Montgomery ISD Prop A with Superintendent Mark Ruffin

This is episode number 299 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We are so glad that you could join us for another live episode here in the studio. you doing, Kev?

Oh man, I'm doing all right. I don't have anything to complain about today.

You could.

Well, I'm just saying I, I'm not going to.

Did you look in the mirror?

I—

well, this is all that can be done. I, I was, I was actually, um, I went back to Arkansas, lived there for 10 years, went back and saw a bunch of people that I hadn't seen in a long time this past weekend. And, um, I didn't look like this back then. I didn't have this beard. And everybody was like, what has Who's that woolly booker up there?

Yeah.

I was like, well, I stopped officiating football for one. 21 years of that. I said, okay, I'm going to be done for a little while at least. Yeah, I can grow a beard now. So here I am.

Yeah.

How you doing, man?

I'm doing good. I was, I was going through my list of things that we've got episodes coming up about. One, I mean, like, I was in Florida for Helene.

Yeah.

So we can, we can talk about that at some point. This, this crazy Hurricane Milton is about to slam into Florida again.

It's not going to be good.

I just got back from Universal. We need to do a trip review on that. This super cool wireless bridge that I just installed on the house is insane. I'm super stoked to talk about that with everybody. Also, craziest weekend ever in college football. You might be able to get into some of that. today, um, because you were in Arkansas. I'm actually surprised you didn't come back with like a pig hat of some sort.

Well, they tried to like give me all kinds of stuff. It was like, it was like this big crazy thing. And they— but they also know they tried for 10 years to convert me and it didn't work.

They didn't want to give you like a slice of the goalpost or something?

No. Well, there were a lot of goalposts that were in rivers and taken all over the place this weekend.

And, and we didn't— we haven't even had a chance to like you know, come down off of the VP debate that happened where we all learned that the Republican vice president— vice presidential candidate does an incredible Jim impersonation.

Yes.

He's got— he's got this.

He's got it.

He's got the deadpan smirk. So all you Office fans, I know who you're voting for.

So anyway, that's, that's one way to determine what you're gonna do.

It's, it's a better reason than most of the reasons other people vote anyway.

Good point.

There is, there's like a huge push. I don't know if you got— we'll bring our guests in here in a minute, but like, there's a huge push right now to actually, like, kind of talk people out of voting.

Oh, yeah.

It's like, look, we're tired of your uninformed vote. We don't want it anymore. There's like, there's people out there actually doing that and saying how, like, do you remember, like, Rock the Vote back in the day?

Oh, yeah.

They're like, that was the dumbest thing ever. I don't disagree with them, but I'm like, I would love for everyone to vote in an informed manner, which we'll talk a little bit about tonight.

We might.

Not about Democrat and Republican, but other stuff.

Yep.

And then we— special shout out to our good buddy Jim Jackson.

Oh, man. So one of our longtime listeners, just isn't with us today, and so we're gonna— we're sad about that.

Yep, we celebrated his life this past Saturday, and his wife Sherry just said that one of her— one of their favorite things was listening to this.

Well, we love them.

And we love them. So love you, Sherry. We miss Jim. That's right. Good man. So anyway, let's get to the— let's get to the sponsors, and then we'll bring our guest in. Sure. Who you want to do first?

Let's start off with Lone Star Appliance Repair.

Lone Star Appliance Repair.

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I, you know, and there's, there is, like, this whole thing. There's, there's this anxiety about calling some, a new number.

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And someone that you don't know. But, like, there's, there's, like, a certain amount of security that you have in just sending that text message.

Well, I think, I think part of it is, like, I don't know how much is it, about to cost me. Yeah. I don't— I mean, I gotta talk to who and what. Yep. And I'm just, just texting them. It's like one of those things you put off the entire day and you're like, it's 9:30 and this washing machine still doesn't work. So I think I'm just gonna send a text message.

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So like getting, getting your dishwasher cleaned, getting your washing machine cleaned. I don't know if you've ever done that before, but—

Well, but most people are like, it cleans every time I wash it, doesn't it?

No, no. Like, look, there's filters on and they get nasty.

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And like, not only that, they'll make your clothes stink. And if you don't do it on a regular basis, and if you don't know how or you don't want to and it's kinda icky for you, hire somebody else to do it.

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Well, and like, so in, in our neighborhood, one of the things that's been going around is like, you know, this, this neighborhood has its own water treatment facility.

Yeah. Has for years.

One of the things that it has is a lot of calcium. which kills a coffee pot of mine at least once a year.

Oh, geez.

You know, and, and so, but, like, that's also the same water that's running into your dishwasher. That's the same water that's running into your washing machine. All, all those water features that you have in your home get calcium buildup a lot quicker in this neighborhood than they do in most others. You know, and we've, we've tried to remedy some of that with, like, a whole home filter and, and things like that, but you can't catch it all.

Sure.

And, and so that's why it's important also to do a lot of the maintenance on your appliances, and that's why you sometimes need a professional to come and actually do that.

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Decalcification on an appliance, I mean, that, that can be tiresome and not fun.

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That's right. So if you want to get one of your appliances repaired, all you gotta do is call or text 936-647-2364. 936-647-2364.

Give them a call. That's right. Also, True Texas Solar sponsoring the show tonight. We love these guys. Uh, I, I, I, like, I think, I think solar in general has gotten a bad rap.

Well, since its inception, it's gotten a bad rap.

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Well, and you know, I We could talk about taxes like that too, but, like, I would disagree on that front.

But, like—

I would too.

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It is a common misconception.

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And, well, not only that, and there's, there's grifters and thieves and con men out there.

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All right.

Who are we talking to tonight?

Man, I'm, I'm really excited. Um, tonight we've, we've got a special guest. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring him in in just a second. He, uh, His name is Dr. Mark Ruffin, and he doesn't like the doctor part, but we're going to call him doctor for everybody's sake and give him his cred. He'll just be Mark from here on out. But Mark is the superintendent of Montgomery ISD in Montgomery, Texas. And Mark, we're glad to have you. If you wouldn't mind, just tell, tell people a little bit about yourself.

Thank y'all very much. I appreciate it. And matter of fact, it's so funny that y'all mentioned the first sponsor there, Texas Appliance Repair.

Yeah. Lone Star. Lone Star. Lone Star. Yeah.

An hour and a half ago, my wife told me our washing machine stopped working today. Uh-oh.

I know somebody to call.

So it sounds like— but it's late, so I'm going to give them a text.

Yeah. You can do it right now. I mean, that's great.

That's it.

That's great.

You can do it.

But no, I appreciate y'all having me. Like I said, my name is Mark. I'm the superintendent of Montgomery ISD. Very proud superintendent. My family and I moved here in January. So we have done a lot of the things y'all talk about over the last 10 months in terms of being a new homeowner in a new area. and trying to get connected to the services that we need. And so I'm excited to engage in this conversation. And I can tell already that, man, I'm going to love this conversation, just y'all's dialogue and y'all's approach to it. It is definitely my style and my personality. So thank y'all.

Awesome. Well, cool, man. Well, we— the impetus behind all this, I know you've been all over the place, and I'm sure you're exhausted at this point because there's a big election that's coming up. And yes, obviously the presidential election, but there's a very important prop that is on the ballot in Montgomery that's related to the schools. And it's been part of your job along with your team to get the information out about it. So I'm going to let you just lay out what Prop A is, and then we'll get into some discussion from there.

Well, thank you. And you're right, it's where we're focused right now because it is the most critically important thing to educate our stakeholders on. And within Montgomery ISD, we are just getting closer and closer to that 10,000-student mark. We're about at 90— actually, I can tell you we're at 9,926 students as of this morning.

Wow.

And so The thing within Montgomery is, in general, it's really hard to comprehend the amount of folks and the amount of people and equity and effort that goes into running a school district. And so what we're really working on allowing folks to understand, and regardless of political affiliation, all those things aside, my job is just to educate.

Sure.

And just to inform, people are going to vote however their heart tells them to vote. My job is to make sure that when they get to the ballot, when they get to that point where they're selecting their choice, they're educated on what they're voting on. And I think it doesn't matter if it's a school election or a candidate-based election nationally or locally. We need educated and informed and engaged stakeholders to cast their votes.

Yeah.

And so that's really what our effort is on, is about educating folks on what Prop A is, and what Prop A isn't. And to kind of put a very 30,000-foot view on this, we in Montgomery ISD, we've adopted over a $4 million deficit budget this fiscal year. So for our homeowners there, thinking that lens of that means we're going to spend $4 million more than we take in this year.

And that's a problem.

It's a challenge.

Yeah.

And it's not a pace of play that we can maintain.

Yeah.

We can't do that year over year. this data.

Real quick, what, what is actually causing the deficit?

It's a great question. So it really is kind of a perfect storm. Um, before we can ever call a tax rate election, which is what Prop A is, we're required to do an efficiency audit. State of Texas says you have to go hire a third-party auditor to come in and look at you compared to 10 like districts. They call that your peer district group, and that's based on your demographics, based on your your community base tax rate, all those things, to make sure that you're looking in the mirror first. That's a good law. That's a good expectation that you should have to look at your own finances before you go ask your stakeholders, your taxpayers to consider the approval of a tax rate election.

Sure.

So what that has done is it's shown us what we already knew is that within Montgomery ISD, we get less per revenue per student, like when you look at just those 10 peer districts, we get $1,500 less per kid.

Wow.

