Hotze, Lowry, and Polland AWOL in Katy Bond Battle

On December 23, 1776 Thomas Paine wrote the immortal words that have inspired every subsequent patriot that ever wanted to play a role in preserving the rightful role of government in our society when he penned the phrase “summer soldier and the sunshine patriot” to describe those less than willing souls who find a reason to stay on the sidelines in battles where their presence could make a difference.

For Paine, the cause was the founding of a nation establishing a revolutionary new form of government. Today approaching the mid-point of over two centuries later, the modern day causes are more likely to be attempts at restraining the growth of government at every level of our society that has grown too arrogant, too powerful, and too smug in its self-righteousness even at the local level including school districts.

I don’t write this in meanness. However, it appears at this point in time that the three political giants of conservative Republican primary politics in Harris County are missing in action in a bond issue battle in the iconic Katy I.S.D. that could literally change the debate in public education accountability statewide on matters ranging from the deterioration of the role of school boards in holding administrators accountable to the extortion-like process by which bonded debt has exploded in Texas.

Thomas Paine never met Steve Hotze, Terry Lowry, or Gary Polland. However, in a different era under different circumstances confronting different challenges, Thomas Paine knew a summer solider and sunshine patriot when he experienced once.

Hotze, Lowry, and Polland – the conservative kingmakers in the largest county in Texas – apparently are apparently poised to abandon reformers in Katy who are being overwhelmed by political cash fueled by crony capitalism and vested financial interests and a powerful government’s public relations campaign that walks right up to the ‘safe’ edge where bond issue educational efforts end and politics begins.

Here are three facts:

1. Everything that has gone terribly wrong in fair governance about the process by which school districts issue public debt is on a full display in Katy’s I.S.D.’s proposed $750 million bond issue this November. If there were ever a major bond issue that should be defeated, Katy I.S.D. has put one forward this time. The process has been superficial and the accountability is embarrassing. For Texas school districts including Katy, that’s the way it supposed to be. Intimidation and power are their calling cards.
2. While there are legitimate construction needs for schools and facilities that bonded debt should finance, the public education bureaucracy of Texas has mastered the process of all or nothing approaches that in effect hold school children’s needs hostage to a fair and legitimate process grounded in actual accountability that denies voters their rightful power to impose discipline on the system.
3. From the vested corporate interests that profit when bonds are issued to a hapless news media including The Houston Chronicle and locals that have long since abandoned serious, research-based journalism to carefully crafted bond packages that distribute benefits without meaningful accountability, reformers such as those in Katy who are fighting like hell to hold the line on government accountability face overwhelming institutional odds.

Here’s another fundamental fact.

Reformers in Katy have all the issues staked out on why the Katy I.S.D. bond issue should be defeated. Many have expressed support for a consensus bond issue to be brought back quickly in May to address serious needs. Those who oppose this bond issue are not weak on the issues; they simply have no money or political organization to compete on a reasonably level playing field against the powerful forces that simply cannot afford for this bond issue to be defeated because of the statewide ramifications such a defeat would have.

The entire public education bureaucracy in the State of Texas was poised to watch this battle in Katy. Defeating this bond issue would send shock waves throughout the system and potentially create a groundswell of support of reform elsewhere. Such is the iconic reputation of Katy. Passage of the bond issue means the storm will have passed, the status quo defended, and reform efforts will once again fade into the deep background.

There is a reason that so much vested interest money is being pumped into this race to help the bond issue be approved and defeat those who would start the statewide reform movement in Katy. There is a reason that Katy I.S.D. is pushing the limits of its educational propaganda at every campus, on its district website, its campus websites, and its external communications.

Apparently the only ones in Texas who do not understand that Katy reformers who beat the last smaller bond issue setting the stage for a magnificent showdown on rock solid principles of governance demanding conservative accountability for government at the local level that would quickly extrapolate to statewide importance are the conservative kingmakers like Hotze, Lowry, Polland and others. They fight philosophical battles at the statehouse but are summer soldiers and sunshine patriots at the community level where the rubber actually meets the road.

Here’s what these conservative kingmakers should understand and internalize.

• The accountability for virtually every aspect of public education from academics to finance to bond issues is out of control. School boards have allowed themselves to be neutered surrendering their autonomy and rightful authority to the unmitigated arrogance of  a bureaucracy on steroids. Billions of dollars of waste and tragic public education policies ensue from self-evisceration that school boards have imposed upon themselves and inflicted upon those citizens they are supposed to represent.
• Katy’s reformers have made a genuine effort to engage the enemy of runaway, unaccountable, arrogant government in Katy I.S.D.
• Katy’s reformers are fighting with pea shooters – almost without the peas.
• The defenders of the status quo are fighting with all the power of government and all of the money they need from those who benefit from government contracts producing results that enrich and advance the professional careers of those in the educational bureaucracy who are the engineers of this government train racing ahead.

Meanwhile the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots luxuriate in their self-absorbed, self-righteous world of philosophical distance far removed from a battlefield where serious reform could begin.

I guess the kingmakers are just afraid of being called anti-children and anti-education. They have certainly chosen the safest course – silence.