rtalaber

and you can sell these "perfectly good" buildings for a heft profit and re-invest it into the entire district.

The perfectly good buildings are not being abandoned in the current proposal, they are being torn down and rebuilt. Everyone seems to think that Klein High School was built in the 60's. The majority of the school was not built in the 60's. In fact, the current proposal is to tear down the high rise which was built in 1979 as well as buildings from the 80's and one from 1992.

If all they were proposing was to rebuild the old building, it could be done in place. This would be the same as adding a wing to Klein Oak or Klein Collins. Those wings have capacity of 500 to 700 students. That is about the same size as a project to rebuild the main building from the 60's. If it is OK to have Klein Oak and Klein Collins' kids go to school in a construction zone, it should be OK for KHS also. However, now that the project has grown from the inital couple of buildings that was originally proposed to 8 buildings, of course you cant rebuild this entire thing with kids on campus.

I have promised KHS parents that I would post their concerns on the www.kleinforall.com website. I will also be sending them to Dr. Cain for comment. Some of the concerns include:

Rat infestation

Mold

Buildings have to be kept at 50 degrees in order to keep mold from growing

Students have to wade to class, knee deep in water

Walls are falling down

Ceilings have fallen down

The school is on a busy intersection

The school needs to be under one roof for security concerns

It is Old

There are too many doors that students and uninvited guests can enter

The administration claims that the buildings are safe and up to code. This statement was made by Dr. Cain at one of the Steering Committee meetings and can be viewed at www.kleinisd.net in the minutes. When asked why the rebuild, Dr. Cain's reply was "we got together and talked about it and just felt the time was right." He also mentioned that he thought too much money being poured into the existing buildings. From a percentage of replacement cost perspective, we pour more money into other buildings than we do Klein High. In fact, the amount of money we are proposing to spend on rennovation has gone from $22M in the 2004 Bond to over $98M in the 2008 Bond. Should we be rebuiling other schools first, where we clearly are investing a higher percentage of the rebuild cost?

There is no engineering report indicating a rebuild is required. This is what everyone seems to forget. If there is no financial or scientific justification to rebuilding, it is clearly a want and not a need. That being said, again, many of the Klein For All members have toured Klein High and agree that something needs to be done. The time is not right to rebuild and place additional burden on over crowding. If we must rebuild in place, it should wait a few years. If we can rebuild some place else, fine...lets do it. The bigger question is why hasn't the building been repaired? why are ceilings falling down? there is $40M left to fund from the 2004 Bond Proposal. Yes, it is earmarked to buy a laptop for every high school student, but is that more important than fixing Klein High School? Apparently it is. The Administration could have diverted that money to fix Klein High, but chose not to.

Dr. Cain mentioned that almost every school in the district has T buildings. I agree it is time to get rid of them in all of our schools. But, they dont go away even when there is enough capacity. They get used for someother purpose, like JROTC or some other special program.

That would be Chris Allen. I believe he lives in Gleannloch too....on the North Side.

You keep thinking this is just a gleannloch group and you are wrong. There are people from quite a few neighborhoods involved and we are recruiting more. So, you are ignorant and I dont mean that as an insult. You choose to be uninformed. Oh, you may be informed about one side of the coin, but not the other. That is the same as being uninformed my friend.

Sounds like you are a very jealous person. When the re-zoning thing took place a year or so ago, I attended the board meetings stood up and insisted that the Bluff not be separated, that MCE still go to hassler and the Hillcrest stay too. I argued that there was no need to remove that number of people that KISD was proposing. I said it in public at the town hall meetings and I said it on the online forums. Does that make me an elitist?

I dont care if we get the HS #5 or not. I and the rest of the members of Klein for all actually do care more about the entire district and the spending. We care that in 2004, we spent 22 Million on repairs and in 2008, after adding only 3 buildings to the district, we are proposing to spend 98 M. We care that there was $40 Million in bonds left from 2004 to sell that could have been used to fix KHS, but instead, the administration is saving it to buy laptop computers. We care that a wall fell down at Klein Oak, that mold was in a bunch of schools, that overcrowding exists everywhere. Again, you are not doing your research. You know where I live, you know my kids go to Hassler, you should know that Hassler is not overcrowded. That is not the fight we are fighting. I had a daughter graduate from KO. If my next child goes to KO, that is fine.

