I went to the CyFair ISD schools, home of
Ken Pridgeon Stadium and
Richard Berry Stadium. The new Berry Complex - at a cost of $75 million (including a 16,000 seat stadium for football/soccer, a 9,500 seat arena for bball and graduations, a 450 seat auditorium, and a 16,000 sq.ft. conference center) - should be the nicest HS facilities in the nation. Cause for talk, indeed.
Need: In 1997, CFISD opened HS#6. In 2002, they opened HS#7. This year they open an eighth, with #9 and #10 scheduled to open in 2008. With 6 HSs using Pridgeon, there were games Thurs, Fri, and 2 on Sats [not every weekend, but most]. Thursday night games suck, and Saturday afternoon games are downright brutal. Something had to be built before it came to Wed. or Tues. night games.
Funding: It's all voter-approved bonds that essentially jack up your property taxes - or so I think. In addition to that, you sell ads in the stadium, get revenue for renting out your facilities, etc.
I don't think a bond referendum has been voting down in a long time (for CFISD). It's a good thing, too, because they are building new schools as fast as they can put them up and overcrowding is still a problem.
Educationally, the only problem is a lack of lockers/textbooks. Hell, they even built CyFair College - sometimes referred to as 13th grade - which has to show a commitment to education.