Tag Archives: Princeton ISD

local news

Get ready for rapid growth

Four years ago, my bride and I made what we knew at the time would be one of the most important decisions of our married life: We found a home in a community in the midst of a population explosion.

We chose to move into a newly built home in Princeton, Texas, which is in Collin County, nearly 40 miles north of downtown Dallas. We downsized from our previous abode in Amarillo. It’s perfect for the two of us.

What’s the point? It is that Princeton’s growth rate is unlike anything I’ve ever seen up close. The city’s population effectively tripled between the 2010 and 2020 census. The house we chose is in the middle of a subdivision that is still growing.

I came out of retirement to work as a freelance reporter for a weekly newspaper group. Only recently, my bosses at the newspaper assigned me to cover goings-on in Princeton. I am delighted to cover the news of the community I now call home.

But there’s a huge assignment awaiting me. It will enable me to cover plans for the Princeton Independent School District to deal with the population growth that is placing enormous strain on the district’s ability to keep pace. It looks as though Princeton ISD is going to present the third bond issue since 2017. Voters approved a bond issue election that year and again in 2019. I don’t want to get ahead of myself on what I project will occur in the weeks to come. I do, though, feel comfortable asserting that PISD has a raging tiger on its hands.

Our house is two blocks from an elementary school that opened in 2019. Three school years later, it has two portable classrooms assembled next to the playground. I was told that Lowe Elementary School basically was over capacity when the doors opened for the first time.

So it goes in a city that is bursting at the seams. The school system needs places to put its exploding student population. The city recently received voters’ endorsement of a city charter, which is a sign of municipal maturity for Princeton. Traffic in Princeton grinds to a halt during morning and afternoon rush hours along the major highway that intersects the city; the state has plans to improve traffic flow that cannot be realized soon enough.

My bride and I, frankly, are happy to witness our city grow, to mature and to change its identity from tiny burg to a community of significant consequence.

This is a first for us. We are anxious to see how our city grows up.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

education news

Be careful with Open Meetings Law

You run into this once in a while: a governing body will convene an executive (or closed) meeting to discuss something that in the strictest sense of the word doesn’t qualify as an item worthy of such secrecy.

It happened the other evening at a Princeton (Texas) school board meeting that I happened to be attending.

The Princeton Independent School District board of trustees met in regular session to discuss school business. During the course of the meeting, the board convened three executive sessions to discuss employee grievances; it’s all according to the Open Meetings Law that governs public governing bodies’ conduct. The board convened an executive session then reconvened its public meeting to vote on what it had discussed in secret. Then it went back into private session. This happened three times.

Then the board welcomed two new members who were elected in Nov. 8 school district trustee election. They swore them in and bid goodbye to two outgoing trustees.

The board then convened a fourth secret session. Why? To discuss election of its officers for the coming term. I believe that fourth session was an inappropriate reason to convene an executive session. Trustees cited personnel matters as their reason for speaking out of public earshot. That’s not right.

Personnel matters, as I interpret the Open Meetings Law, deal with paid employees. They do not cover elected officials’ duties. A better way for the board to handle it would have been to keep meeting in public and then go through the motions of selecting a board president, vice president and secretary.

Now, in the grand scheme this isn’t a scandalous breach of transparency. It was a routine process that boards such as the Princeton ISD board go through every year.

Taking this routine matter into the closet, though, was an unnecessary attempt to shroud it in secrecy.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

education news, local news

Pay attention to these contests

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I am going to pay careful attention to the Princeton Independent School District Board of Trustees election coming up this fall.

It’s not because I have children in the school system. I don’t. My two sons are middle-aged men and one of them is Daddy to our 9-year-old granddaughter and they reside in nearby Allen.

I am interested in the PISD contests because I want to be mindful of the campaign material they put out. I want to look for evidence of any candidate who is going to sound off on that idiotic notion of banning what they call “critical race theory” from our school curriculum; or whether they intend to champion the banning of other textbooks that seek to cast any sort of negative eye on our history.

I keep hearing about how the MAGA crowd is seeking to penetrate our public schools. They are running candidates who adhere to some of the goofier — and frankly, dangerous — notions about how we should run our public-school systems.

I also intend to stay alert to candidates who talk openly about siphoning public money away to pay for school vouchers to allow parents to enroll their children in private schools. Moreover, I’ll be listening for rhetoric that suggests we should allow the re-entry of state-sanctioned religion into our public classrooms. I have said many times that religion should be taught in church, not in school.

Finally, I intend to listen for those candidates who want to put firearms into the hands of teachers and give them the go-ahead to use those weapons in the event of trouble inside our schools.