What is different about me from you and others like you is that I put my name behind my position. I dont hide behind a moniker and throw stones and name call or send chicken !#% anonymous letters to people's homes. Nothing worth having comes for free. If you feel so strongly and have such high opions about people you dont even know, put your name out there.

And thanks for all the facts and figures by the way (sarcasm). I knew you didnt have any. And you are the one who alluded to knowing all these great things that I could never understand. You put yourself on the pedestal. I certainly would not.

Be a man. Get to know me, I dare you. You will find that I worked extremely hard for every thing I have and I will bet you that my beginnings were much more humble than yours. I dare you.

They have revised the plan and it now includes 8 buildings. The High Rise, built in 1979 is now included as are some more of the surrounding buildings. One of the included buildings was built in 1992. There are only 4 buildings that will remain now; Choir, Music, Pavillion and Natatorium.

Really interesting how the "orginal plan" was to demolish and rebuild 3 of the buildings for $130M, but now they can to 8 buildings for the same price.

They just added it, 500 more seats for about $9M

LOL. I have not visited Klein Forest, but I am sure it is a fine school. I have already had one daughter go to Klein Oak and she did great. I was pleased with her education. I really dont care if my other kids go to HS5, the one on 2920, or Klein Oak. I just want them to have a quality education. A lot of what I am fighting for doesnt really affect my kids right now at all. Hassler is real close to capacity, that is better than the 40% over they were before Frank opened. Frank is at capacity as well. These are going to go over capacity next year, Frank more than Hassler. I dont have kids at Frank. Intermediate do affect my kids as those are very over crowded already and I have one that will be going to Krimmel next year.

I just dont like the way the committe meetings are run. I think people should disagree and the disagreements should be talked out. I dont think that the President should shut down any argument that is not aligned with his agenda. I don't think steering committees should be stacked with Administration or one particular area or one particular anything. I suggested to Dr. Cain that a true steering committe should be a majority of parents and that the parents should be distributed in a way that mirrors student enrollment through the district. The administrators are going to be there to present their views, as will the people who were hired to conduct population surveys, as will the folks who did facility assessements, etc. Do they think that parents are not qualifed? Too stupid?

I dont like the decision to ignore very quantitative analysis in favor of some things that have no justification. No scientific justification, no financial justification, no anything. As far a diversity, the steering committee was a sea of white.

It is no secret that on jan 15th, the "steering comittee" had an appropriate number of schools proposed to be built because they agreed with the PASA Most Likely Recommendation. It is also no secret that the total for all the things the steering committee wanted to do was over $830M. It is no secret that the survey results the board and steering committee received indicated that any proposal over $500M was going to be a tough sell. What is a secret is why the steering committee, when forced to make cuts in the bond proposal, chose to cut the building of schools on January 29th? What mystical event occurred between Jan 15th and Jan 29th, that made them now believe that the Most Likely Growth scenario would not happen? It is very convenient, to say the least, that this information...which has yet to be shared with anyone else...allowed them to adjust growth numbers down enough for them to leave the KHS rebuild in the bond proposal. Take a look at the conditions that PASA lists for a low growth scenario to occur. I dont recall any major terrorist attacks that occurred in the US between jan 15th and Jan 29th...do you?

The housing market tanked long before those two weeks and was already part of the PASA considerations. What needs to happen before people realize that rebuilding KHS on that spot is a pet project? I have spoken to many Klein High parents now and agree that the conditions there are bad. But, we have a choice to rebuild in place and never solve all the issues or rebuild somewhere else and solve every last one of them while not delaying relief of overcrowding. As I have said before, It will still not be under one roof, it will still have a major gas pipeline running underneath it and it will still be on a busy intersection. I have yet to hear a logical argument, which includes financial analysis , that justifies this. It is absolutely absurd. But, let me be clear again. I do think we need a new Klein High School. Putting it in that location is a painfully ignorant and arrogant mistake. I challenge anyone to show the thought process/analysis that went into making this decision. So far, the best I have heard at any board meeting was this from Dr. Cain. "We just talked about it and felt it was time." There has been no explaination for not rebuilding somewhere else. I need more than that, dont you?

