Massive budget cuts to Texas schools in 2011 are still having ripple effects throughout the school system in the state, but apparently not in McKinney, Texas where a new $62.8 million stadium project passed with 63 percent of the vote on Monday. Texas schools may have been forced to increase class sizes, cut bus routes, fire teachers, librarians, counselors, nurses and more staff, but when it comes to high school football, they’re willing to raise taxes, according to CBS Sports. The new stadium is expected to come in right at $50.3 million but there is an additional $12.5 million needed for roads, sewage and other infrastructure associated with the building itself. But compared to the $1.15 billion they spent on the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium in 2009, $62.8 million is just pocket change. The new 12,000 person structure will be just four miles from Eagle Stadium in Allen, Texas, which was the previous home of the most expensive high school football stadium in the country at $60 million.
I’d like to say that I’m outraged by what could only be described as a massive, thoroughly skewed lack of proper priorities on the part of McKinney’s voters and school board. Of course, this is Texas we’re talking about, a place where high school football is valued far more than edumication and preparing children for the future. In the Lone Brain Cell Star State, edumication too often is considered to be either A) publicly subsidized Bible study, B) useful only as a reason to have a football team, or C) both.
In 2011, I began writing about what I at the time referred to as “A $60 million example of backasswards priorities.” I was referring to Texas- a world unto itself in which a football coach is considered to be of far more value than a common, garden-variety chemistry teacher. Even as Allen ISD was laying off teachers and staff and cutting back edumicational programs, they were building a $60 million monument to misplaced priorities. The story got even better when it was revealed that Eagle Stadium was, not even three years after its unveiling, falling apart. Karma, meet Schadenfreude….
Normally, it might be reasonable to expect that even Texans could look at this sort of boondoggle and take a few lessons from it. Au contraire, mon ami; it would appear that those who slept through history are condemned to repeat it- in this case, a mere four miles down the road.
The $62.5 million price tag for McKinney’s audacious palais du futbol Americain is by no means unique in the Lone Star State. Katy ISD, just west of Houston, is working on its own monument to out of whack priorities. Even having lived in Texas for 10+ years (3722 days, not that I was counting or anything), I’m gobsmacked at the fact that denizens of God’s Country © seem to find nothing amiss with the idea of funding multi-million dollar high school football stadiums that will sit empty far more than they will be used. In an era of cuts in programs, staff, and available resources, a time in which schools are continually expected to do more with less, there’s no logical way to justify such expenditures…even in the cultural context of the birthplace of Friday Night Lights.
Then again, who needs edumication when there’s football to be played??
