Mayor Mitchell files for re-election

Saying he is “excited to continue working hard for the community,” Mayor Travis Mitchell has filed the necessary documents with the City Secretary’s office to run for re-election to a second, three-year term.

“The last three years have been about galvanizing behind a vision of Kyle — pride in our community, investment in quality of life initiatives, and a focus on excellence in all things,” Mitchell told The Kyle Report in a written statement. “The budget we are working on reflects just how far we have come and what our priorities are as a council. I’m excited to continue working hard for the community to bring that vision into a reality.”

The filing was in sharp contrast to the events Mitchell staged when he first ran for council five years ago and then for mayor in 2017. This more low-key approach is perhaps fitting in times of a pandemic. In his application, he named himself as his campaign treasurer.

Mitchell joins Tim McHutchion, who is seeking the same Place 4 Council seat he unsuccessfully sought three years ago, as the only candidates who have filed for a council position to date.

The deadline for filing is still more than two weeks away (Aug. 17).

Proposed city $134.2 million budget does not include tax rate increase, but does increase water, wastewater and trash rates

City Manager Scott Sellers will propose the city council enact a $134.2 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year that includes a 10 percent increase in water and wastewater service rates and a 2.5 percent hike for trash collection services, according to material posted on the city’s web site. The language contained in the agenda item for Saturday’s council budget workshop says Sellers’s proposed budget includes “no increase in proposed ad valorem tax rate,” which is somewhat cagey because it leaves open the notion that the tax rate actually might have to be reduced to comply with state law.

“If a proposed ad valorem tax rate exceeds the no-new-revenue tax rate or the voter-approval tax rate, whichever is lower, the taxing unit's governing body must approve a resolution or ordinance, as appropriate, to record vote to place a proposal on the agenda of a future meeting as an action item to adopt the ad valorem tax rate” according to the language posted with Saturday’s workshop agenda. “This record vote is required to be published in the ‘Notice of Public Hearing on Tax Increase’ before the public hearing. This vote must be recorded to show how each member of the governing body voted on the resolution or ordinance to place a proposal on the agenda of a future meeting as an action item to adopt the ad valorem tax rate.  If the resolution or ordinance passes, then the governing body must hold a public hearing on the ad valorem tax proposal before adopting the tax.”

The Kyle Report has also learned through informed sources that the propose budget will raise a middle finger to the Black Lives Matters movement with a significant increase in the Police Department’s budget at a time when many cities, in deference to the movement, are reducing Police Department budgets while simultaneously and proportionately increasing funding for social services. It is worth noting, Kyle does not budget for any recognized “social services” initiatives. The closest thing I could find for something resembling one is a line item for “Community Health Support,” but as far as I can tell no money has ever been allocated for this item.

The budget also calls for the addition of 25 new positions and, from what The Kyle Report has learned, 15 of those will be in the Public Works Department, five (including one code enforcement officer and one code enforcement supervisor) will be connected to the Police Department and four — two parks maintenance technicians and two trails maintenance technicians — will be assigned to the Parks Department. Eleven of the 25 new positions, we have learned, will be directly assigned to activities involving streets.

It is believed the proposed budget does not call for any merit salary increases for city employees but does recommend the city spend close to $3.6 million over the course of the next fiscal year on new equipment.

Even with the water and wastewater rate increase, total water department expenditures for the upcoming fiscal year appear to be in the range of $6.6 million more than total revenue and total wastewater expenditures will be in the neighborhood of $.79 million over total income during the same time. The trash rate increase is needed to fulfill the obligations of the latest contract the city signed with Texas Disposal Services.

Council limits bar hours

The city council voted unanimously Tuesday to force all bars in the city to close by midnight Sunday through Thursday nights. On Friday and Saturday nights, local bars will be permitted to remain open until the state-mandated closing time of 2 a.m. the following day.

The council said they reserved the right to change the ordinance again any time they wanted, because the purpose of the ordinance, in reality, is to restrict bar operations in the downtown area and not necessarily in other areas that might be developed away from residential areas.

