PART 1 Awards: Katy I.S.D. School Board Members Earn Honors

Note:  Nothing would please me more than for the criticism (past, current and future)  I have (and will continue) leveled at these Katy I.S.D. School Board members would prompt each of them to seriously reevaluate their roles.  I want to reiterate that I think all of them are fine people on a personal level. They are just incredibly mediocre Board members. I think that they have allowed others in the educational bureaucracy to convince them that their actual ability to impact public education policy is far less than it really is. Whether they ever realize or acknowledge it, they would be Exhibit A of any discussion of group-think’ and ‘group-speak’.

As I have said and written before, I am not out to make friends with George Scott Reports.  My goal is to help students, teachers, parents, taxpayers and patrons of public education better understand some complex issues.  Mocking poor performance by school board members is just part of the process.

George Scott Reports Education Awards

MAJOR GROUP AWARDS/GOVERNMENT

The Leonard Merrell Center Memorial Award

ACCEPTING: The 2008-09 Katy I.S.D. School Board.

The decision by the Katy I.S.D. School board to name such a major facility after a sitting superintendent remains one of the most telling insights into the reality of the very institution of a community school board. Most Boards (and members) have pursued the path of a ‘Star Trek Vulcan mind-meld’  with its superintendents eschewing its responsibility of accountability.  Never explained and never addressed is exactly what process did that Katy I.S.D. Board really follow that night which permitted it to take that vote with such apparent orchestration without a prior understanding of the results that would ensue.

“Everyman” characters in literature are common.  The decision by that Katy I.S.D. School Board to name a facility after Leonard Merrell is the “everyman” equivalent that stands for the coziness or fawning adoration that has developed betweens school boards and their superintendents and their administrations.

It is only fitting that the current school board be the first recipient of “The Leonard Merrell Center Memorial Award.” 

When Board members consider themselves colleagues and team members with their administrators, there is no limit to the level of organizational wasted motion and the decline of accountability that one school board can ‘achieve’ on behalf of the citizens it should represent.

The Enron Board of Directors Accountability Award

ACCEPTING: 6/7ths of the Katy I.S.D. School Board including Eric Duhon, Judy Snyder, Robert Shaw, Chris Crockett, Rebecca Fox and Joe Adams.

There is absolutely no evidence of which I am aware that would even assert that members of the Enron Board of Directors ever conducted themselves illegally.  They were just incompetent.  I can still recall the scene from the brilliant book “Conspiracy of Fools.”  Santa Claus Ken Lay came to the Enron Christmas party bearing ego massages for his Board.

So mesmerized with the ego of their positions and their self-righteous self-importance, Enron board members never asked two simple questions:  “How much damned money do we have in the bank today?” and,  “Are you telling me that we are going to count as current revenue income projected to be realized next century?” Had the Enron board pursued answers to those two simple questions to their truthful and inevitable conclusions would mean that tens and tens of thousands of lives would not have been destroyed.

It is only fitting that the Katy I.S.D. School for 2008-09 receive the first annual Enron Board of Directors Accountability award.  Without even an implicit notion of wrongdoing but an explicit assertion of coziness, the Katy I.S.D. School Board has earned this award.

These Katy I.S.D. Board members have proved time and time again that they are so fundamentally ignorant of accountability issues involving curriculum that they don’t know enough to know what they don’t know.

However, board member Tom Law has been denied inclusion in this award because we consider him to be a special case.  We have created a special honor just for him.

INDIVIDUAL AWARDS/GOVERNMENT/ELECTED

The Spare Tire Is Flat and It Is Of No Use; Does Anybody Have a Cell Phone? Award

ACCEPTING: Katy I.S.D. Board Member Tom Law

GSR holds Katy I.S.D. Board member Tom Law to a higher standard than his peers.  The reason is as justified as it is simple.  He was elected almost three years ago by plurality based in large part on the organizational efforts of The Katy Watchdogs.  He promised reform because he ran on a reform platform.  Since, he has proved himself to be wholly inadequate to the challenge he accepted.  Issues upon issues have arisen during his tenure.  Law’s opportunities to advance a reform agenda have gone unfulfilled because he has simply been too lazy to study the issues effectively or too timid to even make serious attempts at reform.

