Communication Breakdown

“Communication Breakdown”

KISD Blog by Liz Ramos

8/22/19

“Communication breakdown, it's always the same, having a nervous breakdown, drive me insane!” ~ My favorite band, Led Zeppelin.

I am going to be honest; I am looking forward to this school year. I was pretty miserable last year. My concerns fell on deaf ears and my emails went off into the oblivion, hardly ever to be returned. I quit giving a shit after month two. I was elated that the school board hired a new superintendent. I had googled in the past to try and find information on KISD and nothing much came up in the Record. Finding a history on what had transpired up to the point of elections was slim. Remember, I came into all this eyes wide shut so to speak because there was little to be known. I formulated my thoughts and opinions without listening to the public. I quickly learned that mine were the same as most everyone else’s. The topic of concern, conversation, and venting were about relatively the same things amongst parents.

So why didn’t I just leave? The door is right there, right? I have my principles. If the community is paying for a service, then parents should be able to use that service and get the best possible service. It is in its own way a business. They take money from us so they can help pay for the school district. I am a fan of public school. Not one person in my bloodline went to a private school or paid for a standard education. Why start now? My grandfather was COO of Bell Telephone Co, now AT&T. He worked in the major operations of laying lines down in oceans for international calling in the 50’s. He spent a lot of his time on boats. (Google that, it is pretty interesting information.) He traveled all over the world and bought a nice home in Madison, NJ. The home was so nice that the Mickey Mouse Club stopped their tour bus in front and asked to see the inside. He adopted two little girls and had a nanny for the home. He was able to have all of this later in life from standards of a regular public-school education. You don’t need a private school or a charter school to be somebody in life. My grandfather improved communication between countries, yet I live in a small town and schools cannot communicate to parents, to teachers, to other campuses, to the district, to the super and vise versa.

Everyone needs to understand that there are no two same teachers, no two same parents, no two same kids, no two same principals, no two same schools, and no two same districts. Still, we need to find a minimum common ground. A common ground everyone is on-board with and everyone implements. Not everyone is going to agree with everyone, everything or every decision, yet there still needs to be a standard across the board. This reduces parental and staff confusion. I can’t get my way all the time. It is being called a grown up. My major concerns at first was communication, or the lack thereof and safety pertaining to visitors and drop-off and pick-up. It was madness! And damnit, that needed to change! Too many parents were online asking questions about their school.

As most parents are finding out, from now on, at every campus you will have to have an ID to access the inside of the schools. This helps improve accountability of who has access to your children while they are not in your possession. This is incredibly important even though it may be annoying now, we will all get used to it. This is a positive change in the right direction and used in most school districts. They have installed a Raptor system. They will scan your ID and hand you a sticker with your picture on it. I sat down with Bera soon after she started working thanks to her open-door policy. Anyone can call and make an appointment to talk to her. I brought her a list of my concerns and this was one of them. She was already on it! I never cared about the district grade, ever. It was everything else that bothered me.

During this conversation I learned that campuses can do certain things that do not need approval or do not need to be done at every campus. That is fine to me, but if KISD cannot get together on the same level at every campus as a standard minimum then happiness tends to fade. Parents will want their kids to go to other schools in KISD or at another school outside of KISD. Some parents will complain about others and praise another because they all don’t do something a certain way. I felt the need for all campuses to do a teacher meet and greet from PreK-4th and this was extremely important to me and many other parents. Drop off and pick up was a nightmare at certain schools.

As far as I was concerned there was no accountability. Everyone pointed fingers at someone else and then those people didn’t accept responsibility. A lot of back and forth crap to be honest. If everyone should be doing the standard there should be no finger pointing.