“There are going to be opportunities as our city evolves to further amend the hours as the need arises,” Mayor Travis Mitchell advised council members before they voted on the ordinance.

“I can see this being an issue later on,” council member Alex Villalobos cautioned. “For the downtown area, because it’s so close to residents, it’s a good start.”

“I’m not anti-bar,” said council member Robert Rizo, the ordinance’s sponsor. “I’m thinking about public safety. When I see an area that’s going against public safety, I really want to address that issue.”

Rizo did not address any specific public safety concerns he had about the bars hours of operation during Tuesday’s discussion.

As was originally presented, the ordinance would have allowed bars to remain open Thursdays through 2 a.m. Friday, but that provision was removed by an amendment offered by Rizo when he moved passage of the ordinance.

Council adds charter discussion to Saturday budget workshop

City council members agreed Tuesday to add a discussion on what changes to the city charter they will recommend to voters following a workshop already scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 1, for the purpose of rolling out the 2020-21 fiscal year budget.

Converting which is usually an 8 a.m.-to-noon budget workshop into what is possibly going to be an all-day marathon meeting became necessary because of conflicts in council members’ schedules and deadlines on when charter revision elections may be called. The Aug. 1 date was the only one all council members were available to meet and still satisfy the statutory requirements for calling an election.

Council members got a glimpse of the recommended changes proposed by the charter review commission during their regularly scheduled agenda meeting Tuesday. The only changes that seem to give members any pause were ones involving polling places for special elections, which were largely insignificant, and Section 3.09, the controversial charter provision regarding compensation for council members. The charter review commission recommended the “council appointed committee” created by the last charter change that is assigned to consider and recommend changes in compensation be replaced by a “committee consisting of nine members, with seven council appointees and two non-council appointed members, selected randomly by the city secretary from applicants meeting qualifications of elective office.” Review commission chair Diane Hervol told the council this recommendation was made “to give citizens a little more buy-in.”

Low income Kyle residents eligible for utility bill relief

Beginning today, low income Kyle residents facing “financial hardship” as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic may apply for relief from the utility bills they received during March, April and May that cover city-provided water, wastewater, solid waste and storm drainage services.

“We are looking at making available for those that apply and are eligible a credit for their monthly service charge for these services as well as late-payment penalty fees and any service-disconnection fee that may have been assessed,” assistant city manager James Earp told the city council Tuesday.

Earp stressed that this relief does not cover bills provided by outside providers such as electricity, internet, etc., but he also cautioned it does not apply to water bills if a resident is served by a water utility other than the City of Kyle, such as Monarch or County Line.

To be eligible for the relief, a customer must reside within the Kyle city limits and be the person whose name is registered on the account, Earp said.

“You must also be experiencing a financial hardship due to the loss of job or reduction in income that’s related to Covid,” Earp said. “You must also be at or below the federal thresholds for low income.”

Residents can learn whether they are eligible for the relief and/or apply for the assistance by clicking here. Earp said the city’s goal is to spend no longer than a week reviewing applications and notifying applicants whether their submission has been successful.

“It’s possible there might be a lot (of applications) that will be received during the first week and it will take a little bit until we first get this rolled out,” Earp said. “But the intent is to try to be extremely timely in these responses because of the on-going financial impact that virus has had on that household.”

In a goofy discussion and vote, city council places contradictory parking restrictions on Cromwell Drive

This blog had been retired for two almost two years, but because of my involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement, I revived it when pressure began mounting in earnest to replace the racist mascot at Hays High School. So I figured, if I was going to do it for that, I might as well take a look at what’s transpiring with our city government since that is what inspired the creation of this journal back in the fall of 2014. As a result, I watched my first city council meeting in more than two years last night and I felt a sense of relief in seeing it’s just as goofy as it was when I stopped paying attention back in 2018.

The real goofiness took place during a discussion about parking on Cromwell Drive by city council members who appear to have never spent any time on Cromwell Drive. Then additional goofiness was added by the city engineer who apparently knew even less about Cromwell than the council members.

