<p>I realize that a school district can spend funds as they wish, (over 60% of voters approved this bond package which helped fund this stadium) but is this the right message to send to students? Just having a bond package of this magnitude also highlights the giant gap in funding from district to district (Allen is one of the wealthiest districts in the state.)</p>
<p>I find it interesting you didn’t note what the other $59 million of the $119 million bond package was being spent for. It doesn’t help your argument so just leave it out, huh?</p>
<p>What difference does it make what the other projects were? The topic is the high school stadium, not the other municipal needs.</p>
<p>Thoughts-- The Allen, TX culture prizes (worships) football by teenage boys. Perhaps since the cowboy days have vanished from the suburbs, the varsity FB jock provides a romantic figure, slaying the neighboring teams and making his daddy, mama, and girlfriend proud. </p>
<p>Bragging rights for science project awards, piano competitions, and poem publications probably don’t have the same cachet in Longhorn country.</p>
<p>The other project was a fine arts facility. At nearly $60 million. For this high school. </p>
<p>But since football is king, it must be shot down. This community chose to fund a football stadium and a fine arts complex. Both of them are “extra-curricular activities.” But people only whine about the football stadium.</p>
<p>I am not a sports fan, but I have seen family and friends gather around a TV watching Sun football in the US , or people from some impoverished country gathering around a run down restaurant/bar to watch their country soccer team beat another team. The pride and joy is priceless. Sometimes a school/town stadium or art center is not just for the kids, it may serve as an entertainment center for the town.</p>
<p>The money to pay for the stadium and art center came from the bond issued by the municipal. They didn’t deceive the voters about how they were going to spend the money and 60% of people agreed to fund it. If having a large football field could bring the town together and provide some good hometown entertainment, I say why not?</p>
<p>I referenced the espn story as my source, as I read only this story. I did not research or go beyond this particular source. Note that the story IS on a sports-related site, and I wouldn’t exactly characterize it as delivering an anti-football message. I just hope the Allen TX district spends as lavishly on their learning materials (textbooks et al) and their teachers as they do on their extracurriculars. Maybe the bigger issue is the disparity in overall funding for districts across the state. $60 million football complexes (or fine arts complexes) are pure fantasy for poor districts in Houston, Brownsville and Sullivan City.</p>
<p>Allen ISD teacher salary scale is available on their website.<br>
33+ years of teaching service: $62K
New teacher: $46K<br>
Stipends are added for graduate degrees and for critical needs certifications.</p>
<p>oldfort - I agree 100%. I know people who have season tickets for their children’s high school football games…and their children graduated in the 1990s! They have just moved a couple of hours away - but still have their season tickets for next year and plan on coming back for some of the bigger games. It’s just part of life for many people.</p>
<p>“The pride and joy is priceless. Sometimes a school/town stadium or art center is not just for the kids, it may serve as an entertainment center for the town.”</p>
<p>Yes, in small towns and many suburbs, this is the case. However, I wouldn’t characterize the Allen stadium (being located in the Dallas Metro area) as being the entertainment center of the town. Sports (high school, college, pro) is something my family enjoys playing and watching too. I get that it’s a big part of life for many families.
But, we’re talking about a high school stadium complex that cost $60 millon bucks. There are many smaller colleges that don’t have anything of this magnitude. There are 4000 kids in this school – you could have built another high school, with another stadium complex (sans the fancy concrete seating system) for the amount of the bond package.</p>
<p>The ‘intangibles’ learned while playing sports are also priceless. Life lessons experienced as a part of a high school sports team are carried over into the real world like few other opportunities. —$60 million sports stadiums aren’t essential for these lessons, but the lessons learned are nevertheless quite valuable.</p>
<p>And if the current high school is capable of handling 4000 students and is not expecting significant growth in the near future (a problem in many suburban districts) - then a new high school would be a waste of money.</p>
<p>First, correct the errors. Don’t do a quick Google search and pass off the first thing you read as the last word. Big error: the school system did not spend the rest of the bond money on performing arts or a fine arts center. You could have found that out if you looked.</p>
<p>The money was spent as follows:</p>
<p>$23.3M for an auditorium seating 1500. The school had no auditorium at all. It is a mistake to label this a “performing arts space.” Some portion of the cost will go toward things like lighting and sound for use in performance but the main purpose was to build an auditorium. This information comes from the actual Allen, Texas newspaper. Which is online. Which can easily be found if you look for the information.</p>
<p>The next batch of cash is $36.5 million for a new service center. This “project will include school bus maintenance and parking, a district maintenance department, a food service department, a transportation department, food service distribution and a district warehouse.” In other words, infrastructure for the school district. Definitely not a fine arts center.</p>
<p>The rest is on a stadium. So yes there is a $60M stadium. And no the rest of the story is not that even more money was spent on the arts. Yes they’ve built an 18,000 seat stadium. The high school has about 3800 students. So yes the stadium holds several times the total student body but the auditorium holds less than half. </p>
<p>But those are the priorities of the people in Allen, TX. They voted for this by 66+%.</p>
<p>Much of this thread shows a big problem in our society: off the cuff bad answers. Bad information spreads faster than wildfire. So don’t contribute to it.</p>
<p>Agreed – not a king’s ransom for 33+ years of service.
And for all the glossy talk about ‘priceless intangibles’ and invaluable life lessons, the fact is a high school stadium shouldn’t cost $60 million. Fun times and great memories can and do occur in stadiums that cost a lot less … even in the Lone Star State.</p>
<p>Median household income in 2007 was $93,392. It does look like this district can well afford this. The city where I work built two high-schools for $140 million about ten years ago, is about the same size and the median household income is in the 50s.</p>
<p>I had a look at the general area and it’s at the edge of a densely populated area. It seems to me that they can also rent the stadium out to generate revenue, perhaps to other districts or to commercial interests for hosting things like shows and concerts.</p>
<p>$62,OOO after 33 years in a profession isn’t much. An increase of only $16K from beginning teacher to the maximum salary seems almost criminal. That’s only $500 a year…Summers or no summers. Most of us would find it difficult to send kids to college on that salary.</p>
<p>You can’t bring teacher pay into this discussion.
The state of Texas limits the M&O (maintenance and opperations) part of a district’s tax assessment to a certain amount. This pool of dollars pays for running the district; payroll, utilities, bus fuel, etc. Property wealthy districts send nearly everything above that limit to the state to distribute to poorer districts.
However the taxpayers in any district have a lot more freedom to vote to tax themselves to pay for fancier facilities.<br>
Other than the electric bill for the stadium, its extravagance has nearly nothing to do with teacher pay.</p>
<p>I think many people, even your diehard football fafns, would agree with this. Yes, they went and spent the money and it’s quite the facility. But I wonder how many of those 60%+ who voted for it believe that it is “too nice.”</p>
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<p>In the business world, how much vacation time do people normally get? I think people just stick it to the teachers because they have so much “time off” all at once. But people forget when business people take a full week here or a full week there throughout the year.</p>
<p>Or for example, my sister who works in a nonprofit took the 3-day weekend that is Labor Day weekend extended it to either 5 or 6 days. That’s after she just took 10 days off last month…</p>