An upcycling opportunity for CCISD (or others)

We're in a tremendous building phase right now in the League City area, with major new projects including, but not limited to, the following:

• The new HEB store on League City Parkway.
• The $74 million retirement community on the corner of Coryell Street and FM 270 Egret Bay Blvd.
• The new $39 million CCISD stadium, which just broke ground within the past few days.

Perfect, perfect name - couldn't be better.  But before this artist's rendition becomes reality, an extraordinary amount of infrastructure will need to be put in place.

Screengrabbed from CCISD.  

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind folks (directing this post @clearcreekisd in particular) that there are going to be plenty of opportunities for upcycling some of the construction wastes from those projects, CCISD's in particular, supposing you can get the permission to do it and supposing you can find someone (such as a motivated teacher or volunteer(s)) with the enthusiasm to lead an upcycling project (they aren't that difficult to manage, as I will show below).  

Construction sites generate vast quantities of useful materials that cannot be incorporated into the sites themselves, but which do have the potential to serve purposes that are arguably superior (on a dollar-per-dollar comparison basis) to their original function.  But despite their potential value in other applications, they are usually just thrown away unless someone steps in to capitalize on them.    

My favorite of these materials is storm water drainage culvert.  

I am the proud back-yard owner of seven gardens that were built from pieces of drainage culvert picked from construction trash piles (picked with the owners' permission).  These trimmings (scraps) were too short to be used on the original construction site or in any other location, so they had been tossed into dumpsters or onto waste heaps shortly before I got to them and saved them.

This is my beloved herb garden, which is further described in this post (with construction details).  

Here are three more as they looked about a year ago.  At the time, they held two very small blueberry bushes with Swiss chard in the middle.  Description here. 

Here's how that same grouping looks today, after the blueberry plants in the right and left segments had a year to explode into growth.

You can also see a few of my stock tank gardens in the background.  Large stock tanks cost about $100 - $300 apiece, whereas culvert scraps are free if you can get them.  

The CCISD stadium project will probably generate a good volume of scrap culvert.  There should be at least three different diameters of it.  That resource could be developed into a gardening and/or landscaping project that could give Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's analogous efforts a run for their money.

And that would be a tall order given that the Wildflower Center has elevated container gardening to heretofore-unheard-of levels of creativity and artistic expression.  But much the same could be done with culvert.  Personally I prefer the black polyethylene culvert from an artistic standpoint because it creates a more striking contrast with the surroundings.  Stock tanks are less visually distinct.

Screengrabbed from Rock Rose blog, which has a great entry on these famous stock tanks here.  

Well-known reporter Deborah Wrigley waters the student garden at CCISD's Clear Creek High School, but you'll notice right away that she's on her knees.  When large containers such as culvert scraps are used for gardening, there's no more kneeling required as the gardens are raised up to a more convenient working height.  This is especially useful for handicapped individuals.

Screengrabs courtesy of KTRK-TV.  

It's a wonderful garden but you can tell that a lot of taxpayer money has not been spent on the aesthetics of it.  This could be developed further if someone wanted to do that.    

Here's what CCISD's upcycling of some of its own pending culvert waste could potentially teach kids:

1. That we don't have to send perfectly good stuff to a landfill.  
2. That we don't have to default to a retail solution every time we want to accomplish or build something.  If we want to improve our situation, we may not need to rush out to a store and spend money.  The answer might be free and right under our noses.  
3. That upcycling is the ultimate example of thinking outside the box.  It goes beyond recycling in terms of the value that it adds to our environment.  
4. That thinking outside the box is at the heart of entrepreneurship.  Every time you conceive of a way to combine, use, or build upon existing materials in a new way, you're being an entrepreneur.  
5. That we shouldn't allow our pretentiousness to interfere with our creativity.  Value is value no matter where it comes from.  Do you think you're too wealthy or too proud to go dumpster-diving?  Try it (with permission) - it's a liberating experience.  Some of the most amazing art being produced today is being made with items that were thrown away (Google 'found object art' for examples).  
6. That gardens are very cool and raised gardens can be used to grow special plants that everyone loves.

We are eagerly awaiting the ripening of our current culvert crop of blueberries!!!  Blueberry plants require lower soil pH than we have in greater Houston.  It's difficult to create those conditions in a garden which is installed in the ground, but it is easy to do it in culvert scraps.  