Yes, you are correct. 5 years from now, there will be relief of overcrowding at the High School level only. The elementary Schools and intermediates will have the exact same conditions because we are not building enough schools. In fact, if the economy does not crash, as many predict it will not, the overcrowding will be much worse.

Yes, the are adding a wing in both Klein Oak and Klein Collings to relieve some of the overcrowding. This is very interesting because the Klein High folks did not want to rebuild in place because they did not want their kids to be in a construction zone. I guess it is OK for half of the district High School Students to be in one though.

Read my previous post about the steering committee. Very, very few of the members who attended the meetings were parent with kids in school. over 55% of the members on the committe work for Dr. Cain. That is not a steering committee. That merely enables the administration to claim that they incluced parents in the decision making process. had you attended any of the meetings, you would have seen many objections to the KHS rebuild from day one and you would have seen the rest of the room intimidate and shoot down the person raising the objection. The course was set on this one before a "steering committe" was ever formed. There was no steering to be done. So, no, I dont think it was stacked to the South. It was stacked to the administration. As far as invitations, it was stacked to Klein High. You can see the invitee list on the Klein ISD website. Klein High had 9 parents invited while Klein Oak had 3 and Klein Collins had the 2 or 3. Klein forest had 7 invited I think, you can check for yourself on that one. We have made both the invitee list and the actual attendance list available on our site. I know that ENGcons would rather leave his head in the sand, but perhaps you are open to learning the facts.

Our group is being listened to. The Klein Collins addition was added in response to not only our groups complaints, but complaints from folks in many communities. At the last board meeting Dr. Cain listed building Klein High on a new location as a suggested alternative. will he make that recommendation? Probably not, but like I said to ENGcons, you can sit back and watch life pass you by or you can stand up for something. You know what they say about arm chair quarterbacks...right?

Low voter turn out is a reality and that is one of the exchanges I had with Dr. Cain. I told him that the bond would most likely pass due to voter apathy. That does not mean that this is the right proposal, however. And you can defeat this Bond, just like Spring did. it does not take much voter turn out to defeat a bond like this either. We can force them to go back to the drawing board. we are already in overcrowded conditions and they are only planning on opening one elementary school in 2009 anyway, so we have time. Lets see who uses "scare" tactics now and says that voting down the bond puts our children at risk. It would delay the bond by about 6 months and have very little impact. this is a debt services bond issue, not management and operations.

You seem to have "knowledge" of some things that I don't. I have no knowledge of any member of this group threatening anyone. I personally sent Dr. Cain and the entire board a copy of the ad to get their feedback prior to it being published. I wanted to ensure that they had no issues with any of the facts stated. I gave them over a weeks notice and there was no feedback. It was a courtesy and fair play, there was no threat anywhere. How is one group of people going to threaten the school board. I made it a point to talk to Judy Rimato at the last board meeting to make sure that she and the administration knew that although we disagreed with them, we would not pursue any legal action like Waller and Houston ISD. Again, I would call that fair play.

I have no idea what you are embarassed about. We have raised nothing but factual issues. We did not wait until the train left the station, as one poster put it. We have been raising this issue for some time. Unfortunately, you and the other poster keep focusing on the high school as being the primary issue. The issue is over crowding. There is much more overcrowding in the elementary and intermediates than in the High Schools. This project diverts funds from building the schools we need in the high growth areas of the district. Additionally, it delays the relief of overcrowding in other high schools.