So in short, here’s the result of the action the council took last night: On Cromwell, between Sampson and the unfortunate cul-de-sac, parking will only be allowed on the west side of the street. On Cromwell, between Sampson and Dorman, parking will be completely prohibited. On Cromwell, between Dorman and Kohlers Crossing, parking will only be allowed on the east side of the street. That’s three different parking restrictions on a road that’s just one mile in length — a road that will soon be, if it isn’t already, the most densely populated road in the city.

Parking restricted to the west, fire hydant side on the south end of Cromwell

Now it didn’t start out this badly. As mayor pro tem Rick Koch originally proposed the one-side-of-the-street-only parking ordinance, it would have limited the north-end parking to the west side only, just as it is on the south end of the street. But then came a discussion about fire hydrants and what side of the street they were on, which was my first clue that none of the council members — not a single one of them — had any familiarity with Cromwell Drive. For some reason, the council thought, parking should be only be allowed on the side opposite the hydrants. And, in theory, that’s all well and good. But if these people knew anything about Cromwell, they would know that not only is parking restricted to the side of the street containing the hydrants on the south end of the street, but that motorists consistently park their cars on that side of the street closer to the hydrants that is permitted by law, but are never ticketed for it. So why all the sudden concern about hydrants now?

At another point in this goofy discussion, council member Michael Tobias wondered if pedestrian walkways could be inserted to aid pedestrians in getting from the place where they must park their car to the place where they live. Seemed like a reasonable request.

Except.

“I’m not a great fan of mid-block pedestrian crossings,” said City Engineer Leon Barba, “but they exist. I’ve seen them throughout other cities.”

Other cities? OTHER CITIES??? How about seeing them not only right here in Kyle but right there on freaking Cromwell Drive? There are two — count ‘em, two! — mid-block pedestrian crossings on Cromwell between Sampson and Dorman. But no one on the council was informed enough about what they were voting about to contradict Barba. Yes, dear readers, things haven’t changed at all at City Hall.

Of course, these rwo mid-block pedestrian crossings are completely useless. Instead of serving what pedestrian crossings are supposed to accomplish — protecting pedestrians — they actually only paint a large target on pedestrians for the sake of oncoming motorists. But that’s another issue.

One of the two "non-existent" mid-block pedestrian crossings on Cromwell Drive 

Anyway, the ordinance passed unanimously on first reading and it was decided that there would be no need for a second reading so, yes, the city of Kyle now has three separate, distinct and different parking restrictions on one, one-mile-long road. That’s what I love about this body — consistency has never been a concern. I guess I could understand the lack of consistency in regulations around a city of 50,000 persons, but on one, one-mile road? C’mon.

But, like I said earlier, I find this somewhat comforting, It’s good to know that this government body hasn’t changed during my two-year sabbatical. They still adhere to the same premise: “If the choice is between the simple and the complicated/confusing, let’s always go with the latter.”

I, on the other hand, have changed. Two years ago, these types of actions by the city council made me fear for the future of the city I chose to call home for the remainder of my life. I actually lost a lot of sleep worrying about what these people were promulgating. That was damaging my health and that’s the reason I put The Kyle Report in hibernation.

Now, I just sit back and laugh. Because, when you think about, it really is funny.

As a postscript to all of this, I do want to go on record as saying I don’t believe the council deliberately intends to enact confusing, contradictory ordinances. That’s simply the result of something far more troubling. As I mentioned earlier in this article, the real problem is that members of the city council as well as the relevant city staff simply don’t take the time — they don’t make the effort — to study and become as informed as they should be about all the items on the council's agendas. I’m willing to bet not one member of the Kyle City Council took the time — made the effort — to make the short, one-mile drive, along the entire length of Cromwell Drive between the time they first saw this proposed ordinance on the agenda and the time they voted on it. If just one of them — just one of the seven — had mentioned the fact that parking was already restricted to the west, fire-hydrant side of Cromwell on the southern end of the street and then they voted to approve restricting parking on the other side of the street at the northern end, this vote might have still seemed strange and confusing but not completely without thought or reasoning. But not one of them did and the only explanation for that is simply they just weren’t well informed enough about what they were voting on.