Conversely, if there are no teachers or volunteers interested in developing culvert gardens at any school(s) in CCISD, the stadium-derived scraps could instead be cut to garden sizes and then sold to the public in a fundraiser (the other construction sites around League City could also be asked to contribute their scraps).  People would pay good money for this stuff; look at these gardens - they're beautiful as well as uniquely useful!  With a child in CCISD, I've had a decade of dealing with school fundraisers, and what goods are usually sold in them?!  Sugary snacks that are good for nobody's waistline, as well as consumer items and home decor that nobody needs because our houses are already chock full of all that stuff.  I know so many people who would love to get into vegetable and flower gardening but they need a way of jump-starting and simplifying their efforts because they only have limited free time.  A culvert garden would be just the ticket for those folks.  These things would sell like hotcakes.  

Think about it, and if anyone has any questions about this idea, feel free to contact me via centerpointe.blog -at- gmail.

Culvert scraps thrown on the ground at a location in Vermont (screengrab courtesy of this site).  They don't need to be landfilled or shredded like soda bottles - they can be cut to height and used for gardens as-is.  

A teacher's teaching moment

I was wrong about what I said yesterday - spring has not arrived.  It was only a momentary illusion followed by a forty-degree let-down.

Last night as I once again blasted the new fire logs that we bought to commemorate this unusual winter, my husband raised an eyebrow and asked, "Are you enjoying spending forty dollars on natural gas in a single evening?!"  I replied, "Yes I am.  It's a small price to pay for subtropical sanity."  
:-)

Given that you won't be spending much time in the frigid outdoors today, you might have a little extra time for elective reading.  If so, I recommend this op-ed by a recently-resigned HISD rookie teacher.

In the endless wrangling over public education, which suffers from hopeless distortion inflicted by polarizing duality just like every other debate topic in the American repertoire, that piece resonates and rings true for me because the author and I have a few important things in common.

I, too, put myself through university because my family did not have the means.  I, too, worked endless hours to support myself while simultaneously graduating from two of the best universities (top 3 in my home country followed by one of the top 20 American universities for graduate school).

The amount of work that goes into that kind of lifestyle choice is beyond the imaginations of most people.  Cognitive capacity for academics is not nearly enough - it literally takes an Olympic-level dedication to hard work - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year (Edison's "99% perspiration" comes to mind).  

For this reason, when a self-made high-GPA Cornell graduate says that teaching conditions are untenable, chances are good that this is objectively true, because this is not a person who would be likely to have unrealistic expectations about what "hard work" does or does not entail.  This is not a person who would be likely to have problems prioritizing tasks, either.  

It's a good read.  Check it out if the state of our public education system is of concern to you.

More of the wrong kind of Clear Lake lore

About 30 minutes ago, I tweeted about seeing a news broadcasting truck at CCISD's Clear Path Alternative school, not knowing what it was.  Almost certainly, it was in conjunction with this sordid story about the recent murder of a Clear Lake teenager who had reportedly attended the school.  The story must be going (inter)national because there's a 404 error and I can't even link to Clear Path's website at this point (URL perhaps overloaded).

More sick (but thankfully rare) stuff to be sensationalized and flogged in the popular media.  Wonderful news on yet another dreary abnormally cold day.  Sigh.

A mole by any other name

Tag line:  How to turn a school chemistry project into an exercise in hilarity.

It's Mole Day - 10/23, where from 6:02 a.m. until 6:02 p.m., we celebrate the definition of mole, which is 6.02 x 10^23 particles (Avogadro's number). 

The geek shall inherit the Earth:  Screengrab from the National Mole Day Foundation. 

My child's bonus assignment in chemistry was to creatively represent this day using a crafted mole (as in, the mammal, which is not actually a rodent), akin to this assignment.  It's the kind of project that engages the entire family, especially a family of science nerds.  There's always room for sock puppets! 

At first, we came up with "Guaca-mole-e", which would have Avocado's number of particles.  But that just seemed so obvious that we concluded it must have been done many times before.  Checking the internet this morning as I'm writing this post, I see that we were correct.

We settled on this:

A Mole in One, because one mole has Avogolfer's number of particles.  Even while dressed in golfing plaid.

Isn't that cute??  He's got his own little mole hole in the form of a tin can, which began its life with somewhat less than Avogadro's number of garbanzo beans. 

The clerk in Lowes looked at us like we were crazy when we asked him to cut us a single linear foot of Astroturf off the ten-foot mega-role in the outdoor carpeting section.  We have nine leftover feet if anyone would like to have it.  Free to a good home!

If you know anything about moles, you'll immediately conclude that, while his star nose is mildly convincing (for a sock puppet), his button eyes are too large.  But this particular mole needs large eyes if he's to perceive the full wisdom of science, so there you have it.

