Texas Real Estate Daily

Graford Independent School District has again received a “superior achievement” in its accountability rating under Texas Schools FIRST financial accountability rating system, as noted at the Board of Trustee’s first public hearing on the matter last week.

The rating is the state’s highest.

In other business, Palo Pinto Chief Appraiser Donna Rhodes briefed the board on appraisal district issues and how it affects the school district.

“Some of the law suits question the methodology using comparable sales,” said GISD Superintendent Chance Welch.

“That keeps us near comparable values with the comptroller.”

Welch said the Texas Comptroller value for property was around $518 million with the comparable sales methodology. If the law suits result in changes of the appraisal method to an equity system, based upon lease value, the overall value would drop to around $400 million, Welch explained.

Credits: Lake Country Sun

Texas City Independent School District plans to reopen its campuses Tuesday — and there could be a large influx of new students.

Texas City Superintendent Bob Brundrett told members of the district’s board of trustees at an emergency meeting Thursday that any students who say they are homeless because of damages to their residence from Hurricane Ike must be accepted by the school.

“This is something we need to be prepared for as a district,” Brundrett said. “We have to accept these students at face value when they say they are homeless.”

Brundrett said the district would do research later this year to verify the students are indeed eligible to attend a district campus.

Brundrett is asking all staff of the district’s campuses to report for work Monday. Power has been restored to all the schools.

“We need to restore some sense of normalcy,” Brundrett told the board. “We need to get these kids in a clean, safe place with air and food. I’m not sure how much educating we will do at first, but we need to be fulfilling basic needs for the kids.”

According to a survey done by the school’s principals, 59 percent of the teachers have confirmed they will be at work Monday. According to the survey, some of the district’s teachers are still on Galveston and won’t leave their homes for fear of not being allowed back.

The district will be able to run all of its buses, although some may have to make double runs if there is a large number of new students.

As for damage to the campuses from the storm, the estimated total for repairs is $115,000. Damage to school roofs accounts for $80,000 of that total. The district anticipates all of the money being reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Several of the sports facilities received damage. The scoreboard was destroyed at Stingaree Stadium and damaged part of the track when it collapsed. The southwest light pole of the stadium is also without power.

Robinson Stadium had part of its fence blown down, and a light pole along the third base line is tipped over. A door on a storage garage has also been blown in, with no one able to get inside.

Credits: Galvnews

Dallas ISD school officials visited hurricane shelters this morning to enroll children who were displaced by Hurricane Ike.

The representatives were expected at Samuell-Grand Recreation Center, Loos Field House, Ellis Davis Field House and the Dallas Convention Center. Bilingual staff members planned to be at each shelter.

“If the parent wants them in school, we will get them in school,” said Jose Luis Torres, executive director of parent services and school choice for Dallas ISD.

At Samuell Grand Recreation Center in East Dallas, school district representative Rene Martinez helped with enrollment and registration. The center had 23 children ranging from ages 5 to 15.

There is no definitive time-limit for the evacuees to be in Dallas in order to register their children to school. “If it’s one day, it’s one day,” said Mr. Martinez. “Two days, two days. We’re taking this on a day-to-day basis.”

The center, which was converted into a shelter by the American Red Cross, has hosted evacuees since last week when Hurricane Ike hit the Texas Coast.

“We’re just trying to make life as easy and comfortable during this time for these folks,” Mr. Martinez said.

School representatives were also at the convention center recruiting parents and children this morning and a town hall meeting may be held in the afternoon, said Dr. Torres.

The Dallas Morning News was denied access to the convention center and unable to contact school representatives on scene.

As of Saturday, the convention center had about 250 children staying there, Dr. Torres said. The number of evacuees at shelters continues to fluctuate as people find housing with relatives and at hotels. He said the district expected to enroll about 100 children at the convention center today.

After Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Torres said about 2,500 evacuees enrolled in the Dallas school district. The majority of those children were elementary school students and some still remain.

Evacuee children in the Dallas area who are not staying in one of the shelters can enroll at their nearest school.

