Local Stuff of National Interest
Katy, Texas, is a suburb of Houston and also does a little squatting in my county of Fort Bend.
Those people are nuts. Seriously. That’s where that guy had the gun store that displayed anti-Obama crapola on his sign out front. They’re crazy.
I have proof of that. They are a fast growing district with severe overcrowding problems but they have a new $72 million dollar football stadium. In all honesty, it didn’t start that big, $58 million, but along the way they quietly added $12 million here, another $3 million there, another million to correct mistakes, and Lord only knows what the hell else. It will be the most expensive high school football stadium in America.
And nobody seems to know how it happened.
There’s a new superintendent but the same school board (except for one new member). Mostly, there’s no money for the 12 schools they need almost immediately.
Katy will go strongly Republican. I just thought you’d like to know that.
Funny how no matter how bad a district is doing, there is always money for Football (genuflect and cross). Where my wife teaches it does not matter how many thing remain unfinished or unfixed, when a coach wants a new (fill in literally anything here) he gets it.
1What? No dome?! Shocked, I tell you. Just shocked.
Yes… our kids is learning. Preparing for those high-tech, high-paying grass cutting jobs of the future. I suppose we in VA just don’t get it. Here in PW County we just completed a new high school with all the bells and whistles. No sradium though. I guess you showed us, huh Texas.
2The reported (fox news) projected cost of the new Mckinney High School, Texas football stadium was $72MM….that was last year. If there are any cost overuns, the final project cost should be north of the Katy stadium. And, no, pretty sure it does not have a dome. And, yes, the school systems here are way short of money for teaching actual classes.
3I refereed high school football in the Houston area in the 70s. It was a big deal back then when Spring Branch got a rug for their stadium. Turned out Houston in Sept is HOT and the rug made it worse. Who would have thought. Snark.
4Classes 1-2 will report to section G of the bleachers…
Voters of Katy, TX, Phyllis Schafly is doing your bench warming and will direct you to your assigned seats.
5“Katy will go strongly Republican”
And sadly, being 12 schools short of a district, it will stay that way.
6The GOP may be sleazy and completely unable to govern, but they are brilliant at getting ignorant and misinformed people to vote against their own economic interests.
Of course, they proved a good part of the misinformation.
7My sister was a guidance councilor at a Texas High School for many years. She said it was not unusual for coaches to come into her office to get grades for football players “adjusted,” always for what they explained were excellent reasons. Other than their excellent test scores that is.
Students in Texas can flunk from Monday through Thursday, but as long as they can pass (or catch, or run, or block) on Friday Night, they’ll graduate.
8WAAAAAY OT: Y’all have heard that the Donald today said that the election should be cancelled an he be declared the winner. “Just give it to Trump.”
Y’know… sometimes the comedy just writes itself. Who knows Twitter? Here’s a new hashtag to start:
#GiveItToTrump.
Believe me… I’d love to.
9@Mel
I played (at) football for the coaching Poe brothers before they became big deals in McKinney. These situations where a football field is turned into a temple for worship is not entirely the coaches fault, although there are exceptions at every level. Bear Bryant and Barry Switzer for example in professional college football.
If you know about McKinney’s football temple then you know about Allen’s temple where the concrete was mixed so thin the sstadium began to crackup within the first couple of years.
My kids attended in a district which while the stadium was old, there seemed to be an additional story added to the standalone press box every summer. I betcha that press box is 6 or 7 stories now. What on earth necessitates that?
Tejas is eat up with stupid, but nowhere does it so through so clearly in the school districts. Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles could find waste and abuse before noon on Monday.
10Bundy boys and anti-Amerikan militia friends all found NOT GUILTY! WTF????
11Read up on the Sagebrush Rebellion. Ammon Bundy is a smart m-f. He framed their actions as an act of civil disobedience that required them to have guns for protection against an FBI/BLM/ATF that was already mad because of the Bundy standoff in NV. This played well in an area of the country that is practically libertarian in some ways and feels they are self reliant and don’t require interference from the Feds. It is the same reason that the whole “Secede” thing works in Texas (extra points for working the Alamo in somehow) and why AL, MS, GA, VA, NC, SC and others insist on their right to display and wave around a symbol of treason and anti-patriotism – AND LABEL IT PATRIOTIC!! These regional grievances ring with people who live in those places, and are largely incomprehensible to the rest of us! Reading Faulkner helps explain the South; recalling that much of Texas was settled by folks who hailed from Tennessee explains a lot about Texas!
12epo!! Don’t ever do that, man!! Have a heart and link, okay?! I thought you were being snarky til I checked it out.
But you are correct. And America? This is why we can’t have nice things. So… don’t ever bitch about how our country is going to hell-in-a-handbasket because I WILL remind you of this.
13Me-snarky? 🙂
14Well, if its any consolation, the Bundys won’t go free. They are still under federal indictment in Nevada. I am sorry for the jury but there is no way these terrorists are innocent.
15Those boys will be at it again right soon. They have just been empowered by that ignorant jury.
16Don’t forget that schools in TX have been artificially keeping the number of kids receiving special ed services low to save money.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/denied/
17Buck the Fundys.
As an athlete in high school and college, and a high school coach after that, I can vouch for the fact that boys’ sports are sacrosanct. It’s not that way only in Texas. Small towns that have old, cramped, ineffective schools will spend any cash they can scrape up on the gym and football fields. All the chronologically adult boys will throw their cash at those 2 facilities while reliving the fantasies of their youth when they were all the star of the team and dated the head cheerleader. It’s repulsive.
