Donation for school pavilion approved

Neighborhood resistance doesn’t hold up project by the Colony Meadows PTO

Fort Bend Independent School District trustees’ unanimous approval on Monday of a $66,700 donation from an elementary school PTO came after a yearlong conflict between that group and the neighboring community.

The donation will fund a metal pavilion that will cover part of Colony Meadows Elementary School’s basketball court, providing shade for students and serving as a site for outdoor classes and events, school PTO president Heather Rudolph said. It’s especially needed because 16 aging trees are being removed from the campus, she said.

“The kids and staff are about to lose a lot of shade,” Rudolph said. “It will help them to have a place outside even though it’s hot.”

Though Fort Bend ISD has fabric or metal pavilions on 23 of its 74 other campuses, this project came under scrutiny from residents of surrounding Colony Meadows neighborhood who fear the pavilion would increase crime.

“These things are usually pretty simple, and for many reasons this one is not,” trustee Dave Rosenthal said Monday. “But when we look at our roles as trustees governing the

district, holding it accountable, that’s our job, and our job is not necessarily to be judges as to whether a project is worthy and should go forward.”

Opponents of the pavilion managed to delay the project for several months; it was supposed to be completed last summer.

Carol Scott, a Colony Meadows resident whose three children attended the school, was the only member of the neighborhood group opposed to the pavilion to speak at the meeting, though several others attended.

Scott started fighting the project in October 2014 after a Colony Meadows PTO member told her about the plans.

Scott has a binder thick with documents related to the pavilion project, including the group’s petition and copies of her many emails to entities including Fort Bend ISD and the school PTO

Based on some neighbors’ previous complaints about problems related to pavilions at other Fort Bend ISD campuses, Scott and others claimed the 79-by-69-foot structure would increase afterschool crime, primarily from teenage boys who they fear would curse, vandalize and litter.

The opposition group links crime to Sugar Land’s increasingly urban environment. A notice sent by the Colony Meadows Neighborhood Watch to the community read: “As Sugar Land moves from a Houston suburb to its own urban area, many challenges associated with cities are becoming apparent in our area.”

“We already experience mischief here and expect it will increase,” said Fred Levert, a block captain for the Neighborhood Watch group who lives near the campus.

Both the Fort Bend ISD police department and the Sugar Land police department said they have no indication that a pavilion attracts crime to an area. There is no evidence that a similar pavilion at Fort Bend Lexington Creek Elementary School in Missouri City has increased crime, according to that city’s assistant police chief, Lance Bothell.

Scott said neighbors find litter about once a week around the Colony Meadows school.

“Our opinion is you build it and they will come,” Levert said of troublemakers.

By January, Scott and other Neighborhood Watch members had canvassed 238 homes, about 66 percent of the Colony Meadows neighborhood. Their petition with 245 signatures was submitted to the city of Sugar Land, the First Colony Community Association and the Fort Bend ISD board. In March, PTO members met with the opposition group and then moved forward with plans for the pavilion.

Rudolph, who started her PTO term in May, said she had initially opposed construction of the pavilion because of its expense. But after the new PTO board as a whole voted to continue with the project, as the group’s leader, Rudolph inherited the task of defending the pavilion idea.

Of the money for the project, $4,000 came from parent donations to the PTO specifically for the pavilion. The rest came from the PTO’s existing funds.

Rudolph said that while the previous PTO could have been more open with the community about the project, the organization was following protocol and that parents and teachers at the school requested the pavilion. The PTO does not have to solicit community feedback for a gift, according to bylaws published on its website.

The PTO chose three contractors to construct the pavilion, all recommended and approved by Fort Bend ISD. The PTO signed construction contracts, committing $36,000. Because the project is a donation of more than $10,000, the board had to approve it.

“The concern of potential crime to the Colony Meadows neighborhood was offered as a reason to not support the project,” Lilly Karim, a Colony Meadows Elementary parent and volunteer who led the project design and construction, told trustees in September. “After discussions with Sugar Land City police officers, Fort Bend ISD officers, First Colony Community Association representatives and our school principal, it was decided that those concerns were based more on fear than factual data. We have 14 neighborhoods that feed into our school, and it is in the interest of the PTO to serve all neighborhoods, not solely focus on the desires of one.”

The neighbors could continue to fight the project by searching for technical violations in the PTO bylaws on how the project was pursued, Levert said, but expressed doubt that he’ll pursue the matter further.

Rudolph would like the pavilion constructed soon. By the new year, there will likely be a pavilion on campus, she said.