09/22/2020 School Board Patron Presentation, Damon Barone
Each month as I look at each board member during the board meetings, I constantly wonder what happened to the person you all pretended to be when yall were out in our communities soliciting votes for your campaign? Each of you were asking to speak at community churches, soliciting support at the Alief Super Neighborhood meetings, asking residents to put your campaign signs in their yard, you reached back to previous educators and staff that you worked with asking for their support, solicited the districts union organizations to get behind you, and claimed to have ample time to fulfill the duties of an elected official.
Once elected you all have resorted to blocking, refusing, or not responding to community members whom you were elected to represent because you don’t like being held accountable for your actions as a public servant to our community. President Annie Joseph Williams ran for a Houston Community College (HCC) trustee position while seated on the Alief Board, John Ngyuen recently ran for the District F City Council position while seated on the Alief Board, Lily Truong recently ran for reelection, won her reelection to the Alief Board then turned around and is now running for a State Representative position while sitting on the Alief Board.
How can a school board operate for the people if none of you all really want to be here, yall are using your school board seats as springboards for other endeavors? To compound the problem, President Annie Joseph Williams continuous appeal is to have each board member email their questions ahead of time so that the public never hears the questions, or the responses to those questions, in an effort to conduct board meetings like an auction block and rapidly approve whatever the district lays at your feet for a rubber stamp vote? I would like to be CC’ed on all of the boards emails since the discussions do not take place on the third Tuesdays of each month as specified in board policy BE (Local).
You all are currently having an emergency meeting to consider the approval of a hybrid instruction waiver for 9th through 12th grade, and the person responsible for the waiver, Superintendent Henry David Chamber Jr., is not even in attendance to answer questions about his decisions for our children safety or education.
The Board had plexiglass erected during the September 15, 2020 board meeting to protect yourselves from one another, yet prior to the district turning its cameras on, each of you stood in a huddle gossiping with one another at Trustee Darlene Elizabeth Brueax, and Enrique Moreno’s area talking about yalls personal medical conditions with no concerns about social distancing. President Annie Joseph Williams even pulled her mask off of her face so that she could read the school board introduction speech. Our teachers still don’t have adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and items mandated by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yet district educators have been in the classrooms with students beginning September 21, 2020.
Covid-19 has been a gift and a curse for our community concerning academics and the business of our tax dollars. From March 13, 2020 through today I have heard more students, parents, staff, and community involvement in these six months than I have heard or seen in the last four years while attending every board meeting. What I have not witnessed is change in the boards practice of willfully giving over their governance power to their one employee, Superintendent Henry David Chambers Jr., nor have I seen a single union representative stand before the board and express the concerns our teachers and staff have bravely stood before the board multiple times and proclaimed knowing that their actions would garner swift and immediate retaliation by the district. What has also been abundantly absent is the presence of any of the other potential school board candidates, after they lost their elections during the last two school board elections, whom will mysteriously surface again during the next election period because someone put them up to it and made promises to them just as they did for you all, thus you are indebted to the districts organized crime unit led by Superintendent Henry David Chambers Jr. and the Districts General Counsel Attorney Jon Erik Nichols, all of which is funded with a blank check of our tax dollars. I would love to hear Trustee Jennifer Keys patron presentation about that.
Anyone within the sound of my voice or watching this video, I beg of you to do your research on the candidates for this next school board election, and don’t just give your support away because someone said the right things to you in the moment or made a bunch of empty promises which they had no intent or ability to deliver on. We should all listen with our eyes and not our ears when dealing with political candidates and the politics that come with them as they seek to become our public servants and the stewards of our children’s education and safety, as well as our tax dollars.
Damon Barone, Alief ISD parent, taxpayer, and alumnus.