June 13, 2022 Letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbot from Alief ISD Parent Damon Barone
Alief ISD is just as unsafe, possibly even more unsafe, as Uvalde ISD, and Santa Fe ISD, yet district leadership is doing nothing about it, nor does our district get the local or national attention as our neighboring districts such as Houston ISD and Fort Bend ISD.
The Alief ISD has more police presence at their School Board meetings each month, to protect adults, than they do at Best Elementary to protect our children against a known threat of abduction.
Furthermore, the district has a chain link fence, 3,960 feet long (.75 of a mile), surrounding the entire new Alief Pre-K building on the corner of Bellaire and Howell Sugarland Rd., but won’t put a fence up at the front of Best Elementary School (Centre Parkway and Sugar Branch Dr), where the playground is, to protect our kids. The width of that distance is 264 feet long (.05 of a mile).
On April 11, 2022, a teacher from Best Elementary, Marie Cortes, stated on Channel 13 News that she left the district due to safety concerns for staff and students, regarding the multiple child abduction attempts during recess at the campus playground during school hours.
Ms. Cortes and the parent of a student whom was attempted to be abducted came to the April 19, 2022 school board meeting and spoke to address the School Board Trustees and the Superintendent. The school district has done nothing to protect our kids since the two abduction attempts in December 2021, and the two patron presentations during the April 19, 2022 school board meeting; today is June 13, 2022 (more than 6 months later).
Nor was either of the incidents spoken of during the districts February 08, 2022 Safety and Security Meeting. Leadership Matters, and we need help her in Alief because our community is not being represented well by our tax money and elected officials.
Damon Barone, Alief Parent, Taxpayer, and Alumnus