Hypocritical Governance
While I served on the Alief Community Leadership Network Committee and the Alief Bond Referendum Committee, we regularly discussed two central topics, one being funding for Alief public schools and the other was the use of local taxpayer dollars by Alief ISD.
At the October 15, 2019, school board meeting, Trustee Jennifer Key, with the approval of the board, left her school board seat to represent herself as a community member during the patron presentations and spoke about the districts use of taxpayer dollars for legal expenses. Upon doing a little research on the district’s website, under the tab titled Transparency, I looked at this year’s budget page, titled Combined Adopted Budget Summary 2019-2020, and I noticed that there was not an account for legal expenses by the district. This is very disappointing to me because Alief ISD prides itself on transparency, hints the tab which the information is noticeably missing from.
The absence of this financial information supports Trustee Jennifer Key’s patron presentation statement where she stated that she had to complete an open records request to Alief ISD in order to gain access to the district’s legal expenses. This information presumably was not provided to Trustee Key in her official capacity either, if she had to make an open records request as a community member to receive the districts legal expenses. This prompted me to look at the budget presentation slides presented during the August 27, 2019 school board meeting, which was used by the district to gain the school board’s vote of approval for the proposed budget. Once again, I noticed that there were no account for legal expenses in the data presented by the district to the board and the public.
I have concerns as to how our school board approves a budget, year after year, yet the board cannot see legal expenses, especially if legal expenses are concerning enough for school board trustees to publicly question community members for following district policies and procedures when filing grievances, and exercising their constitutional rights to grieve the district or the board. Let me remind Trustee Key that grievances against the British Parliament lead to the American Colonist fighting for independence from Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, and subsequently the colonist establish the United States of America, celebrated on July 4th of each year.
At the April 16, 2019 school board meeting, the board discussed having new legal counsel solely for the school board, and Trustee Lillie Truong expressed concerns of using taxpayer dollars wisely with the acquisition of new legal counsel solely for the board, as she felt that doing so may raise the districts expenses for legal services, and the district could spend the legal expenses for the proposed new counsel on our students.
What I find most interesting is that Board President Ann Williams has also spoken about using taxpayer dollars wisely regarding legal expenses, yet President Williams and now immediate past Vice President Rick Moreno both mentioned that they were the authorized trustees to speak to the districts/boards legal counsel on behalf of the school board because they held the positions of president and vice president. President Williams went as far as saying that she had private individual meetings with Attorney Erik Nichols on behalf of the school board in her official capacity.
As a taxpayer in this district, it concerns me that board members are questioning how much taxpayer money is being spent on legal expenses and alleging that the money could be better used on students, but Trustee Jennifer Key, who is also an officer on the board, had to file an open records request as a community member in order to view the districts legal expenses. If the board routinely approves the districts budgets when legal expenses are purposely not shown and the school board also authorizes the use of taxpayer dollars for legal expenses; let’s not forget that the board is also the final designee for all district level three grievances and is also responsible for writing and approving district policies, then who is monitoring the districts actual budget for legal expenses? One only has to look at the district’s lawsuit against the parents of special education student Chuka Chibuogwu, which the school board alleged they had no knowledge that Alief ISD attorney, Erik Nichols, was suing the family for multiple years before the story aired on Fox 26 news.
On the agenda tonight, there is a request to use taxpayer dollars to build new pre-K facilities. How much money in total has the school board authorized the district to spend in taxpayer dollars for legal expenses over the last 10 years for grievances, settlements, compliance fines, court costs, etc. all of which could have been spent to help fund resources for our children, and even fund the proposed pre-k facilities on tonight’s agenda?