Klein to be one of the top 10 segregated districts in the nation. That was before the big changes at Forest. Wonder what they would find now? If geography was the only criteria, why are kids in my neighborhood bussed twice as far across one of the most dangerous highways in the state? We are 2 miles from Kleb and Klein and 4 miles from Forest and Wunderlich. The kids are split upon leaving Mittlestadt. There are 2 kids from here going to Wunderlich. Everybody they know and went to school with for 6 years goes to Kleb.

Check the KISD website. My neighbor informs me that a parent committee has been formed. They are to provide their wishes to the district. The results of these 2 meetings will go to the Board. A public meeting will be held on January 7. The board will vote on the attendance zones at their February meeting. The PASA 2008 Bond report provides new Intermediate zones. Here's hoping the district uses them.

All they do is say mom works. Then mom gets a babysitter who is employed by the district at Mittlestadt. Since the caregiver drives the kid to school ( ha ha) the kid goes to Kleb. If the district ever checked employment, then they just enroll at the community college, and then never go to class. It's hard work avoiding poor minorities. One lady moved herself and her kid to their lake house in Conroe. Guess they come home to dad and the dog on weekends. I'm thinking about moving up to the Klein attendance zone so that I can supplement my Social Security by saying I babysit 14 year old kids or just selling my address. Thank goodness there are just a few folks with that attitude.

Open enrollment was offered for a very brief time to equalize the population between Collins and Oak, who had too few students, and Forest, too many students. Forest kids could go to Collins or Oak. This was before the addition at Forest. There were no takers. Years ago, Woody Lyons offered a motion to allow open enrollment. If I remember correctly, the motion was seconded but no one voted for it. Klein ISD does not currently offer open enrollment. But, if you go to Mittlestadt and they like you and your grades, you can go to Kleb even though you are in the Wunderlich attendance zone.

Hwy. 6. Spring has several schools that were omitted from your spreadsheet. That might account for the improvement at Westfield. It is not my intention to diss any message or messenger. All anybody wants is factual information instead of urban rumor. Any teacher who sees unacceptable behavior at any school needs to deal with it or get another job. That attitude comes from my 2 daughters, 2 nieces, 1 nephew. 1 sister and 1 brother in law who currently teach. Forest has needed to absorb many changes in the last 10 years. They are doing a good job at it, now. What do we do with the kids who can't test well on state test. Starve them? Drown them? In your quest for an excellent school in a low crime area you might want to consider moving to another state. Texas does not have a really good record compared to most other states. BTW, when the district offered open enrollment at the high schools a few years ago in order to equalize student population, not one kid left Forest to go to Collins or Oak.

Sorry to have jumped to the wrong conclusion Hwy 6. I apologize. We may be on the same page. I have long had a problem with the way the district runs KF. Perhaps it is because they threatened to arrest me for holding a tiny little hand lettered vote no sign at their open house during the 2004 bond election.. At that time, a friend who lives in GF and volunteered at Forest said she counted almost 500 affidavits from students transferring to Forest from schools such as Eisenhower. At a board meeting. Dr. Cain said that KISD did not check to see if the kids really lived in the Forest zone. The next morning I called Cy Fair to inquire if they checked where the affidavit kids lived. The person giving me the tutorial said yes they did. If not, they would have a severe problem at Jersey Village. In 1966 I attended the Baptist church in Galveston. Somebody did a membership study for future planning purposes and discovered the impending demographic changes in Texas. The date certain for a minority majority was so far off I knew I would be an old woman. I think the date has arrived. The dilemma remains. Just because kids are poor does not mean they can't learn. The district just was not prepared for the urbanization of part of its territory. One of the principals they put at Forest was not equipped to help her teachers. Forest has had 4 principals in 9 years. That hasn't helped. My daughter taught at Jeff Davis for awhile. She had no problems because all of her students wanted to be at school to learn. The ones who did not, dropped out. KISD could just refuse all Federal aid. That is mostly free lunch funding and is about 10% of their budget. Anybody can save 10%. All the people who want reduced and free lunch would have to move or go back to HISD. I still believe that kids at Forest who want to learn, can. Competent faculty is there. Nobody I know is afraid for their kids safety. There is more to a good school than a state test. And, this is still a great neighborhood.

What do you mean? Liberal playbook? PR people that I am related to are apolitical. They tell me that many in that industry are also amoral. Is you comment designed to diminish me as a person, or to discount my opinion? I'm just defending my school and neighborhood from people who have no daily contact with either. It is a good place to live. Trying to use incendiary comments about total strangers is no way to gain insight into a situation.

Will everyone who comments on how bad this area is, please state how long you have lived here and where? My family moved back to Houston the 1st. time in 1974. We bought in Westador. I promise you that crime was much worse then. Every house in the neighborhood was robbed. When the construction stopped so did the break ins. Many people even thought our crime problem was the result of the competition between the sheriffs department and the constables office. Subdivisions were contracting for private security services. We moved to Ponderosa, back and forth to St. Louis and Dallas a couple of times, and now live in the Champions area in the Klein Forest attendance zone. To my knowledge, there has been one break in in Woods 2 in the last 10 years. The house was undergoing extensive renovation and the family was out of town. An upstairs window was left unlocked to enable the crooks to enter. A couple of years ago, some things were taken from unlocked cars, parked in driveways. There was a random car jacking at a drugstore and a woman was hurt. The home of an elderly woman was broken into in Huntwick about 6 months ago.

There is reason to think the crook had some kind of prior knowledge of the house. That's it, as far as I know. What are you guys fixated on? The sort of shoot em ups that happen any place where there are a lot of bars and trashy night life? There are millions of people in this area of the country. What do you expect? There was a time when massage parlors would set up shop on the 45 feeders. A man from the community would take pictures of the visitors coming and going and the put them up in the window at the grocery store. The trailers moved, and the County Commissioners named a park after James Driver. Any perceived decline is being bought to us by some PR outfit trying to sell new houses in Bridgelands and the Woodlands. They have even started in on Glennloch Farms. I think most of this trash talk about our area is being done by folks being paid to do it.

Bless you, Forest

I wonder where these folks get their information. The kid down the street from me is really liking Princeton. If Forest were so bad, how did she get there? Six of her classmates are also in Ivy League schools.

Kids within less than a block from me attend both Wunderlich and Kleb. From what the moms tell me, Wunderlich ,by far, is the better managed school.

My school teacher children tell me that many times when kids score O.K. on these State test it does not mean that they are bright, only that they can follow instructions. Doesn't mean that they can think.

Keep up the good work of advocating for Forest. When you consider that the student body there is over 52% low income, they are doing better than the comfortable kids to the north.

Sorry, Westguy 76. That year my vote went to Perot/Choate. We really liked Perot and my husband knew Pat Choate from his work. Most times I vote Libertarian.