[caption id="attachment_148330" align="alignleft" width="220"] Joe Adams[/caption]

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.