This will be a critical election. My intention simply is to learn as much as I can about these candidates and work — if I deem it necessary — to prevent certain candidates from being elected.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

education news

Keep eyes on school board races

Republican Party officials are casting a wide net across the national political landscape in their attempt to shape public policy at all levels of government to their liking.

School board races, normally those that draw little public attention, deserve voters’ careful eyes and ears.

My wife and I live in a North Texas community that could become a target of the far-right wingers who think our public school system might need to be, um, “regulated” a bit more carefully.

I am going to keep my eyes and ears wide open to what’s being said throughout the Princeton Independent School District.

Right wingers are attacking that thing they call “critical race theory.” They also want to ban certain books that discuss sex education.

Voters will select candidates running for two school board seats in November. I intend to pay careful attention to those who are running. I don’t want far-right-wing ideologues serving on our public school board. I prefer my school trustees to be broadminded, individuals who aren’t driven by ideology but instead by determining what’s best for the entire district, its students, parents and educators.

Princeton happens to be a racially, ethnically and religiously diverse community and for that I am grateful. There is no way in the world that our school system can adhere to a rigid curriculum that — for example — refuses to speak to the racial prejudice that soaked our society at large.

I don’t know much about the men and women who serve on our school board. I do intend to pay careful attention to what they are saying as they run for re-election.

I damn sure intend to listen to the messages being delivered by those who might want to succeed them.

After all, these races determine who sets policies that have a direct impact on our lives. I can think of nothing more impactful than policies involving the lives of our young people.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Growth explodes all around us

This is no surprise, given the rapid and frantic growth occurring in the community where my wife and I live. I watched construction crews assembling a portable classroom module on the campus of a brand new elementary school in Princeton, Texas.

Dorothy Lowe Elementary School opened for the 2020-21 academic year. Then the COVID-19 pandemic closed in-class learning for most of that school year. Students and teachers returned. Boy, howdy! Did they ever!

I live in a subdivision that is growing practically daily. We live a block from the school and we watch the traffic jam up at the beginning of the school day and then at the end of it when moms and dads deliver and then pick up their children.

The portable classroom, it looks to me, will be one of many to be erected while the Princeton Independent School District decides what to do about the burgeoning student population. Indeed, Princeton ISD predicted growth would explode, saying this on its website: Demographers predict that the District will add over 6,700 new students over the next 10 years. The District could either build a new campus to house more students or purchase over 40 portables to accommodate the growth. 

We are witnessing the cost of growth. Families with young children are looking for a place to live and for their children to be educated. The school system will need more classrooms and more teachers. How does it pay for all that? Hmm. Let me think. Oh … you know the answer to that one.

I understand PISD will open a new elementary school next academic year. I am unclear about what that might mean for the students who attend Lowe Elementary or their parents.

What does strike me initially is that the temporary classroom is being erected so soon after the doors opened at an elementary school.

Then again, I am not terribly surprised. I could have predicted it would happen as I watch homes spring up like weeds on the prairie.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

School races take on new urgency

We just cast our ballots for municipal offices and a citywide resolution in Princeton, Texas, along with amendments to the Texas Constitution … as well as for seats on the Princeton Independent School District board of trustees.

It’s the latter race that causes me some angst and potential worry. Yes, I worry about the Princeton ISD and whether our local school district is going to frolic down the path of examining “critical race theory” and examining textbooks that examine seedier portions of our national history.

I do not want that to happen in Princeton.

We are a rapidly growing community full of new families with small children, many of whom live in our subdivision that happens to next to a newly built elementary school.

The critical race theory discussion troubles me in one key aspect. It is that right wingers fear CRT because it allows teachers to instruct our children about our nation’s single greatest sin: the enslavement of human beings and the associated racism, a good bit of which remains to this day.

I do not want my school board members to shy away from teaching our children about that facet of our nation’s history. Yes, we live in a great nation, arguably the greatest ever created. Greatness, though, does not preclude mistakes along the way.

Let us not forgo teaching our children about those mistakes and the measures we have taken to — in the words of our nation’s founders — seek to create and preserve a “more perfect Union.”

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

education news, Uncategorized

Teachers deserve our honor and respect

My wife and I live one block from an elementary school in Princeton, Texas and each day when we take our stroll through the ‘hood, we see evidence of great things happening with the children who go there each day.

I want to salute the men and women who serve those children, their parents and, yes, the rest of us who don’t have kids attending that particular school or even in the school district where we live. What I witness often are teachers interacting joyfully with their students, who interact with equal amounts of joy with the teachers.

I know it’s a little thing. Then again, it’s not so little, particularly if the child gets too little joy when he or she goes home at the end of the day.

Some years ago I took a turn as a substitute teacher in Amarillo, where my wife and I lived before we relocated to Princeton. It was an eye-opening experience for me. I learned one thing about myself right away from that stint: I am not wired to teach children. 

