Vouchers are not the answer for education for Pilot Point.
Approving the $295 million Pilot Point ISD bond is.
I've lived through school growth as a parent.
My oldest daughter attended Aubrey Middle School when it still had that name.
For two years, the school she attended was full to bursting.
That affected everything. Her school environment when she walked through the hallways to class.
Her classroom environment when she dealt with classrooms accommodating too many kids.
Her lunch environment when the room reached deafening levels because so many bodies were crammed into one space.
The growth comes before the money does.
That's the reality of living in a fast-growth area.
The state, in its infi nite wisdom, has curtailed what can be done to limit residential development under the guise of personal property rights. Cities are seriously hobbled when it comes to saying no to swaths of homes.
Saying no to the bond wouldn't keep the schools from filling up.
It would, however, prevent the district from building the necessary facilities to house those students.
Based on the data available on Wednesday from educationfreedom.texas. gov, only 95 students from the Pilot Point ISD boundaries applied for a voucher to go toward an alternate form of education.
The information included doesn't indicate whether those students were enrolled in PPISD schools at the time of the application.
Ninety-five kids. If they're all the same age, that would make a difference in four classrooms, assuming a class size of 22.
Spread across the district, that makes a very small impact, especially in the face of so much growth set for the area.
Not every application has to be accepted, either.
I have heard of no plans
OPINION
for a massive private school or charter school to be built anywhere near the Ranch Cities we cover.
Even if it did, there would be no guarantee that there would actually be a mass exodus of students to attend it.
Even if the students and their families wanted that, there would be no guarantee such schools would accept all of the students.
Even if that all happened, there would be no guarantee that the growth already planned for the area would not provide an ample population for the public and private schools.
This is a growth bond for a reason.
That's the only mechanism the district has to pay for the facilities.
It's much like a mortgage for a private home.
The district does not have the ability to pay cash for new buildings, nor would it have that ability when the rest of the growth kicks in. It would be triaging the need with tourniquets in the form of portable buildings to keep students from being overcrowded, which are not cheap. The state does not require developers to pay for new school facilities, even though the developers promote them as amenities in neighborhoods like the one I live in.
The state also doesn't allow school districts to do that, either.
The developers often donate or sell the land for the school lot at the cost of closing, because it benefits them, but the district is on the hook for that school's construction and maintenance of the land.
We also have seen the price of construction for school facilities skyrocket in the last decade, with no indication that will become more reasonable moving forward.
It's an unfortunate reality that the bill hits the people living in the community already first, but that is the cost of investing into your community.
The only way to honor the spirit of Pilot Point is to continue to invest in it.
That's because the people who return home or move in because they love the feel of the town who continue to make it special are going to want a good environment for their families.
Strong communities have strong school systems.
Voting yes isn't just saying yes for Pilot Point kids.
It's saying yes for retaining the spirit and value of Pilot Point.
Abigail Bardwell is the Editor & Publisher of the Post-Signal. She can be reached at abardwell@post- signal.com.