Regrettably, Google did not post up a Mole Day GoogleDoodle this morning.  They managed to hit their recent Schrodinger-themed Doodle out of the park, but dropped the mole ball where Avogadro is concerned.

Remember this one? Schrodinger's birthday bash, literally. 

Screengrabbed from Slate. 

In lieu of art, you could always peruse this collection of Mole Day gift ideas.  Have a good Wednesday.
:-)

Creationism controversy: What's different now?

The mainstream media seems like it might be suffering from an attack of short memory syndrome, and so I'd like to help rectify that here. 

The internet positively exploded yesterday with retreads of the AP story surrounding the apparently-growing textbook controversy in Texas, as creationism once again threatens to rear its inappropriate head in public school science classrooms.  The list of news URLs went on for several pages Monday night. 

Screengrabbed from Google. 

But here's what I found curious:  Neither the Associated Press nor any of the related media sources that I've read have thus far have invoked Kitzmiller while framing the issue in its present-day Texas context.  OK, some so-called "social conservatives" are once again pushing for the teaching of creationism at the expense of science instead of in its proper historical and cultural context  - that's no more surprising than the sun rising in the east.  But what hasn't yet been explained is why this newest challenge rises to the level of justifiable alarm.  As a nation, we've been there, we've done that, and in Kitzmiller, Judge John E. Jones III did a jaw-droppingly good job of setting everyone straight on the issue (trial transcripts here; judgment here).  

In a word, yes (tap to expand).  Screengrabbed from this source. 

At this point, there are the popular news stories and Texas Freedom Network has initiated a campaign called Stand up for Science to oppose these developments (the grab above is from their summary document).  But the Constitutional precedent has already been strongly reaffirmed on this issue, has it not?  And recently, and by Republicans to boot. 

According to the NOVA episode "Judgment Day", Judge Jones (rear right) had been recommended for his position on the bench by Senator Santorum (left) and appointed by George W. Bush. 

Screengrabbed from "Judgment Day". 

So even if some rogue Texas creationists were to succeeded in getting inappropriate textbooks approved, what's the worst-case scenario?  Presumably, the usual squandering of an inconceivably large number of public dollars on some Rube Goldberg-style legal machinations would quickly follow, as it always does in the unwinnable culture war.  The litigation would launch, textbooks would get tossed, and Texas would then resume its expected social trajectory none the worse for wear (except financially, of course).  Or would there be more to it this time than just that? 


One of my favorite "unwinnable war" memes, courtesy of Cheezburger.

Perhaps more details will emerge in the coming days.  Hopefully some of you media people have your trackback ears on, because many of us would like to know more about the core of this emerging issue.   

A rose by any other name.

Excerpted from the Kitzmiller decision, page 8. 



The remarkable elegance of Kitzmiller is found in the way in which the plaintiffs were able to show, using actual physical evidence, that "intelligent design" is quite literally creationism re-labeled.  It was so striking that, at times, I wondered if an intelligent designer actually had a hand not in the arising of life, but in the trial. 

It is resoundingly and emphatically unconstitutional to teach creationism within the context of science in an American public school system.  That much was affirmed long before Kitzmiller. 

Screengrabs from "Judgment Day", from frames around the 1:27 mark.

L I N K P O S T : Back to school in CCISD

Seriously, I don't know how people with multiple children handle the school information management challenges, especially folks with kids in high school.  Yes, Clear Creek Independent School District (CCISD) is a well-rated district - the schools are good quality and the Superintendent is literally second to none.  But it's a massive district with highly complex and diverse operations and the information resources are distributed among so many unrelated e-spaces that sometimes the school officials themselves don't know where to find specific info when you ask for it (been there, done that, as a parent). 

And there has never seemed to be a cohesive "go-to" launch site that pulls all that stuff together in one place.  With this in mind, I decided to create a narrative Linkpost summarizing the highlights of that sourcing. 

The usual disclaimers apply - the information presented below is not warranted to be complete and if you're reading this past August 2013, much of it will probably be out of date.  Contact the ISD directly if you have questions.

(1) Calendars.  Here is a downloadable PDF of the 2013-2014 district calendar that applies to all schools.  And here below is the same calendar converted to JPG: 

Tap the image to expand.  I routinely get "cannot find font" errors with the original PDF and it will sometimes hang Acrobat on one of my machines, so I converted it to JPG. 