You say that the district will not abandon that property. Again, you seem to be very close to the board, and perhaps that is why you are so defensive of them. Why wont they abandon it? If it makes monetary sense and is the only logical option....why not? What is the reason. Show me the dollars and sense behind the reason. I have given you a ton of facts, you give me speculation. Put up or shut up. Explain why it is in the best interest of all of Klein to be tied to that property. Bring with you facts and figures please. I have been conversing with parents of Klein High Students and they are OK with going to a new location. I am sure that many would not be Ok with it, but you never know until you ask. And then, it is just their opinion and not necessarily what is in the best interest of the district...is it?

Steering Committee? You and Forest need to do some research. The Steering Committee was made up of almost 60% School Adminstration. Pretty easy to get your way, when you stack the deck. If you intend on arguing that one, you better have a list of names and addresses to back it up. I have one and it is simple math sir.

You can go on living in your dream world. Just sit there quietly and let the world pass you by. Dont speak up , dont stand for anything, just visit a little blog and spew some garbage about a group of people who are trying to make a difference. Right, we are petty? At least we are making an effort sir. Go ahead and change your vote because you disagree with our approach....that too would be brilliant.

some more corrections. The $38M in technology only includes around $7M for the laptops. The rest is other technology across the district.

There are two sides to the school budget; Management & Operations and Debt Services. M&O is currently $1.04 per $100 in home value and is what is used to pay salaries, perform routine maintenance, supplies, etc. M&O taxes are limited by the state to $1.04, it was much higher prior to the state imposed limit. That is why our taxes are lower now. Not because of good stewardship. The debt services side is what the current Bond Proposal addresses and is for building new schools, major repairs and renovations, technology, district wide projects, etc. You know, the big ticket items. The state limits this to 50 cents. The current proposal puts us at 42 cents by 2012 and keeps us there until 2015. In 2012, we will need to have another Bond Election. We will only have 8 cents to work with for the first three years, money is going to be tight.

You can see all of this stuff on www.kleinforall.com.

HISD has negative growth in student population, we have been growing over 5% year over year. That is a big difference. Growth is the biggest issue, when it comes to debt services, in a fast growth community.

My name is Rich Talaber and I am a member of Klein for All. I would like to apologize for the message coming across as you have indicated. Read my other entry and you will see that we have thoroughly researched the entire district. We only used the North side because Spring Cypress Rd (not 1960) is a known zoning boundary. What we have encouraged the district to do is to consider high growth areas differently from underutilized ones. That would include your area. Your schools are represented on our website and your over crowding is taken into consideration in all calculations. That is different from KISD who just looks at the district as one number and feels confident that they have the right capacity.

Please visit www.kleinforall.com and look at the data. Your schools are in there and we are fighting to get more capacity for you as well. The question of Klein High is a major issue simply because it takes money away from solving capacity issues and actually delays the release of needed capacity by two years. We believe that something needs to be done about Klein High, we are questioning the timing and the plan. Our recommendations are to either fix it and wait a few years until we have caught up with capacity or build 2 high schools at the same time, releasing new capacity in 2011, close down the current Klein High and move that student body and zone to that new building. Either option would be better for the district as a whole than the current plan. I say district as a whole because there are between 15,000 and 20,000 kids in over crowding conditions right now. If major portions of the bond allocation are directed to Klein High rebuild and Klein Annex rebuild in the early years, that leaves little money to build out new elementary and intermediate schools anywhere in the district. This big ticket item is why the building of elementary schools and intermediates was pushed back a year or more in the bond proposal.

Hello,

My name is Rich Talaber and I am one of the self appointed petty people who started Klein For All. We started this organization after attending the steering committee meetings, board meetings, walking through Klein High School, and reading every single report that is out there. Let me tell you sir, it is not a pretty picture. All of the data that I just mentioned, the capacity information and enrollment projections from Population & Survey Analysts was placed into our database. All the numbers we report are not our opinion, but rather, the opinion of a company that has been in business for over 23 years doing this kind of research for our district and many others. I encourage you to visit www.pasademographics.com. You will find links to all of their research on www.kleinforall.com under the documents link.