Hays school officials ask governor to butt-out of local decision-making during pandemic

Saying local schools need to make the decisions based on local situations especially when teachers “are afraid to come back for in-person instruction,” Hays School District Superintendent Dr. Eric Wright and the district’s board of trustees have sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott asking him to allow local school districts to decide when and how to reopen their schools without state interference.

“Local school districts need the flexibility to make decisions based on a measured response to local conditions and data,” the local officials said in the letter.

The letter also demands $1.3 million the district claims the state owes the district.

In addition to the governor, the letter was sent to Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath, Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, and Rep. Erin Zweiner, D-Driftwood.

Although the letter requests a number of issues be addressed, the one involving school reopenings may be a moot point. A week ago, during an interview with a Houston television station, Gov. Abbott said he would grant local districts the flexibility to make those decisions on when to reopen. Originally, he set the three-week limit Superintendent Wright adhered to in his reopening plan, saying that any school that remained closed to in-person classes longer than three weeks would lose state funding.

“I think Mike Morath, the commissioner of education, is expected to announce a longer period of time for online learning at the beginning of the school year, up to the flexibility at the local level,” Abbott said to KTRK. “This is going to have to be a local-level decision, but there will be great latitude and flexibility provided at the local level.”

Public health experts have warned that reopening school buildings in areas where cases are rising precipitously will result in entire communities becoming infected.

“If you open K-12 in areas where virus transmission accelerating, teachers, staff will get sick, as will parents,” tweeted Peter Hotez, an infectious disease expert and the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “All it takes is for one or two teachers, staff, or parents to enter hospital, and it will be lights out.”

The Hays district letter also asked that STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academics Readiness) tests be waived for the upcoming school year as well as the state’s grading system for schools, The A-F grades are something most schools would like to see ditched even if the pandemic didn’t exist.

During that same television interview, Gov. Abbott said “It’s way too early to determine whether or not the STAAR test may not be used this particular year. We gotta wait and see.”

Last week, Wright unveiled a plan for reopening the local schools that delayed the fall semester’s opening date from Aug. 20 to Sept. 8 and said the first three weeks of the semester would be online classes only. The letter sent to the governor seeks to allow the district to extend online teaching for as long as local health officials deem necessary.

“Our teachers, staff, and administrators would like nothing more than to welcome every one of our over 21,000 students back to school; but when staff, many of whom have children in the district, are afraid to come back for in-person instruction due to an increase in the number of positive COVID cases, we have a problem that needs to be addressed,” the officials wrote.

Specifically, the letter said the district wants five requests addressed.

First: “Giving local school districts the flexibility to make decisions on providing in-person instruction or on-line learning based on local data and community values and funding for resources that will keep students and employees safe.”

Second: “Waiving STAAR and A-F rating for the 2020-21 school year. It is absurd, in the midst of figuring how to reopen and being terrified of losing a student or staff member, that the state is mandating STAAR testing and labeling schools with letter grades.”

Third: “Amend acceptable uses and qualifications for receipt of CARES Act funding for the reimbursement of expenditures on remediation or preventative measures necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19 rather than using it to backfill gaps in the state budget.” The CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act is a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill passed by the congress in March in response to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the district’s letter, the district was supposed to receive $1.3 million “that was never disbursed and is still needed to invest in more safety equipment” along with personal protective equipment and other learning tools.

Fourth: “Additional funding to supplement costs incurred by districts to provide safe and effective learning.”

Fifth: “A commitment to allocate current or future federal money specified for schools as a supplement for existing funding commitments by the state.”

Here is the complete text of the district's letter.

School board votes to retire Hays High mascot, allows superintendent to oversee replacement

The Hays CISD board of trustees voted unanimously this evening to retire the Rebel mascot at Hays High School and to allow the district’s superintendent to oversee the selection of a replacement.