Fort Worth ISD officials are preparing for representatives to visit each evacuee shelter in the city. District spokesman Clint Bond said the Fort Worth ISD hopes to make those visits this week to help families decide whether to enroll their children.

Lewisville ISD also is accepting evacuee enrollment.

The Texas Education Agency continues to leave it to parents to decide if it makes sense to enroll their children in local schools based on their circumstances.

Parents should consider how long their children will be in the area. Some Gulf Coast school districts will extend the school year to make up the time lost from Hurricane Ike.

Credits: Dallas News

Two Amarillo schools are nationally recognized by earning Blue Ribbon awards.

Bivins Elementary and Landergin Elementary are among 26 Texas schools to receive the award this year.

The Amarillo Independent School District says both schools were nominated because of their high academic performance. Both Bivins and Landergin have their test results in the top ten percent, with at least 40 percent of the students being disadvantaged.

Both schools will be honored at a ceremony in Washington D.C. in October.

Credits: News Channel 10

Coming just months after the latest round of tuition increases, the state of Texas is opening a new prepaid tuition plan.

The Texas Tuition Promise Fund opens today, offering families predictability and, hopefully, savings on college costs.

A previous prepaid tuition plan closed to new enrollments in 2003, after the Legislature allowed schools to set their own tuition, setting off five years of increasing costs.

Comptroller Susan Combs is expected to announce the details at a press conference in Austin today. A Web site, www.texastomorrowfunds.org, will have prices and other information, said R.J. DeSilva, a spokesman for the comptroller’s office.

DeSilva said the cost will be based on current rates, allowing families to lock in current prices. People may buy as little as 1 percent of a year’s tuition and fees, he said; prices will vary depending upon what type of institution participants expect a child to attend.

Tuition and fees at Houston Community College, for example, are about $1,300 a year. They are nearly $6,500 at the University of Houston, and more than $8,500 at the University of Texas at Austin.

More expensive later
Participating in the Texas Tuition Promise Fund will get more expensive as tuition increases, DeSilva said.

The fund is mainly intended for use at public colleges and universities in Texas, although DeSilva said it could be used at out-of-state and private schools, with some caveats.

Prepaid tuition plans may be an especially good option for families when a child is closer to starting college, said Keith Fenstad, a financial adviser at Tanglewood Wealth Management.

He also likes 529 education savings plans, operated by some educational institutions and a number of states — Texas has two 529 plans — and named after the section of the Internal Revenue Code that created them in 1998.

Prepaid plans cover only tuition and required fees, but money from a 529 plan also may be spent on room and board and related college expenses. You don’t have to send your child to a college in the state that administers the plan.

The most important thing, Fenstad said, is to be aware of the looming cost.

“I have a 4-year-old and a 2-year old, and this weekend I was talking to my wife about what it costs today to send kids to a (school like) Rice, and to Sam Houston State University, where we both graduated, and she was floored,” he said.

“It’s difficult to fathom what it will cost.”

Still, he recommends parents build short-term emergency savings before saving for college.

Saving for retirement is important, too. “You have multiple ways of funding college, but you don’t have a lot of ways of funding retirement,” he said.

Families should explore grants and scholarships, even if they don’t expect to qualify for need-based aid.

Preparation courses for the SAT can be a good investment if higher test scores help a student qualify for scholarships, he said.

Living at home while attending a local university is another option.

“I would rather see the student live at home and go to the local university than see the parents raid their 401(k),” he said. “When you strictly look at tuition and fees, it becomes a lot more palatable.”

Credits: Chron

Rae Ann Forester was losing confidence in Grand Prairie High School’s academic program. Even though she was president of the Parent Teacher Student Association, she took a decisive step away from the school.

Ms. Forester enrolled her daughter, Katherine, in dual-credit courses at the University of Texas at Arlington for her senior year. Today, Katherine spends most days on the college campus and returns to Grand Prairie High for volleyball, choir and theater.

Parents whose children attend struggling public schools may feel like there’s no way out. But Ms. Forester and other persistent parents are taking control of their children’s education and finding options.

