PN-G bamatex

Faircloth won four of his last six games versus Nederland, including three in a row. The losses to Nederland were only an issue until Neumann left. That wasn’t the ultimate cause of Faircloth’s demise. But as a Faircloth supporter, I don’t really think this is worth rehashing now. We have a generationally great coach, and the program’s in the best shape in decades. No use reopening old wounds.

That hasn’t changed. I remember listening to a dog right at the back of the visitors’ stands 15 years ago. One of the tuba players dropped his mouthpiece over the back railing by accident and we decided to leave it there because we didn’t think the dog would give it up without a fight.

I know PN-G is a football school first and foremost - 28 district titles, 16 seasons with ten or more wins, ten regional titles, eight state championship appearances and four state titles speak to that - but we really are blessed with an embarrassment of athletic riches at PN-G. The baseball program has made four state championship appearances and won it once; three of those appearances and the victory have all occurred in the last 25 years. The softball team has made two state championship appearances, both in the last 25 years. The volleyball team is 3-0 in state championship games. For most of the last fifteen years, both the boys' and girls' soccer programs have been major regional powers, making regional final appearances several times. If I recall correctly, there was one season where both teams made it to the regional final. We've fielded two or three state champions in various track activities plus a few dozen more state track meet qualifiers, and are always competitive in powerlifting. We used to be a real power in tennis. Sports-wise, basketball is really the only area where PN-G has consistently underperformed. Add in all the academic accolades - the years of blue ribbon designations, thirteen straight district titles in UIL academics from 2001 to 2013 and several consecutive years of dozens of kids advancing to regionals, a handful to state and one kid winning a gold medal in creative writing at the state UIL meet. For several years, PN-G offered more dual credit hours than any other local high school, Kelly included. And then there's the performing arts. The band has made, what, four trips to the state marching competition? Straight ones all but maybe three or four seasons since the UIL started holding regional marching competitions 50+ years ago, plus how many different awards from local marching festivals and competitions? Not to mention the hundreds of PN-G students who've achieved all-region and all-state honors in band and choir over the years, and a very competitive theater program. There are whole hallways at the high school lined with trophy cabinets filled to the brim for the different performing arts groups. Football is king at PN-G, but there are many, many more reasons to be proud to be an Indian.

Hey now, if it was at Redbird's, I'm gonna be jealous I wasn't invited.

Scott Rich will be a good coach for the Bulldogs. It might take a season or two for him to right the ship, but Mid-County Madness is on the verge of being a contest of state-ranked powers, on top of already being the state’s fiercest rivalry and the perennial marquis game in the Golden Triangle. This is good for both schools, and good for the area at large. I look forward to seeing what Coach Rich does at Nederland.

I don’t know, but I do know this: Quinton Jackson is still on his feet. (PN-G fans who were at the 2009 game will get it.)

Welcome to the Jungle, v. 2.0.

This metric doesn't work the way I suspect you think it does. The grading rubric TEA uses to determine these ratings has several "ceiling indicators," which are factors that can cap the maximum possible overall score assigned to a school district if a particular condition isn't met, even if the school scored the maximum possible points with respect to every other factor for consideration. You can confirm that for yourself by viewing the rubric here. PN-G's FIRST report, available here, indicates the district scored a 96 out of 100 and would have been given an A rating but for the failure to satisfy one ceiling indicator. According to the data considered with respect to that factor, the district's fund balance fell 25.4% over three years. The factor only allows for a maximum 25% reduction before the grade cap is triggered. I would bet good money that the decline in the district's fund balance was caused by special arrangements the district had to make due to the delays in the construction of the new schools caused by COVID, though I can't say that for sure. Whatever the case may be, failure to meet that condition capped PN-G's highest possible grade at 89, instead of the 96 PN-G would have otherwise scored. Interestingly, Nederland also scored a 96. NISD's FIRST report, available here, and PN-GISD’s are identically scored in every way except for with respect to that one fund balance criterion. In any event, this is an academic exercise that I don't think really addresses PhatMack's point. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he was saying that the Nederland bond was more expensive and less effective at reducing NISD's long term operational expenditures than PN-G's bond packages have been and/or will be. I think he's probably correct. PN-GISD's latest bond package consolidated six schools into four, as PhatMack aptly pointed out. Less obvious is the reduction in utility and maintenance costs brought about by both PN-G's 2019 and 2007 bond issues, which altogether replaced eight old schools that were energy inefficient and costly to maintain with six new ones that are much more efficient and less maintenance-intensive, and achieved similar cost savings at the high school through extensive renovation. NISD's bond issue didn't consolidate any schools and only replaced one, though it included some renovations to a handful of others, too. I don't think there's much debate to be had that PN-G's bond issues will save the district considerably more money in the long run.

