06-08-2023 Patron Presentation, Damon Barone
Greetings, Damon Barone, Alief ISD parent, taxpayer, and alumnus.
During the May 02, 2023 school board meeting you all stated that the district will be spending money on an outside marketing firms in an effort to increase student enrollment in Alief.
You have also been soliciting community surveys, and collecting the data within those surveys when historically the district has shown no interest in the truth, or properly addressing our concerns expressed in those surveys.
If you really wanted to know what parents and community members thoughts are, and wanted to receive our honest feedback you would put the same efforts in to notifying the public of when school board meetings are, and encourage people to come and speak during patron presentation opportunities.
If you really wanted to know why parents are withdrawing our children from the district and why teachers and staff continue to leave the district you should go back and read all the written grievances that are filed, which you all typically never conduct proper hearings for.
Those two spaces are where your honest responses will be located, not in the employee exit surveys filled out only by 10 people, and most certainly not in the parent surveys and teacher surveys which the district scrubs, and then publicly presents your narrative that everything is all great in Alief ISD.
The district hides its committee meeting dates and times so that parents such as myself cannot attend them, like the policy committee meetings.
Then you all change board policies to limit our voices and hinder our rights, without discussing your policy changes in the public, and placing those changes on the consent agenda like you did in the May 16, 2023 school board meeting, for one quick vote and no discussion.
After not having discussions in the public so that we can follow along, you all turn around and impede our access to open records request of the business of the district which you all voted on, and discussed in private.
You ignore our voices when we speak during patron presentations, but you claim to want and need our participation with your surveys, and increasing student enrollment.
The district and the board are great at requesting and collecting data, but you continue to fail at making any changes to address the data you collected and compiled from us.
You all want us to be engaged but we have to get permission from the district and the board on what you want our engagement to look like, where we can be engaged, and for how long we can be engaged.
During the May 02, 2023 school board meeting you all posted a slide that stated that the customer experiences which the district provides is horrible. I have been an Alief ISD customer since 1982.
You all do not need any additional information of why parents and staff are not happy with leadership and your decisions. Your lack of action continues to speak volumes to students, parents, community members, and staff.
Damon Barone, Alief ISD parent, taxpayer, and alumnus