In revenue than those 10 peer districts. We spend less in every expenditure category from instruction to administration to extracurriculars. I think the only one that we actually tip over by a couple dollars per kid is counseling and student support services. And that's all posted on our website. That's all very outward facing. We're as transparent as we can possibly be. And so the causes of where we are with this $4 million deficit, one of them, and honestly, it's probably the biggest one, is stagnant funding. The basic allotment, that's the amount of money we get per kid.

Mm-hmm.

has not changed since 2019.

Oh man.

So if you just close your eyes and reflect what's all happened and transpired since 2019, it's a bunch.

Yeah. I mean, I, I'll tell you this, my grocery bill feels it, my gas bill feels it, my electricity bill feels it. Like every aspect of my life feels the inflation that's happened. And that doesn't just not happen in schools. I mean, they've, they've got a lot of those very same bills.

We have a lot of those same costs. I mean, we, we, we have, let's see, we transport 4,500 kids on school buses a day. It's a lot of fuel.

Yeah.

We, we drive over a million miles every year.

Wow.

On school buses. It's a lot of fuel.

Well, and, and, and I, I wanna jump in right there. You drive more than you have to compared to other districts in the area.

We do.

And is it because you're having to go further or?

No, because districts have decided, whether that's for budgetary reasons or for staffing reasons and just their ability to hire bus drivers, a lot of districts have put in a radius in place that says if you live within a mile, 2 miles of a campus, you're not eligible for bus transportation. We'll go pick you up, but you got to live outside of a 2-mile radius. Within Montgomery ISD, we don't have that.

Right.

If you live in our school district, and you go to the school you're zoned for, we will come pick you up. Part of that, honestly, it helps relieve traffic congestion.

Right.

The more kids that ride our buses and we can get them all there on one stop helps our car rider lines. But the challenge is, you know, with Prop A and the future looking or looking into the future of if it does or does not pass is that, like I said, we can't maintain a $4 million deficit budget year over year. And so we're going to have to reduce that deficit going into next school year, which means cuts.

Yeah.

And unfortunately, we can't start with our first grade teachers, our second grade teachers. We start away from the classroom and work in. But unfortunately, all those cuts at some way, shape, or form end up back in the classroom teacher. Like all of those roles and responsibilities.

It's going to affect the ratios. It's going to— yeah.

It really is. And so transportation's a factor of it. But the stagnant funding levels is like our insurance premiums alone. Like, we carry insurance on every one of our buildings— liability, cyber, hazard, all of those things. Our insurance premiums have gone up $750,000 since 2019.

Yeah.

And we're not a privately owned industry to where we can just go generate additional revenue, right? Like, we can't go hustle. Like, yeah, as pest control, if y'all need to generate revenue and you have a down quarter, hey, let's, let's put a strategic plan together to make sure that we generate more revenue next semester.

Yeah.

Or next quarter. We can't do that. Ours is set by what the state funds us by. Also, our expenditures, we're really limited on how we can control our expenditures. I've told this, this reference time and again in these community meetings that I've had is that in the same meeting that we celebrated cutting just under $1 million from our budget going into this school year, We also— the very next item we had to talk about was approving $1 million in new positions for special education. If a student comes into Montgomery ISD, we're public education. We educate all.

Right.

We don't get a choice. We can't turn you away because we can't do it.

Right.

If you're in our school district and you come to us and say, hey, I'm student Johnny and here's my services that I need, if that means we have to hire new staff to do it, we're forced to do it.

Yeah.

And so there's only so much control that we have. And Prop A really is exercising that control. It's exercising the local control that says, of all the things that we have, a tax rate election is one of those. We can put that in our taxpayers' and our stakeholders' hands and allow them to weigh in on that.

Right. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about what, what the option that you have chosen as a school district to go with Um, because the problem with, with so much of, of the deficit is not only, not only all, all of the things you're talking about, the deficit, but then there's a certain amount of what's called recapture that the state has required from Montgomery. So I want you to touch on the recapture part of it. And I, you know, I think, you know, those of us who have been around for a long time the old Robin Hood law is what we called it. And I don't know if it's, it's probably somewhat similar to that.

But there's recapture going on, but then there's also some options that as a city that can be exercised, and that's where y'all come in. So I, I'd like you to hit on just kind of explaining what that looks like.

Yeah. So recapture occurs, and that's kind of another one of the misnomers of of how we're funded is, you know, school districts don't get to set the amount of money it takes to run their school district. The state of Texas says, here's what you're allocated, here's what you should run your school district.

And you've got a, you've got a budget with inside that number.

That's it.

Okay.

And, and that— so let's say that's a bucket. A 5-gallon bucket is how much money Montgomery ISD has to operate a school district. That bucket is filled with tax collections and it's filled with state aid. For property wealthy areas like Montgomery ISD, the vast majority of that bucket is filled with tax collections. So the state only has to contribute minimal to fill the rest of our bucket. Recapture happens when tax collections overflow that bucket.

Okay.

So they fill the bucket all the way up in tax collections, and we collect more than the state says we should run our district on. And so everything that overflows is scooped up by the state and taken back and redistributed, not to Montgomery ISD, but to other districts. At least that's the way the law is intended to be.

Sure.

Is that it's redistributed to other districts?

Is that intended to help fund like poor neighborhoods and things like that?

Okay.

Yep. Yep, it is. And so—

Well, you said something there. That's the way it's supposed to be done.

The way it's supposed to be done.

But it may not necessarily go that way.

Yeah.

And so you should probably—

I'm going to stay away from that. Yeah, no, you stay away from that.

But the listener might be interested to kind of dig if they really want to. Okay.

Yeah. And so within Montgomery ISD over the last, oh, 10 years, I think we've paid probably close to $10 million in recapture.

Wow.

So money that's going away, money that's not getting put back in the district.

Money that's going— exactly, exactly. And so This past year, we did not pay any recapture. That's—

Okay.

The year before that, we paid $3 million in recapture.

Wow.

So part of the reason this year we paid no recapture was our tax rate was compressed through, through new legislation, 18 cents.

Okay.

So taxpayers in Montgomery ISD saw an 18-cent tax rate decrease.

Wow.

Last year.

That, that, like, never happens.

I feel like. Never happens. And it, and it's based on what your property value growth is.

Okay.

So every school district in Texas who had any sort of property value growth saw a tax compression, but if they had a lot of property value growth, they saw a big tax compression. So that's another one of the misnomers within how we're funded is, uh, you can look at the last 10 years in Montgomery ISD property values. People just naturally associate as our values go up, that means our school district gets more money, and that's not true at all. Our property values have increased over 100% in the last 10 years. So we had $4 billion in 2014, closer to $9 billion in 2023, 2024. So that's 100% increase. And our revenue per student over that same time period has increased 13%.

Revenue per student.

That's not close.

Not even close, right?

No.

So it's not a direct correlation. And so that— but that's, that's why it's so important to have these conversations and to have these community meetings to make sure folks know that You know, what you read, what you see, what you hear, um, we really need to do the research behind it and understand what's really happening. And, um, every meeting I've had, I've really been diligent about trying to say, what do you need from me?

Sure.

What information do you have that I'm not trying to tell you you're wrong, but I just want to make sure you know it's a very complex system and there might be another lens that we need to examine your same facts on and compare it to what's really happening.

Yeah. So we can exercise an option this year, and from what I understand, it can only be done in a major election. It cannot be done halfway through the year or anything else. So the November 5th election, that is the only time this can be done. And what is the option that's being gone with? I know that there's There's this weird thing out there called golden pennies, and there's even some copper pennies, and I have no idea what all that means, but I hear it all the time. So I'd love for you to elaborate a little bit.

Well, thank you for that chance because— and I kind of make this joke. I've got a 4, a 7, and a 10-year-old, all boys, and they're as boys as you can get. And I really feel like if I asked them, hey, what should we call pennies? And a tax rate. Yeah, I'm like, let's call them golden and copper, right? Like, that's just—

Yeah.

One of those things, it just tags to it, right? So yeah, but what it— what essentially is in Prop A is a 5-cent tax rate increase that results in $5.5 million of funding this fiscal year.

Okay.

And every year moving forward. So I mentioned we're in over a $4 million deficit, so If Prop A were to pass, our $4 million deficit goes away, and we've got some additional capacity to make sure that we're maintaining competitive compensation, we're able to recruit and retain our staff. And ultimately, if Prop A is successful, we're not forced to reduce our staff to reduce that budget.

Okay, so just before you keep going, the one of the impacts if Prop A doesn't pass is that staff will have to be reduced.

Staff will 100% have to be reduced.

Okay, so we'll come back to that.

And I'll—

yeah, we'll come back to that.

Yes, sir.

Yes.

Um, and so what the, the 5 cents that Prop A is, um, raises the tax rate is 3 of those are called golden pennies.

Okay.

Um, which means that, and it's in, uh, Texas Education Code Chapter 48.002, if anyone's really just interested in the research behind it. But golden pennies yield more value to school districts because of 2 factors. One, they require the state to contribute additional state aid once they're accessed.

So you're forcing their hand.

They're forcing their hand. And 2, they're completely void of recapture. The state can never touch any tax collections on golden pennies.

Okay, so even if it overflows the quote unquote bucket, who cares?

If the 3 pennies overflow the golden bucket, overflow the bucket, Those— any revenue from golden pennies cannot be recaptured.

Okay.