This site contains additional, targeted calendars (e.g., athletics).  Both CCISD and its individual campuses also utilize Google+ calendars, but I have never sucked up that stuff into my own calendars because I have found they contain too much that doesn't apply to our family - classic information overload syndrome leading to non-functionality.  Perhaps if you are a Google virtuoso, you could optimize that stuff for your own use.  My method of retaining organizational sanity is to selectively enter only those "mission critical" school dates into my own Outlook calendar and assign them their own color. 

Additionally, many individual Parent-Teacher-Student Associations (PTSAs) also embed a calendar on their website, such as this one for Clear Creek, which is Centerpointe's zoned high school.  More about PTSA in a section further down. 

(2) Logistics.  CCISD has produced this back-to-school portal which will help guide you to logistical information such as attendance maps, bus routes, and individual campus enrollment dates.  In significant measure, I will not repeat all that information, except for caveats which I will include below (subject to future updating). 

Don't be surprised if the bus / school portal does not function.  It was returning "No Busing Information Available" and "No School Information Available" messages for any and all geographic inputs as I was writing this post.  Phone CCISD if you're having a problem for your area. 

(3) Registration.  Registration packets are neither emailed nor snail-mailed.  They must be picked up by families, preferably according to schedules specific to each of CCISD's 43 individual schools (I believe you can wait until the first day of school to receive them, but completing a packet takes a lot of time and it's best done in advance of the flurry of first-week activity).  Start at this page, click your school level (elementary, middle, or high), then click the individual webpage for your school to find out when the pick-up dates are (e.g., here is the link for Clear Creek High). 

Notice that, when you click to the individual school level, the web page "feel" might look like you're leaving the CCISD system.  Also, be aware that the information on those individual school sites might not be updated in a timely manner and it might not be presented in a way that makes sense to you.  For instance, we know from the PTSA website that yesterday and today are the days for pick-up of the Creek registration packets, but as of 8:50 a.m. yesterday, there was no corresponding announcement on the homepage of the school itself. 

I suggest being very careful and double-checking everything school-related that you research as a parent. 

Screengrabbed from this site.

Here's a concise grab from the Clear Creek High PTSA site. 

CCISD registration packets will vary somewhat from school to school and level to level (elementary, middle and high) but generally they contain the following:

• A pre-printed child-specific information verification form (unless your child is new to the district)
• Medical info sheet
• A back-to-school calendar
• Residency questionnaire
• Handbook / code of conduct receipt acknowledgment
• Educational planning information (partial list of guides here)
• PTSA enrollment form
• Various releases and participation agreements for special programs

My suggestion is as follows:  The forms all have to be filled out by hand and signed with ink, but I make scanned copies of the entire package before my child turns it in.  This way if we later get accused of neglecting to provide some information (been there, done that), I can simply email the corresponding scanned sheet. 

(4)  Individual Enrollment Issues.  Once you get your enrollment package filled out and all attachments included (e.g., immunization records, proof of residency, etc.), your child is ready for the pre-first-day-of-school "camp" during which their completed registration will be accepted and they will be issued textbooks for home use.  Check with your school's website for dates and times. 

(5) Lunches.  CCISD is currently using the third-party provider ParentOnline for internet-based funding of lunch accounts.  If memory serves me, the charges show up on credit cards tagged as "Cybersoft". 

(6)  Individual Class Information Sites.  Many teachers in the higher grades maintain their own websites which are hosted on yet another set of third-party platforms (no cohesion).  Often in order to find out what those are, your child first has to bring home the hard copy information sheet he or she will receive during the first week of classes.  Those sheets should contain the corresponding web page addresses. 

(7)  Textbooks.  Note that for the higher grades, numerous textbooks are moving to a new system of electronic access for the 2013-2014 school year (although I believe that hard copies will still also be issued to students).  This change is not yet associated with the tablet program approved by the voters in the recent bond election - those come in later years.  In the short term, my research revealed that many textbooks previously available on the open internet are now migrating behind a paywall.  Your child will be given a username and password to access content specific to the courses in which they are enrolled.  I previously raised holy hell about this policy change (we, the taxpayers, have already paid for that content, so what is the justification for restricting access??) but we'll just have to see how this new program deploys this fall before we can further evaluate what is transpiring. 

(8) Student Progress Monitoring.  Here's where the info management challenge gets even more dicey because the cohesion is not what it could be.  At present, there are several different logins through which performance information is accessible: 

• The student-access site called E4. 
• The separate adult-access portal which had been called Parent Self Serve (not to be confused with the aforesaid Parent Online) but which is now apparently referred to as TEAMS.   I believe you need to be set up by CCISD itself to access that one (you can't initiate your own username and password).  This site contains the nuts 'n' bolts of grades, attendance, and other statistics. 
• Yet another login site called CCISD4ME.  This contains general information as well as links to both TEAMS and ParentOnline.   
• CCISD also has something called Naviance Family Connection which is a planning resource for high schoolers.  In an announcement contained within the 2013-2014 registration packet, the announcement says "Please contact the counseling office for assistance if you do not know your registration code.  Note that you and your child will each receive different registration codes, and that each code may be used only once."  Fantastic - it sounds like it will be even more difficult than logging into the new restricted-access textbook system.   