“What do you do in a school that’s low-performing?” Ms. Forester asked. “If we can’t get what we need from that specific campus, we do what we need to as a family. I do want people to have options, and that’s what I’m advocating.”

After the Texas Education Agency rated Grand Prairie High School “academically unacceptable” the previous two years, the school’s poor reputation prompted some families to act.

Though the school’s Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills scores improved enough to move the school to an “acceptable” rating this year, they are still low.

About 60 percent of students passed math and 57 percent passed science. The campus’ ninth-grade center escaped an unacceptable label only because of new loopholes in the state rating system. The majority of poor and Hispanic freshmen failed the math TAKS.

Grand Prairie High School is not unique. Many inner-ring suburban high schools are facing the challenges posed by increasing numbers of poor students, many of whom have limited English skills.

A lot of poor students also have unstable academic records because they frequently move.

In addition, Grand Prairie has had three principals in four years. Veteran teachers left and were replaced with less experienced teachers. Some parents think that intense focus on testing and getting failing students to pass comes at the cost of advanced programs.

School officials say they are improving scores and making Advanced Placement classes available. But some parents aren’t waiting to find out whether the reforms will be successful.

Principal Joseph Showell said he and his staff have made progress by targeting students who need help.

“We want to get out the true story about Grand Prairie High School and the success we have,” Mr. Showell said.

Deciding to leave

Kathleen Reed put her daughter, Rebecca, on a different path out of Grand Prairie High. Last year, she began trying to get an interdistrict transfer for Rebecca to Ranchview High School in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD.

At first, Carrollton-Farmers Branch rejected her plea. But Ms. Reed didn’t give up. She made an emotional appeal to the school board at a public meeting, expressing her frustration and fear that Grand Prairie’s poor academic performance might cause universities to view her daughter as unprepared.

“My children are college-bound, and the focus seemed to be on intervention and rescue,” she said. “For our community, it seems to be appropriate, but for kids who are college-bound, that leaves them behind.”

In the end, the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board decided to break with its policy of not admitting transfer students from outside the district.

Rebecca is now a sophomore at Ranchview High. Ms. Reed was drawn to the district’s “recognized” state academic ranking. Ranchview’s smaller enrollment, cultural diversity and new international baccalaureate program also were attractive.

Ms. Reed initially tried to obtain Rebecca’s transfer to Ranchview under the little-known state program known as Public Education Grants, or PEGs. The program is designed to allow students to transfer out of “low performing” schools into better schools in other districts.

Grand Prairie High is among a handful of high schools that fall under PEG guidelines. Lancaster High and Arlington’s Sam Houston High are other examples of struggling schools to which PEG applies. But Carrollton-Farmers Branch does not accept PEG transfers and did not accept Rebecca under that program. Instead, Ms. Reed will be paying tuition to Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD.

Advocates for choice in schools say school districts are intentionally making it difficult for families.

“They’re afraid of opening the floodgates,” said Allan Parker, president of the Texas Justice Foundation. “They figure if we take kids from this school that’s unacceptable this year, well, we might be unacceptable next year. So everybody just keeps their own kids.”

Leaving Grand Prairie High was a difficult decision for Ms. Reed and other parents with deep ties in a community. They know their children will miss their friends. They intended for them to experience their entire educations in their neighborhood schools.

Ms. Reed said some other Grand Prairie parents didn’t support her decision to move Rebecca.

“Everyone said, ‘We love this community, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to turn things around,’ ” Ms. Reed said. “They’re kind of looking at me like I’m betraying them somehow. Well, it’s for my kid.”

Moving near

Cathy Davidson moved 10 miles down the road so her daughter could leave Grand Prairie High and begin her sophomore year at Arlington’s Lamar High. It was close enough to be near old friends but far enough away to leave the school district.

“There were a lot of kids in the school who did not care to be there, which is a bad environment for those who do want to be there,” she said.

James Harris found yet another route out of Grand Prairie High for his stepson – an intra-district transfer to South Grand Prairie High School, the only other traditional high school in the district.

It seemed the best option. Private schools were too expensive, and neighboring school districts were reluctant to accept transfer students from other cities. Mr. Harris said the transfer was good because his son has friends at the new school.

