Demographers: Are We Getting Our Money's Worth?

Katy Citizen Watchdog$

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Demographers: Are We Getting Our Money’s Worth?

Katy ISD uses as its demographer, Dr. Pat Guseman. Dr. Guseman's firm, Population and Survey Analysts, is used by a great many Texas school districts. In my opinion, projecting school enrollments farther ahead than about a month, is pretty much pseudo science.

School districts feel they have need of demographers more than in the past because they have changed the reasons for building new schools. Schools now are built to accommodate whichever developer can sway the Superintendent and his compliant Board members. Previously (at least until I left the Board in 1996), KISD schools were usually built when there were enough students living in an area to fill them up. That was a prudent policy for a governmental body such as Katy ISD, and it worked. Students moving into an area were bused to the school closest to their home until the time came to build a school nearer their home. We didn't ordinarily build schools before the students were there. In Katy ISD, Leonard Merrell is responsible for this change in policy as well as the Board members who failed to provide oversight and so appear to not even have noticed what he was doing. I'm sure he made this policy change out of the kindness of his heart, but these recipients of his largesse were openly grateful, at least when he retired. (http://www.katyisd.org/files/community_information/Conflict%20Disclosure/Dr.%20Merrell_Retirement%20Gift.pdf) Last year as part of my commentary on the proposed bond initiative, I wrote the following article. It bears repeating because the Houston Chronicle has just posted the Katy ISD's "projected enrollment for the 2007-2008 school year. They are expecting 53,956 students on August 27th. Last summer at the Bond Committee meetings, the committee members were told by our demographer that 52,937 students would be there. So not only were the bond committee members misled, once again, but the District appears to be short the equivalent of one full elementary school when school opens this year.

Obviously, depending on the demographer's numbers as well as building before the students are here and we know where they live, is not good policy. Below is a reprint of an article I wrote a year ago.

In the tables below, one can see the actual enrollment figures at the beginning of the year (or as close to the beginning as I could find) for the years listed.

Also, listed below are the demographic projections at various times in the last ten years. One can see the predictions of Dr. Pat Guseman (formerly Pat Guzman) of PASA (Population and Survey Analysts) (www.pasademographics.com/ ). Dr. Guseman has been predicting demographic figures as KATY ISD’s consultant since 1997. Before that time, Texas School Planning, Inc (TSPI) was the demographic consultant for the District. TSPI was located in San Antonio. The president of that company was Bill Rives, Ph.D., George V. Shaw was Executive Vice President and was a CPA, and Wendell Davis, AICP was the Vice -President in charge of planning.

In looking at the tables, one can see that these demographic predictions, for which the District pays a tidy sum each time they are assembled, are not very accurate, and leave a great deal to be desired if the District is going to base projections of needed school construction upon them. In fact, in my opinion a crystal ball would be just about as useful as these predictions.

Of interest to me as a spectator at the first 2006 Summer Bond Committee meeting was a statement made by Dr. Stacey Tepera, associate staff member at PASA. In the Q&A session of the meeting she made the statement that the statistics provided by PASA had a plus or minus 9% chance of being accurate. I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly, but a Bond Committee member sitting closer to her said, “If your statistics are that far off, we could be talking about as many as 4,000 students that we aren’t certain of.” The response of Dr. Tepera could not be heard by me. I was surprised that no reporter jumped on this significant matter, and no mention of the exchange was made in the District’s Q&A report.

Perhaps the demographic “studies” should all be taken with a grain of salt. To quote Kris Taylor in a Houston Chronicle article on 7/25/02 “Guzman has provided demographic projections for the Katy school district for five years. Her numbers have been consistently accurate, Taylor said.” Perhaps Ms. Taylor doesn’t have a very good memory.

I hope everyone understands that the lack of authentic projections, the failure to predict with clarity, and the use of a fallible science are being used to convince taxpayers that growth is coming when many times it really is not. All of these figures go to the argument that portable buildings might not be such a bad idea until we see real students who actually live in the District.

In 1999 the District suggested that there would be 48,776 students by 2005-2006. In actuality, according to the KISD web site on September 24, 2006, the actual total for the 2005-2006 school year was 47,816 or a difference of almost a thousand students. That’s equivalent to an entire elementary school!