The copper pennies, they do yield less because they are subject to recapture. The consideration is, though, that as you access the 3 additional golden pennies, the additional state aid helps offset some of that recapture that may present on the copper pennies.

Okay.

the consideration that our school board, and this has been a 2-year conversation. I've only been here since January. We have, as a district, our board has been having these conversations about a tax rate election over the last 2 years.

So it's not a willy-nilly, hey, we got to get money, so let's just make this choice.

It's truly not.

Sure.

And within what we're looking at is the golden pennies alone, would have barely got us out of a deficit budget.

Okay.

So, and we— the board could have elected to call for up to 12, up to a 12% tax rate increase and generated additional revenues.

Right.

But again, our board has consistently shown that they want to do right by our kids, our staff, and our people within our community.

Right.

And that's, that's, that's reflected in the fact that they felt like if we can, if we can access 5 pennies, that will get us in a better place financially to maintain the level of ability to recruit and retain our staff, maintain the level of student programs that we've offered, and maintain the level of safety and security that we provide our kids.

So what, what is determining whether or not you get a golden penny or a copper penny?

So if a tax rate election were called and it was just called for 3 cents, those 3 would automatically be golden because that's what we have available to us.

Gotcha.

And the funding formulas are very complex, but Montgomery ISD has been fighting an uphill battle for years based on previous legislation dating back to 2006 in which tax compression took place. And I don't want to get into that, the weeds of that, because it's, it's very weedy. But the tax compression took place, and it compressed almost every school district to $1 from $1.50. But MISD was under $1.50, so we were compressed below $1. So those districts that were below $1 at that point only had the ability to access a certain amount of golden pennies versus others were kind of grandfathered in, right, and allowed to access additional ones. So that kind of comes— that, that really presents the funding gap that we have between ourselves in other school districts is

that's one of those components.

Well, and, and I would— I'm, I'm curious, you, you may or may not know this, so maybe just say you don't know if you don't, but what type of— I mean, you mentioned the housing increase that happened, but in, in the last— and you can give me a number, but say 10 years, how has the school grown in number of students? Because my, my guess is we've It's like a lot of things you operate on in a small town as a small town, and then all of a sudden massive boom comes. I mean, we've now got a Home Depot that's about to open and a Lupe Tortilla in a little small town that's opening up. We're getting all kinds of restaurants

coming in. Uh, H-E-B's probably not too far behind across from the Kroger that's already there. So this— the town is exponentially booming. So what has that done to the student population in relation to the state probably not being able to keep up?

So it's a great question. Within Montgomery ISD, I don't know exactly what the numbers are dating back 10 years, but I know in the last 7 years we've opened up Lake Creek High School. So we've had to add additional high school. We're up to 11 campuses. We opened up a new elementary school this past August, Creekside Elementary, our 7th elementary campus. Wow. And I will tell you, within— in terms of educating folks, a lot of our folks that within our community know Montgomery ISD because they have kids. They have kids that get on the school bus, they have kids they have drop-off every day, or they have grandkids they go watch in sporting events. But there's a huge population within Montgomery ISD that does not have a

direct connection to our school district. And so A lot of the questions that we receive is like, why should this matter to me, right? And you mentioned—

It's a great question, actually.

The Home Depot and the Lupe Tortilla. And, you know, property values within Montgomery ISD undoubtedly have continued to rise, and it's not because Home Depot decided to build a Home Depot. It's not because Lupe is now here and you can get great fajitas, right? It's not because H-E-B might be around the corner. Every single development that it's— that, that says, hey, we're developing this tract and it's Beezer Homes or it's whoever homes, and the very first billboard they put up says what? Zoned to Montgomery ISD schools.

Because that's important.

Because that is why.

Well, I'll tell you, it's a draw. I mean, I live in Montgomery because of that, because of the schools. Um, we— I actually work in Conroe. It's a 25-minute commute, which some people are like, oh, 25 minutes, not a big deal. But, but when I got 2 small kids and our life is in Montgomery. 25 minutes is it, is it one way? It's a decent amount of time. We could have purchased in for cheaper in Conroe, but we chose to be in Montgomery solely for the schools. And I am not even close to a minority of people that are moving into Montgomery for the schools. I'm in vast majority.

Yeah.

So it's a big deal. I mean, so, um, So all of this kind of lends itself to go, okay, we are— we're in a place in Montgomery where if this prop doesn't pass, there are severe negative impact. And I'm curious, let's talk about what some of the negative is. But now I want to— I'd rather end on positive.

Before you do that, no. Yeah, like, because I read a little bit about this and like, I mean, full disclosure, I have my kids in private school, and I'd be interested to hear what you have to say for families, because I know Montgomery County in general, it's a big homeschool county. It's a big private school county. And so I can imagine people in those communities are going to be abrasive towards this. But one of the things I— so I was reading that the prop has to reach— it was designed in such a way that it reaches a threshold so that the state of Texas has to cover 15%. Is that right?

Well, it's not designed in a way. It's just automatically that the fact that if it were to pass, right, that's how the math works out, that the state's additional state aid that they would be contributing of the $5.5 million of additional revenue, 15% of that is state aid.

State aid, which is great. I mean, like, that means that's 15% we're not having to pay. Well, I mean, I don't know. I actually don't know how that works, honestly, because I don't— I don't even know if I wanna let— I don't pay property taxes.

Yes. Well, you're, you're in a unique situation.

Yeah. But, but anyway.

But, but this is— it's different than just property tax. You're still paying a school tax.

Right. But, but I'm, but I'm also in Conroe ISD.

Right. So it does— this, this specifically won't affect you at all.

Yeah. And that's, that's why I'm like, I feel like I can ask some questions that, you know, that aren't biased.

Right.

And the other thing I read about it is that the 5-cent increase is only for homes $350,000 and less.

Correct?

So it's for all.

For all.

It's for all.

Well, I mean, yeah, but is it more for those that are above that? Right.

So in order to message it in a way that is as consistent as possible, right, we try and put a dollar amount so people can relate to it. So, sure, we state that on a home valued at $350,000, The monthly impact is about $9 a month for that home.

Okay.

Obviously, as your home value increases, you're probably looking at an additional dollar amount figure. Right.

Are there, are there several tiers? I mean, how does—

So it, it's just all based on what your home value is.

Okay.

So, so it's, it's not a direct correlation.

There's not a, there's not a threshold. It's just, it's, it's the math of, of your home. And so where do you guys get the, the home valuations to determine that? Is that, is that the, what is that, Kev? Is that What?

Appraisal district?

Yeah. Appraisal district.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So, and, and so you, you guys just go off the appraisal district. Right. And that's just a number that we pull down and say, okay, what, what can people relate to? What can people kind of pull easy math off of to kind of project out?

Uh-huh.

I will always tell taxpayers, we can communicate it as clearly as possible, but as, as taxpayers, it's really your job to make sure that you're pulling your data and looking at your numbers.

Right? Yeah.

For sure.

And, and educate yourself on how it looks because There's so many unknowns, right? So I could not pull your appraisal district information from the website of MCAD and say, well, you'll pay this.

I don't want anybody pulling that information.

Yeah. So we, we try and make it as, as consistent as possible.

Right.

And as clear as possible. And then make ourselves available to answer any questions that might come out. Because it's not as simple as saying, well, if it's $9 on a $350,000 home, that means it's $18 on a $700,000 home. Because that's not how that math works.

Because—

Yeah, sure. there's a $100,000 homestead exemption that could be, could be in place. Sure. Other people may have other exemptions. If, if you're over 65, you're locked.

Well, yeah, I was— that was my next one is the 65.

If you're over 65 and your, your school taxes are frozen, they're frozen. Yeah. Prop A doesn't impact them a dollar cent.

Well, and I think, I think that's an important one to mention because people living in Harris County are very sus— I mean, like, they're talking to people in Montgomery County and like, do you know what just happened to us? Did you hear about that? So, um, they just raised property taxes in Harris County, all of Harris County, by 8% without a vote. And the reason they were able to do it is because of the 2 natural disasters. They found a loophole in the law that allowed them to say, hey, we need to access additional funding in order to pay for these, these natural disasters. And so, and it bypassed the '65 frozen law.

So school districts have the same authority to say, we're, we're claiming a natural disaster.

Yeah.

And we're going to access additional pennies this fiscal year. Montgomery ISD did not do that, or—

Chose not to.

Chose not to.

Oh, they had the right to.

We have the right to.

Really?

It is in education code that if we declare disaster pennies, that we can say because of our disaster, and we had Hurricane Beryl this summer, it probably would have looped us into that category of being able to do that. But It's not worth the amount of distrust, the amount of distrust that you're going to build within your community.

I mean, I can imagine there's, there's a specific judge that was involved in that, in that one. I can imagine she had a contested election last time anyway. I imagine that's not going to bode well for her next go-round.

No, not at all. Well, and so you mentioned that it doesn't affect people that are 65 and over because their taxes can't go up. Now, this is not across the board. But I'm guessing that many of the people that don't have kids or grandkids in the school district have been long-term members of the community in Montgomery. And it's very possible that this isn't going to affect them at all. Now, that's an overstatement, I realize, and it's an assumption on my part, but I do find it to be very important to mention that. And I'll put it this way. I've just noticed you, you talk about the, the dollar. I— when, when you kind of put it into perspective, I mean, you're talking for the, for the average household, $150 to

$200 a year is probably kind of where you're sitting, which is probably less than most people's electric bill for one month. So the, the, the max dollar that you're gonna wind up paying is not, is not unreasonable. It's not like you're going, hey, your, your house is gonna go up $1,500 if we do this. That, that would be unreasonable.

