Zoning Battles CONTINUE! (From the Fort Bend Star April 5th)-

Parents urge FBISD Board to reconsider over-crowding issues
Parents oppose sending Burton students to Baines
By Barbara Fulenwider

After 13 parents from the southeast side of Fort Bend ISD urged the board to reconsider sending Burton Elementary School fifth graders to Billy Baines Middle School to relieve overcrowding at Lake Olympia Middle School (LOMS), the board weighed in on the hot potato topic.

Across the fast growth district overcrowded schools are a problem. Rezoning is a highly emotional issue for students and parents and not easily or quickly solved. Some are happy, some are not, and as Interim Superintendent Manuela Pedraza said at the March 28 board meeting, if you ask 10 people for their ideas on how to relieve overcrowding you get 10 different answers.

After hearing numerous parents of Lake Olympia MS students speak about that overcrowded school, Pedraza, at the board’s Feb. 27 meeting, presented the administrative plan for Burton fifth graders as a quick temporary fix for overcrowding at Lake Olympia Middle School. Trouble was it didn’t sit well with some of the parents of children who are zoned to the new Baines middle school when it opens this August.

They said that the additional students from Burton will cause overcrowding at Baines by the 2007-08 school year and leave no room for growth, which is progressing quickly as more homes are built and bought in Sienna Plantation.

Ann Domenic, who said she has three children zoned to Baines, complained about the administration’s plan not being posted anywhere on the district’s Web site and “no mention of it in the minutes” of that meeting. She urged the district to communicate better and said now the only way parents can share their ideas with the district is at one board meeting per month or through e-mails and phone calls. “The zoning process provides community forums. Please use those.”

Other parents urged the board and administration to rezone the entire district as a long-term fix while two others urged the district to float a “mini-bond” referendum to relieve overcrowding at various schools. Kim Woodall said it “seems the administration action has been made in haste” and that the “board has overlooked other alternatives. Why are some schools sitting almost empty while others are bursting at the seams.”

Cindi Hernandez chastised the board for allowing parents at the meeting only two minutes to speak instead of the customary three minutes that others have gotten. “Leave the zoning as it is. Move rapidly to introduce a bond referendum,” she said.

LaTanya Maxey identified herself as a member of a recently formed group named Fort Bend Concerned Parents. “We want to have a complete solution for every child in FBISD, not just Sienna. There are a lot of issues that plague this district and we want to help” solve them. We will be back at every meeting you have. We want you to make some drastic changes immediately.”

After the public had their say, the board moved on to approve agenda items and then to discuss and possibly take action on an alternative way to alleviate overcrowding at Lake Olympia MS. The item was put on the agenda at the request of Board Members Stan Magee and Ken Bryant.

Magee opened the discussion by saying there are other options to consider than just the one Pedraza recommended. He talked about allowing some LOMS kids to attend Fort Settlement and First Colony middle schools as an alternative since those two schools have room for more students.

He accused Pedraza of not sharing “real figures, truthful figures” with the board and public, and said, “and tell us whether there is a possibility” of other options. Then Bryant asked Pedraza what the rational was for the plan to send Burton Elementary students to Baines.

She said to provide some immediate relief to Lake Olympia and that long-range planning for relieving overcrowding across the district “is right around the corner. Next month we will recommend our selection of a demographer who can start to work.” Pedraza said there’s no way to do a district-wide rezoning before the end of the school year.

“I’ve got to help those children and I don’t know how else I can right away. Fifth graders coming into that environment (LOMS) deserve something better. The closest school we could look at was Billy Baines. It was to open at 65 percent capacity. The figures I give you we are not making up.

“I needed to decide what’s best for kids. I can understand certain neighborhoods don’t want the change but we need to provide for the most kids possible.” She said some parents have asked about the socioeconomic or ethnicity of the kids and said she doesn’t care about that now. “I have to take care of today and tomorrow before I take care of two years from now.”

She did say the administration is looking at other options including whether to allow transfers to other schools but emphasized, “We need something immediately.”

Board President Lisa Rickert said, “I’m seeing us play volleyball back and forth here with kids. We have serious overcrowding problems across the entire district. We can’t do a quick fix for the long-range plan. I think the solution you offered to us on behalf of the administration is not the best case scenario but helps distribute numbers at least temporarily.”

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CRD Comment: Although we support a district-wide plan it is interesting to note that one of the Sienna speakers who serves as a PTO president for a local school here doesn't mention her bosses (developer) ,up to, 2700 zoning buster apartments coming to the Baines district in her data presentations to the board.