Katy ISD Trustees Mull Deal With Sports Marketing Firm
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA? What are these folks THINKING?
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!!
KATY CITIZEN WATCHDOG ANNOUNCEMENT
The Titus Marketing Plan
November 15, 2007
Dear Citizen Watchdog$ and other interested parties:
If you get a minute, go to the web site (www.katycitizens.org) and read the story entitled “Katy ISD Trustees Mull Deal With Sports Marketing Firm”.
You can find the story on the “Home Page” of the web site. The story appeared on the Chronicle web site this morning. In addition, please take a moment and read the open letter below that the Katy Watchdog$ sent to the district today regarding this plan.
The KISD Board will be voting on this matter this Monday night!
Do you still have more questions than answers about this deal?
Do you think that hiring a sports marketing firm should be a priority in this district?
Do you feel that academics will be better served by hiring a sports marketing firm?
Do you think that academics should be more important than football?
Do you wonder why we would have to hire a marketing to name buildings, promote corporate sponsorship of KISD events and secure sideline signage at football games?
Do we not already have people currently working for the district that could do these things for a lot less money?
Does anyone else wonder why our Chief Operating Officer, Mr. John Bailey, could not coordinate such promotions?
Do you wonder at all how hiring Titus is going to raise our academic rating?
Do you wonder how hiring Titus is going to improve the overall educational quality in KISD?
Would you like to see less emphasis on extracurricular activities in this district?
We do.
If you agree the Watchdog$ urge you to send an e-mail to your Board of Trustees and to the Superintendent. Tell them how you feel.
You will also have the opportunity to speak at the Board meeting on Monday. The meeting is held in the Board room of the admin building located at 6301 South Stadium Lane. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m.
Your Trustees and Superintendent can be e-mailed at:
ericduhon@katyisd.org; tomlaw@katyisd.org; joeadams@katyisd.org; judysnyder@katyisde.org;
jackiebirkel@katyisd.org; robertshaw@katyisd.org; rebeccafox@katyisd.org; altonfrailey@katyisd.org
Remember that nothing will change until we all get involved, get others involved and VOTE!!
The Katy Citizen Watchdog$
For questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to e-mail us at info@katycitizens.org
We’re Taxpayers. It’s Our Money!
Local Citizens Looking Out For The Interests Of Taxpayers and Students!
Join us them at www.katycitizens.org & www.radiofreekaty.com
November 15, 2007
Katy Independent School District
6301 South Stadium Lane
Katy, TX 77494
Attention: The KISD Board Of Trustees & Superintendent Frailey
RE: An Open Letter To The KISD Board Of Trustees & Superintendent Frailey
Dear KISD Board of Trustees and Superintendent Frailey:
I just finished reading a Chronicle on-line article entitled “Katy ISD Trustees Mull Deal With Sports Marketing Firm”.
After reading the story the Katy Citizen Watchdog$ wanted to ask some questions and pose some comments that we would like for all of you to consider:
- In our view, this district does not need any new entities feeding at the taxpayer money trough.
- I believe the district is still projecting a deficit budget for the 2007/2008 school year.
- Why does the district think it needs help “marketing” itself?
- We are already one of the fastest growing school districts in the state. What is the driving force here?
- Is it believed that a nationally televised football game entitled “Clash of Champions II”
- will interest people in moving to KISD? Unlikely in our view.
- Like we said before, we don’t believe we need any help in “selling” our district to the outside world.
- We’d like to see the growth reduced or stopped altogether. We still are asking the question; why is bigger better?
- I don’t know about any of you, but I hate the increased traffic congestion,
- the never ending road construction, the endless rows of strip malls,
- the increased crime and the school overcrowding. Over development does not improve the quality of life.
- We don’t need some third party helping us with naming rights.
- The Watchdog$ have always wanted to sell the naming rights to the arena.
- It has always been our view that it was inappropriate to put Merrell’s name on the arena in the first place.
- We can tell you first-hand that we have never spoken to a single individual in our community
- that approves of his name being on the arena. Face it, the arena is a money loser when it comes to self-sufficiency.
- We’ve run the numbers and have posted those numbers on our web site.
- Vote to take his name off and then find someone in the Katy business community that might want to have their name on the arena.
- We believe that there are enough large companies in our area
- that would be very interested in having their name put on the arena;
- especially when you consider the fact that the arena has I-10 frontage exposure.
- If the district wants corporate sponsorship money and sideline signage then let’s put some of our current KISD administrators to work.
- As we have said before, the Watchdog$ don’t believe that we need additional third party contractors on the payroll.
- We believe that KISD has more than enough staff in the admin building alone who could easily secure these items.
- It would seem to me that Mr. Bailey, who apparently has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer, should be working on this kind of things for the district.
- In addition, Mr. Bailey should be assigned the task of finding a business that wants to put its name on our arena.
- Don’t these tasks fit the job description of a COO?
- We would like to know exactly what “event planning” Titus would perform.
- As noted above, we believe that this kind of planning could be performed with existing KISD personnel.
- All it takes is a little effort and redirection of manpower. It’s done all the time in the private sector.
You know, our focus in KISD needs to be on academic education and not athletics.
Now we are not implying that athletics are not important to some in their general overall educational experience, but in our view there is far too much emphasis on activities that really are extracurricular in nature. We have an “Academically Acceptable” rating for this district and pay the highest school taxes in the state.
Please explain how Titus is going to improve education in this community.
Sincerely,
Christopher E. Cottrell
Co-Founder/Katy Citizen Watchdog$
cc: Members of the Press
Mr. Steve Stanford
November 16th, 2007 at 7:44 am
The audacity of the Katy School Board is amazing. Katy needs to put some people on that school board who understand the importance of education. This is sad. I bet Cy-Fair will follow suit, depending on how Katy decides.
November 16th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Katfish, Please use the more tag to shorten the ammount of verbage we have to skip over once we have read the post! It’s easy. click on the edit symbol and space down a paragraph or two, just to show what the post is about. put your cursor at the end of the paragraph an click in the more tag above the edit area. You will see the more tag appear in your text. Click the save button and go look at your post. Will work for the long but necessary PGR posts also.
Thanks, Marc
November 16th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Cool………………didn’t know that one!
that short enuff?
November 16th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Great…you fast learner you!
November 17th, 2007 at 9:51 am
I’ve also taken the liberty of doing some edits to Whiskers’ post. I did a couple of grammar edits in the “open letter,” but that’s the teacher in me. The rest was just formatting edits to make it an easier read.
I also removed it from “FauxNEWS” as it isn’t made up, and I did a couple of other things… See my article “Blog News” for an update. Well, when I finish posting it, anyway. It should be up before noon on Saturday, November 17, 2007.