“We figured it would be less traumatic for him, and the school is a little better,” he said. “It would be difficult for a high school student to completely leave and not know anyone.”

Katherine Forester has mixed feelings about spending so much time in class at UT-Arlington. She is still enrolled as a senior at Grand Prairie High, but she is missing experiences such as making her “senior scrapbook” in English class.

Katherine said she grew frustrated by misbehaving students and teachers who didn’t seem to care. She realized just how academically behind some of her classmates are when a student in her speech class didn’t know how to spell mouse.

She’s had some amazing teachers at the school. But she also said many of her friends expected to fail their Advanced Placement exams.

“I do love my school; I just feel like there are things they could do better,” she said.

Credits: Dallas News

This fall, a political spotlight and a sense of urgency hangs over the yearly quest to get potential dropouts back to class.

From principals to superintendents to mayors in the state’s largest cities, the heat is on to get these students in school quickly.

Two changes are bringing extra attention to the more than 50,000 students lost from Texas schools each of the last few years.
More education

State officials have said that failing to meet the federal dropout standard could for the first time count against campuses in their ratings.

For the first time, Texas schools have until Sept. 26 to corral wayward students before they must be considered dropouts. They had until mid-January in the past. This is a challenge in a district like Dallas ISD, which has historically had thousands of kids not return until several weeks into the school year.

“This is a very critical period for us,” said Dallas ISD superintendent Michael Hinojosa. “It’s a very important year. If we don’t do this now, if we don’t have the completion rates we need, these schools will be unacceptable.”

The changes are part of the state’s ongoing effort to come in line with the federal dropout standards developed by the National Center for Education Statistics. Texas began using these standards two years ago, but had not yet fully factored the graduation numbers into school ratings.

On Saturday, Dr. Hinojosa, Mayor Tom Leppert, parents and other volunteers will make a public showing. They will knock on doors to reach families of potential dropouts and try to convince them to re-enroll.

Five other major cities – including Fort Worth and Houston – and more than a dozen Texas school districts will do the same.

Houston Mayor Bill White said he started the effort because he believes that knowing an adult cares enough to come to their door sometimes is enough to get students back in school.

“Every week that goes by makes it harder to get that student back up to grade level when they return,” he said.

Last year, the Houston effort encouraged 60 students to return to class the day of the walk and by the end of September, 766 students who were contacted during the walk were back in school, organizers said.

Most recent state statistics show about 64 percent of the class of 2007 made it through Houston high schools. Dallas graduated 62.5 percent of that class.
Dropout statistics unreliable

For years, the state’s dropout numbers and high school graduation rates were inconsistently calculated, according to the Texas education agency’s own historical timeline.

Critics also say keeping accurate track of the number of dropouts has bedeviled Texas for years.

Part of the problem, they say, is that when a student stopped coming to school, for example, educators often assumed that the student moved or went to another school when in fact the student may have quit entirely and should have been counted as a dropout.

“The quality and accuracy of the data from Texas is a real problem,” said Daria Hall, the assistant director for K-12 policy at the Education Trust in Washington. The group monitors achievement trends nationwide.

She said the state’s 2006 completion and dropout report contained 1,300 students that were listed as data errors, those who were not figured at all.

TEA officials say they have adopted the standards of the National Center for Education Statistics within the last two years. Those standards require that school districts be more specific in documenting why students leave school.

The TEA now requires the schools to report any seventh- through 12th-graders who were enrolled at any time during the prior year, who did not show up the following year.

The standards also have more specific deadlines for when schools have to report data.

“We’ve given the districts as much transition time as we can,” said TEA spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe.

In August, state officials acknowledged that 95 districts and 142 campuses avoided lower accountability ratings because the state excused schools that failed to meet the dropout standards but still met test score requirements.

Commissioner Robert Scott said in August that the state would discontinue that practice, a move that could result in hundreds of schools being rated low-performing next year.

Mr. Scott plans to hold a state dropout summit Nov. 10 in Austin that will include state and city leaders, educators, businesses, non-profit groups and youth associations.
No easy fix

Marcia Niemann, who teaches English as a second language at Adamson High School in Dallas, said she supports the early push to find dropouts.