Grow up boys!
18@Micr
I moved back to TX a few years ago to be closer to my kids and grandkids. The competition amongst the local high school districts with regards for stadiums is insane…while the state funding for academic programs and teacher pay is static or falling. I am depressed for my kids and their kids who don’t know any better because this is all they know.
Every local parent touts the school ratings. When I say, I don’t really care about the ‘local’ (within TX) ratings but would like to know how Texas student cohorts compare against comparable cohorts in the SATs or other nationally/internationally administered tests, I get either a blank stare or a lot of hand waving.
It is interesting that one of the big community programs that Toyota is implementing (before they even fully move in) is investing substantially in the local school systems.
19Don’t understand your problem? Football is ALWAYS more important than more schools!!! football is the modern ‘bread & circuses’ to keep people from thinking too much. Schools teach you stuff, and knowing stuff is bad as it causes people to realize what a load of crap rePUKEians are and their policies of bigotry & hate!!!
20Why the lack of horror in the first place for a pro-ball stadium for a high school? James Michener noted in one of his books that sports in Texas is a religion. Well, at $50 plus million, the folks living in the education pyramid of that high school must be the most religious ones on the planet! And Mel, you’ve got it right! I read recently where 3 districts in Texas were ranked among the top school districts in the country, I had to wonder about that. Could the test scores etc. of those districts compare with the test scores of school districts in, say, Connecticut? I know ‘Bama touts their test scores (believe it or not) but the tests they use are, how can I say this, do not have the same scoring systems as school districts in the most populous areas of the country such a New York state let alone New York City. One “test” used by ‘Bama tops out at 40! Heaven forbid that they use a test involving a ranking beyond that! Any kid achieving a full 40 on that test is considered a genius.
21When my youngest son was in HS in Pennsylvania, his gifted students class was in what had been a windowless janitor’s cupboard. The was a table, some folding chairs and a cheap metal shelving unit. No room to walk around and no natural light. Meantime, the football field sported brand new lighting. There had been nothing wrong with the old lighting but it was no longer shiny. The team traveled in a rented tour bus instead of a school bus. But the gifted students did not even get supplies like paper and pencils, let alone text books.
It is why the US is behind so many other countries academically.
22But football at the high school level gives lots of minority students who haven’t learned to read or write access to institutes of higher football where they leave school without having learned to read or write. We’re doing this for the minority kids.
23When I was in college, I was in our marching band. We played a bowl game in Longview, Texas, in a high school stadium that was bigger than our home stadium.
Football is religion in Texas.
Side note – We rehearsed in the hotel bar where we played “Yellow Rose of Texas” for a nice couple who bought the band a round of drinks after. They asked what school we went to. University of Delaware! Then they asked what state that was in. SMDH.
24“Here in PW County we just completed a new high school with all the bells and whistles. No sradium though. I guess you showed us, huh Texas.”
so JAK, you’re in PW county huh, my old stomping grounds (Gar-Field, 74). when the (then) new G-F was built, it had the largest football field in the District, along with a rubberized asphalt track, and a practice field on the other side of the school building. the cost for the entire complex was in the neighborhood of $20m. my Dad was the Zoning Administrator at the time (many a meet with C.D. Hylton, who he actually liked and respected), and the paperwork for that school was unbelievable.
I am a bit surprised they would build a school without one, is the school not going to have a football team, or are they going to share a field with another school?
25The geriatric folks among us may remember that Ross Perot, of all people, led efforts many years ago to improve TX schools, including instituting the “no pass, no play” rule (see http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/29/us/1992-campaign-shaking-schools-when-perot-took-texas-special-report-education.html?pagewanted=all )
26It was also common when I lived there for promising (i.e. large and athletic) boys to be held back in school a year, regardless of their academic situation, so they’d be even older and bigger on the football field. TX is not the only part of the country with this mania, though. My high school in CA built a sunken football stadium, lined with bricks, not quite as fancy as the photo above but far better built than the classroom buildings, which looked like a cheap motel. Their excuse was that the campus used to be a brickyard so there was this leftover pit and a lot of bricks. Never had a winning football team the entire time I was in high school, though, in fact one year the only win was a forfeit by the other team. I personally won more regional math contests than they won football games my last two years, not that the admin noticed.
I remember when the Astrodome was built for an outrageous amount of $33 million.
27Oh my! for some time now the Little League ballfield just down the street from my house was a bucolic place for summer ball, little people and adults as well. It was straight out of a Disney film. Well over a year ago it was closed by the county and has just completed a complete make-over into a semi-pro ball three diamond field with the latest of damn everything. The folks who live on the other side of this “stadium” will have unbelievably strong lights keeping them awake during night games. The rest of us will have the noise of crowds and no, they did not make a big enough parking lot. Our streets will be jammed with double parked cars. Outside of the summer season, the old ballfield lay silent and unused. It was kind of sad but poetic at the same time. This behemoth — this titanically expensive behemoth — will also be unused for about 5 months out of 12, and the gates will be locked. Its not just “our” ballfield any more for our kids to play on. Its a waste of our tax money and waste of us!
28cpinva: It’s got the field and some stands like any school. It’s just not anything like the Coliseum, y’know? It’s the one thing I like about NoVa, the emphasis on EDUCATION. We after all are the people who turned down the Redskins new stadium, — twice, Disney’s America theme park, and Legoland. We spend the money here, just not on the dumb stuff. (For the most part. Nobody’s perfect.)
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