Communication. The only parents or people who seemed to know everything that was going on was a best friend of a teacher or a stay at home mom who did everything with and for their child. People who knew were already “in the know.” And that is fine, but what about us other parents? What about single parents with one or two jobs or one job and school? Or parents with multiple kids. Not everyone leads the same life and not every parent who doesn’t know is lazy or doesn’t care. Yes, there are those parents out there. But don’t throw us all into that same boat! Some board members like to do that. Not everyone leads an easy life. Maybe there was a death in my family that I didn’t handle well and got depressed? What if I had a physical alignment like fibromyalgia that prevented me from being a super-active parent? I’ve worked plenty of years in healthcare to know; shit happens and some shit can be a very valid excuse! Just like parents are supposed to do our part, how about KISD do their part too?

I am happy to announce, that along with the accountability by using the Raptor system, principals will be calling parents each Sunday to let parents know the happenings of the week at their school. Now parents cannot use an excuse to why they didn’t know something. Now parents don’t have to get on social media and ask around. There should be little effort this year in getting the word out! I am thrilled Bera listened to those concerns and the principals are on board! Not only should this help parents, teachers and staff should love this too! This is less work ya’ll have to do as far as letting parents know everything and making sure every parent knows. I am sure some still will, but now most of the hard work is done for you!

Bera will roll out the usage of a Bully App this year. Principals at the campuses will be able to give you more information on that and how it will work in the beginning of the school year.

I have gone up to the city and KISD and spoke very bluntly about how chaotic drop-off and pick-up has been. I had a meeting with Bera and staff this week and they explained they will be rolling out an agreement with the campus administration to have them outside during the morning. Select staff will be outside to greet you and your children in the morning, hopefully directing traffic, helping kids out of the cars and to the front doors and then to class. They will have staff stationed in specific areas. Not all schools will do the exact thing as most schools are laid out differently as far as logistics is concerned and may need to be tweaked throughout the year. This will hopefully (there are a lot of hopes in this blog) eliminate the number of parents taking their child into the school or walking in the parking lot in-between cars and into traffic. Maybe this will also speed up the drop off and pick up times. Safety should be KISD’s number one concern; or any district for that matter. This is a huge step in the right direction! I am going to assume campus administration will give you more detail during meet and greet, the first day of school, and the first few weeks after. I am sure they will have to reassess from time to time. Please be patient with the changes! Be part of the change!

I know this blog may bore you because it is mostly positive in nature. I am elated! The promise of changes to not only improve academics and athletics, but now to improve the relationship between the school, district and the parents and community. People say, “Happy wife, happy life!” I say, “Happy parent, happy teachers, happy campus, happy district!” I understand that a lot of these new changes may put more work in teacher’s laps. I am hoping that parents will get used to these changes and see the positives in them and pass the happiness back onto the teachers and staff. The teachers do so much as it is and I am really looking forward to better communication between the teachers and staff and the more top-level personnel. Maybe less retaliation, finding more of a common ground of agreement to make both parties happy, and the freedom to do more because the schools are operating more smoothly?

Bera came into our district and changed a lot of things around. It probably made people happy and pissed a lot of people off. I told Bera in our first meeting that I was not going to go away. That she was going to be seeing a lot of me in the future. I told her that I look forward to seeing her do well at KISD, but I would also call her out if I felt the need. Bera gets no special treatment from me. She does make me feel at ease by listening to my concerns as a parent and a community member. I know she cannot do everything overnight and I don't expect her to. She is listening! Do I expect everyone to be perfect? No. Will there be bumps in the road this year? We live in Kingsville, there are bumps everywhere! We will take them in stride! Bera is enforcing laws and policies that haven’t been enforced in the past or getting rid of “policies” that shouldn’t have been there to begin with. I want to see action where there has never been action. There is already a lot of that and it won’t make everyone happy. In order to move forward the tide had to change. I believe the whole community knew that. Lots of people are working hard right now to make this school year the best it has been in a long time. Bera and staff have created waves. I hope that all these waves that were/are/will be made brings in a pot of gold next school year or maybe a tour bus filled with celebrities!

Have a great year to all our hard-working teachers and staff! I appreciate you! No way I could do what ya’ll do every day! Good luck to Ms. Bera! Make us all proud! Be part of the change!

Can anyone guess the name of the man in the picture below?