Every year my family and I take the long road trip to Pensacola, Florida for a week on the beach to relax and give our children a chance to see the beauty of Gods many wonderful creations. While driving through rural parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama You can’t help but notice the many schools you see on the journey to the sunshine state. Even though some of these schools are small you notice one thing. The community supports and is involved and proud of their local schools. Then I compare LISD to these small communities, and can see that we are not involved as a community in our children’s education and most are not proud of their local schools due to the lack of leadership. We have great facilities for our children to learn in the LISD district, but we don’t have the proper leadership in place, nor do we have many proactive members in the community to stand up for our students, teachers and staff. We as a community often wait until something effects our own children before we step in, I am just as guilty of this. As taxpayers in the LISD community we have a say in how we want our schools to be run, but many times we forget about that and continue to watch our district fall apart at the seams. We often forget that the people we voted to the school board are our voices for the district we live in, and our school board often forget that they speak for the community. A change is coming and the times of the “GOOD OLE BOY” system is quickly coming to an end. We as parents and taxpayers are starting to finally see that our district is crumbling due to the ignorance of our administration. Teachers are not proud of where they work, and when telling someone where they work they are given apologies for having to work for such an awful district. Many of our great teachers go to smaller schools in the community for less money, but are more happy and proud to be a part of a great district. We have great kids in our schools that do many great things, but we can do better with the proper people as the leader of our school. Currently our ESC is so top heavy with people who need to go, and our PART-TIME superintendent is a common criminal who cares nothing about our schools, but only lining his pockets. This man has hidden many things from us including hiding inappropriate behavior between a teacher and student. This teacher was fired, but still paid through the end of the year, and still has a teaching certificate, and can continue to be around children. He also never reported this incident to the TEA, due to the fact he knew the child’s father very well. This man also tries to pawn off his side business on teachers in the district which is also a conflict of interest. Dr. Wilcox has done nothing but put a dark cloud over our district and continues to try to run our schools as if he were a dictator. You read in the paper almost every day of things going wrong in our district, to the point where they came up with a wonderful idea to create a newspaper to tell all the positive things happening in our district to counteract the negativity brought by the Longview News Journal. We once again Dr. Wilcox as the LISD community ask you to step-down and allow us once again to be proud of our schools. LISD school board we ask you as our voices and your elected duties to search outside our district for a person who cares about our teachers, staff, children and district. In talking with the community most feel that you the school board members are all idiots, and I partially agree. Do what is right for the community. Let us be proud to be LOBOS again. Because we as a community know that “ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE”. Make a change in the right direction and eliminate the toxic waste sitting behind their desks in our district. I will continue to be the thorn in your sides until a positive change is made. Thank You, Jason Bates