Right.

So I just want to kind of put that out there. But there are some, some negative impacts. I want to end on the positive impact, but some of the negative impact I want you to address. And I know, again, I'm not asking you to, to tell people, hey, you should vote this way or you should not, because we are not here to have that conversation. But let's address the facts. What will have to happen If this doesn't pass? What is just the ramifications?

So, um, I kind of mentioned that the, the depth of involvement it takes from people to run Montgomery ISD at the level that we've run it and at the success that we've run it. And that goes everything from our bus drivers to our extracurricular activities to our academic expectations to the support that we provide our students and our teachers. Unfortunately, to the safety and security also, unfortunately, we're legally required to provide a minimum, and Montgomery ISD has just always exceeded that.

Right.

So, for example, safety and security-wise, our 2 high schools, they roughly have 1,500, 1,600 kids on them. And they're huge campuses. Montgomery High School is really spread out.

Yeah.

So we have 2 officers, 2 police officers within— we have, we have a Montgomery ISD Police Department, 2 officers at that high school campus. House Bill 3 requires us to have 1 armed officer on all campuses. Okay, just 1. That's, that's a legal requirement. Elementary, elementary, middle school, high school, 1 armed officer.

And I don't see how it's possible for one person to cover that campus. Lake Creek just did an expansion and now their campus is massive. And we're not talking about the inside of the building even. We're talking about the football fields, everything. I mean, it's many acres of land to cover. It really is.

Is requiring an armed officer on all campuses a new thing?

So House Bill 3 was passed in this last legislative session. So, okay, that was a new thing.

And I know that's something I think people in Texas have been clamoring for for a long time. Yeah. I mean, like, let's have it.

It's good law. The challenge is you mentioned kind of what has led us to this financial downfall that we're in is so that's an example of an unfunded mandate, meaning the state of Texas passed that law. You have to have an armed officer on every campus. The challenge is it did not come with funding to meet that requirement. So we get $240,000 a year for our safety and security allotment. Our MISD payroll is over a billion.

For the whole district?

For the entire district.

Okay. And you mentioned there's how many campuses?

11 campuses.

Well, that's, that's an insanely small amount of money.

So it doesn't even come close to covering—

Does not come close to covering the cost to meet the mandate. So there's that unfunded mandate gap, right? So Our payroll is over $1 million a year just for our police department.

Sure.

Right.

So, and the challenge that I, as a public educator who believes in the goodness, and you mentioned your children go to private school.

Yeah.

We've got phenomenal private schools in and around the area.

Yep.

And I've got, I'm great friends. I mean, with several of the administrators within these systems, they've got phenomenal kids. They've got phenomenal staff. They've got staff that love on kids and want what's best for them. And guess what? We have the same, right?

Yeah.

Those same things exist. I'm about kids. I don't care where they are, but my job is to advocate for the ones that are in our care directly.

Sure.

And so, I mean, I went to private school up until 2nd grade, and within what we're trying to do and the ramifications of this does if it's not successful and the consequences of that, the decisions that we have to make. Safety and security is one of those things where if we know what we're legally minimally required to do, we're probably gonna have to pull an armed officer off of our high school campuses and reduce force with our police staff. We've got staff members like instructional coaches that support our teachers. Teaching looks completely different than it did 15, 10, 5 years ago.

Yeah.

Instructional coaches work alongside our teachers to help guide their instruction. to help making sure our kids are making progress academically. I've said this time and again, I've got a 2nd grader that is a struggling reader. And from a high school math teacher, that drives me crazy.

Yeah.

I'm not the guy to sit down with him at the dinner table at night and work on decoding and, you know, all that stuff.

Not your wheelhouse.

But we have academic interventionists that pull him out of class and work with him one-on-one. Well, that's a benefit to the classroom teacher. That's a value add to them. We've got certified librarians. We're not legally required to have certified teachers as librarians in our schools. We do because they can cover some of the content and instruction in conjunction with the teacher.

Right.

Well, if all those positions go away, those roles and responsibilities, they don't just disappear. That just falls back on the classroom teacher. And if you talk about how could we recruit and retain our staff, we can pay them all we want, but if you overload them, They're gone. They're gone.

Yeah, they have to. They just can't do it. I mean, there's, there's already a lot of pressure on teachers, uh, there already is. And if you take away the support, this can be a challenge. But we're also talking about coaches, right?

Sure. Extracurricular activities, the level in which we've done extracurricular activities. We're— the UIL, um, did us a huge favor and redistricted us with Port Neches Grove.

Thank you.

I mean, that's like—

That's a long way.

That's West Louisiana.

Yes, it is.

That's West Louisiana.

It is.

And so we take 7 buses down there.

Because you have to.

3 football buses, 2 band, 1 cheer, 1 dance. But how many buses need to get to PNG to play a football game? 3.

Yeah.

The football team, and that's it.

Yeah.

Is that fair to our band that practices their tails off and works to do their halftime performance?

No.

Is it fair to our dance? No, is it fair to our football team that feeds off that? It's not fair. I'm not saying those programs disappear, but it will impact them. And Prop A, it impacts every single kid one way or another within Montgomery ISD, every staff member one way or another within Montgomery ISD, because the funding is this year and every year moving forward.

Yeah. So nurses?

Sure. We're not required to have RNs.

That's unbelievable to me. I mean, I— look, I, I've got— I love my daughter to death, but she's clumsy. And there's oftentimes whenever I get a call from the, from the nurse, and I am so thankful that she's there.

Yeah.

And I, I can't imagine not having a nurse on staff at a school.

Yeah.

So just, just so I understand, you're not required to have nurses on all all campuses. You do have nurses on all campuses.

We do have RNs. We have RNs on all campuses.

Right.

And the way that districts have started to circumvent that is they may hire an LVN or a certified nurse's assistant on the campuses and maybe have one district RN that oversees them. So again, it's a level. It's a level. It's a level thing, right? And some of our kids, just because of their needs, whether they're medically fragile students, they they require RNs to train to change like trach tubes or other things like that requires the support of an RN.

Well, I'm asking because like, if I understand, and I don't understand a lot, but with— you need nurses on campus in order to hand out certain kinds of medications. Like you can't just like hand medications out to a nurse's assistant, right?

So that's a whole nother topic of conversation.

I mean, actually, I'm trying to figure out the rationale behind not requiring a nurse on campus when you have so many children not that I'm saying it's a good thing, that are medicated, that you can't hand those medications off to.

So RNs are actually held to a higher standard on what they can and cannot distribute than anyone else within Montgomery ISD employee. Because they abide by the— and I'm gonna mess up the governing body of it, but the nurses—

Well, it's not your world, but yeah.

The nurses' laws, right? The laws that govern nursing. They're governed by those. And part of those say that you're not allowed to handle any prescription, any medication, and hand it to someone that you don't have a doctor's order for.

Right.

So that's Tylenol, that's Advil, that's over-the-counter stuff that historically— that's a change this year. Like, our nurses, our RNs are not handing out Tylenol and ibuprofen unless we have a doctor's consent.

Yep.

Our district policy says anyone in the school district that's an employee can, by parent consent, give over-the-counter medication. So when there's those 2 conflicting laws, they have to go higher.

Teachers can do what the nurses can't. Is that what you're saying?

Right? Yeah. It's kinda funny.

Yeah. Well, there— so, okay. So we're down— we're down security guards. We're down librarians. We're down nurses. We're down coaches. We're down instructional coaches. Who else? I mean, that— that's a— that's a large number of people. Who else?

Well, it—

it—

it goes back to just the ability to— there's going to be some attrition also, that just losses through attrition. We'll have central admin positions that will have to go away.

Yeah.

We've got some people that their entire focus is— I shouldn't say their entire focus because they wear a ton of hats.

Sure.

But community engagement, community support. We do a back-to-school bash that that provides 300 plus, like we had 300 kids come through our central admin office in August and walk out with brand new backpacks full of supplies. And I'll be honest, in a community like Montgomery, that sometimes is a missed need. We don't always recognize that we have kids that truly are in need.

Oh, sure, sure.

Yeah. Those programs have been really successful because we've been able to allocate a person to oversee that and make sure that they're making sure students' needs are met in the building and outside the building. So we've got central admin positions that unfortunately we'll have to lose through attrition.

Well, and just to— I mean, just to— this is actually some of the stuff that my wife does. I mean, she's a big community advocate. She works with a lot of different ministries and things like that. I know of areas in Montgomery County where people are living without electricity.

Wow.

You know, and it's like—

It's tough. Yeah. Like, it—

but like, and there's kids living in there.

Yep.

And like, and they don't even know where, like, their next meal's coming from. But, like, I— and I— to your point, Montgomery County tends to appear and, and have the visual of being a very affluent community, and it is. But that just means that those kids living in those conditions are even harder to see sometimes.

Yeah.

You know?

For sure.

They really are.

And that's why, you know, we put a huge emphasis on the relationships that we have with our kids. Our counselors, they do an amazing job.

Yeah.

There's certain expectations set out through Texas Education Agency on what counselors they should be spending their time on. And unfortunately, I've had to meet individually with all these groups of people, coaches, librarians, nurses, counselors, bus drivers, instructional coaches. And I've had to have these really tough conversations that ahead of us telling our story about Prop A, ahead of calling this election, I need y'all to know that in order for us to tell our story, we have to talk about positions and we have to talk about people.

