Education
BY DANICA LLOYD
Superintendent Doug Killian shares goals for Cy-Fair ISD in 202425 Cy-Fair ISD Superintendent Doug Killian stepped into the role at the start of 2024 with 20 years of superintendent experience, including in Pugerville, Hutto, Human and Poteet ISDs. Inspired by the teachers he had in school, his education career began as a rst-grade teacher, he told Community Impact in a July 31 interview. How has education changed during your career? I think over the years, ... we’ve moved from a basic trust and partnership, especially over the last couple of years, to a little bit more of an adversarial relationship with community and parents; and that’s denitely not what we want. ... I go back to my time teaching rst grade, and when you have a problem with someone, you tell them. And you talk to them in your normal voice without being upset. ... Those golden rules you learned when you rst went to school and had to deal with other people with dierent opinions and dierent backgrounds—that still applies today, and I wish we would get back to more of that. Because we’re here to help. I got into the business to help kids and help sta members. So I want them to succeed, and I want them to go as far as they possibly can. What have you learned since being in Cy-Fair ISD? A lot more about nance. ... One thing that I will tell you that became very apparent when we rst started looking at the budget issues in the district is how well-managed the district is. When we started looking for low-hanging fruit that was easy to cut, ... there really wasn’t a lot. ... You end up impacting sta and the classroom even when you want to stay away from that. Transportation is probably the biggest thing that’s out there right now that we had to pull back on. ... I don’t think a lot of people realize the millions of dollars we spend to transport inside of the 2-mile limit when we don’t get that covered [by state funding]. What are some other misconceptions you hear from the community? This building—the central oce—that it’s a Taj Mahal and that [we] could have used that money to help with transportation or sta salaries. It’s actually a separate tax rate, and legally we can’t use that. That’s also voted on by the public, ... so [bond funding] can’t be used for day-to-day
Cy-Fair ISD Superintendent Doug Killian participates in Read Across America Day.
PHOTOS COURTESY CYFAIR ISD
operations, which is our maintenance and operations tax. That’s probably the biggest misconception of how we’re funded. And then just the fact that we’re limited on [how much funding] we get based on a state formula. A lot of people see that their property values go up, so we’re collecting more of a local share in our taxes; but we collect that rst, and then our state aid gets reduced because we have a nite amount of money that we can get per student. How do you approach advocacy at the state level? I’m new to the area, so I wanted to make sure that I was establishing a relationship with our representatives and their sta. ... We have that local optional homestead exemption that gives our local taxpayers an additional 20% o of their values. Well, we’re punished in the state formulas for that. ... So, doing that legwork of telling them about that. And then suggesting some bill languages or things that we can do in statute to provide that money. ... Obviously, funding is a big issue because we don’t want to hurt the inherent greatness of this district. We provide some really expansive programs. Our dual-credit program that we have with Lone Star [College] and the associate’s degrees that we’re getting kids to come out of high school with—that’s pretty amazing. And we don’t want that to be threatened at any point or any of the other things—the wrestling, the swimming, all the extracurricular and co-curricular stu that excites kids about school.
Other than legislative priorities, what are some of your goals for this new school year? One of the things is looking at expanding what we’re doing in dual credit. ... I don’t think folks in the community realize that we’re not just graded on how we implement the state standards—the curriculum in the state—anymore. It’s whether or not our kids will be successful post-secondary. ... I don’t want to oversimplify kids, but it’s an assembly line in terms of public education. ... You want to be a plumber, you want to be a licensed mechanic—you’ve got to start that process in eighth grade or maybe even sooner because they need to have some exploratory stu so they can gure out, “Hey, I might want to do this,” and come out with some type of certication. ... The other thing is just celebrating the successes in the district—some of the things that have been lost with the loud noises and just, I think, people being a little bit more aggressive about things; ... they’re forgetting that there are great things going on. We need to get better; that’s true, ... but we also need to recognize the great things that are going on and celebrate those.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version, visit communityimpact.com.
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