By Juan Montoya
Look at the map above closely.
It depicts the southwesternmost boundaries of the Port Isabel Independent School District. The Brownsville Independent School District eastern boundaries lie across the red boundary line along Highway 48.
The district stretches from the northern reaches of South Padre Island, covers Laguna Vista, and then runs west along State Highway 48, takes in all of the Port of Brownsville, then south along the Rio Grande to Boca Chica beach. It is a huge district. As far as anyone knows, a bus from PI ISD is sent daily to pick up one student on the Boca Chica beach side.
Last night, at the meeting of the Brownsville Independent School District, trustee Phillip Cowen proposed that the boundaries of the BISD be made to match with the boundaries of the City of Brownsville. Of course, the Port of Brownsville is not within the city limits and would be excluded.
Cowen said at the meeting that he was looking to the future when development would go north toward Los Fresnos and that the BISD should look toward that area to grow and indirectly encourage economic development in the form of schools and residential subdivisions. One of our readers pointed out that at least two Los Fresnos schools are already operating inside the Brownsville city limits and that some residents of Brownsville already have to attend Los Fresnos schools instead of the BISD.
But that will surely invoke a turf war with Los Fresnos, already chafing under the annexation plans that have been implemented by the City of Brownsville and have gone to court to fight them. The City of Port Isabel, by the way, is also locked in a bitter annexation war with Brownsville. But it is not the city boundaries that are part of this boundary-change proposal. It involves only the school districts' boundaries.
If the PI ISD went along with letting the BISD extend its boundaries as far as the Jaime Zapata Boat ramp, it would lose the tax income from the industry at the Port of Brownsville and the agricultural taxes south of the ship channel, but it would still have to pitch in to the state's Robin Hood fund because of the tax income it gets from the properties on South Padre Island, even with its lower tax rate.In fact, the PI ISD has to pitch in some $30 million yearly to the Texas so-called Robin-Hood plan for distribution to property-poor school districts. And it's the only school district in the Rio Grande Valley to have to send money to the state. Brownsville is one of those recipient school districts. Even if PI ISD gave up the Port and Brownsville ISD got that tax income, PI would still have to send some money to the state and Brownsville would still be receiving some of those state funds.
And fears by PI ISD residents that BISD taxes would be foisted upon them with the envisioned boundary change seem to be unfounded since the BISD proposed boundaries would only extend to as far as the Zapata Boat Ramp and wouldn't go near Port Isabel.
While it's Brownsville residents who put up with the traffic congestion created by port workers and freight, who must deal with the threat of hazardous cargoes rumbling past our schools and neighborhoods, and in the majority of cases educate the children of the majority of port workers, the bulk of the taxes go to the Port Isabel ISD.Except for a strip of land along the westernmost edge of the Port of Brownsville, nearly all the industry (including Amfels, Transmontaigne, the shipwreckers, the Shrimp Basin, etc.) pay taxes to the PI ISD, not Brownsville schools. The three proposed LNG plants would be the same. Same goes for SpaceX. It, too,lies in the boundaries of the PI ISD.
Brownsville school would probably educate the students who came along with their parents to work there, too.
As far as we know, there are no petrochemical course being taught at the local community colleges. If the plants were to be built tomorrow, the bulk of those "high-paying jobs"– as in the case of SpaceX, – would probably be taken by outside professionals coming from somewhere else.
There is still a debate on the desirability of having the LNG plants come here, but regardless of whether they come or not, the same disparity in Port of Brownsville taxes going to PI ISD and not to BISD will remain. LNGs thrown into that scheme will just exacerbate the issue.