Protect what you've paid for.

That is a fair thing to be angry about, and the timing is terrible. On September 8, the Commissioners Court voted to move ahead with a 7.6 percent increase, about $190 a year for the average Harris County homeowner, with a final vote set for September 17. I am not going to stand here and tell you $126 is nothing when the county just added $190 to the same bill.

But they are two different governments with two different budgets. Not one dollar of the county's increase reaches a Cy-Fair classroom, and voting no on these five propositions will not lower your county bill by a cent. The only thing a no vote reaches is the district that teaches your kids.

And a no vote does not really save you money. It saves you $126 and puts at risk the thing that holds your home's value in the first place. People pay Cy-Fair prices to live in Cy-Fair schools. A district that starts cutting teachers and bus routes is a district people stop moving to.

If you are 65 or older with a homestead exemption, the school portion of this does not change at all.

I have a dream of earning a PhD in economics one day, so let me see how I do explaining this one.

That $436 million is a savings account. It is not income. It is the piggy bank you only get to break open with a hammer one time.

Here is what breaking it looks like. A year ago the district had about $134.9 million sitting above the four months of reserves the state requires it to keep. After this year's $80.9 million deficit, that cushion is down to roughly $1 million, and the fund balance itself lands at about four months. Four months is the floor, not the goal.

So the piggy bank is nearly empty already, and Austin has not fixed one thing. The shortfall comes back next year. And the year after that. Keep breaking the piggy bank and soon we have no savings and the same hole.

They have also already cut. $94 million over three budget years, before anyone asked you for a dollar. The state made Cy-Fair pass an efficiency audit before it could even call this election, and that audit found the district spends more of its money on instruction and less on administration than districts its size.

Trustee Justin Ray put it plainly when the board called this election. He said affordability matters right now, and that the numbers are what they are. Cy-Fair needs revenue from the community or from the state, and there is not much left to cut that families would not feel.

Because Austin made sure they cannot. And because it would cost you far more than this does.

Cy-Fair takes 20 percent off the value of your home before it taxes you, on top of the state exemption. Twenty percent is the most any taxing unit in Texas is allowed to give. On a $350,000 house it saves you about $760 a year, which is roughly six times what Proposition A costs you.

The Legislature banned school districts from touching that exemption. When a handful of districts tried it anyway, to fund their own schools, Attorney General Ken Paxton went to court against them. He called it a money grab. Twenty-one districts were in his sights. That ban runs through 2027.

Now here is the part that should make you mad. That exemption costs Cy-Fair about $63 million a year, and Austin does not pay back one dime of it. Our district has gone to the Legislature and asked to be made whole for offering it. The answer was no.

They do find time to come to our schools for pictures. They use photo opps with our administrators for their campaign pages, then drive back to Austin and keep our money from us.

So Austin hands you the discount, makes it illegal for your district to touch it, refuses to pay for it, and walks away. We are not asking to take your exemption. It is one of the reasons families and businesses move here in the first place. We would not be having this conversation at all if Austin sent our schools the money our kids are owed.

I get it. This is the best argument against, so let me answer it straight.

Pull up your tax bill. There is a county line, a hospital district line, a water authority line, a MUD line, and a school line. The school line is the only one you ever get to vote on. So it is the easy place to say no.

But nobody in Austin feels it. They have been sitting on our money for years, and they are still sitting on it after they passed vouchers. Vote these down and not one person in Austin loses a dime.

We are the only ones who lose. Our kids lose buses again. Our schools lose teachers. Our home values take the hit. Businesses looking at Cy-Fair start looking somewhere else.

Protesting is cool, but you have got to send it straight to the top. Those folks are on this same ballot, up above the propositions. They are at the bottom of this page.

We already know. We lived it in 2024.

That August the district cut 79 bus routes. It hit about 33,000 kids, and families found out 18 days before school started. Kids walked and biked on roads with no sidewalks. In one week that October, three students were hit by cars. Trustees sat at the board table and apologized to our families. All of that saved $4.8 million against a deficit of roughly $140 million.