We also researched the tax rates, tax base, growth rates, and other information at the Texas Education Agency Website and simply put their data up into a spreadsheet that compares our district's growth and spending with other districts that are nearby and have very similar, or much greater, growth. The links to this data is also provided on the website.

We not only reviewed the Bond Proposal, but every Facility Assessment conducted and made that data available on the website as well. This information was not generally available and can only be obtained in one of two ways. Go to www.kleinforall.com and click on the documents link and you will find them there or you can drive to 7200 Spring Cypress Road, ask for Judy Rimato and tell her you want a copy. Every single Facility Assessment was reviewed by our group and put into a database. All of this data is available through our website as well.

Everything on that web site is driven by the facts and information collected from these sources. If you take the time to research it yourself, you will find it to be entirely accurate and the only place where you can get all this data easily.

What have we done different? Our contention, based upon the facts, is that some areas of KISD are high growth and others are not. This is proven in a study by PASA where they compare Kindergarten enrollment to High School Enrollment. Areas in and around Klein High are deemed to be built out due to fact that there are less Kindergarten students than High Schoolers. Areas North of Spring Cypress and some areas to the south are still high growth areas and suffer from overcrowding conditions. We focused on the north side, not because that is where we live, but because Spring Cypress has been used by KISD as a zoning boundary for many years now. if you live on the North Side, you typically to to North schools and vice versa. yes, there are some exceptions.

On the North side of spring cypress, the vast majority of schools are overcrowded. South of Spring Cypress, the majority are underutilized. Re-zoning from North to South is something the district has never wanted to do, so the only way to solve the issue is to build schools.

If you look at the district numbers as a whole unit, it looks like there is no overcrowding. when you break it out by school, you see that 14 schools are well over capacity today. Most are in the north and some are in the south. So, is the district doing a good job? They have enough capacity and have had for years. You have to consider high growth vs no growth and when you do you will find than many more schools than are currently proposed, are actually needed. PASA recommended building 7 elementary schools on this bond election, 3 Intermediates and 2 high schools. KISD is recommending 3 elementary, 2 intermediate, and one high school. Why? The original bond proposal was well over $800M, that is why.

So what is the right thing to do? If we compromise and build 5 elementary, 2 intermediate and 2 high schools (one that Klein High can take over as their own), we need to spend $450M to do that. On top of that we have other things to pay for, like repairs, buses, and such that add up to another $125 M or so. But wait, we are not done yet. You have to add in the technology cost of $38M, rebuild of Klein Annex, a new multi purpose building, and so on.

The most money we could as for is around $850M by state law. The debt services portion of you tax bill is not allowed to exceed 50 cents. today it is 22 cents and it is projected to go up to 42 cents under the current proposal. If we rebuild Klein High where it sits today, it delays building schools because you dont sell all the bonds on day one. You sell 25% or so each year. You don't automatically have money to spend on everything right wasy. Additionally, the proposal to use the new high school as a layover spot delays the release of needed capacity to the district by another 2 years.

Sir, we have our fact straight. I encourage you to visit www.kleinforall.com and do the research that we have. We have made it easy for you. I also encourage you to execute the Build My Bond feature. You can select what you think the growth scenario will be, what acceptable overcrowding is, whether or not to rebuild buildings, etc. Push the button and it will estimate what the bond proposal will be in your opinion, not mine or any one else at KleinForAll. Please do this and send it to Dr. Cain. Many other people have done so already.

We recognize that our message has come across a little as us versus them and it was in response to the makeup of the steering committe. For each parent from the North Side, there were 5 or more from Klein High. That does not make it right and we are taking action to reach out to the Klein High folks. They have been neglected, their school is in disrepair and something needs to be done. Rebuilding on that location does not solve their problems though as a major gas pipeline running directly under the property prevents them from putting all the students under one roof and the busy intersection causes security and safety concerns. What is best for All of Klein is to give them a new school, somewhere else and build another high school at the same time. By 2011, we will have new capacity and KHS will have all their concerns alleviated. Everyone wins.