“I’m looking at my list of students who were here last year and who should be here this year and I don’t know where all of them are,” she said. “One moved, one returned to Mexico, another told me ‘Miss, I won’t be back.’ If we find them within the first few weeks and get them back, they can still catch up.”

Maria Garcia, the parent liaison at Adamson, said she hustles all year, finding students at home, in the grocery store, wherever she can. She tells them why they need to be in school. Then she checks back again and again.

“I keep telling them ‘You still have a chance,’” she said. “They have different situations, like work or family obligations. But we have to stay with them.”

Many times, she says she reminds parents that while the money that their children earn helps out, it can’t replace education.

California researcher Russell Rumberger, a professor of education at the University of California, Santa Barbara who studies dropouts, praised local and state efforts to raise awareness.

But he cautioned that raising graduation rates is complicated and finding solutions is not easy.

“These are great gestures, but they won’t have any impact if there’s not something in schools to keep kids there,” he said. “It’s a long-term process.”

Credits: Dallas News

Austin students from poor families tend to be less physically fit than students from wealthier families, an American-Statesman analysis of school district data shows. And Hispanic students tend to be less physically fit than students of other races.

A 2007 state law required all school districts to give students standardized fitness evaluations measuring height-weight proportionality, cardiovascular capacity, strength and flexibility. The first evaluations were given to students in the 2007-08 school year.

Austin’s trend mirrors statewide results, and national studies that show higher rates of physical inactivity and obesity among Hispanic and poor adults and children put them at higher risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, joint and bone disease, and other health problems.

Regardless of fitness trends among various demographic groups in Austin, “what’s really striking is the absolute level of poor fitness across the board in general,” said Dr. Aliya Hussaini, a health program grant officer at the Dell Family Foundation, which has invested $85 million in childhood health issues in Texas, including support for health and fitness programs at 97 Travis County public elementary schools.

Austin students in general are in worse shape than those in all but three of the state’s 10 largest districts. About 19 percent of all Austin students fall in the “healthy zone” on all of the fitness measures; below them on the list are students from the Fort Bend district, near Houston, with 15 percent; Houston, with 13 percent; and Dallas, with 11 percent.

Austin has a higher proportion of unhealthy students, as measured by the percentage of students falling in the “healthy zone” on all of the fitness tests, than all but eight of the 28 public school districts in Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties for which fitness data are available.

In the Wimberley school district, none of the 1,010 students tested passed all of the tests, a surprising result considering the district’s athletic championships in recent years and its relatively low proportion of students from low-income families.

Wimberley superintendent Dwain York said district staff members are investigating the low fitness scores.

A renewed push

The requirement to test students’ physical fitness each year is one of the recent efforts by state legislators, including state Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, to draw attention to and improve children’s health through the public school system.

After regular physical education classes in Texas elementary schools were phased out in 1995, Texas schoolchildren were not required to participate in physical activity during the school day beyond taking physical education classes in high school.

In 2002, the state began requiring kindergartners and elementary school students to participate in daily physical activity for at least 135 minutes a week, which averages out to 27 minutes a day.

The 2007 law, sponsored by Nelson, also requires middle school students to have at least 30 minutes of daily physical activity in at least four semesters. Those requirements take effect this school year. Lawmakers have discussed physical activity requirements for high school students, who currently must have a minimum of 1.5 physical education credits to graduate.

State law now also requires elementary and middle schools to adopt comprehensive health plans addressing health education, physical fitness, nutrition and parental involvement.

The 2007-08 school year was the first time that all districts were required to give the fitness tests to all students in grades 3 to 12, so most parents won’t know whether their schools’ efforts to keep kids healthy are paying off until results come back from this school year’s evaluations.

Though a growing body of research shows that physical fitness programs can improve student academic performance, several studies, including a 2007 study by the Austin school district, have found that family income has a bigger influence. The Austin study, which included fifth- and seventh-graders, found only a “modest relationship” between fitness and academic achievement.