The only debate on the subject came when District 3 trustee Dr. Michael Sanchez argued the board should also be involved in choosing a new mascot, but none of the other trustees agreed with him.

“Hate is not our community,” said board president Esperanza Orosco, trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep her emotions in check as she made the motion to approve the mascot retirement, a motion seconded by vice president Will McManus.

The Rebel mascot will not disappear immediately and school trustee Vanessa Petrea said she hopes it will remain throughout the 2020-21 school year. What is more likely, however, is that students will be involved in some sort of mascot selection process, the results of which will be forwarded to Superintendent Dr. Eric Wright’s office and that new mascot will receive his blessing perhaps as early as the beginning of the next calendar year. Trustees did voice the opinion that they would prefer the mascot be animal, not human, in nature, saying a human mascot, such as Patriots or Cowboys, the two names that topped a recent on-line student poll, could also prove to be divisive.

“I am against the new mascot being a person,” Petrea said. “That could be deemed controversial in another 50 years. I would like to remain consistent with our two other high schools and pick an animal or an object that we can all rally behind. I think this change is overdue. I am very proud of the students and community members who stepped up and used the current shift in momentum to bring this important issue to the forefront.”

“It is past time for this change,” McManus said. “We don’t want to have 25 percent of our students at this or any of other campuses to feel intimidated or unwelcome by something as simple as a mascot.”

McManus, a graduate of Hays High School,  said the Hays students who spoke to the board during the public comments section of the meeting “demonstrate for me the quality of the education they’re receiving at Hays and that’s what I want us to be known for.

“I am deeply saddened that our students were persecuted on-line for something as simple as advocating for change,” McManus said. “Honestly, it breaks my heart. And adults that may have been a part of that really need to spend some time reflecting on what matters to their life. I am really, honestly upset about it. If students want to battle one another over something, that’s fine. But any adults creating fake accounts to troll students on-line is not acceptable in this community.

“This is about the future and not the past,” he said. “Although I am part of that past, I want to help define the future and that’s why I fully support this change.”

Trustee Merideth Keller, a 10-year veteran on the school board, said she wished the mascot change had happened years earlier. She said the board banned the confederate flag at Hays in 2012 and in 2015 decided not to overrule a decision to change the school’s fight song from “Dixie.”

“I wish we had retired the rebel mascot back in 2015 and I am sorry that we did not,” Keller said. “Now we have an entire cohort of kids that have to suffer through this conversation again and the vitriol associated with it again. I apologize to those students and to the teachers and all of the staff because we didn’t handle it when we should have.

“Institutional racism is 100 percent real,” she continued. “And this body actually has the opportunity to do something about that. We need to dig deeper. We need to look at the people of color who are in trouble more than their counterparts who are white. We need to dig down into the data. We need to look at our policies and our procedures and our training and make sure that we are doing the best that we can to educate our kids. I want to learn more about how we’re dealing with institutional racism with our policies and our procedures. How are we keeping kids safe, healthy and in an inclusive environment.”

Start date for Hays schools moved back until after Labor Day

Citing rising hospitalization and mortality rates in Hays County due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Hays School Superintendent Dr. Eric Wright announced this evening the start of the classes for the upcoming fall semester has been rescheduled for Sept. 8 and that the first three weeks of classes will be virtual. After that, he said, parents will have the option of having their school children attend classes in person or virtually.

“We realize it’s tough,” Wright said. “Everyone wants the school to start back so that they can get back to work. But we can only do so when we know we can protect everyone.”

The first date of classes for the upcoming school year was originally scheduled for Aug. 20.

“Our district is large and the community that we serve right now is dealing with a lot more cases and we feel like if we’re pro-active by pushing this date back, we’re going to protect a lot of people,” Wright said.

In making the decision to delay the start of the school year, Wright said administrators studied information from the American Academy of Pediatrics, documents from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) pertaining to re-opening safely and the guidelines for school re-openings formulated by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

“You can’t educate students unless everyone is safe and healthy,” Wright told the district’s board of trustees this evening. “We always had that at the forefront of our minds and so we wanted to make sure that the 21,000-plus students we’re going to serve and the 3,000-plus faculty members we’re going to serve and all of the people that they go home to will remain safe.”

