Joe Adams

Hometown: Kirbyville, Texas Occupation: business owner 281-492-0700 [email protected] Top priorities: continue to pay off debt ahead of schedule, become a District of Innovation

How does your experience qualify you to be a member of the Katy ISD board of trustees?

Katy is our home. I have served on the board since 1989 and have been honored to help guide our response to the growth of Katy ISD in both student population and education of our students. I love our district and want the very best for all of our students. I am not focused on one issue or on one geographic area. I have provided strong leadership for a board that, during my tenure, has championed and supported ongoing long-range planning that has allowed Katy ISD to continue to excel as we experienced major changes in curriculum standards, growth, demographic diversification and finance. I have years of best practices and knowledge to apply that will help the district maintain and improve the educational process.

If elected, what would your top two priorities be? What action(s) would you take to implement them?

I would like to see us continue to pay off our debt ahead of schedule with more refinancing, which will hopefully result in us lowering our debt tax rate, like we did last year. Katy is an outstanding district and we know best what is best for our students. House Bill 1842 allows eligible districts to become Districts of Innovation through a board resolution or petition from a District Advisory Council, followed by public hearing and board vote. The plan would develop a local innovation plan, which may include innovations to curriculum, instruction, governance, parent and community involvement, changes to school day and year, budgetary issues, accountability measures and more. The plan would put local control back into the district. I will advocate for this in Katy ISD.

What are the most important financial and budgetary issues KISD needs to address?

We will closely monitor the ruling on the state funding lawsuit. The state funding formula has been frozen for several years and has impacted fast-growth districts such as Katy. Through all this our finance department has done a fantastic job, as noted by our audit firm, of managing our money. We have under spent our budget annually for several years allowing us to have a balanced budget. Our building project bids have come in under budget allowing us to utilize unspent money on other needed projects. We monitor our spend rate on these projects and compare it to our demographic projections to prepare for the next phase of buildings that need to be built.

George Scott

Hometown: West Columbia, Texas Occupation: public policy consultant 281-818-7872 [email protected] Top priorities: strengthen accountability in superintendent’s contract, require superintendent to enforce performance standards evaluating effectiveness of administrative programs

How does your experience qualify you to be a member of the Katy ISD board of trustees?

In my career as a public policy analyst, major Harris County corporations including Fortune 500 ones paid me to pull back the curtain on local governments and advise them of what was really happening. In my career as a journalist, I developed an uncompromising priority of the public right to know. In both careers, understanding public education in terms of policy and organization became my top expertise. As a husband of a classroom teacher and father of three honor graduates of KISD, my commitment is to taxpayers, parents, teachers and transparency. Great challenges demand knowledgeable leadership at the board level.

If elected, what would your top two priorities be? What action(s) would you take to implement them?

The school board refuses to hold the superintendent rigorously accountable for the success or failure of administrative initiatives. This is a serious, material deficiency in its diligence obligation to taxpayers. First, the board must strengthen performance accountability standards in the superintendent’s contract. Second, the board must require the superintendent to develop and enforce empirical-based performance standards evaluating the effectiveness of administrative programs imposed upon campus-based professionals by curriculum administrators, coordinators and others.

What are the most important financial and budgetary issues KISD needs to address?

Let’s accept the reality that the taxpayers’ pocketbooks are not bottomless wells. KISD will need to issue new debt for new schools and support facilities to serve our future families. KISD’s management culture regarding bonded debt has degenerated into an attitude that it gets exactly what it wants and more when it wants. This is not about being anti-growth.  It’s about fiscal discipline, which must be restored. KISD has an administrative bureaucracy that is growing like wild mushrooms coupled with a stunning absence of performance review standards on the bureaucracy’s programs. Only a knowledgeable school board can restore needed discipline.