This fall, the Texas Education Agency plans to release a statewide report examining the relationship between children’s fitness levels and academic performance, attendance, discipline and other measures.

Texas tests, but …

Texas is one of several states that require schools to give students standardized fitness tests and report the results to the state, according to the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. Others include California, Connecticut, Delaware and West Virginia.

But Texas is the only state to require all but the youngest students to be tested: Most other states test only three or four grades. But unlike California and Connecticut, which report schools’ fitness test results on their annual school report cards, the Texas Education Agency does not publish individual schools’ results.

The $230 cost to each Texas district for the equipment and computer software used to conduct the fitness tests and report the results was covered by private donations raised by the Cooper Institute, the Dallas-based nonprofit that created the software.

In the 2007-08 school year, in part to comply with state law, the Austin school district launched a coordinated effort to improve student health.

The district revised its physical education curriculum and encouraged school staff members and administrators to take physical education as seriously as any other class.

Playing badminton in P.E. class in the spring convinced Isaac Rodriguez, then a fifth-grader at Hart Elementary School in Northeast Austin, that the game could be “kind of fun.” But even more important to Isaac was the chance to get up and move around.

“I just like getting out of the classroom,” he said.

Feeling the squeeze

In spite of significant school-by-school disparities in Austin students’ fitness levels, the Austin school district has no plans to give schools with higher proportions of less healthy students more fitness-focused staff, equipment or professional training, Austin schools health coordinator Tracy Diggs Lunoff said.

Few other Central Texas districts plan to focus resources on less healthy schools, either.

The Lake Travis school district has added centers with nutrition information in every school’s library and is introducing a health program this school year focusing on proper nutrition — again, in each school, rather than at specific schools or student groups.

Last week, Austin trustees approved a budget amendment of $60,000 to fund a health and wellness specialist position previously paid for through a grant. The specialist visits campuses to help implement fitness and health programs.

Though schools are responsible for students for at least 35 hours each week, countless factors that affect students’ health — like what they eat at home, how much exercise they get, and how much tobacco use they’re exposed to — are largely outside the district’s control, Lunoff said.

At Maplewood Elementary School in East Austin, parent Wendy Morgan said she didn’t think that her daughter and her classmates necessarily needed more physical education teachers or equipment.

However, Morgan said, it is unfair that Maplewood’s outdoor facilities are in worse shape than those at Austin schools in wealthier neighborhoods: The basketball poles tilt and the track field is lumpy and lacks a water fountain.

About 46 percent of Maplewood students were at a healthy weight relative to their heights last year, compared with the district elementary school average of 70 percent.

More than 75 percent of the school’s students qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches; about 40 percent of students are Hispanic.

Azucena Garcia, principal of Sanchez Elementary School, said more resources at her campus would be welcome.

A few years ago, a grant allowed Garcia to hire an extra physical education teaching specialist who helped supervise students’ daily physical activity time. The specialist also set up an after-school yoga program for students and a morning walking group for parents, among other programs.

And it helped. According to the state fitness report, 72 percent of Sanchez’s students are at a healthy weight. More than 90 percent of the school’s students qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches; about 93 percent of students are Hispanic.

When the grant funding ended, the extra physical education teacher’s position was cut, and some of the initiatives the specialist started fell by the wayside, Garcia said.

“I’m always looking for more opportunities,” Garcia said. “As it is, it’s up to interest and how much you’re willing to do.”

Credits: Statesman

Garland school district officials are taking steps to ensure their students are not left without a legal guardian should their parents be deported in an immigration raid during school hours.

The Garland school district will ask all parents to provide the names and phone numbers of six emergency contacts. The district is also instructing school officials to not allow a student board a bus if a parent is detained or deported and no one else is available to take the child home, The Dallas Morning News reported Saturday.

The plan also forbids anyone not on the emergency contact list from withdrawing the student from school in the event of a raid, the paper reported.

“We don’t anticipate large-scale raids here in our district because we don’t really have the industry (known for hiring illegal immigrants) that suggests this sort of thing will happen here,” said Shelly Hopkins, who oversees district programs for English learners. “But we do want to support principals (in cases) where the legal guardian has been detained and deported.”

Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, said his agency repeatedly asks parents taken into custody whether or not they are the sole caregivers for children.

“If they are sole caregivers, a decision is made whether these people can be released or (are) going to have to be held,” Rusnok said. “We go through extraordinary means to ensure children are not left home alone or left alone at school.”

South Gate Elementary School Principal Clyde Schilling said parents of his students have been detained two times before.

“This is relatively new to a lot of school districts,” Schilling said. “I don’t think it’s a topic of discussion at the lunch table, but as you imagine, it is very upsetting when it happens to any of your students.”

The Urban Institute and National Council of La Raza issued a report last fall urging school districts to make sure students had a safe place to go in the event of a raid. The National Immigration Law Center also advised people last year to prepare a form or document authorizing another adult to care for their minor children in the event of a raid.

Credits: Chron

Texas public school leaders may still be fuming about the legislative mandate that delayed the start of the school year until the last week of August, but advocates point to lower utility bills as a sign that lawmakers made the right choice.

In the first year, schools statewide appear to have saved millions of dollars in August utility bills. The Houston Independent School District’s monthly payment to Reliant Energy, for example, dropped almost $200,000 between August 2006 and August 2007. Officials attribute about $66,000 of the savings to lower electricity costs.

HISD spends about $57 million a year on electricity, meaning $66,000 is a slight savings, officials said. And they said some of the savings probably were erased by extra days in May and June, but they couldn’t provide the figures.

Some districts reported using half as much energy in August 2007 as in past Augusts, according to records provided by some of Texas’ largest school systems.

And the later start date has been popular among parents, who remember an era when the school year started after Labor Day.

“I’m happy to see Texas schools saving money,” said Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville. “The fourth Monday in August is really, in my opinion, family-friendly, and it’s putting money in our classrooms.”

Districts used waivers
Before the law took effect last year, most Texas school districts got waivers to start the year in early or mid-August. School districts adamantly opposed the later start date, saying it didn’t allow enough time to prepare students for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills or to administer final exams before Christmas break.

They’re even discounting the apparent savings on utility bills.

“I can’t say the delayed start date didn’t have an effect, but there’s obviously other variables,” HISD controller Ken Huewitt said.

San Antonio parent Tina Bruno, head of the Coalition for a Traditional School Calendar, said she’s not surprised that school officials are dismissing the savings.

“The school districts were so against having a uniform start date that they’re not ever going to admit there’s any benefit,” Bruno said. “When you look at August-to-August utility bills, there were savings, even though electricity rates went up. This was a smart move.”

Indeed, the Texas Association of School Boards is discussing lobbying the Legislature to reverse the law when it convenes in January. Each school district should have a say in setting its calendar, officials said.

“The tourism industry pushed very hard — and successfully — to move the school start date later in the year to no sooner than the last Monday of August,” said TASB spokesman Dax Gonzalez. “The argument was that cities would benefit from increased sales taxes. … Meanwhile, districts have less time to prepare for TAKS, and midyear holidays must be truncated or eliminated altogether.”

School calendars should be driven by academics, not finances, said John Brooks, head of the University of North Texas’ principal certification program.

“I really think the Legislature would be well-advised to give local boards the opportunity to set their start times,” he said.

75 degrees for students
But the new law also keeps children at home during one of the hottest times of the year. With electric rates climbing quickly, Pasadena school district spokeswoman Candace Ahlfinger said she’s sure that bills would have been higher under the old calendar.

The district keeps thermostats at 75 degrees when students are in the building and 80 degrees when they are not.

Like most suburban Houston districts, Pasadena has added new schools and is experiencing higher rates — other factors that would have further inflated August utility bills.

State Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, said he’s not surprised that districts, even those that are financially strapped, aren’t celebrating the savings. They don’t like being told what to do, he said.

“I understand why they’re not happy. I do. But in the Legislature, you have to look at the bigger picture,” he said. “If you can subtract some August days from your air conditioning bill, you can’t help but to save money.”

Credits: CHRON.com