Don't ask me why there are so many different unrelated websites and resources that show so little intuitive organization and cohesion.  It's frustrating.  I guess this is just where we are right now in what the Information Age can offer at the level of public schools. 

(9)  PTSA.  Even if you have no urge to volunteer or "get involved", I recommend joining your school's PTSA simply for sanity's sake.  I've never found any of them to be overbearing in the sense of the "PTA from hell" social stereotype, and they do provide useful e-mail blasts which I find save me time and energy that would otherwise be spent hunting and pecking through many different hosted websites for information.  They're worth the entry fee. 

(10) Robo-calls.  I also recommend the robo-dialing automated school reminder messages, especially if your smartphone has visual voice mail capability which will allow you to prioritize those messages during your day.  Yes, as a matter of fact, some of our family days are so complex that I do benefit when the school phones me up with automated reminders.  On some days, I feel like I hear the voice of Scott Bockart (Creek's Principal and the voice behind its friendly robo-calls) more than that of my own husband.  I've been on the robo-system for so long now that I can't remember how I joined.  Contact your individual school for info. 


Anyway, this is a scratch-the-surface compilation of some of the more common relevant CCISD links.  There are probably errors and omissions in this post, so be sure to double-check everything I've summarized.  Good luck as we all gear up for the new school year. 

If only it were as easy as readin, writin, and rithmetic.

Microsoft clip art. 

Educational access, Part 1: CCISD Parental Advisory Committee

Within the past couple of months, I've had fresh concerns with the depth and breadth of access that CCISD students currently have to educational content for which the taxpayers have already footed the bill. 

My concern was motivated by our family's individual plan for our child's education, although it comes coincidentally on the heels of the $367 million bond referendum that passed last month.  Part of the resulting mandate involves increasing computerized access to educational content, and CCISD has associated the statement "We believe learning can occur any time, any place, and at any pace" with the new initiatives. 

Screengrabbed from this CCISD site. 

It would appear that I'm not the only parent with concerns, or at least extremely-motivated interest in this issue.  Last Monday, CCISD announced a summer volunteer opportunity to help flesh out what this initiative actually means in practical terms.

I'm screengrabbing only because internet pages like this tend to decay and disappear with time, and I want to be able to refer back to this announcement in future blog posts. 

I received this new volunteer opportunity announcement just this morning via a PTSA email blast.  I immediately clicked the link to volunteer, but this is the response I got:

According to CCISD communications coordinator Elaina Polsen (CCISD Office of Public Information) who responded to my inquiry via email, CCISD quickly received 120 applications and had to select 35 volunteer positions via lottery. 

There was such a large amount of interest that the application basically closed right after it opened.  For me, the lament "always a bridesmaid, never a bride" came to mind, except in my case, it's "always a commentator, never a contributor"!   Continuing in the idiom groove, I'm a day late and a dollar short with this one, but I do plan to continue monitoring and evaluating this issue, so stay tuned for future posts if this topic is of interest to you and your family. 

CCISD zoning revisited

FYI, about a year ago I published a post describing how Centerpointe is zoned with respect to public high schools.  The whole thing is fairly confusing and involves a systematic migration away from the original zoned high school (Clear Springs) and into Clear Creek High School.  This was the original CCISD implementation schedule I posted at that time:

I can't reference a refreshed URL pertaining to this table, because I can no longer find it on CCISD's website.  Their zoning boundary maps are published here, but there is no associated discussion of an interim implementation scheme that I can locate. 

All of this is relevant because my child recently received several computer-generated communications indicating that she is still zoned to Clear Springs, at least according to CCISD's computers, despite the fact that they apparently made these changes well over a year ago.  If you have a child transitioning to high school, verify your paperwork carefully, and don't necessarily take everything at initial face value.  I submitted a request for confirmation just to make sure that nothing has changed regarding the transitions described above, and I'll comment below if I learn anything important.

Ode to many local wallets

Last June, as the 2010-2011 school year was drawing to a close, I wrote about the costs associated with CCISD's Magnet program busing.  I provided a spreadsheet estimating outlays for the three most common transportation scenarios from which families choose.

