02-02-2021 Alief ISD School Board Patron Presentation, Damon Barone

Greetings, Damon Barone, Alief ISD parent, taxpayer, and alumnus 

If board meetings are supposed to be for the public why do you all ask board members to email their questions before board meetings, then the public never gets to hear or know about your questions? 

After each presentation the board never has any questions or comments beyond telling the presenters that their presentations were good, thanking them for fulfilling the duties they were paid for to make the presentation, and that it was very informative for you. I watch the same presentations that you all watch and I have a million questions and comments afterwards each time, before the board takes its rubber stamp vote. 

How equitable are the patron presentations if community members are required to talk about agenda items before they are discussed, then you all do not address all of the concerns that the community expresses, just the ones which serves the districts hidden agendas, or the ones that make you all mad? 

During my six years of regularly attending Alief ISD school board meetings I have received two or three typed responses to the concerns I have expressed during patron presentations at board meetings, then the written communications abruptly stopped just as mysteriously as they began. Why don’t I get those communications anymore and when did the district start and end those written communications for the public? 

The district never shows current data compared to previous years data so that community members can make a comparison of the information being presented to us; nor does the district give the numerator and denominator of their alleged percentages. Instead, the district hides data by making comments like, “82% of students (parents, teachers, etc.) said they love what the district is doing”. If only 200 students out of 46,000 students responded to a survey, the district misleads the public into believing that those 164 or 3.5% of students accurately reflect the masses by saying 82% of the responses said that the district is doing great. 

Any time Alief ISD is not doing well in certain criteria the district quickly points out that other districts, the state of Texas, or our country is doing just as poorly in that area as Alief ISD. But you never mention when other districts, the state of Texas, or the country is exceeding Alief ISD’s efforts.  

According to Alief ISD’s dashboard, the district currently has 882 COVID-19 cases, 349 of which are students and 533 are staff members. If you seven board members are uncomfortable having face to face board meetings with one another then why has the district not shut down a single school because of covid-19, nor is the district practicing or enforcing the Covid-19 Standard Response Protocols in the Roadmap to Reopening created by the districts Re-entry and Recovery Task Force which you all alleged would be implementing for the safety of students, staff, and our community. 

Why does the board limit school board trustees’ comments and questions to two minutes but you let your one employee, Superintendent Chambers ramble on and-on, and chime in whenever he wants to in an effort to sway public opinion? If Superintendent Chambers wants to speak about every agenda item or agenda items in detail, then he should present those items. He is allowed to go unchecked giving the impression that superintendent runs the school board and not our elected officials. 

I noticed that the district does a great job of collecting data, such as the Risk Load Assessment, Equity Audit, Annual Performance Report, Effective School Framework, and the Texas Education Agencies Equity Tool Kit, just to name a few, but when it is time to put the findings of the data to work in an effort to better serve our students and community the district turns a blind eye to the data which our tax money has shown to be the problems. 

There are trustees on this school board with over 12 years serving on the board, master trustees, and you all still have to ask legal counsel (Lisa McBride) for advice on how to proceed with motions, you all change votes for past agenda items while in the middle of discussing other agenda items, ask legal counsel to explain laws, district policies, and even how to go into executive session. 

To add insult to injury, the school board and Superintendent Chambers consistently take efforts to try and get our community and staff to lobby our state officials on behalf of the districts causes while taking overt and covert efforts to silence our voices here in Alief. 

I will close with this; in economics and history classes we were taught that our currency has no value at all without the backing of gold to support it. The districts priorities, mission statement, vision statement, and board goals have absolutely no value to our community when they are purposely enacted inconsistently and without equity.  

Thank you. Damon Barone, Alief ISD parent, taxpayer, and alumnus.