PN-G bamatex

5ADII PN-G beat 6A Beaumont United 49-0 and 45-14 in 2022 and 2023. 4ADII WO-S played the eventual 5ADII state champion Indians to overtime in 2023. If it all boils down to just attendance numbers, explain those facts to me.

To your point, it’s worth noting that the 50-15 loss was PN-G’s first game under a new coach. I think most PN-G fans would agree that the 2022 Indians didn’t fully settle into Joseph’s system until late in the regular season.

That’s a recent phenomenon. PN-G and Nederland were always within a hundred students of each other until PN-G’s numbers started to jump around 2018. In fact, for many years leading up to that, PN-G was slightly smaller than Nederland.

Jeff Joseph was special teams coordinator at Southlake Carroll when PN-G hired him. Everyone at PN-G, including Joseph himself, characterized the hiring as “taking a chance.” Look how that worked out.

Would be interested in seeing the regional champions in the small school divisions from the days before state championships were played in the lower classifications added to this list. The original Port Neches Indians won regional championships in 1946 and ‘47, when that was the highest they could go. Finished one of those two seasons undefeated, as I recall.

Agreed. I’m hoping Joseph’s success with the Indians signals to the state’s top coaching talent that Southeast Texas has the right mix of talent, resources and community support to be successful. Scott Rich’s arrival in Nederland suggests that might be happening.

I stand corrected. (As does my calendar.)

I really respect Coach Joseph’s predistrict selections, even if I would like to see Memorial on the schedule. We will be prepared for whatever we face the rest of the season. I’ve already circled December 13 on my calendar. Scalp ‘em, Indians.

I’m gonna preach this one more time and then I’ll get off my soap box. The foundation of a successful high school or collegiate football program is a top notch strength and conditioning regimen. These Katy guys seem to understand that really well.

Faircloth won four of his last six games versus Nederland, including three in a row. The losses to Nederland were only an issue until Neumann left. That wasn’t the ultimate cause of Faircloth’s demise. But as a Faircloth supporter, I don’t really think this is worth rehashing now. We have a generationally great coach, and the program’s in the best shape in decades. No use reopening old wounds.

That hasn’t changed. I remember listening to a dog right at the back of the visitors’ stands 15 years ago. One of the tuba players dropped his mouthpiece over the back railing by accident and we decided to leave it there because we didn’t think the dog would give it up without a fight.

I know PN-G is a football school first and foremost - 28 district titles, 16 seasons with ten or more wins, ten regional titles, eight state championship appearances and four state titles speak to that - but we really are blessed with an embarrassment of athletic riches at PN-G. The baseball program has made four state championship appearances and won it once; three of those appearances and the victory have all occurred in the last 25 years. The softball team has made two state championship appearances, both in the last 25 years. The volleyball team is 3-0 in state championship games. For most of the last fifteen years, both the boys' and girls' soccer programs have been major regional powers, making regional final appearances several times. If I recall correctly, there was one season where both teams made it to the regional final. We've fielded two or three state champions in various track activities plus a few dozen more state track meet qualifiers, and are always competitive in powerlifting. We used to be a real power in tennis. Sports-wise, basketball is really the only area where PN-G has consistently underperformed. Add in all the academic accolades - the years of blue ribbon designations, thirteen straight district titles in UIL academics from 2001 to 2013 and several consecutive years of dozens of kids advancing to regionals, a handful to state and one kid winning a gold medal in creative writing at the state UIL meet. For several years, PN-G offered more dual credit hours than any other local high school, Kelly included. And then there's the performing arts. The band has made, what, four trips to the state marching competition? Straight ones all but maybe three or four seasons since the UIL started holding regional marching competitions 50+ years ago, plus how many different awards from local marching festivals and competitions? Not to mention the hundreds of PN-G students who've achieved all-region and all-state honors in band and choir over the years, and a very competitive theater program. There are whole hallways at the high school lined with trophy cabinets filled to the brim for the different performing arts groups. Football is king at PN-G, but there are many, many more reasons to be proud to be an Indian.

Hey now, if it was at Redbird's, I'm gonna be jealous I wasn't invited.

Scott Rich will be a good coach for the Bulldogs. It might take a season or two for him to right the ship, but Mid-County Madness is on the verge of being a contest of state-ranked powers, on top of already being the state’s fiercest rivalry and the perennial marquis game in the Golden Triangle. This is good for both schools, and good for the area at large. I look forward to seeing what Coach Rich does at Nederland.

I don’t know, but I do know this: Quinton Jackson is still on his feet. (PN-G fans who were at the 2009 game will get it.)

Welcome to the Jungle, v. 2.0.

