In 2011, the Texas legislature cut more than $5 billion from the state’s public schools, which enroll 5.3 million children. Over the past six years, that amount was never restored, and once again this year the legislature failed to act on a funding program for the schools.
According to data from the Texas Education Agency, the majority of students of students are Hispanic and poor. Whites account for less than 30 percent of students in public schools. Is that why the Legislature doesn’t want to fund the schools?
Here is what taxpayers are willing to fund: football stadiums. The new Katy high school football stadium cost $70.3 million, making it the most expensive in the United States.
Texas is also home to other expensive high school football stadiums, including a $63 million dollar one McKinney, Texas, voters approved last year, and a $60 million stadium in Allen, Texas, according to the New York Times.
Football stadiums matter more than teachers, the arts, class size, science, mathematics, or history.
That is not a good sign for the future of Texas.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Kinda like when the voters of Denver voted down supporting public schools, but voted to fund Coors Stadium, a football field. People are so ridiculous.
And guess who gets the credit? Coors, of course. Duh.
Perfect polarity. Violence, blood, military preparedness vs study, reflection, cross cultural appreciation. And the gladiators win. What do they fund the stadiums with, concussion bonds?
Our district is in the bottom 5 percent of all schools in the state. The district is spending $1.5 million on new Astroturf for the football field. Meanwhile, teachers had to start the year without classroom supplies unless they had them from last year or purchased their own. (There is currently no protocol/procedures in place for teachers to order those supplies.) One would think that the supplying the classroom would be a greater priority than Astroturf.
Given the horrible brain damage that football inflicts on players, I even wonder if football will be around as a school sport. The day is coming where either a taxpayer or parents
will sue a school district for permitting such a dangerous sport, thus exposing the districts and its taxpayers to liability.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2017/07/26/is-football-worth-gambling-with-high-school-and-college-players-brains/#290dfb9612c6
“Football stadiums matter more than teachers, the arts, class size, science, mathematics, or history.”
I agree with your point, but what is interesting is that HS football is a driving mechanism for having many music programs in Texas. After all, how will the audience be entertained during half-time? And if one doesn’t have the attributes to be on a HS football team, then how else can the students participate in support of the program?
Answer: marching band
Then of course, what will the students do in the off-season? well, concert band.
I cannot speak to visual arts, science or math in the Texas schools, but on the whole, the music programs — including orchestras and choirs and even mariachi music — in the Texas public schools are better than in most states.
Let’s agree that in better-off schools, sports & music are symbiotic. I completely agree! Way back in my day, I was part of the we-hate-jocks artsie crowd, but you’d better believe, the chops that made us one of the best hs concert bands in the state were based on the team-bldg that happened every summer in marching-band camp. And none of that could have happened w/o the community support/ funding for the sports program.
What worries me is the stats that show at the elem level recess, phys-ed, & music are being cut from lo-funded districts while they pony up funds to meet fed or state mandates for computerized accountability. That trend has got to have repercussions: mid-school sports/ music slashed, & on up.
Diane,
I am from McKinney, Texas and I would like to provide some context for the stadium. The stadium was part of a bond package that also included safety renovations for all of the campuses in the district and an $11 million performing arts center at one of the high schools. The stadium also includes an event center that will host community events, banquets, and professional development for staff. In addition the school district in McKinney has a certified librarian, art, and music teacher at each elementary campus and provides Advanced Art, Orchestra, Band, Choir, and dance classes at the secondary level. If you look at our demographics you will see that we have quite a large gap between the haves and the have nots in our city. It is important to us that ALL of the children in McKinney have access to the best facilities. So children from gated communities and those living in deep poverty will benefit from some of the best facilities in the world as that is what our community values. The school district has the best teachers with advanced degrees and experience. The school board in McKinney is committed to zoning the schools at the secondary level so that the schools are balanced socioeconomically and ALL kids in our community have access to the best teachers and the best facilities. To say that our community doesn’t value academics or teachers is not accurate. Our teachers, strong academic programs, fine arts, athletics, and facilities are top notch and our entire community benefits.
TX isn’t the only state that’s doing this. CA is also following their lead.
Being from California, I’d be interested in your example(s).