This is the part where even I start to get confused. I don’t pretend to understand exactly how that works, partly because it’s only gotten more complicated as the state has started throwing large amounts of money into property tax relief (a process known in policy circles as rate compression). But, as I understand it, the district isn’t actually keeping the cash, just redirecting it away from the state in favor of bond projects, and the sums saved from Robin Hood aren’t as large as you might think. It might be better termed a subsidy than a rebate.

The emboldened line is an underrated point. I know I'm the PN-G homer here, but I've spent the last seven years dealing with school districts across the state. I am objectively impressed at the strides PN-GISD has made in terms of financial management over the last ten years. They have been far more prudent than a lot of other Texas school districts I can think of (and I'm not necessarily referring to Nederland, to be clear).

Not to add fuel to a growing fire or anything, but I would just like to point out that PN-G's higher level of property wealth per capita versus Nederland, owing to the former's more industrial tax base, also means PN-GISD loses substantially more state funding than NISD to recapture, better known as "Robin Hood." When all is said and done, the net per capita funding disparity is not as significant as one might think, and nowhere near as significant as it was before the Robin Hood plan was put into effect a little over 30 years ago. It is also worth noting that Maintenance & Operations funding (i.e., money for day-to-day operations) and Interest & Sinking funding (i.e., money to pay off bonds) are two separate streams of tax revenue for school districts that are assessed as separate line items on your property tax bill. To PhatMack's point, the latter is totally dependent on the structure and amount of the bond proposed by the school district, subject to rate caps and other mandates imposed by the state. I doubt there's much, if any, difference in the overall cost to the individual homeowners in PN-GISD and NISD over the lives of their respective bonds after inflation is controlled for, or at least little difference attributable to anything other than differences in the total, inflation-adjusted costs of the bonds.

It did, and I get it, but I have to stick up for the school district there. Post-COVID, large scale construction projects are still a nightmare. The district did the best it could in a worst case scenario. I recently left a state institution of higher education with eleven existing campuses across the state and two more on the drawing board. Back in 2021, I helped get them $208.5 Million from the Legislature for major construction projects at seven of those campuses. By the time all the fundraising was done, and after a little more coaxing from the state, that was nearly $400 Million total. I had occasion to drive by one of those campuses last week. The ceremonial groundbreaking for its project was last August. It’s February, and they still haven’t even leveled the site for the foundation of the facility. I was flabbergasted.

School district boundaries don’t follow city limits. NISD has all of Nederland plus healthy portions of Port Neches and Port Arthur and all of Central Gardens and Beauxart Gardens. PN-GISD loses roughly a quarter of Port Neches to NISD and a fifth of Groves to PAISD, though it picks up two neighborhoods in Port Arthur. It’s more like both districts have a town and a half; the number of residents and households the two districts have is almost always roughly even. When I was in school (PN-G c/o 2011), Nederland had about a hundred more students than PN-G. The fact that PN-G is ~15% larger than Nederland now is significant. That’s the largest enrollment disparity between the two schools in at least 30 years, maybe longer. What you’re seeing is PN-GISD’s aggressive approach to replacing schools since 2008 paying dividends. Young families took notice.

A good friend of mine from law school is a Nederland grad and still practices in Austin. Grabbed a beer with him a few weeks back. He told me just about everyone he knows from his high school graduating class who’s still in the area and has kids is trying to find a house in PN-GISD right now. Top reasons are the current success of PN-G’s extracurricular programs and the condition of NISD schools, the new high school aside. Meanwhile, the only person I know from my high school days who’s sending her kids to Nederland has a beef with a retired PN-GISD administrator (petty reasons, not real ones) that she’s still not over.

