This will be about the two decisions I mentioned in my previous post regarding the school board election.
Decision #1: The Hiring of Coach Dick Olin
Let me begin this with the admission that I have never met Dick Olin. Despite the many things I have heard about him, I will assume that he is a nice guy, and so this will not be a personal attack on Coach Olin. I will be speaking only on his record and his connections.
This brings to me my first point, his lackluster record. Out of his last seven seasons at his previous high school, Coach Olin only had two winning seasons. Two. Winning. Seasons. That's it. What he may have been lacking in winning seasons, he made up with friendships with the previous top two LISD administrators, Superintendent Jerry Roy and CFO Alan King. If this was Dallas ISD and there had been a lackluster employee hired that made six figures, and if the only reason they were hired was because of their connections to the superintendent and CFO, it would be called corruption. In LISD, it's called normal. (Just a side note, Alan King is now the CFO of Dallas ISD. I'm sure he'll fit right in). Did Mrs. Kyer and Mrs. Fulton, along with the rest of the school board, really think that a coach who had such a terrible record over the past decade could possibly create a successful program? I was asked while I was campaigning for the school board elections last year by the wife of a then-school board member why I thought Coach Olin wasn't a good coach. I responded with simply, "Look at his record." After two wonderful years of Dick Olin, Lewisville's High School football record is 5-15. In two years, Olin has coached the Farmers to five wins. All at the cost to the taxpayers of $108,000 a year. Many people also complained about his advanced age and that he would retire in a few years. Well, after two years, and Lewisville's football program becoming the laughing stock of the area, I truly hope that comes true, not just for the football program now, but for future generations of Lewisville High School. I also hope that when Coach Olin retires in the next couple of years that Lewisville High School will get a competent coach that they deserve and that is hired because of his merits, not because of who he knows. Is Wade Phillips still looking for a job?
Decision #2: The Construction of Lewisville High School South
The school district doesn't want the two campuses to be referred to as North and South supposedly because of its gang connotations. Well, I didn't want the South campus to be built, so I guess we're even.
History lesson: A long, long time ago, way back in the mid-2000's, there was a secondary school task force that was put together to create a long term plan for the five high schools in the district. The school district made the wise decision to not include any Lewisville residents or any LHS teachers or administrators. The results from this group suggested building 9th grade centers at 3 of the high schools, and drastically changing the LHS campus by building a 9th and 10th grade center in Southern Lewisville and converting the North campus into another 9th and 10th grade campus. Another plan that came out of this task force was to create academies, and of course Lewisville HS would get the academy for students not going to college. You see, according to the former school board, Lewisville students can't achieve success like students at other schools because they're poor and have skin that's a different color than theirs. Where else would this academy be?
Back to the South campus. Lewisville parents and students came out in force saying they didn't want this plan. Meeting after meeting for over three years, they refused to listen to us. While they might have been all ears for for even the smallest complaint when school zones changed in Flower Mound and Highland Village, they shamefully ignored us. Their reasons consistently changed onto why this campus was supposed to be built.
Explanation #1: LHS Enrollment Figures. They originally projected significantly higher enrollments for LHS that never panned out. Shocking.
Explanation #2: Demographics. I will never apologize that Lewisville HS is a diverse learning community. It is unfortunate that some (including people who live in Lewisville) perceive it as a problem.
Explanation #3: Smaller Learning Communities. With a large budget shortfall because of state funding, I'm going to guess that class sizes will only become bigger.
All of this was going on while plans were being developed to demolish and rebuild the main campus of LHS. They could have fixed problems #1 and #3 by building the school larger and incorporating smaller learning communities within the same building. Unfortunately, the school board was too stubborn to do this, and this stubbornness will come at the cost of future success for generations of Fighting Farmers to come.
And the saddest part of this all is that the district administration and select members of the school board don't care about us, and they never will.
This campus has already divided the community, and the paint has yet to dry.
This coach has driven a football program that once united a community into the ground.
And I just keep asking myself, is this really what the school board wanted?
-Jeremy
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