The numbers illustrated that the financial impacts to families who drive instead of bus were profound.  This is the kind of slow creeping expense that might not rise to the level of your daily awareness because it gets spread out over 177 annual teaching days.  But if you don't pay attention, you could find yourself effectively spending a few thousand dollars a year for a darned good service that your ISD provides to you essentially free of charge.

So with these things in mind, I was delighted to note that WAVE Magnet bus ridership originating from Victory Lakes Intermediate currently seems to be running at about 150% what it was last year.

So many kids boarded the bus that it sorta looked like it was sinking on its axles.

This could be partly or wholly a coincidence, perhaps has nothing to do with CCISD's proposal to eliminate Magnet busing and nothing to do with my cost analysis.  But regardless of inspiration, it's evidence of many families making a good choice:  not only are they saving themselves some serious money, the increased participation shows the ISD just how valuable this service is.

CCISD budget issues: The vote is partially in

Last week I posted a back-of-envelope financial analysis pertaining to one of the cost-cutting measures proposed by Clear Creek Independent School District (CCISD).

I also presented that same analysis at the "town hall" meeting held at Clear Springs High School on June 7, 2011, and directed interested parties to this blog for a copy of it.

CCISD has published some of the informational materials used in its two recent town hall meetings, including a video summarizing their current financial situation.  For people who are looking to gain a basic understanding of these budget issues without slogging through an unmanageable mountain of detail, this video is a reasonable resource and it demands only 7.5 minutes of our precious time:

Along with those information resources and video, CCISD also published an interactive survey through which interested parties could render feedback.

Look for this button at the bottom of the above-linked page.
Or, here is its direct URL.

While I think this was a great start, the survey was limited in that it did not explicitly associate line items with their actual costs.  This is important because if people don't have that kind of quantitative information right there in front of them, they can't possibly comprehend what exactly they're advocating or opposing.  Just I said in my post last week, in order to sensibly evaluate anything, we first need good numbers to be staring us in the face because, to the extent that they can be objectively generated, numbers speak a language that is nonpartisan, non-pandering, and non-idealistic.

On June 10, I emailed CCISD asking them to tighten their survey by presenting those associated financial numbers, but as of this blog entry, this had not been done.  That's unfortunate, but it does not totally negate the outreach efforts that they are making.  I noted to the Superintendent and will make the same observation here that precise delivery of relevant information in this fashion is likely to become more common (and more expected) in the future.  Last November, the New York Times did exactly what I'm talking about when they published their federal budget calculator:

Screengrab from here.

That thing was a game-changer:  all of a sudden, voters didn't need to sift through a million numbers and an equal number of partisan rants in order to understand the basics of what's happening at the federal level.  Instead they could fiddle around with a simple but powerful little puzzle and get a "feel" for the magnitude of the issues using nothing but their own brains (which is all they SHOULD be using).  I was shooting for a much smaller-scale but analogous intent when I published my spreadsheet of last week.

The CCISD survey appears to be still actively accepting submissions, but Bay Area Citizen (via local journalist Mary Alys Cherry, who was sitting in front of me last Monday) has already published some preliminary results.  This is clearly a non-scientific tabulation (Mary Alys notes as much) and not only that, the survey was loosely structured in such a way that the options were not mutually exclusive (i.e., not strictly "either/or") and therefore the whole thing gets a bit fuzzy when one tries to glean from it what people truly prefer.  Nevertheless, the interim results are worth looking at (percentages rounded):
 

• Tax rate increase - 79% of respondents in favor
• Lay off employees and increase class sizes - 29% in favor
• Eliminate Homestead Exemption - 57% in favor
• Allow out-of-district students to attend CCISD for a fee - 66% in favor
• Eliminate non-hazardous transportation - 57% in favor
• Eliminate special program transportation - 39% in favor
• Charge a $20 transportation fee for special events - 85% in favor
• Charge fees for extracurricular activities - 74% in favor
• Suspend funding for staff supplemental insurance - 44% in favor

There's an interesting bit highlighted above:  My argument to maintain special program transportation was based on the fact that I strongly suspect it would cost the community significantly more to do it severally than it costs CCISD to do it collectively using its present model.  Whereas eliminating this transportation would save CCISD $317,000 annually (per their analysis), I roughly estimate that it would cost the community as a whole in excess of $1 million to accomplish equivalent transportation.  Therefore adoption of that reduction on CCISD's part would be financially degenerative - penny wise for them, pound foolish for us.

