May 18, 2021 Alief ISD School Board Meeting, Patron Presentation

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

It’s a smack in the face to our students, parents, community members and district employees when the school board and Coach HD Chambers marginalizes, attacks, retaliates against, and despises anyone who does the exact same things that you all constantly promote us to engage in with our state senators and TEA; however, when we do those things here in Alief ISD we become public enemy number one. But much like the boards cult like following for Coach HD Chambers, as long as we are supporting the cults agenda, and vision then everything is all good.

·        You encourage community members to watch legislative meetings, just not the Alief ISD School Board Meetings.

·        You encourage intense conversations, just not in Alief ISD.

·        You encourage transparency, just not in Alief ISD.

·        You encourage us to protest, just not in Alief ISD.

·        You encourage us to make our voices heard, just not in Alief ISD.

·        You encourage us to organize our efforts to promote agendas, just not in Alief ISD.

·        You encourage us to stand up and fight for our rights, just not in Alief ISD.

·        You encourage us to challenge our elected officials, just not in Alief ISD.

·        You encourage us to hold people accountable, just not in Alief ISD.

·        Most importantly you encourage us to vote at elections, just not in Alief School Board Elections every two years.

I have heard President Ann Williams and Master Trustee Rick Moreno express numerous times, specifically around the time of Coach HD Chambers annual performance reviews and raises, that “we [the board] either LIKE him or we don’t,” and use likeability to be the only justification in keeping Coach HD Chambers as Alief ISD’s $400,000 per year superintendent.

I would argue that LIKING Coach HD Chambers is not a substantial qualification for maintaining his superintendent contract here in Alief or any other school district for that matter, and the board continuously approving pay increases each year for our Master Degreed baseball coach whom has never taught in a classroom.

The aim is supposed to be for the school board to hold Coach HD Chambers accountable for his decisions and leadership here in Alief, and not his ability to win the hearts of the school board members with you alls cult like following for Coach HD Chambers, because you like him and he makes back room deals to support your personal and professional aspirations.  

Theodore Robert Bundy, better known as Ted Bundy killed 36 women because he came across as a nice guy, charming, and was extremely likable by his victims prior to killing them. However, the state of Florida held Ted Bundy accountable for his actions and convicted him to death. Justice would have never been served to the victims of Theodore Robert Bundy had the Florida courts used Mr. Bundy’s like appeal to sentence him for his actions.

Because I couldn’t find the word like in Coach HD Chambers contract or the word like in the oath that each of you took when becoming school board members, I think that it is time to stop victimizing our Alief community by accepting Coach HD Chambers poor leadership because you all LIKE him and hold the coach accountable for his actions and the decisions that he makes for our district.

In the reputable words of Coach Kott’s, I gathered a few SOUND BITES from the April 06, 2021 Alief School Board Workshop, where the Board and Superintendent passionately discussed the 2021 Legislative Updates

These sound bites are from Coach HD Chambers:

1.       If you go back and watch the back and forth between myself and Chairman Dutton and Chairman Huberty, it went on for quite a while (01:31:00).

2.       This was my argument, one of my arguments, one of my arguments, I had a lot of arguments (01:32:40).

3.       And I know I frustrated Dutton, I know that I did, but I don’t really care. I told him that this needs to be done (01:35:13).

4.       I wasn’t going to let that go unchecked, I was not going to do that (01:35:59).

5.       It got a little tense which I was fine, I could have gone all day (01:36:04).

6.       The charter folks are opposing it because they don’t want to be held to any type of standards (01:36:18).

7.       If you want some free entertainment, you can watch that for a little while (01:36:53).

8.       I’m not going to be able to make it over there, but if I was, I would probably stir it up again (01:38:54).

9.       I think that they are attempting to silence your voice. Period (01:46:42).

10.   You guys are an elected governing body and you are responsible for the stewardship, along with myself for taxpayer dollars (01:47:25).

11.   The issues, these political issues, if we don’t catch them and weigh in, we are going to wake up on September the first of this year with some bad, bad policies in front of us and wonder what just happened (02:22:33).

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