The Sept. 8 start date means the school year will end June 16, 2021, Wright told the board.
“Because of our rising hospitalization rates and our rising mortality rates, we felt compelled to protect our community,” Wright said.

“We also decided that once we start on Sept. 8 we will be virtual because we want everyone to understand what that system looks like,” he said.

For those students who decide to return after the three-week virtual period, Wright said, “We’re going to do our very best to social distance, wear masks, sanitize hands — all the things the CDC asked for us to do.”

He also said “hot spots” are going to be inevitable and when that happens, the school(s) affected will have to return to all-virtual instruction and learning. He told the trustees that Texas Gov, Greg Abbott has walked back many of his original demands for school re-openings, especially in areas with high Covid concentrations. Hays County currently has 18.46 positive Covid cases per 1,000 population, a rate higher than Harris, Dallas, or Travis counties and twice as high as Bexar County.

“We will be giving parents and guardians the opportunity to chose whether they want to go in-person learning or virtual learning and we’ll be doing that by the (9-week) grading period,” Wright said. “That way we can staff appropriately and prepare master courses for kids appropriately.”

“We are going to make sure we are reaching out to all of our children with special needs to make sure they are getting the support they need,” the superintendent said. “We’ve talked about even making home visits or allowing certain groups of kids to come in where it’s safe so we can make sure they have the adaptive materials they need in order to be successful.”

He also said the district has contracted with the YMCA to extend its summer programs through Sept. 4. “That way parents have another option if they need to drop off their kids.”

Wright said Covid screening mechanisms will be in place when in-person classes resume. “We are going to ask when we return in person that everyone wear a face covering if they’re within six feet. We’re going to ask that each individual is responsible for their own face covering.”

However, he added, the district is supposed to receive personal protective equipment that can be used as replacements in the event a student’s face covering “breaks, or has tears in them or they cough in them and they need a new one.”

He said schools will be required to have supervised isolation holding areas in case “a kid has a fever once he comes to school or develops other symptoms” to try to prevent that student from infecting others. Plexiglass barriers are also being installed in all school reception, library and food service areas, he said. He said the district will be encouraging personal transportation to and from all schools because social distancing requirements would limit the number of students on a bus to no more than 14. When bus transportation is necessary, riders must wear masks and “ask that we only have one student per seat.” Students will be assigned seats on a school bus to facilitate contact tracing, the superintendent said.

Schools will not have meet-the-teacher events or open houses during the upcoming school year, Wright said. “We will try to the best of our ability to replicate a virtual model, but we’re not going to allow campus visitors just because it’s not safe. We’re going to encourage parents to drop their kids off. If they want to walk them, they can walk them to the front door and then say good-bye.”

“We’re going to shut down our water fountains this year, but there will be fountains available for water bottle filling only,” he said.

“We’re going to create staggered drop-off and pick-up times,” he said, adding that he will be working with other government agencies to lengthen the time electronic school zone speed restriction signs are in operation and also to extend school speed-restriction zones.

Noting that STAAR testing requires a student to appear in person, Board President Esperanza Orosco mentioned after Wright’s presentation that she hoped “our parents and our community (are) writing to their elected officials letting them know we should waive STAAR testing for the 2020-2021 school year because that is not in the best interest of our students.”

Trustee Meridith Keller told Wright she was “feeling very sad” as he outlined the protocols for the upcoming school year. “This is not what we want. This is not what anyone wants and I think we’re all going to need a lot of grace. This is going to get completely messed up, I’m sure. Things are going to go wrong. We will make mistakes – traffic going in and out of schools, pickups and drop-offs by people rushing to get to work and it’s going to be a mess. So everybody is going to need to give so much grace and be kind during this.”

Board Vice President Will McManus called Wright’s plan “well thought-out.”

