Bravo To BISD Bond Supporters
It was flawed and took too long to get onto the ballot, but the $388.6 million Beaumont school bond issue that voters approved Tuesday will help get the district going in the right direction - at least structurally.
Campus embarrassments will be gone, and students, teachers, principles and other staffers will have facilities of which they can be proud. The schools will no longer be neighborhood eyesores.
Prior to the election, I harped on BISD for not breaking out the bells and whistles, such as an athletic complex, into a separate proposition so that it wouldn't torpedo the real-needs stuff. This what happened in 2002 when a BISD bond issue went down in flames thanks, in part, to Lamar stadium renovations being part of the package.
The region is poised for an industrial boom, which in turn will ignite a boom in real estate and businesses large and small. Having good schools is at the center of community prosperity.
However, shiny new facilities will not translate into academic and disciplinary successes.
Take, for example, Price Elementary School, located in a lower-income neighborhood in Beaumont. The school was built a half century ago, and it looks outdated. I took my son here two consecutive summers for summer school. The place smelled, and the carpets were cheesy. A few blocks away at a car wash, two people were shot to death.
Under the bond plan, Price students will be moved to a new facility at the Fehl campus.
There has been something special going on inside Price for years. Despite the socio-economic situations that many of its students face, the Title I campus consistently receives high marks for its academics. Earlier this year, it gained the highest label of "Exemplary" in the state's accountability ratings. Only three other BISD campuses achieved this. The others were Dunbar and French elementaries.
Recently, the 2007 honor roll of top Texas schools named by the Texas Business & Education Coalition included Price. It was the second time the school made the list.
Meanwhile, the picture hasn't been so rosy at nearby Ozen High School, where a band director stirred controversy by canoodling with a student. In May, several Ozen High School students were arrested after a brawl at an end-of-school dance in an American Legion Hall.
Central Senior High School was named a "dropout factory" in a recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University for The Associated Press. The report said there are 1,700 such schools nationwide. The data compared freshman enrollment with the number of seniors three years later.
BISD has problems that go beyond bricks and mortar, beyond natatoriums and stadiums. Now that it has $388 million in its britches, it needs to turn its attention to its students, teachers and academics. It needs to broaden and improve its preschool and special-education programs. It needs to get more kids into college.
Otherwise, we're just putting a pretty $388 million Band Aid on a festering flesh wound.
Campus embarrassments will be gone, and students, teachers, principles and other staffers will have facilities of which they can be proud. The schools will no longer be neighborhood eyesores.
Prior to the election, I harped on BISD for not breaking out the bells and whistles, such as an athletic complex, into a separate proposition so that it wouldn't torpedo the real-needs stuff. This what happened in 2002 when a BISD bond issue went down in flames thanks, in part, to Lamar stadium renovations being part of the package.
The region is poised for an industrial boom, which in turn will ignite a boom in real estate and businesses large and small. Having good schools is at the center of community prosperity.
However, shiny new facilities will not translate into academic and disciplinary successes.
Take, for example, Price Elementary School, located in a lower-income neighborhood in Beaumont. The school was built a half century ago, and it looks outdated. I took my son here two consecutive summers for summer school. The place smelled, and the carpets were cheesy. A few blocks away at a car wash, two people were shot to death.
Under the bond plan, Price students will be moved to a new facility at the Fehl campus.
There has been something special going on inside Price for years. Despite the socio-economic situations that many of its students face, the Title I campus consistently receives high marks for its academics. Earlier this year, it gained the highest label of "Exemplary" in the state's accountability ratings. Only three other BISD campuses achieved this. The others were Dunbar and French elementaries.
Recently, the 2007 honor roll of top Texas schools named by the Texas Business & Education Coalition included Price. It was the second time the school made the list.
Meanwhile, the picture hasn't been so rosy at nearby Ozen High School, where a band director stirred controversy by canoodling with a student. In May, several Ozen High School students were arrested after a brawl at an end-of-school dance in an American Legion Hall.
Central Senior High School was named a "dropout factory" in a recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University for The Associated Press. The report said there are 1,700 such schools nationwide. The data compared freshman enrollment with the number of seniors three years later.
BISD has problems that go beyond bricks and mortar, beyond natatoriums and stadiums. Now that it has $388 million in its britches, it needs to turn its attention to its students, teachers and academics. It needs to broaden and improve its preschool and special-education programs. It needs to get more kids into college.
Otherwise, we're just putting a pretty $388 million Band Aid on a festering flesh wound.
posted by Brian Pearson at 9:42 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home