I say Districts 8 and 10 file grievances.

Football: 101 Track: 120+ Band: 230-250 in any given year. Indianettes: ~75 Cheerleaders: 12-20 Twirlers: 8 Geronimo’s Crew: 10-15 NDN Press & PN-G Primetime: 10-20 Probably a few hundred more competing in UIL academics and related activities, the choir and theater groups, all of the other sports, etc. Take a good look. That’s what a strong high school culture looks like.

The best defensive lineman PN-G’s got right now is Hernandez. That kicker who won offensive MVP for the Indians in the state championship is Oceguera. The Hispanic kids can play just as well as the black, white and Asian kids. Nederland’s issue isn’t their kids’ race.

Agreed, especially about that last part.

I remember thinking PN-G didn’t have the athletes. Then Jeff Joseph took those athletes to two consecutive state championships. Coaching and culture are just as much a factor as raw talent.

When PN-G faced that issue two years ago, the high school principal arranged the schedule.

1970 and 1989NDN touch on some important points about PN-G and what's going on in the rest of American secondary education. I think most of the posters on this site know that I've been involved in Texas policy circles for several years now, and worked for a state institution of higher education until a few months ago. In my dealings with the state's education policy thought leaders, it has struck me just how significantly public schools in this state have changed, generally speaking, even since I was in high school only thirteen years ago. To my mind, PN-G has solidified itself as one of the last remaining examples of the right mix of things that used to make the model public high school in America: strong academics, strong extracurricular programming, strong community support, and a strong culture centered around school pride and a continuing tradition of success. To have a strong high school, you need a healthy mix of all of that. Extracurricular participation is particularly important because it teaches life lessons that can't be learned from a textbook, and because it often motivates students to try harder in the classroom. PN-G has staved off - in some ways, reversed - trends I've seen across much of the rest of public education that have slowly eaten away at the strength of our education system. You can see the evidence every Friday night. Schools with substantially more students (and resources) than PN-G field sports teams, drill teams and bands a fraction of the size of their PN-G counterparts. Sure, some of those other schools might look fine on paper, but far too often, it's because administrators, curriculum developers and faculty have found ways to game the system to create appearances of success instead of doing the hard work it takes to achieve real success. I think PN-G's present level of extracurricular participation and success, and all of the benefits that come with it whether tangible or intangible, is a testament to what the faculty, staff and community have managed to accomplish and sustain. Many schools have a rich history that sits in backroom trophy cabinets and closeted yearbooks collecting dust while nobody notices. PN-G has refused to forget about its history, instead choosing to hold out the achievements of past students as an example to current students of what they, too, are capable of. At the high school level, that is truly remarkable. I believe the high school's present success validates the efficacy of the approach. One day, some of us alumni are going to have to have a conversation about what we can do to more tangibly contribute to the continuation of those traditions, but that's a conversation for a future date when I have more time and energy to spare. But now back to Nederland....

That was the game where Shea broke his foot. Conner came in early in the second quarter, if I recall correctly. If that hadn’t happened, I don’t think that game would have been so close.

And even if they aren’t, it might not be the school district footing the bill.

Coach Dodge was the only one who advised the hiring committee appointed by the school board that reviewed resumes and conducted interviews, the latter being comprised of various members of the PN-GISD administration. Several of those administrators are PN-G alumni, one of whom played on the ‘75 state championship team. A dedicated PN-G alum from out of town (not me, to be clear) arranged first contact between the PN-GISD superintendent and Coach Dodge after Coach Faircloth’s departure, eventually resulting in the consulting contract. There’s no question Dodge’s involvement brought many qualified applicants to the table, and Dodge’s recommendation was key in the selection of Coach Joseph. It was a team effort, and everyone involved in the hiring process, whether formally or informally, deserves commendation for their contribution.

“The price of victory is high, but so are the rewards.” - Bear Bryant