“No plan is going to please everybody,” McManus said. “There’s going to be people who are upset about it or have different opinions but I appreciate that we are putting our students and our staff first and I think that’s the most important thing that we can do. I do feel like it’s very dystopian and I agree with Miss Keller that it’s very sad. I hope it’s as temporary as we can make it. I know we all want to get back to normal. We need to take these steps, but what a strange time we’re living in.”

You can read the school district's reopening plan here.

Start date for Hays schools moved back

   Hays School Superintendent Dr. Eric Wright announced this evening the start of the fall semester has been rescheduled for Sept. 8 and that the first three week of classes will be virtual. After that, he said, parents will have the option of having their school children attend classes in person or virtually.

(More to come)

School board votes to retire Hays High mascot

   The Hays CISD board of trustees voted unanimously this evening to retire the Rebel mascot at Hays High School and to allow the district’s superintendent to oversee the selection of a replacement.

  The only debate on the subject came when District 3 trustee Dr. Michael Sanchez argued the board should also be involved in choosing a new mascot, but none of the other trustees agreed with him.

   “Hate is not our community,” said board president Esperanza Orosco, trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep her emotions in check as she made the motion to approve the mascot retirement, a motion seconded by vice president Will McManus.

(More to come)

Hays High will keep Rebel mascot at least through start of school year

The results are in and the students of Hays High School have spoken loudly and clearly. And their message? “We really can’t be bothered with this right now.”

And that’s probably the right message at this time, especially when it comes to something like figuring out what the school’s new mascot will or should be. For one thing, no one knows for sure if the students will even be returning to the school campus. Some may and others may not. According to the school district’s web site, parents of Hays High School students “will have an option to keep your children learning from home or send them to school in-person.” I would imagine making that decision is weighing more heavily on the minds of students and parents than what the new mascot should be.

I wrote recently that the district provided an on-line link where students could select their choice for a new mascot. Only about a third of the students (902, to be exact) participated in the process. The Patriots received the most votes — 143, in all, which amounts to a whopping 5 percent of the student population. That is by no means any kind of mandate. In a classic understatement, school administrators said today in an official statement. “The administration does not believe it was able to obtain enough student response during this process to be confident that the responses fully represent what students would like to see as a new mascot.” Ya think?

Which is probably one of the reasons the school trustees won’t be asked to select a new mascot when they meet Thursday to consider whether they even want to join the 21st Century and rid the school of its current Rebel mascot. That means, according to the district statement, the Rebels will continue to be the school’s mascot at least through the start of the upcoming school year and quite possibly for the entire school year.

“Though the campus could begin phasing out ‘rebel’ depictions on websites, walls, and other places around the building immediately, an official mascot change-over date would likely not occur until the spring semester or at the start of the 2021-2022 school year,” district administrators said today.

In fact, the administration wants to take the board completely out of the process of selecting a new mascot. The administration said in today’s statement it plans to recommend at Thursday’s school board meeting “that the board retire the Rebel mascot and authorize prior approval to allow the superintendent to determine a new mascot, without requiring an additional board vote, following a student selection process that would occur once students return to class, whether in-person or virtually, for the 2020-2021 school year,”

There appears to be an out, though, for those Hays students who don’t wish to be a “Rebel” during the upcoming school year should the trustees decide to dump the racist moniker.

“Students who do not wish to wear uniforms with ‘Rebels’ on them would not be required to do so,” administrators said. “References to ‘Rebels’ on their uniforms could be covered.”

The administration estimated it will cost, at the most, $600,000 to replace the mascot, a sum that would be split between the next two fiscal year budgets. This would cover replacing student uniforms as well as  Rebel references painted on school buildings, the floor of the campus gym and various signs. However, the administration said, “If uniforms are patched and not replaced until their normal replacement cycle, the cost impact of a mascot change would be lower.”

“Digital conversions, such as letterhead templates, website markings, social media graphics, and the development of a new mascot graphics package, would not incur any expense to the district,” administrators said. “Branding services, including logo and graphics design, are provided free to the district through the existing district vendors that supply athletic uniforms and equipment.”

