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South Texas District Suspends Sports to Keep Afloat
Texas Tribune 1/26/12
South Texas District Suspends Sports to Keep Afloat
PREMONT — A plan to save a school district has come down to rows of yellow Post-it notes.
Dozens dot a wall in Premont Independent School District Superintendent Ernest Singleton's office, covering white poster boards labeled with the state benchmarks — 11 in total — that his district must meet in order to remain open next year. Each note points to a step toward the corresponding goal. Scrawled on one are two words that have brought national attention to the tiny 570-student school district in South Texas: "suspend sports."
Singleton came to Premont ISD in June. He received a letter from the Texas Education Agency in July saying that after years of financial disarray and lagging academic performance, the district would lose its accreditationand be absorbed into a neighboring district.
After the initial shock subsided — despite the district’s shabby record, Mr. Singleton said he did not expect closure so quickly — he took his case to Austin and asked for more time to turn it around. In November, Premont residents voted overwhelmingly for a 13-cent property tax hike to support the schools. A month later, the agency agreed to delay its decision by a year, setting out the stringent demands related to financial and academic improvement that now line the superintendent’s office.
The reprieve was hard-won. If Premont ISD fails this time around, there will be no appeal. With those stakes in mind, Mr. Singleton turned to a budget that he had already scrubbed bare and looked for more ways to save. The $150,000 that the district would spend during the next year on spring and fall sports, including football, stared him in the face.
South Texas District Suspends Sports to Keep Afloat
PREMONT — A plan to save a school district has come down to rows of yellow Post-it notes.
Dozens dot a wall in Premont Independent School District Superintendent Ernest Singleton's office, covering white poster boards labeled with the state benchmarks — 11 in total — that his district must meet in order to remain open next year. Each note points to a step toward the corresponding goal. Scrawled on one are two words that have brought national attention to the tiny 570-student school district in South Texas: "suspend sports."
Singleton came to Premont ISD in June. He received a letter from the Texas Education Agency in July saying that after years of financial disarray and lagging academic performance, the district would lose its accreditationand be absorbed into a neighboring district.
After the initial shock subsided — despite the district’s shabby record, Mr. Singleton said he did not expect closure so quickly — he took his case to Austin and asked for more time to turn it around. In November, Premont residents voted overwhelmingly for a 13-cent property tax hike to support the schools. A month later, the agency agreed to delay its decision by a year, setting out the stringent demands related to financial and academic improvement that now line the superintendent’s office.
The reprieve was hard-won. If Premont ISD fails this time around, there will be no appeal. With those stakes in mind, Mr. Singleton turned to a budget that he had already scrubbed bare and looked for more ways to save. The $150,000 that the district would spend during the next year on spring and fall sports, including football, stared him in the face.
Football takes a holiday in Texas. Freaking shocking. While it is sad that these kids will not have the same opportunities to compete in sports as other kids in districts nearby, at least they won't be doing a daily commute 20 or so miles to get to school. I could see that being much, much worse. And some families just making the decision not to send their kids to school.
This one belongs on the republican controlled legislature which has slowly been starving school budgets.
21 replies
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This is an example of what that looks like in Texas.
150K? What multiple of that was spent by tax payers on guarding Rick Perry's behind as he traipsed around the country in his megalomaniacal pursuit of the presidency?
Because the up and coming economies that we've always considered third world are kicking our ass. Those countries are investing in their education systems and eating our lunch. While here in the U.S. we're dumbing down our education system, making cuts to please corporate masters and we are slipping quite rapidly to the bottom.
Very sad indeed.
Rick Perry wasted another $2 million of Texas taxpayer money on his extra security detail. That's more than 13 Premont sized schools comparable sports budgets.
Man how I hate that taxpayer money black hole that is Rick Perry.
I can't imagine that nightmare at all. Even being bused, these kids would have to be up earlier and spend 1 to 2 extra hours a day just in the commute part of the deal.
What a mess. 
"That created some anger in San Diego since the people there consider the people in Premont to be inferior. "
Was that meant for purposes of the football/sports competition or do you mean that there is some class or racism issue involved?