To put that in perspective, that is like saving $4.80 on a $140 bill. We put 33,000 kids on the side of the road for pocket change.

The buses came back in the 2025-26 budget because this community showed up and demanded them. But nothing changed in Austin. Dr. Killian has said it publicly, from the dais: transportation is the first thing cut again if there is no new revenue. That means if these five do not pass. Cy-Fair spends about $60 million a year on buses, and the state formula that pays for them has not been updated since the 1980s. So Austin will not pay for a safe, reliable bus to get your kid to school. Austin will haul you into court when your kid misses too many days getting there.

And it does not stop at buses this time. A trustee laid out what comes next. Zero-based budgeting across the whole district. Schools close. Not might close. Close, and fast, instead of shrinking a little at a time the way you would want it done. And no way to bring back the positions we already lost, including our librarians and counselors.

We have already cut $94 million over the past several years. There is nothing painless left to cut. This district runs lean enough that the next round is one every family feels.

District leaders have been plain about what a yes does. It keeps them from cutting student programs and bus transportation again.

So this is not a guess about what might happen. It is a rerun.

Yes. In 2019. Seven years ago. You can see exactly what that one paid for at cfisd.net/bond.

Seven years ago is a lot longer than it feels. The bond passed on May 4, 2019. Avengers: Endgame was still in theaters. Two weeks later we were watching the series finale of Game of Thrones. Old Town Road was the song of that summer, no one had heard of a Zoom meeting, and Disney+ and Apple TV+ had not launched yet.

The kindergartners who started school under that bond are in seventh grade now. This year's seniors were in fifth.

Here is the part that trips everyone up, me included at first. Bond money and operating money are two different buckets, and the law does not let you pour one into the other.

Bond money buys things. Roofs, buses, air conditioning, computers. It cannot pay a single teacher. Operating money pays people. It cannot buy you a roof.

So a district can have the money for a new roof and no money for the person teaching under it. That is exactly where Cy-Fair is right now.

Propositions B through E are the bond half. A long-term planning committee made up of Cy-Fair parents, staff and community members went and looked at what we own and said it needs work. Nothing on that list is a new building. It is repairs, replacements and equipment for the buildings we already paid for once.

Proposition A is the other bucket. That is the one that keeps people in our schools.

One person. My name is Ashley Buckner. I am a CFISD parent and a product of CFISD schools. So is my husband. My mother-in-law worked for the district back when we were kids. I built this page myself because I am worried about what happens to my kids' schools, and yours, if this does not pass and we do not send people to Austin who will actually fix it.

You may know me as the founder of CFISD Parents for Librarians. I started that group when I found out CFISD had cut half our librarians. Literacy is the foundation of an education and of a free country, so I have been fighting to get a librarian back on every campus, to keep libraries open the whole time school is open, and to put librarians back in charge of our libraries and our curriculum.

This website is not a group project though. It is mine.

This is not a paid job. I am doing it for the love of the game. I paid for the site myself, which is why my name and not a treasurer's is at the bottom of it. I do not work for the district, I have never worked for the district, and the district had no part in this. I can be a thorn in their side.

I have no plans to run for anything. The only payment I get out of this is safe schools, and educators and district staff knowing I am in their corner. What I want is the CFISD I grew up in during the 90s and 2000s. I want it back.

I am not going to promise you something I cannot deliver. So here is the honest answer.

This is the only thing that makes it possible. It does not make it happen. But without it, I can tell you with certainty that it will not happen at all.

If the VATRE and the bonds pass, the money is there. Then a trustee has to put it in the budget in May 2027, and a majority of the board has to vote yes. That is four votes.

Now add the people at the bottom of this page. Money from these propositions, and a Legislature that stops starving us. Put those two together and I am about as certain as I can be that we get fully staffed libraries, open at every campus, again.

So if this matters to you, start telling them now. Not in 2027. Four people is not that many, and they do listen.

And please, be nice about it.