This metric doesn't work the way I suspect you think it does. The grading rubric TEA uses to determine these ratings has several "ceiling indicators," which are factors that can cap the maximum possible overall score assigned to a school district if a particular condition isn't met, even if the school scored the maximum possible points with respect to every other factor for consideration. You can confirm that for yourself by viewing the rubric here. PN-G's FIRST report, available here, indicates the district scored a 96 out of 100 and would have been given an A rating but for the failure to satisfy one ceiling indicator. According to the data considered with respect to that factor, the district's fund balance fell 25.4% over three years. The factor only allows for a maximum 25% reduction before the grade cap is triggered. I would bet good money that the decline in the district's fund balance was caused by special arrangements the district had to make due to the delays in the construction of the new schools caused by COVID, though I can't say that for sure. Whatever the case may be, failure to meet that condition capped PN-G's highest possible grade at 89, instead of the 96 PN-G would have otherwise scored. Interestingly, Nederland also scored a 96. NISD's FIRST report, available here, and PN-GISD’s are identically scored in every way except for with respect to that one fund balance criterion. In any event, this is an academic exercise that I don't think really addresses PhatMack's point. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he was saying that the Nederland bond was more expensive and less effective at reducing NISD's long term operational expenditures than PN-G's bond packages have been and/or will be. I think he's probably correct. PN-GISD's latest bond package consolidated six schools into four, as PhatMack aptly pointed out. Less obvious is the reduction in utility and maintenance costs brought about by both PN-G's 2019 and 2007 bond issues, which altogether replaced eight old schools that were energy inefficient and costly to maintain with six new ones that are much more efficient and less maintenance-intensive, and achieved similar cost savings at the high school through extensive renovation. NISD's bond issue didn't consolidate any schools and only replaced one, though it included some renovations to a handful of others, too. I don't think there's much debate to be had that PN-G's bond issues will save the district considerably more money in the long run.

This is the part where even I start to get confused. I don’t pretend to understand exactly how that works, partly because it’s only gotten more complicated as the state has started throwing large amounts of money into property tax relief (a process known in policy circles as rate compression). But, as I understand it, the district isn’t actually keeping the cash, just redirecting it away from the state in favor of bond projects, and the sums saved from Robin Hood aren’t as large as you might think. It might be better termed a subsidy than a rebate.

The emboldened line is an underrated point. I know I'm the PN-G homer here, but I've spent the last seven years dealing with school districts across the state. I am objectively impressed at the strides PN-GISD has made in terms of financial management over the last ten years. They have been far more prudent than a lot of other Texas school districts I can think of (and I'm not necessarily referring to Nederland, to be clear).

Not to add fuel to a growing fire or anything, but I would just like to point out that PN-G's higher level of property wealth per capita versus Nederland, owing to the former's more industrial tax base, also means PN-GISD loses substantially more state funding than NISD to recapture, better known as "Robin Hood." When all is said and done, the net per capita funding disparity is not as significant as one might think, and nowhere near as significant as it was before the Robin Hood plan was put into effect a little over 30 years ago. It is also worth noting that Maintenance & Operations funding (i.e., money for day-to-day operations) and Interest & Sinking funding (i.e., money to pay off bonds) are two separate streams of tax revenue for school districts that are assessed as separate line items on your property tax bill. To PhatMack's point, the latter is totally dependent on the structure and amount of the bond proposed by the school district, subject to rate caps and other mandates imposed by the state. I doubt there's much, if any, difference in the overall cost to the individual homeowners in PN-GISD and NISD over the lives of their respective bonds after inflation is controlled for, or at least little difference attributable to anything other than differences in the total, inflation-adjusted costs of the bonds.

It did, and I get it, but I have to stick up for the school district there. Post-COVID, large scale construction projects are still a nightmare. The district did the best it could in a worst case scenario. I recently left a state institution of higher education with eleven existing campuses across the state and two more on the drawing board. Back in 2021, I helped get them $208.5 Million from the Legislature for major construction projects at seven of those campuses. By the time all the fundraising was done, and after a little more coaxing from the state, that was nearly $400 Million total. I had occasion to drive by one of those campuses last week. The ceremonial groundbreaking for its project was last August. It’s February, and they still haven’t even leveled the site for the foundation of the facility. I was flabbergasted.

School district boundaries don’t follow city limits. NISD has all of Nederland plus healthy portions of Port Neches and Port Arthur and all of Central Gardens and Beauxart Gardens. PN-GISD loses roughly a quarter of Port Neches to NISD and a fifth of Groves to PAISD, though it picks up two neighborhoods in Port Arthur. It’s more like both districts have a town and a half; the number of residents and households the two districts have is almost always roughly even. When I was in school (PN-G c/o 2011), Nederland had about a hundred more students than PN-G. The fact that PN-G is ~15% larger than Nederland now is significant. That’s the largest enrollment disparity between the two schools in at least 30 years, maybe longer. What you’re seeing is PN-GISD’s aggressive approach to replacing schools since 2008 paying dividends. Young families took notice.

A good friend of mine from law school is a Nederland grad and still practices in Austin. Grabbed a beer with him a few weeks back. He told me just about everyone he knows from his high school graduating class who’s still in the area and has kids is trying to find a house in PN-GISD right now. Top reasons are the current success of PN-G’s extracurricular programs and the condition of NISD schools, the new high school aside. Meanwhile, the only person I know from my high school days who’s sending her kids to Nederland has a beef with a retired PN-GISD administrator (petty reasons, not real ones) that she’s still not over.

I say Districts 8 and 10 file grievances.

Football: 101 Track: 120+ Band: 230-250 in any given year. Indianettes: ~75 Cheerleaders: 12-20 Twirlers: 8 Geronimo’s Crew: 10-15 NDN Press & PN-G Primetime: 10-20 Probably a few hundred more competing in UIL academics and related activities, the choir and theater groups, all of the other sports, etc. Take a good look. That’s what a strong high school culture looks like.