The same argumentative principles probably also hold true for the "eliminate non-hazardous transportation" option, but I couldn't back-of-envelope those calculations because, unlike the special transportation case, I don't have personal observations upon which to base estimates.  But look at the disparate results of the polling:  a minority (39%) in favor of eliminating "special" transportation, but a majority (57%) in favor of eliminating "non-hazardous" transportation.  Never mind that it would be expected to take somewhere between 10 and 78 individual cars to replace each eliminated school bus in BOTH scenarios, eh?  What may be happening here is that we're seeing a partial effect of citizens being unequally informed.  I am not aware of anyone having made a strong explicit, quantitative argument in favor of keeping nonhazardous transportation, as I did with special transportation.  So some citizens may have understood one choice better than they understood the other choice, possibly contributing to disparate polling results (in postulating that, for brevity I'm eliminating details of discussion in last week's town hall).  Which, if true, would have something profound to say regarding the power of education.  Nothing that we didn't already know, but it's one thing to know that from theory and quite another to see it manifest in practice: votes based on partial information or incomplete information are a potential recipe for disaster.  Or at least degeneracy.

Anyway, I'll keep watching this issue and will post about interesting future developments.

CCISD budget issues: Non-mandatory transportation

Clear Creek ISD's budget challenges have made the news recently, sometimes dramatically, and a citizens' committee was appointed to help identify the most palatable cost cuts.

There is a "town hall" meeting tonight at 6 p.m. at Clear Springs High School to discuss the options put forth by the committee.  If I were a better blogger without a "real" job demanding my time and focus, I might have re-posted this information with more advance notice.

Some of the service reductions proposed by the committee appear to be solidly within diminishing-returns territory when assessed from a community perspective.  I chose to focus on transportation-related issues in rendering my feedback to the committee, because that is an issue that I know from personal experience.  CCISD can indeed reduce its budget by eliminating busing services that it is not required by law to provide, but the corresponding cost to local families would be incredibly high - penny-wise for them becomes pound-foolish for us.  For this reason, I think it makes more sense to develop a means by which CCISD could be compensated for providing those non-mandatory services.

Blogger does not yet support content hosting, so in order to share my feedback on this blog, I have to embed my letter and supporting calculations as two photographs.  Click on each one to enlarge so that you can read.  And check out those numbers.  Note that these are only costs associated with one example group of students being transported to one Magnet school program from one location.   If these types of impacts were integrated over every family in the ISD and for every type of non-mandatory busing, the financial impacts to the community would indeed be remarkable.

Incidentally, this document is redacted but I do not mind sharing my identity if you contact me personally.  I don't want my ID to become associated with this blog NOT because I have anything to hide, but because it would likely cause a confound with my professional on-line identity.

2011 District Science Fair

The CCISD Science Fair was held last night in the new Clear Falls High School commons. 



The stage was set to celebrate student success...

For those of you not familiar with this event, it's a huge undertaking involving vast numbers of ISD personnel and also 200 volunteer judges from the community evaluating approximately 800 projects from our 26 elementary, 10 intermediate, and 7 high schools (whew!!).  With the local emphasis on science and engineering represented by NASA and its associated technology companies as well as our area's medical and petrochemical infrastructure, Science Fair is a big deal around here.  And last night marked the 50th anniversary of this Fair. 

Reproduced from http://www.ccisd.net/

Congrats to ALL the kids who competed!  With 38,000 children in CCISD, just getting into District is a tremendous accomplishment!  (For those of you not familiar with the process, the kids who go to District must first win top prizes within their individual schools).

I wish I could report on the competition results for the Centerpointe kids who entered the Fair while still maintaining the degree of anonymity appropriate for a public blog, but given privacy issues, there's no real way for me to correlate the published list of winners to their respective neighborhoods.  I know we've got some extremely talented kids in Centerpointe (I've met some of them!) including some attending the Seabrook Science Magnet, which naturally tends to spawn many winners.

I can, however, comment on the results of one project that has been a source of mild curiosity in the neighborhood by virtue of its conspicuousness.



If you strolled through the new section within the past two months, you may have noticed this unusual sight on one of the vacant lots.  The project was designed to compare the most common types of sediment controls used by construction contractors in Texas.  These types of controls have been widely used for years, but not much work has been done to evaluate how effective they actually are.

