Alief ISD Falsified Student Attendance Enrollment to gain additional funding

Alief ISD Falsified Student Attendance Enrollment to gain additional funding. Please help me understand. At Alief ISD’s October 20, 2020 school board meeting Alief administrators stated that the district “lost” 3,530 students and could not find them”.

The current Alief ISD enrollment is 3,530 (8%) less than the district projected enrollment, and 4,060 less than the district 2019/2020 enrollment numbers. Additionally, Alief ISD attendance rates are approximately 80% vs. the typical attendance rates of approximately 95%. This has an estimated negative financial impact for the district of a loss of $37 million dollars, attributed solely to the continued student attendance decline.

I would argue that the 3,530 students are not lost, the district may not be able to find them, because parents do not want or need Alief ISD to find them any longer. Parents now want their new schools (usually charter schools) to continue finding their children each day, that is why they unenrolled them from Alief ISD and enrolled them into a charter school, because the district has made it a practice of minimizing and belittling the rights and relationships of parents with the district. This point was abundantly clear during the same October 20, 2020 school board meeting when a current Alief ISD parent, Mary Tisdale, poured her heart and soul out to the school board and administrators only to storm out of the board meeting not even wanting to continue her patron presentation. When Ms. Tisdale unenrolls her children from Hastings High School, and Youngblood Intermediate School because of how she continued to be treated by the district, superintendent chambers, and the school board, the district will classify her children as lost too, as they sit in the classrooms of one of the multiple charter schools welcoming our Alief parents and students with open arms.

In a open records request from the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the governing entity of Texas public schools, I reviewed a document from TEA to Alief ISD, specifically sent to Superintendent Henry David Chambers Jr. (HD Chambers), and CC’ed to School Board President Annie Joseph Williams (Ann Williams) and PEIMS Coordinator Tabitha Carter, dated MARCH, 31, 2020 . Simply stated, Alief ISD falsified their attendance data, which directly affects funding. Not only is the district driving parents and students out of our district schools, Alief ISD is also claiming students that never existed in our district because they were clearly enrolled in other school district/schools.

Let me be clear, parents and students ARE NOT leaving the Alief COMMUNITY, they are leaving the Alief SCHOOL DISTRICT. Several of my neighbors have school age children, they wake up each day and drop their kids off to one of the FIVE charter schools that are all less than a five-mile radius from the Alief Administration Building, and our homes. Parents are tired and have figured out that we have options. That is not being lost, that’s called being informed and exercising our rights.

One could also make a strong argument that Alief ISD’s student enrollment is NOT down by 3,530 students, the Texas Government (TEA) caught Alief ISD cheating as a result the district was no longer able to claim 3,530 students that they NEVER HAD, because big brother was now on to their financial fraud scam by way of enrollment data.

Damon Barone, Alief ISD Parent, #TrustButVerify (TEA document #DAA18-025, #101-903; TEA Audit #DA12-058, #101-903)