They’ve been doing this for years in texas, Football brings in billions to the schools. Look at all the mental midgets running around in that state. They don’t GAS about education.
Texas does not have a monopoly on football, basketball, or any other sport. Nor does sports seem to matter the most because it is sports. Rather, sports matters because it is performance the community can involve itself in. People come together over sports when they disagree over politics. People use sports for community togetherness. They do the same for marching band and drama. They like science fairs, even though students often spend more time on the show than the study.
The point is, people long to be involved in their school. Communities use sports and other public events to be involved in their community school. Before there was high school sports, baseball teams sprung up all across America in small communities. Weekend activities usually meant seeing your friends as the local baseball team played a neighboring town in someone’s field. There you could sit down with a Lutheran, even if you were a Catholic. There you could find out who had a baby and who died. High school sports usurped this tradition and took its place.
Budgets for facilities are very often unrelated to their educational functions and the aspirations behind the financing of these. ,Football and other high-contact sports have consequences. Recently well-documented, is the damage done to brains of players from concussions, including “micro-concussions.”
I live near a high school. In my immediate view is a newly refurbished outdoor sports facility with a lighted football field (convertible for soccer), the usual track surrounding the field for runners, two baseball fields, sixteen tennis courts, and more than an acre of open field with well-kept grass. This is used for outdoor training by the marching band, drill team, cheerleaders and such.
This dedicated space for school-related activities is merged with a public park. When the outdoor sports facilities are not being used by the school, members of the community use them, especially the tennis courts and baseball fields.
This is no ordinary high school. It opened in 1919. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It has 114-foot clock tower and 27-acre campus. The architecture and landscaping are still symbolic of high aspirations for “high school.” Improvements in the gym and football field were funded by some gifts from alumni and the local NFL team. The whole facility, including the media center was upgraded in 2000.
Unlike the population of the community in which the school is located, about 90 % of the students who attend the school are African-American, and about 70% qualify for a free or reduced price. Most of the other students in this community attend private religious schools, most of those schools are Catholic with multi-generational alums and endowments and splendid facilities.
In the entire school district is populated with 56 public schools. Among the 35,000 pre-K-12 students, 83% are from economically disadvantaged families, 19% of students have been classified with disabilities, and about 7% are learning English.
Over a decade ago citizens were willing to raise their taxes to pay for major league football and baseball facilities, $700 million. Only recently have citizens said “yes” to a new five-year tax to fund pre-school education and for the upgrades in public schools needed for eight years. Academic improvements, measured by state test scores, have been improving, largely from the steady hand of a superintendent who has been in place for eight years and moved to that position from long experience in the community.
Communities are investing in facilities (or not) for many reasons.
Roy Turrentine has the gist of the reasoning for these investments right. Athletics and the “show” surrounding athletic feats is one of the more conspicuous ways of attempting to bridge differences, including what Jonathan Kozal called “savage inequities.”
The charter industry rants about not having facilities. They want facilities, but not the long-term commitments that are more common in public schools. For too many charter operators, facilities are nothing more than real-estate investments. If they can extract public funds to finance real-estate deals they are happy. If they can fill a big box store with desks and computers and call that personalized learning, they will.
Both Roy and Laura’s posts give me hope! Been reading way too many ed-article comment threads haunted by folks who dump on the public commons, esp publ schools.
Roy, your analysis is spot-on. Public schools are about community. Laura, your example fills in the blanks– exactly mirroring my own chi-chi NJ town– for a majority-minority/low SES district!
I do get around to other NJ school districts– partly thro work as a free-lance PreK enrichment teacher, where I observe similar public/school spaces– but mostly thro attending monthly band concerts [my husband plays in 3 – 4 publicly-supported concert bands]. The venues and rehearsal spaces are all part of a state-wide network of public school spaces and other publically-supported spaces including Y’s, arts-centers, sr-housing, & parks– in mostly middle-to-working class areas. Community spirit & public support seem pretty high here.
Take that, Trump!
The examples of public support for sports stadiums in lieu of textbooks almost makes one wish that voters had no say in how facilities are funded… it underscores how messy democracy can be…
The only thing worse than voters are legislators