Just wondering.
Class Warfare by Paul Burka Texas Monthly March 2012 Issue
Class Warfare
Since 1984, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled over and over again that the state’s school finance plan is inadequate, inefficient, and unconstitutional. The outcome of the current lawsuit will likely be no different. Why is this the most intractable problem in state government?
Three days before Christmas, attorneys representing a coalition of 63 school districts delivered an unwelcome present to state officials: legal documents that would trigger the latest in a series of lawsuits over the way Texas finances—or more accurately, fails to finance—its public schools. The delivery was unwanted, but it was not unexpected. The ongoing battle between the state and its financially strapped school districts has become a story with a theme but no ending, dating back to the first successful school finance lawsuit, in 1984, Edgewood Independent School District et al. v. Kirby et al. (William Kirby was the commissioner of education at the time). Since then, Edgewood v. Kirby has been contested more times than the estate of J. Howard Marshall. David Thompson, the lead attorney for one of four groups of school districts that are suing the state, likens the long series of lawsuits to the Harry Potter novels: each one starts where the last one leaves off, and in the end, they fit together. Unfortunately, in school finance there is no philosopher’s stone that can turn bad policy into good.
It is, alas, all too easy to get lost in the intricacies of school finance and to lose sight of what is at stake, so let’s be clear at the outset: the argument is over nothing less than the future of Texas. When schools are underfunded, as they have been since at least 2005, students don’t learn. When students don’t learn, they emerge from high school unprepared for college. When they aren’t ready for college, they risk joining the 75 percent of adults in Texas who don’t have a college degree (the national average is 72 percent). When they lack a college degree, their chances of finding a secure place in the state’s workforce diminish accordingly.
(snip)
Sometime in the upcoming months, the case of Fort Bend Independent School District v. Robert Scott will be tried in Travis County. The state will lose. The case will move on to the Court of Appeals and then on to the Supreme Court. Years will pass. Little will be settled. After 28 years, we are still fighting over many of the same points. And yet, in the time between the first Edgewood case and the Fort Bend case, Texas has undergone profound demographic changes. That schools are the first public institutions to be affected by this is what makes school finance such a critical issue. It compels us to address a situation that many Texans remain ambivalent toward: the profound cultural changes taking place within our state. But if the political system turns its back on today’s students, what kind of future can Texans expect?
Class Warfare
Since 1984, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled over and over again that the state’s school finance plan is inadequate, inefficient, and unconstitutional. The outcome of the current lawsuit will likely be no different. Why is this the most intractable problem in state government?
Three days before Christmas, attorneys representing a coalition of 63 school districts delivered an unwelcome present to state officials: legal documents that would trigger the latest in a series of lawsuits over the way Texas finances—or more accurately, fails to finance—its public schools. The delivery was unwanted, but it was not unexpected. The ongoing battle between the state and its financially strapped school districts has become a story with a theme but no ending, dating back to the first successful school finance lawsuit, in 1984, Edgewood Independent School District et al. v. Kirby et al. (William Kirby was the commissioner of education at the time). Since then, Edgewood v. Kirby has been contested more times than the estate of J. Howard Marshall. David Thompson, the lead attorney for one of four groups of school districts that are suing the state, likens the long series of lawsuits to the Harry Potter novels: each one starts where the last one leaves off, and in the end, they fit together. Unfortunately, in school finance there is no philosopher’s stone that can turn bad policy into good.
It is, alas, all too easy to get lost in the intricacies of school finance and to lose sight of what is at stake, so let’s be clear at the outset: the argument is over nothing less than the future of Texas. When schools are underfunded, as they have been since at least 2005, students don’t learn. When students don’t learn, they emerge from high school unprepared for college. When they aren’t ready for college, they risk joining the 75 percent of adults in Texas who don’t have a college degree (the national average is 72 percent). When they lack a college degree, their chances of finding a secure place in the state’s workforce diminish accordingly.
