Name: Courtney Doyle Time in Katy: 8 years Occupation: Realtor Contact info: 832-421-1045, [email protected] If elected, what would your top three priorities be? How would you implement them? My number one priority will always be the students of KISD and how I can best serve them. The decisions that I make every meeting directly affect each and every child sitting in the desks, from their education to the programs they are offered, as well as their co-curricular activities. It is my goal that every child in KISD is given equal and fair value and they always remain the focus of the decisions this district makes. I will implement this by continuing to keep my focus on this priority above all others.  

2. Diversity: Not only is our community full of diversity but our choices that we offer our students should also be diverse. Not every child is college bound. We have to meet children where they are, expand our thinking, support our teachers, encourage them to learn new innovative ways to reach our youth. Through our new strategic design plan, we are hearing students express their desire for more collaboration. We are hearing from the community of parents and educators other options on how we can engage the students to create an environment that not only prepares our college bound students for their success but also prepare our technical students for their success, and as a whole, prepare these kids with life skills to be productive citizens, to truly “Be the Legacy.” This can’t just be our slogan we use in KISD, but rather it has to be taught and encouraged to be shared beyond graduation day. Implementation of this has already begun. As I stated above with the strategic design plan and as a board member, it is my duty to see that the administration implements the plan that will be brought forward to us in May. This will be a five-year process so being given the opportunity to continue this work that we have started would be an amazing honor. I feel confident our administration will do an outstanding job with this plan.

 

3. Again, I am going to focus on kids and teachers. You will see a recurring theme from me: testing! Our teachers are brilliant! Our students are brilliant! We have to lobby the state to find better ways aside from the STAAR test to evaluate the success of our students. I believe it is grossly unfair to assume that every child fits inside the same square box. With six of my own, I certainly know they aren’t all the same, they don’t all learn the same and they don’t all test the same. This starts with lobbying the state to release us from the standards that bind us to such hypocrisy. We need to continue to create a strong legislative agenda, encourage our leadership to meet with legislators one- on-one and come up with other creative ways in which we could monitor our students success.

  What are the most important financial and budgetary issues KISD should address? We need to get more creative on expanding our tax base. As the scale tips, our property taxes collections increase and state funding decreases. Our property taxes collected are increasing because the values of the homes are going up. The values of the homes increase as demand for our homes increase. The demand for homes in KISD increases because of the quality of the education in KISD. Yet the state penalizes us for our successes. This is grossly misaligned, which leads us to think outside the box with our financial and budget decisions. We must work closely with the Katy Area Economic Development Council as Katy continues to bring in more businesses. We could also look at ways to pay down our debt in a shorter, more efficient manner. With any savings we can obtain, looking at ways to reallocate those funds for teacher raises and programs for the children would be the best use of our funds. I have the utmost confidence in our CFO, Chris Smith and his team of advisers.   How does your experience qualify you to be a member of the Katy ISD board of trustees? I have currently served three years on the board of trustees for KISD. The past three years have taught me an exponential amount about the duties and responsibilities of a board member. My time of service on the board as well as my years of service and leadership prior to serving on the BOT has prepared me for this position. Just as I spoke above about our children and teachers learning and collaborating, our educational system is evolving so rapidly and as a trustee it is important for me to continue to be willing to learn how to better serve and be the best board member I can be all while keeping my focus on students, teachers and taxpayers. I am committed to do that in my second term.