I would point out that the demographic predictions over these years can be underestimated or overestimated which is an indication to me that they have no value, and some better way of predicting the future needs to be found. Whatever the reasons for the flawed predictions, one thing is clear: no bond initiative construction projects should be based upon such predictions.

It should also be noted that Dr. Merrell and the Board have changed the Board’s previous policy of not building schools until actual students to fill them exist. Such a strategy seemed prudent to me as a School Board Member in the 1990‘s. Over the last few years, one after another of our schools have opened and some have been half empty or more than half empty (Seven Lakes High School to name one). If there had been an economic downturn on which to blame such a situation, that would be understandable, but there has been no such problem in the last few years.

When the superintendent comes to the taxpayers and claims that tons of children are on their way and “we have to be ready for them,” a great many people swoon and clamor to give him as many dollars as he claims he needs, but should they? Voters need to ask themselves who really benefits from schools built too soon. I believe the answer to that question is quite obvious.

If the School Board and its Superintendent have not done their homework over the years so that they know the demographic predictions are flawed, their leadership is subject to question.

Bonds are passed for millions of dollars. Since Dr. Merrell arrived in Katy eleven years ago, he has had the opportunity to direct the spending of more than 920 million of our tax dollars. He and the Board are currently asking for 269.4 million more. If they succeed in getting this last request, the Administration will have had access to 1.2 Billion dollars. Dr. Merrell has suggested that they will be back for more in 2009. More means $400 or $500 million. They are saving the best for last. In the 2009 Bond Initiative look for a proposed new stadium that will be supported by all those parents who want their sons to earn college scholarships. If these parents had all their school taxes back, they could afford to pay their sons’ way to college without a scholarship!

For 1.2 Billion dollars all we have to show for it are 13 elementary schools (we already had 14; 5 junior highs (we already had 5); and 3 high schools (we already had 3). The building of the first twenty-two schools only left us with a bonded indebtedness of $148,349,944 on 8/31/96 and an original cost of only $234,959,583 plus interest. (Source: pages pp. 84 and 85 of the KISD Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.) And almost all of the schools, with the exception of Wolfe Elementary, have had additions or repairs made to them in the last eleven years, so their actual original costs are less than indicated here.

The question the voter should have is “If the School District’s representatives offer flawed statistical numbers regarding enrollments, tax rates, and school capacities, do I really want to vote for a bond that is based upon what appear to be erroneous judgments?”

ACTUAL NUMBER OF KATY NUMBER OF KATY ISD

ENROLLMENT ISD STUDENTS BY STUDENTS BY YEAR

OF KISD STUDENTS YEAR AS PROJECTED AS PROJECTED IN 2006

SINCE 1991 IN 1993/2002/2003* AT BOND COMM.MEETING

1991 20,414

1992 21,494

1993 22,629 22,501

1994 23,950 24,032

1995 25,366 25,785

1996 26,766 27,400

1997 28,230 28,830

1998 30,126 30,188

1999 32,338 31,526

2000 34,798 32,832

2001 37,798 34,188

2002 39,524 36,385/40,058

2003 41,460 42,950/41,692

2004 44,212 46,327/43,841

2005 47,816EOY 49,773/46,238

2006 50,992 53,106/48,644 50,161

2007 56,602/51,021 52,937

2008 60,184/53,612 55,676

2009 63,828/56,586 58,935

2010 67,428/59,498 62,279

2011 70,971/62,570 65,844

2012 /65,946 69,906

2013 /69,164 74,202

2014 78,677

2015 83,418

*1993-1996 projections provided by TPSI; after 1996 projections are provided by PASA. Projections for 2002 start in 2002. They are placed beside 2003 numbers and separated by a slash. The school district’s Demographer changes these numbers from time to time depending on her projections. The predictions become more accurate as they get closer to actuality which one would expect, but the District is paying for long range predictions. These predictions are a moving target which makes comparisons and research very difficult. The lack of accuracy is another prudent reason to put off construction until students are actually residing in the School District. Demographic predicting is an imperfect science at best.

See also “The Bond Initiative 2002” in Mary’s Corner - Click here to see the details of this initiative.

Mary McGarr, Katy Citizen Watchdog$

Date: 08/29/2007