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I am very
proud of my decision to sign the Resolution in support of
Grapevine-Colleyville School District. For over a year, there has been ongoing dialogue about
behaviors of board members impacting our district.
At the September 22nd board meeting it
was time to take a public stand supporting the teachers
and administrators of Grapevine-Colleyville ISD for the
students and taxpayers of this district.
There
were questions raised as to why we chose to take this
action when all the board members were not present. All board members were aware of the Resolution, and in fact, all
board members had discussed it in a prior meeting.
All trustees also received a copy of it days prior
to the 22nd meeting.
At that time all members were available. This
was not open for deliberation or any action because that
must be done in an Open Meeting, but any changes could
have been sent in to be reviewed at our Sept. 22nd
meeting. No
recommendations were provided.
Several
of us on the board travel for personal and business
reasons and at times are unavailable to attend meetings
– that is what happens when you have 7 active board
members, most of whom have full-time job responsibilities.
If we held up action of this board every time a
board member was absent it would be very difficult to
conduct business. The
behavior of certain board members has been ongoing for
months and even years and it has taken up enough board
meetings, executive sessions and time of our district.
TEC
11.051 states “an independent school district is
governed by a board of trustees who, as a body corporate,
shall oversee the management of the district.”
Our role as a school board is to provide direction
for the school district through the adoption of
appropriate district goals and policies. By doing this we are assuring that there are systems in place
to achieve the desired goals and then allowing our
administrators to use their expertise to do their job.
Does this mean that we should ask questions and
some of those being tough questions?
Yes, of course. Does it mean that the administration should be asked these
tough questions in a demeaning manner?
No! Does
it mean that we as a body corporate ask for additional
documentation and additional research on topics that will
impact our goals? Yes,
of course. Does
that mean that we will always support administration or
agree with their ideas?
Not necessarily.
What it
does mean, in my opinion, is that we should not publicly
attack administrators, teachers or parents.
And, that we should not unnecessarily create busy
work for our administrators to put together reports that
tie up their time for individual board members.
When this happens they are unable to achieve their
priority focus:
attending to the students of Grapevine-Colleyville
ISD. After
seventeen months, all of the tough questions and
additional information has nothing to show in the way of
positive results for our district nor has it uncovered any
wrongdoing by any employee. It has created a lot of
hard feelings that affects the morale and enthusiasm of
our administrators, staff and teachers. These
requested reports cost our taxpayers thousands
of dollars in administrative fees, legal fees and supply
costs. My
questions would be: what is the intent of this
information, what purpose does it serve and why do certain
board members feel like they need to go outside of our
board policies and guidelines that we set as a board (and
which all members agreed to)?
Also, why
do they feel like they need to publicly embarrass our
administrators? We
do not condone our student’s use of abusive, foul
language, but we condone board members who openly use
fowl, abusive and embarrassing language at meetings.
Is this the kind of role model that you want for
your child or your school board members? If we were to lose our administrators or teachers because of
these embarrassing incidents do you know what that would
cost our taxpayers? Once
again you would have legal fees, contract buyouts,
recruiting firm costs and administrative fees.
Now we are
talking hundreds of thousands of dollars!
The
taxpayers of our community should stand up and say enough
is enough! There
are small groups of individuals that support this
unbecoming behavior and encourage it. These individuals have loud voices and have direct lines of
communication with the media, contact with different
National organizations and have a need to create chaos for
Public Education. These are individuals who complain about Baccalaureate,
create hardships for our students by complaining about
organized City Council debates after the event has taken
place, complain about dates that our booster clubs set,
complain about our homecoming events, and complain about
college nights. They
want a say in everything our district does.
Let’s
give our administrators and teachers the time to focus on
our most valuable resource – the Students of
Grapevine-Colleyville School District.
That is why we pay our school taxes, isn’t it?
These are my personal
opinions and I am not a spokesperson for our School
Board.
Sincerely,
Freda
Ward
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