3,000 Alief Students "Missing"
Alief ISD must be paying the news channels well or have them on the district payroll. Not a single report was made when a parent was killed on school grounds on December 8th at Alief Olle Middle school, during school hours. Nor was there a single report about the Alief Taylor High School teacher charged with an inappropriate relationship with a student by the Harris County District Attorney’s Office on December 17, 2020.
Channel 13 news only does Alief ISD puff pieces and pushes reports of Superintendent Henry David Chambers Jr.’s agenda. While the same reporters and news agencies drag HISD through the mud if an employee sneezes in the dark in their bedroom on a Saturday.
Cue up the HD Chambers sound bites. What a difference three days and a different audience makes for what is communicated from the district. At Aliefs December 15th school board meeting Superintendent Chambers said that NO STAFF OR PROGRAMS will be cut. Three days later on Friday, December 18th he is now hinting at the fact that staff may have to be reduced. Is he talking about the top-heavy administration staff of the district or the valuable teachers, bus drivers, custodians, nurses, etc. whom affect frontline instruction? This report is coming out on Friday, December 18, 2020, right before the district is set to close until January 4, 2021, so that no one will be available to be contacted at the administration building about this report.
Our 3,000 kids are not lost. Parents have enrolled their kids in other school districts, charter schools etc. Everyone has the ability to learn online now, kids can go to school in Asia right now and never leave the comfort of their beds. That is what happens when you [Alief ISD] open schools on August 06, 2020, months earlier than the rest of the state in a middle of a pandemic, but failed to notify US PARENTS prior to doing so, and months after it was done. Alief parents exercised their right to keep their kids and family safe, and their voices heard. Being absent and not enrolled is two different things. ENROLLMENT is down which means kids are enrolled in other places. You can’t be absent from a district or school you are not enrolled in. If attendance was the issue Texas Education Code 25.095 clearly states that parents may be subject to prosecution and students may be referred to truancy court if a student is absent 10 or more days or parts of days within a six-month period. I don’t see any reports of long lines of parents and students at truancy courts.
The real story in this report should be that the district bet on those 3,000 “missing” kids coming back in 2020-2021 academic school year so the district went Christmas shopping before the bills came in, now that the proverbial rent and light bills are due and the money is short. In the real world they call this financial mismanagement.