He brought 20 years of superintendent experience, including in Pflugerville and Hutto ISDs in the Austin area, Huffman ISD in northeast Harris County, and Poteet ISD near San Antonio. He said the great teachers he had in school inspired him to enter the education field, and his career began as a first grade teacher.
Community Impact sat down with Killian on July 31 to discuss his goals for the upcoming school year. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I think over the years, ... we've moved from a basic trust and partnership, especially over the last couple of years, to a little bit more of an adversarial relationship with community and parents; and that's definitely not what we want.
... I go back to my time teaching first grade, and when you have a problem with someone, you tell them. And you talk to them in your normal voice without being upset. ... Those golden rules you learned when you first went to school and had to deal with other people with different opinions and different backgrounds—that still applies today, and I wish we would get back to more of that kind of stuff.
Because we're here to help. I got into the business to help kids and help staff members. So I want them to succeed, and I want them to go as far as they possibly can. Because they're going to be taking care of me long after I've stopped working and hopefully making the world a better place.
What have you learned since being in Cy-Fair ISD?
A lot more about finance. ... One thing that I will tell you that became very apparent when we first started looking at the budget issues in the district is how well-managed the district is. When we started looking for low-hanging fruit that was easy to cut, ... there really wasn't a lot. ... You end up impacting staff and the classroom even when you want to stay away from that.
Transportation is probably the biggest thing that's out there right now that we had to pull back on. Legally, there's no requirement to transport inside the 2-mile limit. We don't even get funding other than 10% of our total. That's all we get. I don't think a lot of people realize the millions of dollars we spend to transport inside of the 2-mile limit when we don't get that covered. That was a difficult cut for me; that was the one that really bothered me the most. It bothered me impacting staff members and the programs we can offer, but that one got down to the extra safety we provide here.
This building—the central office—that it's a Taj Mahal and that [we] could have used that money to help with transportation or staff salaries. It's actually a separate tax rate, and legally we can't use that. That's also voted on by the public, ... so [bond funding] can’t be used for day-to-day operations, which is our maintenance and operations tax. That’s probably the biggest misconception of how we're funded and where we get our money from.
And then just the fact that we're limited on [how much funding] we get based on a state formula. A lot of people see that their property values go up. So, we're collecting more of a local share in our taxes, but we collect that first, and then our state aid gets reduced because we have a finite amount of money that we can get per student. And that's it. Once we hit that cap, the rest of the money would go to the state.
What is your approach in terms of advocacy at the state level?
I'm new to the area, so I wanted to make sure that I was establishing a relationship with our representatives and their staff.
... We have that local optional homestead exemption that gives our local taxpayers an additional 20% off of their values. Well, we're punished in the state formulas for that. ... So, doing that legwork of telling them about that. And then suggesting some bill languages or things that we can do in statute to provide that money is what I’ve started with.
... Obviously, funding is a big issue because we don't want to hurt the inherent greatness of this district. We provide some really expansive programs. Our dual-credit program that we have with Lone Star [College] and the associate's degrees that we're getting kids to come out of high school with—that's pretty amazing. And we don't want that to be threatened at any point or any of the other things—the wrestling, the swimming, all the extracurricular and co-curricular stuff that excites kids about school and gets them hooked, and then they're hooked into the academic piece, too. That's the kind of stuff that I want to make sure we don't lose funding for so we can continue to offer those.
... We also need more safety funding. This district has gone out to the voters, and thankfully they've approved everything that we put out there for safety and been very proactive, but there are still things that we need to do. ... So, if the state has money—and they're obviously very focused on school safety—then why don’t they provide some kind of safety allotment?
... And then special education. Right now, what I've seen is an explosion of kids that need special education services and that are qualifying at larger rates than I can remember in my career. The state had an interim committee that looked at that, and they acknowledged that they're not providing enough money to pay for all the additional special education services. So why not increase those allotments so that we can do that?
Other than legislative priorities, what are some of your goals for this new school year?
One of the things is looking at expanding what we're doing in dual credit. ... I don't think folks in the community realize that we're not just graded on how we implement the state standards—the curriculum in the state—anymore. It's whether or not our kids will be successful post-secondary.
... I don't want to oversimplify kids, but it's an assembly line in terms of public education, and so you've got to get kids making those selections in eighth grade. You want to be a plumber, you want to be a licensed mechanic—you've got to start that process in eighth grade or maybe even sooner because they need to have some exploratory stuff so they can figure out, "Hey, I might want to do this," and come out with some type of certification.
... The other thing is just celebrating the successes in the district. I think some of the things that have been lost with the loud noises and just, I think, people being a little bit more aggressive about things and just more hateful in some of their comments; they're forgetting that there are great things going on. We need to get better; that's true, ... but we also need to recognize the great things that are going on and celebrate those.
I think a community that's actively involved in the schools. We have a really great Adopt a School [program] with several of our businesses and churches. We need more of that. ... We need Bus Buddies; we need folks that'll help feed the kids ... because people are so busy nowadays, and we just need kids to have good adult role models and people that are willing to pour into them.
Also just knowing what's going on in the district because it's really important to understand where the challenges are in the school district so you can get involved and help or be an advocate one way or the other. And we have controversial issues that come up—just know that there's always three sides to every story. It's the two sides that you’re hearing and then there's probably the truth. So, approach everything with, "OK, well, I need to learn more about that."
... I think all of us got really busy as we came back from the pandemic, and we've been very polarized because of social media and other things. We need to pull together as a country and a community.
