04/21/2024
Good afternoon, SBISD community! I have been reading messages on many community groups over the last several weeks and wanted to share a few thoughts. In the last two years, I’ve learned that being a good trustee requires many varied skills. It’s great that we all bring our professional experience to the table-two teachers, lawyer, engineer, lawyer/expert in employee compensation, speech therapist and a business executive. Those are valuable skills, but the most important qualities for a trustee to have are integrity, be honest with the community and a willingness to do the hard work. Trustees have access to a tremendous amount of information- a large amount of data, sensitive financial information, high level contracts, and confidential legal information. There are many people that count on us to make sound decisions for the good of the entire community-our kids’ futures depend on it.
We have had an incredibly tough year with budget cuts. The administration and board have spent hundreds of hours considering all options. When making decisions, we have tried to think outside the “education” box. We have considered impacts to all affected communities; we always ask “how will this affect academic outcomes?” We have incorporated long term planning and considered how our decisions fit in with where we ultimately want to go as a district. We considered our great teachers and staff. We considered the messages, public and private, that we get from the legislators about public school funding. We always want to be fiscally conservative and responsible. When we were meeting in executive session every Monday night for months, we were asking hard questions of the administration’s plans, asking them to come back with other options at times and thoughtfully thinking about the entire district. That is why almost every single budget decision, except for schedule alignment, was a 7-0 or 6-1 vote.
There is a pretty sad narrative by some that seeks to divide the board and community, implying it is 3 conservative trustees vs 3 conservative trustees. If that were the case, you would see votes that reflect that and public disagreement amongst the trustees in meetings. During my first year as a trustee, we did vote 4-3 on a lot of items, and there were heated public discussions about those decisions. During my second year, with two new conservative trustees, there was only one 4-3 vote.
During the 88th legislative session and four special sessions last year, the board and community were vocal advocates for SBISD and public education funding. We created the School Finance Advocacy Team (SFAT) in the fall before the legislative session began. It was comprised of 70 community members, trustees, elected officials and others. The purpose was to educate everyone involved about our advocacy messages and the FACTS about our budget and the upcoming challenges we would have if the legislature did not increase the basic allotment (our main source of funding.) Those on the SFAT had a front row seat to the SBISD budget and it was explained by experts. What we learned very quickly was that some elected officials in Austin either did not understand how school district budgets worked OR they preferred to spread inaccurate information for the good of their anti-public school campaign for vouchers. Either way, trustees, the SFAT and engaged community members spent many hours dispelling those inaccuracies as they were detrimental to our advocacy efforts. The board sent out communications specifically correcting two elected officials’ public statement with misinformation about our budget. Our budget is all public record and accessible online. The board gets MONTHLY budget updates in our public meetings with hundreds of pages of budget documents available to the public. This is why it is upsetting to me to see those same lazy, anti-public education, anti-SBISD misstatements about our budget during this year’s trustee campaign. Claiming that we have increased our personnel costs by $100 million in the last two years is a blatant lie and easily disprovable, but it will again hurt our advocacy efforts that will start again this summer and fall for the 89th legislative session in January.
I am available (and always have been) to the community to answer questions or concerns as are the six other trustees.
We still have a lot of hard work ahead of us in the coming year. As we begin early voting this week, it is imperative that we prioritize the qualities that would make a great trustee. 35,000 kids are depending on it.