At first, I was not that enthralled by the first-place finisher — the Patriots — that the plurality of students chose in the on-line selection process. I associate it too much with New England’s NFL team and I’m not sure such a scandal ridden franchise should be one a local high school should emulate. But the more, I thought about it, the better it sounded. For one thing, it seems to have some kind of relationship to Rebel; perhaps students regarded “Patriot” as the antithesis to “Rebel.” It also rolls nicely off the tongue, especially when you combine it with “Patriot Pride” or events such as a “Patriot Parade” or “Patriot Picnic.”

The second place finisher was “Cowboys” (127 votes), which made me even more convinced NFL names played a huge part in this voting. Hays Hawks (123 votes), my personal favorite, was third followed by Dragons (95), Wildcats (93), Hurricanes (70), Honey Badgers (56), Mavericks (45), Phoenixes (38), Hyenas (33), Hornets (30), Eagles (21), and Lions (20).

Students attending middle schools that feed into Hays also had the opportunity to select from the list and they went with the alliteration options, choosing Honey Badgers first, Hornets second and Hawks third.

Hays CISD administrators recommend mascot change at Hays High School

After seeing the results of its own survey that showed 59 percent of the students and 72 percent of the teachers and staff at Hays High School were uncomfortable with the school’s Rebel mascot, Hays CISD administrators announced today they will recommend the district’s board of trustees change the mascot. The board is expected to act on the recommendation later this month.

“Hays CISD is a much different community than it once was, and so is the world,” the administration said in a prepared statement released today. “We all grow and learn. As a school district, we are, in fact, in the business of growing and learning. The administration believes that it is time to change the mascot and open a new chapter at Hays High School – one that, moving forward, can be embraced and celebrated by all.”

Beginning today, students will have the opportunity to select from a list of proposed new mascots and the results of that process will also be forwarded to the board, according to today’s announcement. In an earlier process, students were asked to pick a new mascot and the top responses were “Hawks, Hornets, Patriots, Cowboys, Eagles, Hurricanes, Hyenas, Phoenixes, Lions, Mavericks, Wildcats, Dragons, and Honey Badgers,” according to the administration’s announcement. The district has prepared what it is calling “a choice selection sheet” that will be used by students to vote on a new mascot and the 13 proposed new mascots listed above are the top names on that selection sheet. Students are supposed to begin receiving links to that selection sheet beginning today and “the choice selection sheet responses will be presented to the board to consider, should the board vote to change the mascot,” according to the administrators.

“When nearly 60 percent of the students, and more than 70 percent of the teachers and staff members, show little to no comfort with the current mascot, it ceases to serve its intended purpose,” the Hays CISD administration said in today’s prepared statement. “When more than a quarter of the students, and nearly a third of the teachers and staff members, are very uncomfortable with the current mascot; that mascot fails in its objective. When a mascot mires the school in political controversy and pits students, families, and community members against each other; it is time to change.”

“The mere fact that the rebel mascot is indisputably divisive is enough to warrant its change,” the administrators said.

Should the board avoid political grandstanding and do the right thing by voting to change the school’s mascot, administrators said “the district will help Hays High School make the transition to the new mascot based on a workable time line that would be developed and announced after a board decision. In anticipation of a possible change, the district will begin preparing an inventory, with associated costs, of items that would need to be changed, including uniforms and signage.”

The administration said no costs estimates for the transition had been prepared as of today.

The Hays CISD survey was sent to 2,325 Hays High School students in grades 9 through 12 and 265 teachers and staff members at the school; 49.55 percent of the students and 55.1 percent of the teachers/staff responded. Of those, 59.37 percent of the students and 71.91 percent of the teachers/staff expressed “little to no comfort level with (the) mascot.”

The statement also noted school trustees might consider, “when making its decision, a community petition that was submitted through an internet website that had more than 1,400 signatures as of July 2. Students have also formed a committee to change the mascot and have reported to news organizations that they have a petition that has garnered more than 500 signatures. Furthermore, board members are reading the many comments on the subject posted to community-managed social media sites, as well as sites operated by news media organizations.”
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