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Katy Citizen Watchdog$ Plan Pre-Election Campaign

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A grassroots group opposing the Katy school district's $261.5 million bond initiative and supporting two trustee candidates on the ballot shored up its strategy Tuesday for getting its message to voters before the May 13 election.

Katy Citizens Watchdogs leaders and candidates Fred Hink and Tom Law met with about 20 members at the Cinco Ranch Branch Library to review the group's conservative platform and information-distribution methods — phone calls, e-mails, yard signs, fliers and posting on its Web site, www.katycitizens.org, to reach as many of the district's estimated 1,100 voters as possible.

Chris Cottrell, co-founder of the group, said the Watchdogs suffered a setback when almost all of the large yard signs opposing the bond and posted by members had disappeared earlier this week.

He said that while the group is not opposed to school bond issues, it opposes the current bond package's passage, which he said calls for nonessential items such as high-density television sets for morning announcements, while the district faces almost $1.5 billion in debt.

"We cannot continue to fund the district's wish lists," Cottrell said. "We would like to see the bond committee go back and give us something we can live with."

District pushes bond issue

The district and bond supporters, including the political action committee Keep Investing in District Schools, claim the package is necessary to build three elementary schools, two junior high schools and a ninth-grade center, and to fund new technology, safety and other programs to meet student growth in the next three years.

The Watchdogs group's goals, Cottrell said, include defeating the "blank check" bond issue and getting Watchdogs members Hink and Law elected in what Cottrell said he hopes will be the largest voter turnout in Katy history. Future goals, he said, include getting two more members elected as trustees in 2007.

Hink, who is running against three-term trustee Robert Shaw in Position 6, said that although he transferred his children from Katy to private schools two years ago, he is still concerned about what he sees as the district's tendency to concentrate student curriculum on what is needed to pass state-mandated tests.

The current board, he said, simply acts as a public "rubber stamp" for policies that sometimes reflect unsound fiscal judgments, and recommends three-term limits on board terms and more open-door meetings in which voters have a louder voice.

"You have to be able to reach out and touch the people who are handling your money," Hink said.

Law, who is running for Position 7 against pro-bond candidates Gregory Gibbs and Neal Howard, said two of his five children attend Fielder Elementary School. He said he believes the district needs to focus more on improving academics, not building schools that cost more than comparative schools in neighboring districts and maximizing its debt.

"Bricks and mortar don't make the school," he said. "Our schools need to give a competitive advantage to our children."

Taking 'the high road’

While the KIDS group hasn't focused on endorsing specific candidates, it has raised money for campaign literature and sponsored public forums to present its pro-bond stance, outlined on its Web site at www.voteyeskids.org. Shaw, Gibbs and Howard have stated in a candidate forum that the district will either have to accommodate rapid growth by approving the bond, or will have to place portable buildings at public schools. All three have served on Katy bond committees, with other Katy school initiatives, or both.

Cottrell said the Watchdogs campaign represents the strongest organized opposition the Katy district has faced in a bond election so far. Watchdogs spokeswoman and former trustee Mary McGarr said she wants the group to "take the high road" in its campaign by keeping hands off of opponent signs and being polite and kind, but concentrated on getting out the vote.

"We have to get voters to the polls," McGarr said. "If we can do that, we will win."

 

Betty L. Martin, Houston Chronicle

Date: 05/03/2006