Yeah.

And I don't want y'all to be on the short end of the stick when it comes to, oh my gosh, I had no idea that this would impact me.

You also don't want them to be surprised when you have to start.

Yeah.

Surprised. And so what I will say our board has done a great job of is committing to doing right by our people. Meaning we adopted a $4 million deficit. If Prop A is not successful, November the 5th, 6th election.

November 5th.

There you go. On November the 6th, we're not doing reduction in force. Like our people have a job through the school year. Because that's what's right. Like if we end the school year at a $4 million deficit, we've signed up to do so.

Right.

The really difficult decisions have to come into play next school year.

Yeah.

And again, I think that's a testament to our board just saying that of all we can do, we can do right by our people. We can be transparent, we can be upfront and honest, and we can make sure that we communicate these challenges along the way. And whether Prop A passes or not, our next focus is with our legislature and making sure that we, we have to fix, we have to increase the amount of funding that Texas allows for our kids. Commissioner Morath was on a testimony period to the Senate the other day, and he said we're spending $300 million less in public education than we ever have. Student population has not really grown a ton in Texas in terms of public

education, but we're spending $300 million less Because we're funded on attendance. We're not funded on the number of kids in Montgomery ISD. We're funded on the average number of kids that attend on a daily basis. Regardless of if 95% of the kids come or 90% or 80%, we still have to have the same amount of teachers and we still have to run the same amount of electricity and we still have to do the same amount of things. So per pupil spending in Texas has gone down and continues to go down. And so those are really important conversations that we have engaged with.

What's causing that?

So great question.

COVID, coming off of COVID I know a lot of people, I mean, I'm, I'm one of them. I'm, we moved out of, out of public education because of that.

Yeah. And, and I'll, I'll tell you this also. I, I respect that. You know, you are, your biggest job, you run a pest control business. That's not your biggest job. Your biggest job is to make decisions for your children.

Oh, for sure.

And your family.

Yeah. Yeah.

And mine is also. But what we have seen is as a result of COVID and this shift to making sure that we're efficient and proficient with online learning management systems, it's no longer that impactful if I happen to miss a day of school because I can still access everything the teacher did that day.

Yeah.

On Canvas or on Google Classroom. And so the impact or the fear of missing a day has kind of gone away a little bit. And so We're more reluctant to, well, yeah, we'll go on vacation a day or a day early. Or, and on the impact of COVID side of it also, if my kid has a fever, maybe I, maybe I will take him and just keep him home an extra day because of that and because all that content is still there and he can still access it.

And so—

Has that changed some of the truancy rules?

So that's another one of the biggest challenges. The truancy rules have just gotten less and less and less every year, and our ability to have any sort of teeth with truancy has gone away.

Really?

Completely.

That probably makes Kamala really sad. She liked to lock up those single mamas.

Well, I'm going to keep my mouth shut, which is tough for me to do, by the way. It's tough for me to do. But she grew up in a middle-class family.

I'm sure she did.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I say, but does that affect the funding?

It does. Yeah.

Because that doesn't make sense to me. Like, if you don't have any teeth to enforce it, why should they be able to pull funding if they're not going to give you the—

Welcome to the government.

I mean, that makes no sense to me because I know, like, if you don't show up enough, you lose the funding for that kid.

Right.

But like, you don't have any means to say, like, okay, like, what's going to happen because they're not showing up?

Correct. And because we're funded on attendance, and this happened last spring, as a matter of fact, one of my first few months within Montgomery ISD, we had a weather situation.

Uh-huh.

And we did not close schools. We opened schools. Our forecast that morning at 3 o'clock in the morning said, by the way, all the weather's gonna really be bad about 9 AM. Well, okay, that's okay. All of our kids are in buildings at 9 AM. That are built to withstand, to withstand. Yeah, like our— there's not safer buildings built within Montgomery County than our schools.

Sure.

That's what they're for. And so great, let's roll with it. Well, guess what? All that pushed in way earlier than expected. Yeah, we start rolling buses. And that was the immediate criticism, was the only reason that this is the decision that you've made is because you want kids to come to school because that's how you're funded.

Sure.

Yeah. So it's not just the simple aspect of reducing funding. It's, that's the lens that now we're viewed for every decision that we make. And yeah, I'll be—

But it's easy to Monday morning quarterback that, right? I mean, like, yeah, I mean, like, you were off.

There's plenty of them. Yeah, there's plenty of them. And I went on social media or Facebook, recorded a little video. And I said, I'm the one that made that decision. Here's why I made it. Kind of going back to that need part that we don't always realize within our community.

Yeah.

There's kids that are better off in our schools than they are at home.

Oh, man.

When their parents leave for the day.

That's true.

In terms of being able to feed them, take care of them.

Yep.

And so at the end of the day, parents' decisions are parents' decisions. If they want to keep their child home, keep their child home.

Yeah.

So, uh, let's, let's talk about funding for a minute because, uh, I've seen a lot of criticism, uh, with the open enrollment, uh, situation because Um, I, I'm— you, you may know more facts than I do. I'm sure you do on this. Um, but my understanding is that Montgomery ISD chose to open the enrollment to allow people outside of the district to apply to come to the district. And so if we've got bloated classrooms and not enough, you know, place for some of these kids to go, then why in the world would you possibly open enrollment. And my understanding is there were hundreds of applications and somewhere around 50 were allowed in. And I may be wrong about that, so correct me, but why

in the world would that happen in Montgomery if we're facing all these problems?

So, I mean, you queued it up greatly. Limited, limited open enrollment is, um, opportunity for a student within Tomball ISD, Magnolia ISD, Conroe ISD to transfer into one of our campuses. And the only— I shouldn't say the only— the, the major overwhelming benefit of even that program or that opportunity is funding. It is 100% a funding-based decision. And so we did. We decided this summer to open up limited open enrollment with a very clear emphasis on the limited part. Excuse me. Um, And you actually had pretty good facts there. We had a lot of applications, and over half of those were denied. And it led to about 50 kids that were allowed in Montgomery ISD.

And what we did before we opened enrollment is we analyzed our capacity at all of our campuses. And we got to the fact that, okay, the only campuses that we truly have capacity at and our ability to maintain this long-term are our secondary campuses. So we had a very intentional plan going into limited open enrollment in that, one, if you allow a 12th grader into Montgomery ISD, they're there for one year and they're gone, right? So impact of them minimal other than the funding fight, the funding side of it.

Sure.

We had capacity at our junior highs and we had capacity at our high schools. And so No student was admitted into an elementary campus as limited open enrollment as a sole applicant. Here, I want to come to this campus, my name's Johnny. The only considerations that were made for the lower elementary grade levels is if your sibling was going to be approved at a high school campus and you were at an elementary campus. And a lot of those times they said, well, we want to be at Montgomery Elementary. I'm sorry, we don't have room at Montgomery Elementary. If you want to be a transfer student, you can go to this campus because that's the only place we have room. And so we, we put very strict restrictions on that. And so

in addition to those, for the first time, part of the application process of applying was you had to provide your previous year's discipline record.

Okay.

And your previous year's attendance Because it shouldn't be a burden.

Right.

It shouldn't be a burden on our teachers, our administrators, to deal with a student that's an LOE. We don't have to allow you into the district. So, um, and that's a big reason why over half of those kids, over 50-something percent, 58%, were denied, is because either their discipline wasn't appropriate or their attendance wasn't appropriate.

Right.

And so, um, another thing we did is Texas Education Code states that if you allow a transfer, it's for the year.

Okay.

So there is a way to get around that. And we got around it through a district of innovation that says, if we approve you day 1, and day 2, you decide to kick our teacher in the shin and throw a desk across the room and throw your pudding at lunch, hey, day 2, you're no longer a student in Montgomery ISD. You can go back to your home district.

Waste of a perfectly good pudding.

Right, exactly. Don't waste it. Some of our— man, our food cafeteria is really good. That's a whole nother topic of conversation. But my kids, I would— don't throw any of it. But so we really were intentional about putting in expectations that made it not a burden on our people. And I'll— we still get applications to this day, and we're not approving anybody right now.

Right.

Because again, I don't think it's right that Miss Smith has had her students in her classroom for now going on 2 and a half months, and us insert a child that we don't really have to insert at this time.

Right.

It shouldn't be her job to now catch up Johnny Smith, who doesn't go to Montgomery ISD, to where her other kids are.

Right.

So again, we, we really are trying to be as mindful as we can about that. All of our overcrowding that we're having, some of our classroom ratios that are over 22 to 1 at the elementary campuses, none of that is because of open enrollment.

Okay.

If, if we have not—

Is that people's beef? Is there— they're saying like the elementary ratios are way off?

Almost all of our concerns and complaints come as a basis of everything points to LOE. And within Montgomery ISD, we have—

So they're connecting 2 ideas that have no connection.

2 ideas that don't— they're not directly correlated.

Okay, I got you.

Because like, it's the easy thing to point to.

The cynical and suspicious side of my brain is like, okay, is part of the application like yards per carry? Yeah, yeah.

Well, and so let me ask this question based on that. What would the deficit be if we didn't have those 50 students here?

So, um, 50 students, and it can depending on— and that's the other consideration about focusing at the secondary campuses, because most of those students enroll in career tech courses, and career tech courses actually generate more funding for us. Okay, so what are career tech courses? Cosmetology, welding, emergency medical technician. We've got a CTE center that's being built that it's state of the art. It's going to be phenomenal and open in August of '25.