(snip)
Sometime in the upcoming months, the case of Fort Bend Independent School District v. Robert Scott will be tried in Travis County. The state will lose. The case will move on to the Court of Appeals and then on to the Supreme Court. Years will pass. Little will be settled. After 28 years, we are still fighting over many of the same points. And yet, in the time between the first Edgewood case and the Fort Bend case, Texas has undergone profound demographic changes. That schools are the first public institutions to be affected by this is what makes school finance such a critical issue. It compels us to address a situation that many Texans remain ambivalent toward: the profound cultural changes taking place within our state. But if the political system turns its back on today’s students, what kind of future can Texans expect?
This piece might require registration on their site which I believe is free. This particular piece by Burka is spot on. Sometimes he just gets it. It's really, really painfully simple. We are dooming the state of Texas and the future of Texas with this cheap crap shoot game of not funding education.
This is the spirit of teaching and students learning that we're all in this together. Republicans who only think in terms of "me, what's it in for me, it's all about me, me, me" will never understand this.
Lovely! Wonderful community spirit!
Texas Observer 6/27/12
The Writing On the Wall
The fight to save a South Texas school district.
THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL IS SUPPOSED TO be full of optimism and promise. It’s a day for blank notebooks, new clothes, fresh haircuts and a clean slate. But that wasn’t the case last fall at Premont High School. There was a sense of sadness among the students, parents and teachers. They had all heard the rumors: the state wanted to close them down. They were all but certain that this would be Premont’s final first day.
Ernest Singleton was determined to make it just another of many first days to come at Premont. The district’s new superintendent, Singleton had no intention of being its last. He had once helped save Benavides Junior High in nearby Duval County after the state threatened to shutter it, and he was planning a similar rescue in Premont. Over summer break, the school board had consolidated the high school and middle school to save money. One of Singleton’s first actions in his new job was to roll up his sleeves and join a top-to bottom cleaning and painting of the school building to get it ready for the new school year.
(snip)
“I am more confident now in the future for Premont than I’ve been since we first got that letter,” Singleton said recently. As the school year came to an end, the district was well on its way to satisfying all 11 conditions set by the TEA. Singleton insists it couldn’t have been done without the decision to cancel sports. “It was the turning point,” he said.
Even Navarro, the devoted cheerleader, recognizes this. “I would like to thank Mr. Singleton for sticking with us and not quitting. He didn’t give up on us.”
But while Premont has so far saved its school, the state’s funding formula that caused so much of the trouble hasn’t changed. Premont may have survived for the moment, but the state continues to endanger poor schools.
The Writing On the Wall
The fight to save a South Texas school district.
THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL IS SUPPOSED TO be full of optimism and promise. It’s a day for blank notebooks, new clothes, fresh haircuts and a clean slate. But that wasn’t the case last fall at Premont High School. There was a sense of sadness among the students, parents and teachers. They had all heard the rumors: the state wanted to close them down. They were all but certain that this would be Premont’s final first day.
Ernest Singleton was determined to make it just another of many first days to come at Premont. The district’s new superintendent, Singleton had no intention of being its last. He had once helped save Benavides Junior High in nearby Duval County after the state threatened to shutter it, and he was planning a similar rescue in Premont. Over summer break, the school board had consolidated the high school and middle school to save money. One of Singleton’s first actions in his new job was to roll up his sleeves and join a top-to bottom cleaning and painting of the school building to get it ready for the new school year.
(snip)
“I am more confident now in the future for Premont than I’ve been since we first got that letter,” Singleton said recently. As the school year came to an end, the district was well on its way to satisfying all 11 conditions set by the TEA. Singleton insists it couldn’t have been done without the decision to cancel sports. “It was the turning point,” he said.
Even Navarro, the devoted cheerleader, recognizes this. “I would like to thank Mr. Singleton for sticking with us and not quitting. He didn’t give up on us.”
But while Premont has so far saved its school, the state’s funding formula that caused so much of the trouble hasn’t changed. Premont may have survived for the moment, but the state continues to endanger poor schools.
Wonderful recap and summary of the problem with the way Texas finances their schools - especially the poor districts.