There is a small town in Texas with a large name. A long time ago it had a high school and kept that school going for several decades until there were just not enough students to keep it going. In Texas the number of students you have equates to how much money you get from the state coffers.
But for some reason when the school system decided to close the high school, they kept the grades K through 6th in operation. This took place around 20 years ago.
But then times changed. A little.
The population of the town didn't really change positive. It fell during the year 1990, 2000 and 2010 census by about 40 percent. There were some new jobs with hog houses, and oil production. But certainly not enough local kids to justify a high school.
But they decided to open a junior high then a little while later a high school again.
They pumped about 5 million dollars into infrastructure, financed by bond issues.
How did they find more kids? Bussing.
They bussed kids in from several miles away. Supposedly they had plans to bring in "above average" students, but soon they dropped this idea. So then suddenly several of the students who lived IN the small town chose to go to a neighboring town to get away from the outsiders who had invaded "their" school.
190
It is my understanding that you need a minimum of 190 students to break even in a school system, and the number of students in this school system is only at about 2/3 that amount. So the state of Texas will probably shut down the entire school system after May of this year. Plus the town has been split in two in an uncivil war of words. Property values have collapsed. You can rent, but it is now difficult to finance a property sale there.
All the details in this blog post are from conversations that I have had with people inside the situation, so any and all of this information should be considered suspect.
What interesting thing did I learn today: From a goverment census website, I learned that Texas is the only state to enter the United States by treaty as opposed to territorial annexation. This allows the Texas flag to fly at the same height as the US flag.
But for some reason when the school system decided to close the high school, they kept the grades K through 6th in operation. This took place around 20 years ago.
But then times changed. A little.
The population of the town didn't really change positive. It fell during the year 1990, 2000 and 2010 census by about 40 percent. There were some new jobs with hog houses, and oil production. But certainly not enough local kids to justify a high school.
But they decided to open a junior high then a little while later a high school again.
They pumped about 5 million dollars into infrastructure, financed by bond issues.
How did they find more kids? Bussing.
They bussed kids in from several miles away. Supposedly they had plans to bring in "above average" students, but soon they dropped this idea. So then suddenly several of the students who lived IN the small town chose to go to a neighboring town to get away from the outsiders who had invaded "their" school.
190
It is my understanding that you need a minimum of 190 students to break even in a school system, and the number of students in this school system is only at about 2/3 that amount. So the state of Texas will probably shut down the entire school system after May of this year. Plus the town has been split in two in an uncivil war of words. Property values have collapsed. You can rent, but it is now difficult to finance a property sale there.
All the details in this blog post are from conversations that I have had with people inside the situation, so any and all of this information should be considered suspect.
What interesting thing did I learn today: From a goverment census website, I learned that Texas is the only state to enter the United States by treaty as opposed to territorial annexation. This allows the Texas flag to fly at the same height as the US flag.
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5 comments:
Great post!
And the really sad thing about school funding in Texas is that as bad as this year has been, and as tough as the cutbacks have been, all indicators say that next year, the second year of the biennium, will be even worse.
This reminded me of my touring show days. Once we played the town of Big Lake, Texas. They had one of the nicest school auditoriums I'd seen up to that time with a beautiful stage with top notch equipment. There seemed to be hardly much of anything in the town. I was there for a few days. Best I could tell the town had a lot of oil money to work with, but the place seem to be going downward when I was there. Interesting story.
Lee
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Interesting - and I never knew that flag bit about Texas.
Marianne: I found conflicting information about the Texas flag 'fact'. That did come from a census website.
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