What does CTE stand for?

Career tech education.

Career tech education.

Okay. Thank you. And so within the 50 students, roughly, you're probably looking at closer to another half a million dollars or so.

Wow.

I can tell you that if across our district, we've got, like I said, 9,927 kids, 26 kids, 300 of those are LOE kids.

Okay.

300 across our entire district.

Not that many.

Not that many. And if we had not had those over the last several years, because a lot of those LOE kids have been in Montgomery ISD since kindergarten.

Yeah.

And now they're seniors.

Wow.

And they've been phenomenal students and they've done everything they're supposed to do.

That's why they're still here.

And they've added value to our district in so many ways.

Yeah.

And so, so what's people's beef?

I mean, like, why, why are they—

The fact that their, their parents or their guardians pay taxes to Conroe ISD or Magnolia ISD and their tax dollars don't go to Montgomery ISD, but their basic allotment, the amount of money the state gives us, does go directly to us. And what those students have allowed us to do is not call for Prop A 5 years ago.

Yeah.

Like that. That's what it comes down to.

It's a misunderstanding.

So are people, are people saying like, look, you've let all these people in. If you hadn't done that, maybe we wouldn't need Prop A. Is that what, is that the line there? Okay. I got you.

But it's, but it's really adverse.

It's the other way around.

The other way around. But, and again, this is why education is so important and why, why I'm so glad that you've chosen to be here with us tonight is to, to help educate because it's easy to make assumptions based on our, the way our brains work. We're smart people. I can figure this out, but the legislation has made it very complicated for sure. So, um, let me ask you another question. So in the neighborhood that I live in, uh, we're zoned, uh, specifically to Oak Hills and Keenan, which, uh, for those that don't know what that is, that's a, it's a junior high, uh, and an elementary school that are right next to each other. They're on the same campus.

Um, Traffic on the road leading to that campus—it's a two-lane county road. It's been there forever, I think. It's it's very bad in the mornings, and we live in specifically in a neighborhood that even getting out of our neighborhood into the car rider line is very very difficult to do. But I know that there is. 110-acre tract of land that was just sold. It's about to be a development with new homes. There's another, I believe, 30 acres, uh, that's on the east side of the school. On the west side of school, I think there's another 30 acres. If you're familiar with that area, it's the, the area next to the fire station that has a pond on it. And then to the south, I don't even know how big that is, but there's 3

neighborhoods. that are currently in development that are going to just completely increase the amount of traffic in that area. So I, I first, I want you to address the traffic issue. How, how are you as, as school board people addressing the traffic issue? But I see security officers out there directing traffic before and after school. My guess is if this doesn't pass, the traffic will get worse because I'm assuming those traffic officers who are getting paid overtime to be there don't get paid whatsoever, which means they're gone, which means traffic gets even worse. Am I even remotely close on any of that?

You're really close on all of it.

Okay.

So, yeah. And my kids actually go to Keenan too, so I know that traffic very well. I know the car rider line very well. Yeah. And the other implication of Prop A is that I mentioned earlier, we drive over a million miles a year and we transport 4,500 kids every day on buses.

Wow, that's a lot.

So if we're forced to reduce staff with bus drivers or implement some sort of radius around our campuses—

Traffic goes up.

Traffic goes up because those kids still have to get to school. So they get off the bus and now get in the car rider line.

Yep.

So the amount of transportation we provide is one of those intentionalities about trying to reduce our car rider congestion. And as we mentioned, everyone's available. So if you really don't like the car rider line, put your kid on the bus and we'll get them there.

Sure.

But it is a real concern. And I'm not naive to think of that, you know, people should just be okay because it's school and it's kids. Or I'm also not naive. We talked about earlier the $9 a month or the amount of money it may be, it's real. It's tangible. It means something.

Yep.

Right? And I don't want to discredit that at all. But I do try to frame it through the bigger picture of things. And specifically about Keenan, we have officers there, like you mentioned, in the morning, in the afternoon. And would it, would it benefit us to have them there earlier and there later? Yes.

Yeah.

But we can't afford the overtime to do so. We have really tried to, to examine— as a matter of fact, our Chief Operations and Facilities Officer did a calculation based on, well, if we looped this extra section and started double stacking cars, how many cars could be fit and get them off of Keenan? Like, we really do understand that that is a challenge, and it's as the community grows We work in conjunction, in coordination with the county. Commissioner Riley is the commissioner in that area, and he's been great to work with. His office has been responsive. We collaborate together. We have conversations. We've done a traffic study in that area. A light at some point will need to be installed right there at the entrance to the campus. And we've also had that

conversation with the developers that This is y'all's problem also. Yeah, as y'all build and develop out here.

How are you going to attract people to the area if the traffic— whenever they're coming to view these houses that you're building, they can't get to the development? So you're gonna have to probably shoulder some of that. Now, and you mentioned a light, I'll mention that, um, Lone Star Elementary that's on 2854, which is just a nightmare during school time, there's an officer there controlling that light. One of your officers is controlling that light, looking at the traffic, determining when, when is it time for me to allow cars to go and how many do I determine get to go through. That guy goes away too. So again, we're talking about major traffic implications if this doesn't pass as well.

Sci-Fair is a great example. If you think back, you look back at the news articles and news stories that came out in early August when we started back to school. Cy-Fair cut several million dollars, probably tens of million dollars out of their budget through transportation efforts.

Really? Geez.

And the result was news stories everywhere about the mile-long car rider lines that they had and the impact to traffic. And we understand, like, people have to get to work. Yeah. Yep. And we want Most importantly, we want our kids to get to our campuses safely.

You know what it makes me think happens? Yeah, because there's going to be more wrecks. There just will be. And, and it makes me assume that what will happen is people will go, well, to heck with this. I'm not going to do this. I'm going to move. I'm going to go to another place that doesn't have the traffic congestion. So I'm going to move. Well, if you're, if you're truly worried about your house, and how much it's worth, just wait till people start flocking away and your home— like, there's, there's suddenly, instead of— and we've talked about this a lot on our show about how there's a deficit in homes available, which is part of the reason that we're in the housing

crisis that we are right now.

Yeah.

You start, you start taking a neighborhood that has 2 or 3 homes available and now there's 10 or 15 houses available. What do you think that does to your property value? it's going to diminish it as well. So the, the impact of, of, you know, we're living in a booming, great area as it's growing, or property values going up, all these sorts of things— I, I don't believe that that's going to continue if this doesn't pass. I think that there are going to be things that happen that people are— are unintended consequences that, that are far-reaching. And it's not just about the school, it's about the community that you live in. It's about the, the people that are,

that are coming or the people that are leaving, uh, the traffic, the, the quality of life that you're experiencing. All of a sudden, that 25-minute commute that I'm taking turns into a 35-minute commute and 40-minute commute, and then it becomes a continual problem. So—

Well, and like, it, it's also obvious that school districts, because of the way they're set up in Texas, can go into decline.

Oh, sure.

You know, and, and because when we moved back here in the '90s, I mean, like, the, the top one was Klein ISD, and it was for a long time.

Yeah.

You know, um, and they're just, they're just not anymore.

Nope.

Um, and there's probably several factors that, that, that go into that, changing, you know, demographics and, and all kinds of different things. Um, but on, on the, on the traffic thing, When, when we were just in Florida, where we were staying was not very far from where I grew up. And I was— I asked the kids if they wanted to go see my old elementary school, and they said yeah. Um, which, uh, looking back on it was kind of grim. The first one I went to was called Challenger 7. I grew up in Cape Canaveral area, so all the schools are named after shuttles.

Wow.

So the first one I went to was Challenger 7, and it was like we had like bomb threats all the time. growing up, like, because people thought it was funny that that shuttle had exploded, right? Um, and then I moved to a new one, which was like— I think it ended up being like 3.5 miles away from my house. I rode my bicycle to school every day, 3.5 miles, me and my little sister. I mean, from first grade on. Uh, and I was kind of driving through, then I could remember how to get home from the school And so I took the kids to see the house, and my wife just kind of— she was like, your parents let you ride your bike to school? And I was like, yeah, everybody did. And I was like, but like, also

look and see how far the, the sidewalk is off the main road. It was a good 50, 60 feet away from the, from the road.

Wow.

So there was like a huge gap. Um, and I, I looked at her and I was like, you know, I think even now if we lived here, I don't know that I would let my kids ride my— their bike to school. I, and I, I kind of feel like that's the way a lot of people feel. Now, I know that's not the case at the school in Woodforest. I mean, just about everybody rides their bicycle to that school.

A bunch do.

That live in, that live in Woodforest. But there's also, like, parents riding their bicycle. When I've seen it, it's parents riding their bicycles with the kids.

Yep.

Is it, is, is that something that's just culturally changed? Do you have many kids riding their bicycles to school? I mean, like, Yeah, we don't.

A lot of our, a lot of our campuses aren't just— they're not set up for the neighborhood-based campuses. Like, because I was the same way. Like, my elementary school was right in the middle of my neighborhood. So we rode our bikes to school.

Yeah. But I think that's a generational thing too.

