04-05-2022 Patron Presentation, Damon Barone

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

Alief ISD school board elections matter.  The Board and District always refers to parents and community engagement as you all wanting to build positive relationships with all stakeholders, with an emphasis on all.

Voters approved the districts bond proposals and elected School Board Trustees; thus, if the voices of voters don’t matter, then Alief ISD needs to refund us our property tax money. 

The registered voters of Alief voted on Election Day, November 02, 2021.  The results spoke and the following people were sworn into office: based on the ballots their first choices were Darlene Breaux, Harvey Tong, Jennifer Key, and Gregg Patrick.

On January 11, 2022, Harvey Tong resigned from his seat and left a vacancy. There were two other candidates who competed in that same race for Mr. Tongs now vacant seat: Randall Stewart and Donald Guillory.  Based on those same election results, Donald Guillory had the second most votes with Randall Stewart receiving the third most votes. 

If this Board appoints someone, the community has seen how things work when you all supported a candidate.  Ann Williams, Darlene Breaux, Lilly Truong, Jennifer Key, Rick Moreno, and Gregg Patrick all openly endorsed Harvey Tong, and he resigned from the Board 57 days after being sworn into office, of which 33 of those 57 days were district holidays, and included weekends.

We all know that this Board relinquishes its authority to Superintendent Chambers; so basically, that means that the Superintendent with the façade of the Board would once again quiet the voices of our community much like you did when you all voted to shorten patron presentations from 5 minutes to 3 minutes, and also voted to only approve the boards nomination of names for the two pre-k centers during the March 22, 2022 board meeting, which the board submitted its names past the January 28, 2022 deadline, violating board policy CW (Local).

Voting is the way that democracy works in this country.  The reason that we have elections are to elect our representatives not to have them appointed for us. If this School Board gets to appoint a replacement for the board, then the community should get to appoint the Superintendent.

If you all want to claim that it is about the cost of having a special election, which is roughly fifty thousand dollars ($50,000), then maybe the district can use ESSR funds since no one knows how the district is spending the SEVENTY MILLION DOLLARS (70,000,000) of ESSR II funds, or Superintendent Chambers can donate it from his annual base salary of three hundred and eighty thousand, nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars, and sixty-four cents per year ($380,967.64).

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