More to the point is that I am not wired to take the abuse that kids dish out to subs who fill in for the regular teachers. Yes, I got a form of abuse from those kids. They were high schoolers. I won’t tell you which high school; just know that it was one of the public HS’s in Amarillo.

I am not casting aspersions on a particular generation of children, or on the community where we lived, or on the school system. It’s just the way it is and the way it has always been since the beginning of recorded human history. Kids look for ways to game the system in their favor. Their “victims” are their elders. I did some of it myself when I was that age.

My experience as a substitute teacher filled me with admiration for those who choose that profession. I also am amazed at those full-time substitute teachers who answer the call to report for work wherever the school district needs them.

The good ones are among the most special human beings I can imagine.

I salute you.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news

Masks still ‘required’

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Toby the Puppy and I went for a stroll through the neighborhood this weekend and ventured onto the parking lot of the elementary school just down the street from our house.

We walked next to the front door of the school, where I noticed something interesting and worth sharing.

This blog post isn’t about Toby the Puppy, who continues to amaze us every single day. It is about the sign I read on the front door of Dorothy Lowe Elementary School.

It said that “masks are required” for anyone entering the school.

How … about … that? Texas Gov. Greg Abbott removed the mask mandate he had ordered as the COVID pandemic began raging a year ago. However, the Texas Education Agency has given school districts the option of relaxing the rules or keeping them in force. Princeton Independent School District has opted so far for the latter.

Keep the masks on. Continue to practice social distancing.

There are reports of cities, counties and states across the nation experiencing spikes in COVID infections as they relax the rules. I am unaware of it occurring in North Texas.

I am still concerned that Abbott’s decision was premature. The virus ain’t dead yet. We’re getting inoculated by the millions daily in the United States. I am hopeful we’ll get to that “herd immunity” stage as soon as we get near fully vaccinated status. We aren’t there yet.

Therefore, I am heartened to know that our local school district continues to keep the mask mandate in effect for our schools.

Toby and I finished our walk and I felt better after reading the sign on the front door of the school.

local news

Dial it back, partisans

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The partisan juices are flowing on this Election Day.

We’re going to elect a president and a whole lot of other officeholders up and down the ballot. This morning I had an encounter with a Democratic partisan who, I hasten to add, needs to dial back her political fervor more than just a little bit.

She was wearing a Biden-Harris shirt while sitting in front of First Baptist Church in Princeton, Texas, one of Collin County’s many polling locations. I was there to snap a picture for KETR-FM public radio. I told my new acquaintance I had voted already but was there to take a picture.

After I whispered to her that I had voted for her guy for president, she informed me of the “need” to “elect more Democrats to the City Council and the school board.”

Huh? Eh? What? I reminded her immediately that council and school board members serve as non-partisan public servants. They aren’t affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties. She said she knows that, but added that a school board candidate wants to “ban masks” in schools, meaning that the individual is clearly a Republican. No, no, no, I said. We cannot push partisan politics onto non-partisan governing bodies, I admonished her.

Well, I guess that encounter exemplifies the partisan fervor that has hit a fever pitch.

Election Day will come and go. We’ll awaken in the morning to another sunny day. I hope we have a new president waiting to take office. As for the Princeton City Council and the Princeton Independent School District Board of Trustees and their political composition … let’s not inject partisanship into those races. Those folks are in office to the public’s business without regard to which party they might belong.

education news

Happy to report sanity in our local school system

I am delighted to report some good news — if you allow me to call it that — regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is that our granddaughter and her brother are going to be kept out of their classrooms for at least the first semester of the upcoming academic year. We got the word from our son and daughter-in-law that the Allen (Texas) Independent School District, absent any guarantee that it can prevent spread of the virus in schools, has decided to give parents the option of online schooling at home.

Our son and daughter-in-law have exercised that option.

Thus, the Allen ISD will not follow Donald Trump’s blind and stupid call to reopen our classrooms despite the surge in coronavirus infection in states such as ours.

For the president to insist on school reopening is beyond irresponsible. He exhibits no outward interest in protecting the lives of our precious children and the teachers who expose themselves to potential illness or worse.

So local school districts here in North Texas are calling their own shots. Princeton ISD, where my wife and I live, isn’t going along with the president’s urging. Neither are the Amarillo and Canyon ISDs, from where we moved two years ago. They are going to online teaching, giving students materials they can study at home.

Our granddaughter and her brother — who is entering his senior year in high school — did well in the second half of the preceding school year learning at home. They will do so again once the new year begins in August.

Meanwhile, the search for vaccines continues. May the brainiacs assigned to find them hit pay dirt sooner rather than later.