His lack of performance on the Katy I.S.D. School Board stands as a testament to the failure of The Katy Watchdogs to achieve serious credibility in this community as represented by the fact that Law’s election three years ago is about its only real claim to fame.  It is important to note that Law did not earn a majority vote to earn his position.  He was the beneficiary of a system that most often allows most incumbents to win re-election without a majority vote.   In his election, the system worked to Law’s advantage because of huge turnout opposing a bond issue that year and an open seat in which there was no incumbent.

The Bill Murray Groundhog Day Movie Award

ACCEPTING: Katy I.S.D. Board Member Joe Adams

Of all the Board members serving Katy I.S.D., Joe Adams is singularly the most disappointing.  Elected in 1989, Adams most reminds me of the Bill Murray character in the movie Groundhog Day.  Murray was the weatherman trapped in time one day at a time.

Similarly, Adams’ tenure on the Board can best be described as one year of experience duplicated for some 20 years.  His claim to fame has not been achieved in educational reform.  The number of cornerstones that bear his name as well as the school building that eventually shall as well will serve as his primary legacy.

In a passing conversation once, GSR asked Adams to explain his evaluation of the meaning of two standard errors of measurement below what the panel recommended.  I would have no expectation that a rank and file citizen of Texas would be able to answer that question.  Yet, “two SEM” was the passing standard of the first TAKS test.  That Joe Adams had a ‘deer in the headlight moment’ when asked to discuss the academic passing standard of the State’s accountability test says more about his service than all the cornerstones of longevity will ever say.

The Dr. Jekyll & Hyde Transformational Award

ACCEPTING: Katy I.S.D. Board Member Chris Crockett

I have always held Chris Crockett in high personal esteem.  I don’t want to jeopardize her standing with her fellow board members, but I actually like Chris.  As a variation of the old saying goes, “she’s the stoutest beer in the six-pack.’ (That excludes Tom Law who is not eligible for consideration.) As a staff attorney for Katy I.S.D., she was outstanding.  That prior excellence is the source of my amazement that an attorney would do and not do the following two things when becoming a member of the Board:

1. Vote to support a Katy I.S.D. administration proposal to change state law by allowing a school district to reduce the 450 minutes of individual planning time guaranteed to each classroom teacher over every 10 days of class, and,
2. Fail to demand the administration produce a verifiable report confirming that it is strictly following the existing law that the District wants to change in the next session of the Texas Legislature.

I cannot get my brain around such a Jekyll and Hyde mentality by a person whose professionalism I respect and from a person I really like.

The Chris Farley/Matt Foley Motivational Speakers Award

ACCEPTING: Katy I.S.D. Board member Rebecca Fox

The award itself communicates the scope of our respect for her service.  It is indeed difficult to forget the board meeting at which Fox ‘grilled’ an administrator inquiring about the differences in the number of questions a student had to answer to pass the State’s TAKS test.  It was information that was readily available to Fox on the Texas Education Agency website.  A little homework before the meeting would have permitted Fox to start with the facts and compose questions of actual importance.  I am sure that there were administrators in the room who left highly motivated by another ‘successful’ meeting.

The Hind Teat On A Boar Hog Of Distinguished Irrelevance Award

ACCEPTING:  Katy I.S.D. Board Members Robert Shaw, Judy Snyder

Additional commentary redundant.

NEXT: 

The Katy I.S.D. Administrator of the Year

The Katy I.S.D. School Board Member of the Year

The Katy Business Organization of the Year

The Katy Watchdog of the Year

The Katy I.S.D. Quote of the Year

The Katy I.S.D. Administrator for the Ages (The Highest Award Given By GSR)