Black leaders denounce HISD's massive school bond proposal

Monday, September 24, 2007

(9/24/07 - HOUSTON) -- A group of black community leaders said they will fight a school district bond referendum that would build 24 new schools if the district doesn't delay the November vote and revamp the proposal.

Leaders including U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, state lawmakers and officials with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said Sunday that the district should rework the proposal with input from the black community and postpone a vote until May.

The Houston Independent School District's $805 million bond referendum would build 24 schools and renovate 134 others.

State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, said Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra should have consulted more with those "who are at a better vantage point of knowing the needs of their areas."

Saavedra said last week that he waited too long to discuss his plans with the community and announced changes in the proposal aimed at winning over support.

He agreed to renovate, rather than consolidate some schools, and he abandoned plans to create prekindergarten- through eighth-grade campuses in the Fifth Ward, a predominantly black neighborhood east of downtown.

He also announced the property tax rate will remain unchanged if voters approve the measure.

Spokesman Terry Abbott said the district doesn't plan to pull back the referendum. The ballot language doesn't list specific projects, meaning more changes are possible, he said. "It would be entirely wrong to say that the proposal can't be tweaked or improved," Abbott said.

James W.E. Dixon II, a pastor and NAACP officer, said black leaders have supported the district's bond efforts in the past. But this time, black leaders were "appalled we were labeled outsiders to this process," he said.

"We are saying, 'Pull it down or we will vote it down,"' Dixon said at Sunday's meeting, which was held in front of the NAACP's Houston branch office.

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