That project earned a Place 3 medal in its category last night.  The author and her family wish to thank Centerpointe Properties, Ltd. for allowing the use of the lot, and Meritage Homes for allowing this experimental apparatus in their active sales area.  Most importantly, heartfelt thanks are due to the buyers who signed a purchase contract on this lot shortly before the project was dismantled.  When they posed for their celebratory family photo holding their Meritage "SOLD" sign, they did so surrounded by this somewhat bizarre experimental set-up.  Thanks so much for your patience, guys!!  At least you know you're buying into a community that offers strong support to its children!!!  (And karma-wise, your new homestead is off to a great start!!).  We all look forward to welcoming you when your new home construction is finished!!
:-)

If anyone else knows of other neighborhood Fair winners, please feel free to comment or drop me an email so that an anonymous kudos can be appropriately rendered! 

School zoning issues

The purpose of this post is to provide some "starter" information about where Centerpointe falls with respect to current public school attendance zones.   My family had to expend some effort to figure out all this stuff from scratch when we moved to this neighborhood less than a year ago (and we already lived in this district!), so I figured I might as well post it so that some of the incoming folks could maybe get a running start on deciphering their own situations.

First, the basic background:
Centerpointe is located within the Clear Creek Independent School District (CCISD), which is a wonderful, highly-rated district - in fact, it is one of the top-rated large districts in the state of Texas.  The combination of the educated local population with the concentration of engineering and science represented by the Johnson Space Center and UTMB workforces (not to mention local petrochemical and offshore service industries) has created a thriving public school system that would be the envy of much of this nation. 

However, the rapid growth brought on by economic prosperity causes changes that may be a bit disruptive in the short term.  CCISD has been challenged by a 4% to 6% annual population growth rate.  The population of League City alone has increased 68% in the past 20 years.  And of course, that growth is not geographically uniform.   The ISD must not only keep up with that growth rate, but its timing is critical: it has to open new schools exactly when they are needed, not a year before or two years after (what are new kids going to do - stand around and wait for a school to be built?). 

Therefore any changes in the rate of population growth can wreak havoc on an ISD's logistical and financial obligations.  Local news reports within the past couple of years have suggested that the abrupt reduction in the velocity of homebuilding associated with the recession posed challenges to CCISD.  That coupled with the opening of Education Village on State Highway 96 have required zoning changes and caused a bit of controversy among some parents. 

Recent zoning changes are apparent in Centerpointe's active real estate listings.  They appear to incorporate a bit of confusion and inconsistency, giving the impression that the neighborhood might be split with respect to zoning, which is not exactly true.

Some of those listings punt entirely on the zoning issue:

And some of them disavow any prediction of high school:

While others cite Clear Springs as the zoned high school:

And some of which reference Clear Creek, albeit with a different elementary school:

Of course each one of those interpretational variants comes with a big fat disclaimer:

and the same disclaimer applies to this blog post: even if what is described here is accurate as of this moment, it might change dramatically, especially given the magnitude of uncertainties surrounding public school funding issues, which started out being a relative trickle of a deficit about a year ago, but has since morphed into what might become for CCISD a forty million dollar roar, depending on how the Texas budget issues play out.      

Second, where we really stand right now in terms of zoning: 
According to the CCISD website, these are Centerpointe's current zoned schools.

Well, heck, that spreadsheet excerpt above is totally illegible, so let's show it this way:

The elementary school zoning map listed on the CCISD website as of February 5, 2011: 
Parr Elementary

The intermediate school zoning map listed on the CCISD website as of February 5, 2011: 
Victory Lakes Intermediate
But note as well that some Centerpointe kids also attend either of two Gifted and Talented (GT) regional intermediate schools:
the Webster Academy Visions in Education (WAVE) which is housed within Westbrook Intermediate School, and
the Science Magnet program, which is housed within Seabrook Intermediate School.

The high school zoning map listed on the CCISD website as of February 5, 2011:
Clear Creek High School.
Certain CCISD students can also qualify to attend the Clear Horizons Early College High School which is part of the San Jacinto College District. 

OK, so that seems fairly straightforward.  But here is where things become a bit more challenging:


This was screengrabbed from the webpage
http://www2.ccisd.net/AboutCCISD/AttendanceZones.aspx
as that webpage was shown on February 5, 2011.
It reflects changes made for the 2010-2011 school year.

I don't even want to pretend that I know the full story of what went into that little gem.  This plan is what prompted the controversy referenced above.  It basically describes how the transition between high schools will be deployed.  Because our family is a bit younger, I / we personally have not been impacted by this, so I cannot comment further on that part of it. 

Again, the information in this post is incomplete and it may not prove to be accurate as future changes are made.  Meet with appropriate representatives of CCISD if you have any questions about how zoning affects the choices available for your children.  And if I've made any mistakes or omissions here or if you've got more to add, please comment below or email me at Centerpointe.blog@gmail.com.