Alief ISD School Board Meeting: July 19, 2022 Patron Presentation, Damon Barone

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

Under the current Alief ISD leadership, 11 years for Superintendent H.D. Chambers, 14 years for Board President Ann Williams, and 14 years for Master Trustee Enrique “Rick” Moreno, there has been a false narrative of there being a teacher shortage here in our district.  

If one were to review the district’s Board Books for the last 10 years, under the leadership of our so-called experts, it becomes clear that Alief ISD does not have a problem recruiting teachers, the districts trouble is in keeping the teachers which they recruit. 

According to the districts resignation reports, Alief ISD teachers are resigning for the following reasons: no reason given, relocating, moving to another school district, or for personal reasons.   

Despite the district’s “grow your own program”, Alternative Certification Programs (ACP), recruiting teachers from Nebraska Kierney, travelling to Puerto Rico to recruit Spanish speaking teachers, giving midpoint raises, stipends, and small step pay increases, teachers are still resigning in record numbers from our district; they are not quitting the profession, but relocating to other school districts. 

Instead of raising the starting salary every year for new teachers, district leadership should address the TASB survey which stated that Alief teachers are leaving the district due to a lack of support from administrators.   

This Board cannot possibly be thinking of our teachers when you all routinely and unanimously approve class size waivers, changed Board Policy DFBB (Local) from 45 days to 10 days to nonrenew teachers, underfund classrooms each year with your approved budgets, and added the catch all phrase of “other duties as assigned” to teacher contracts.   

If student enrollment is on a steady decline here in Alief, causing the enactment of teacher reduction strategies, then why are administrators not having their jobs cut too?  Every year, this leadership says that you all value our teachers, but your actions do not align with those false narratives. 

It has become so bad that the districts Deputy Superintendent of Curriculum, the Assistant Superintendent of Finance, the Controller, and a newly elected School Board Member all left within 6 months of one another in the same academic school year; even Superintendent Chambers added his name to the list to abandon ship, announcing his so-called retirement, scheduled to take effect in the middle of the 2022-2023 academic school year, and failing to show up at last years graduation ceremonies.  

I hope whoever the interim superintendent and the permanent replacement for Superintendent Chambers is chosen using a rubric that is quantifiable and measurable, because we all saw what this boards selection process looked like not utilizing a quantifiable and measurable matrix when you all selected a replacement school board trustee for Harvey Tongs vacated seat. 

Insanity is defined as doing the same things but expecting different results.  

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