We really have— yeah, one, Maidley Ranch, is, you know, set back there in Walden. And that is really the one that is a true neighborhood-based campus. All the others are kind of off by themselves. Yeah. But interesting enough, as we mentioned, the developers that have bought out around Keenan, that's one of the things that they would like to engage in conversations with is creating sidewalk access or secondary access around the back of the building. Because honestly, if I buy next to Keenan and I've got to get in my car and drive out onto Keenan to go into Keenan, that would be a nightmare. It's not gonna be good. So Hopefully, we'll see more of that. Honestly, I think it's a value add. I think

it's—

Are the kids in Walden, are they riding bicycles?

We have more walkers for sure.

More walkers. Okay.

A lot more walkers for sure in Walden than we do anywhere else.

I'm not kidding, man. When I grew up, there was like 10 layers of bike racks.

Yeah, exactly.

And it was just like, why is that so different? I get it, especially out here. I mean, this was kind of more of a rural community before it exploded. And so they kind of had to build where they could build.

Well, yeah, you look at Woodforest and it's very much a planned community that they, they planned things very, very strategically, and we're, we're currently not doing that so well in Montgomery, just frankly. And, and part of that is, is because especially where, where we live, a lot of people own property and a lot of people are on, on multiple acres. And so putting sidewalks doesn't make sense in a, in an acreage neighborhood. Uh, I mean, you live in an acreage neighborhood. There's no sidewalks here.

If you were making the argument that we need to let kids ride horses to school, yeah, I am in. You're in.

You're all in. I will go build the hitch post myself.

I understand. My boys would be 100% on board. Yeah. Matter of fact, I joke, I mentioned my second grader. He has more interest than the educational pathway in his life in second grade. And if I let him drop out of school tomorrow, I think he would if he could just go work cows. And he wants to ride bucking horses and become a bronc rider. We'll see how that goes. He's not gonna rope because he's left-handed.

So— oh wow. Oh, he can heel, man.

He can heel. He can heel.

I mean, you can still do it, but like, they just want you to heel. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, okay. So, um, before we move, and we're, we're gonna wrap this up pretty quickly, uh, but are, are there any other— I mean, I think we've hit on quite a few negative impacts that, that are gonna happen. And I, I— part of the reason we, we've kind of sat on this is because I believe that the negative impacts far outweigh the positive only because the positive is status quo, in my opinion. And we'll get to that in a minute. But are there any other things that we haven't touched on negatively that you're going, okay, we probably need to mention this?

No, I think we've discussed all aspects of it. And it's really easier to have that conversation about the picture of what, uh, what it looks like if it— if we can't increase our revenues.

Sure.

Because it's just factual-based. Like, we have a $4 million deficit. What does it mean to have to reduce that? Here's what it ha— and that's in my ability as a superintendent. I can't— and you mentioned earlier— I can't advocate for or against any sort of election-based criteria, especially for the school district. So, um, but the facts are the facts.

Sure.

In the sense that I can say very clearly, whether people hear that as persuasive or not, that we have to reduce staff if Wood doesn't pass. Yeah, that's a fact. We can't carry a deficit budget again at the tune of $4 million. So, um, no, I think we've covered it. Okay, covered it really well.

Because you guys already have a plan in place, you know, should it, should it not pass?

So we don't have a—

Not like, like, not like every I dotted.

Yeah, we don't have a list, like we don't have a chopping block list.

There's not a hit list, right?

Reality is reality, right? All of that takes planning. And at our senior leadership level, we do have an approach to those conversations that we have in place. But no, we have not laid out XYZ.

Right. Yeah. So let's talk about, as long as we need to, but let's shift to the positive. My guess is Because we're really just talking about— I mean, you're, you're saying there's going to be a little bit of overage, right? Um, and it's, it's exciting to dream about what those might be, but we're not talking tens of millions of dollars. We're talking a million. And you're talking about that's just a police force. Like, that's just a, a certain segment or a certain thing here and there. It doesn't take long in the world that we live in today to hit a million dollars when you're talking about 10,000 students.

Yeah.

I mean, that's not very, very much, but my guess is, I mean, we're definitely looking to just keep, keep where we're at. We're not, I mean, what I'm hearing you say is that this is not like so over and above that, man, we're gonna start building stuff left and right and all this new infrastructure is gonna happen and oh my goodness, it's gonna be cherries and strawberries all over the place. I don't know why I picked those 2 fruits, but What, what are those positive things?

Yeah, and so another misconception about Prop A in general is it's not a bond election, right? And you mentioned kind of building and, and adding these facilities and infrastructure. We passed a bond in 2022, $322 million, and that's what built Elementary School 7. It's built the new CTE center. It's done renovations on all of our campuses and continuing to do more on all of our campuses. That bond money can't be touched. for anything other than build buildings, buy land, buy buses, capital improvement projects, right? Can't touch it.

Was that bond just for Montgomery ISD?

Just for Montgomery ISD. Okay. And, and the, the tax rate implication on that was zero. Like, there was no tax rate increase at all. Wow. To pass a $322 million bond. That's impressive. And so the, the positives, or the, the other aspect of Prop A, Um, mentioned it does cover our deficit this year and provide some additional capacity. One of the questions I get a lot from our staff and from other community members is, so are you guaranteeing a raise, a percentage raise for your staff if it passes? It's a 2% raise for our staff. And the hard answer is no, I'm not. I, I'm not in a position to guarantee Sure. A percentage. I mentioned to y'all before we started this, I'm as transparent as we can be. I never want to be able to have to

back myself out of what I said. And so what I've committed to and what we have as a district has committed to is the sense that our board last year adopted— we're at a $4 million deficit. They passed a 1% raise. That's almost $700,000.

Yeah.

To give our staff 1% raise, that's a $700,000 expenditure.

Wow.

So if you look at just our capacity that we have over what we might get with Prop A, 2% raise and it's all gone.

Right.

So the funding priorities that we talk about within Prop A of recruit and retain our staff, maintain our student programs, maintain our level of safety and security, those aren't just talking about next year. Like, Prop A's funding priority for next year when it comes to recruit and retain our staff might be the sense that we don't have to lay people off.

Yeah.

The following year, maybe that looks like let's shift towards the compensation component of recruit and retain our staff. The following year, let's shift to this aspect. So, um, the funding priorities go on in perpetuity. And so, um, some of the things that, that would be impactful immediately our ability to just open up some positions that we need to open up. We've got some classrooms at the elementary levels that are over 22 to 1. State law says that K through 4, you have to be 22 to 1 student-teacher ratio. If you go over that, you have 2 options. You can apply for a waiver, or you can hire another teacher and break that classroom up. Right. We can't hire another

teacher right now.

So waivers it is.

Waivers it is. Yeah. So The, the, and honestly, that won't be felt. That won't be seen. If we're able, it'll be seen by 22 kids. Yeah. It might be seen by—

It'll be seen by the kids in that class.

Yeah. Class. But those do matter. But those are decisions we're making right now to not hire teachers that if Prop A were to pass, we could free up and post positions to hire additional teachers.

Sure. And I would say that, that while a teacher might not get a raise, They are getting a quality raise because now they're not having to take on as much load. They've got help that they may not have had otherwise. They've got, you know, they've got kids that aren't getting up, you know, 30 minutes early to get into car rider line than they had to. So their kids are, are healthier, and there's a lot of impact. And they've got a job. For some of them, they got a job. period, that, that's a pretty good raise. If you don't— not have a job versus having a job, it's a pretty big raise for some of them. So, um, so it sounds like

there's— I mean, there's quite a bit of upside, but it's not, it's not so crazy that it's like, oh my goodness, we're, we're out here doing crazy stuff.

No. And, and that's, uh, something I did an article with, uh, Community Impact that was just put out, uh, today. I think it was released this morning, and Because of this financial storm of a situation that we're in, you mentioned kind of how do we get here?

Yeah.

There's a lot of things, unfunded mandates, stagnant funding levels, inflation, all those things and several others. There's not— Prop A is not one wide painting brush that just fixes everything.

Sure.

Whether Prop A passes or it doesn't, our focus is then going to go to our state legislators to say that just to account for inflation, I saw a a thing on social media today that said, I want to say it was like an $1,100 or $1,400 increase to the basic allotment. Just to give our districts the same buying power they had 5 years ago, the basic allotment needs to go up over $1,000 a kid.

Yeah.

So we need changes and we need improvements in the funding formulas for public education. And we know that going into the next session, we've got great relationships with our representatives and our legislators in our area. School choice vouchers is a— it's going to be declared an emergency item and it's going to be top of ticket before probably public education ever gets a seat at the table. And that's a whole nother topic of conversation. But—

That's an interesting one. Yeah. I mean, I will tell you, the folks that I know from the private sector, don't want it. And that's the interesting part, right? Is like—

You would think they would.

You would think they would, but they don't. Like, they are strongly— like, at least the ones I've talked to are strongly opposed to a voucher system. Um, and the big reason being is that typically government money comes with government intervention. And that's the whole reason that we have a private option is so like— and, you know, in Texas, I was looking up the numbers on this. Texas, it's like, makes up 6% of the nation's homeschoolers. And then of the private schools in Texas, 60 to 70% of them are religious schools. And that's like, they don't want— those places don't want government involved.

Right. Yeah.

And so, like, there's— I don't— I actually don't know, because when I initially heard about the voucher system, I was like, that actually sounds like a really good idea. It gives people in poor communities access to better schools. potentially. But when you start talking to them about it, it's like, well, then you gotta start getting them there.

Yep.

And then you get, like, there's all sorts of things that go along with that that the voucher system doesn't necessarily cover. And so it's, it's a weird one. Like, it, it seems like the people who would benefit it, meaning the private schools, don't want it.

Yeah.

And so I don't know who's pushing this thing.

Well, it's, it's statewide. It, it's a statewide thing.

I, I know it's coming up, and I know people keep talking about it.

Our, our, Our senator is the chair of the Senate Education Committee in our area. And again, we've got a great relationship with him and he understands the need that public education has in our area. But he's also a proponent of the voucher system. And what you mentioned exactly to a T, one of the biggest challenges that we have, I mentioned we've got great private schools in our area.

Yeah.

great relationships with them. But I actually had a question at a seniors with seniors event that we had at Montgomery High School today. And one of the gentlemen said, y'all need to make sure that you're doing everything you can to market yourself, to draw kids out of the public school, out of the private schools, or out of the homeschools, because public education as a whole is not as good as it was. And my My response was something along the lines of, so what are your metrics that tells you public school is not good and private school is good? Because we don't take the same tests. We're not held to the same standards.

Right.

We don't have the same interventions and red tape around us as others do. And so until we're requiring the same, in terms— I mentioned earlier that we don't have control over our expenditures. If Johnny shows up to our school district who's a special education student who requires high-intensity medical interventions or one-to-one behavioral specialists, we have to provide that. If he shows up—

Private schools don't.

If he shows up at this private school down the road or anywhere in our county and says, hey, I'm here to enroll, voucher or no voucher, they don't have to admit that kid.

Right.

And as a matter of fact, all students in homeschool or private school currently that are special education in any way, shape, or form are evaluated by our staff in public education.

Yeah.

It's like we're still required legally right now to go evaluate and do paperwork on those kids that are not in our system and we don't receive funding for.

Yeah, why are you, why are you required to do that?

The law. It's federal law that even if they're not enrolled, even if they're not enrolled, if they're a special education student, we're, we are required to identify and, and assess, evaluate every kid in our county, every kid within our district.

Okay, so whether they live in the district, I got you.

Okay, well, and I mean This is my, my son's not special ed, but he is part— this is, um, it's, it's part of a similar— it is getting into some hairy stuff, but he's, uh, he— dude, I'm so proud of him. He, uh, I haven't even told you this, Craig, uh, he just graduated this week out of speech therapy.

Yeah.

And he's been in— he's been in speech since 2018. Well, he hasn't been in school since 2018, but he has been in speech from the Montgomery School District since 2018 because they are required to treat him before he even gets in school. And that's a— that is— I'll tell you, as a dad, to not have to go and pay a private speech therapist to do that. Look, that's a huge thing. And we let him pick his restaurant tonight. I thought I was gonna be late because between open house today and him getting to pick where he got to go eat, and it's just a huge thing for us.

What did he pick? Whataburger. Yeah, well, we need to teach him to aim higher. You got to pick—

You know what, he likes the honey barbecue chicken sandwich.

Look, I don't blame him. It tastes good. I'm just just—

I, I took over the late part for you. So there you go. But it's all good. It's funny you say that. And apparently, how old is your son?

He's almost 10. Almost 10. He's in 4th grade.

My 8-year-old, the one I mentioned, struggling reader and everything, we, he just, we just dismissed him from special education this summer. Awesome. From speech. Because again, that's awesome. He was 2 and a half, 3, and couldn't articulate anything. Yeah. And on either. So we, we got him to speech services through the public education system. And he has been in speech and doing speech therapy since he was in before pre-K. Yeah. And so it's always been part of his thing. And it's a great feeling to say, you know what, man? The whole purpose of these services and the support is so at some point you can do this on your own. Yeah. Not that it's not gonna be difficult. Not that you're not gonna be able to have some challenges, but you can do it on your own. They've learned. Yeah.

Yeah. That's cool. Really, really good. Well, what else Have— do we— is there anything like last comments or anything else that we've missed or that you want to add before we kind of wrap it up?

No, honestly, just thank you for the opportunity. I mentioned my passion is our kids and the fact that being as ingrained and honestly just submerged in this topic as I've been since stepping foot in the district in January, I'll tell you, the last thing a new superintendent wants to do is call a tax rate election.

Yeah.

I don't want to do that. That's not on my bucket list. Right? Like, I want to spend time investing and building trust in our community before I have to go to everybody and say, by the way, this is our needs and this is our facts. And so I don't take this conversation lightly, and I don't mean to portray that it shouldn't be a big deal to anybody because it is a big deal.

Sure.

It matters. But so do our kids and so do our schools. But we have a website that you can go to, www.misd.org/propa. There's videos there. There's other resources there, literature there. At every single one of my community meetings I've had, PTA meetings, PTO meetings, I have explicitly said, folks, I'm here. I want feedback. I want feedback. So obviously that we can do it through a question and answer. If you're not like the raise your hand in class type of person, that's fine. Shoot me an email. I mean, I have taken— we've got a great comms team. They will take Facebook comms because I don't have Facebook. My wife has Facebook.

What's a comms team?

Communications team.

Okay.

They'll get comments.

We're not big enough yet.

Right. They'll get comments off of Facebook and send them to me and say, hey, what do you— how How do we respond to this? And I'll pick up the— can you give me this person's phone number? Because I'll just pick up the phone and I'll call them and say, I respect your position on it. Can we talk about the facts about where you think things are and where they really are? Because again, I'm not trying to sway your opinion, but I just want you to be informed when you go cast a vote. Other than that, that's it, man.

When you're getting those comments, is there like an overarching theme to what you're hearing back when people are upset? Or—

Yeah, honestly, a lot of it just deals with, um, the perception of how we're funded, a misconception of that, and say, well, you know, our property values continue to go up and go up and go up. And they're— they do. Yeah, they do. But we kind of had that conversation already. Yeah. And honestly, our appraisal district is in a tough spot with that also because they're audited. This is a whole nother conversation we get into, but they're audited from our comptroller through what's called the property value study. And if our appraisal district is outside of a confidence interval, which is, uh, 5% plus or minus their number, or 10% plus or minus— long story short, if the appraisal district says you're worth— you have $9 billion of

value in your district, comptroller comes in and says, nope, you've got $11 billion worth of value in your district— that means we're funded from TEA based on what the comptroller says. Not what our appraisal district says, which means the state of Texas withholds funding from us because they think we're receiving tax collections on $11 billion when we're only receiving tax collections on $9 billion. So the only, the only negative that comes, the only consequence that comes out of a failed property value study is an impact to school district state funding.

Yeah.

And so our appraisers across the state have had to keep up and keep up and keep up with the property value study component of, uh, of that side of things and home values.

Yeah. Wow. Hey, real quick before we check out tonight, one of the things, because I mean, the show is all 50 states, 12 different countries. I think Texas is kind of unique in the sense that we have independent school districts. Could, could you, could you take a second? And because I, I know that's not the case in many states, is there— I'm trying to think of one off the top. Do you know any off the top of your head that also operate under that kind of a system?

You know, I don't. I know most are county, countywide school districts, or, you know, Louisiana's got their parishes and however they divide that up.

So what makes this unique? Because I know that affects the funding because they're independent and all that kind of stuff. How does that make Texas unique in that regard? Because I think there's probably people listening going like, why is it that— why does yours have to be that way? Shouldn't it be statewide? Shouldn't it be countywide? Shouldn't it? You know.

So I, and I don't know the the historical background of it, but Texas is humongous, right? So to think that we could have one, uh, coming from Norman GISD in Leon County, right? It's like, I don't know what is that, 700-some square miles or something like that. Like, it's a mass. It's immense.

Yeah.

You can't have one school district located in that large of a rural area that all these students can actually be transported to and serviced. And so what Texas has done is we have independent school districts where, like, within Montgomery County alone, it's Montgomery ISD, Conroe ISD, Splendora ISD, Willis ISD. I think New Caney ISD actually touches into Montgomery County also. So all of us are independent school districts from each other, from the county. We're all funded the same. We're all public education entities. We're all run by school boards, elected— 7 elected officials. So the laws that govern each of those are the same, but within one county, individual school district boundaries govern and identify the school district that that area is zoned to.

Oh yeah, that's a good answer. It informed me because I didn't even— I wasn't even completely aware of that. So that's really, really good.

Yeah, well, and I— from what I understand, it allows I mean, it allows some independence so that you can make decisions that's best for your area, and it doesn't— it's not going to necessarily affect Willis, correct?

You know, yeah, yeah. There's varying opinions on a lot of things, right?

Especially there's— and including, including this thing right now.

Yeah, yeah. There's topics of political nature and, and sensitive areas where people's beliefs differ very— there's a vast difference in what people believe is right and wrong, and Again, that topic holding the time, but it does allow some independence. The challenge is some of the independent part has kind of been stripped out on the laws that govern us and what we're required to do and required to implement.

Right.

And that's some of the charge that we as school districts have is that as we talk about funding increases, as we talk about ways to better our system, it is to create more autonomy within the local control aspect. Like, we have 7 elected officials that run school districts. 7. Yeah. That's where the majority of our decisions, the majority of what drives our school districts, that's where the decision should be happening. Right. Right. Not the 200 and some odd miles away.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, thank you so much. This has been really, really good. We do our best to educate people on this show, and I think that this has gone a long way to do that. If you have more questions, go to the website. Uh, we'll link that up in the show notes as well. And, uh, we just want to thank you, Mark. Thanks for coming.

Enjoyed it, man. Thank y'all very much for having me. It's been fun.

All right. Yep. We thank you for listening. Till next time, we'll see you later. See ya.