KISD Special Board Meeting

Special School Board Meeting 3/1/19

Blogged by Liz Ramos *Updated 7:15pm

Tonight the board made two decisions that affect KISD. Other decisions discussed or made were in closed session.

Law enforcement and Superintendent ability to hire personnel immediately.

After Spring Break, H.M. King High, Gillet Middle, and Memorial Middle will see law enforcement presence on campus. Each campus will have one law enforcement person roaming the grounds. Elementary schools may also see presence an hour a week here and there. The board members unanimously voted to approve contracts with KPD, Sheriff and DPS personnel to moonlight for KISD. The cost is $35 per hour per person on the clock. This could cost upwards of $3,675 tax payer money each week.

School Board member Mr. Prado also included in the contract verbage to have a patrol car parked out in front of the/a school (most likely at H.M King) so that their presence will be known. There is also talk about establishing a police department for the district. (I will later write my opinion on the pros and cons of that. What are your thoughts?) This contract will be a month-to-month contract with an option to adopt a more solid contract for a longer period at a later time. The members want to see how smoothly this process will go before writing it in stone.

I personally think the schools need law enforcement personnel. My issue is, when you have law enforcement moonlighting from different entities, law enforcement cannot establish a genuine relationship with school staff, teachers, and students. How efficiently will they understand what is really going on in the schools when they are flipping and flopping out over a dozen different people to each campus? Where is the time to build trust with students? How can law enforcement build a comfortable relationship with the school, staff and students with little wiggle room to thouroughly know, understand and reach out to help those who are troubled or starting fights in school, etc? For now this is a “stop gap measure” until a KISD PD can be made.

What would happen if law enforcement shoots a student? What are the legalities here? Will KISD be the new Youtube star? KISD has no say-so on who will work at the campus. Superintendent Bera had concerns that KISD will not be able to vet law enforcement persons who sign up to moonlight. Bera will be able to make guidelines on what security would entail. Corando Garza mentioned KISD can use templates of other guidelines from other schools that have a police presence. Lord have mercy. Sounded like a middle schooler using a cheat sheet. The Superintendent needs to make sure ducks are in a row, not use a template. This is how law suits happen. May I also mention that Ms. Yaklin was regulary interrupted when trying to make statements or ask valid questions.

Second decision was to allow the Superintendent to keep her abilities to Fast Track teachers to be employed at KISD. Current issue is many times KISD may miss the opportunity to hire wonderful teachers and staff only to lose them to a different district because another district responded faster. Bera made a point that TAMUK has a teacher program but KISD does not get many applicants from the University. She would like to hire people from the same area. Fast Tracking may make this easier.

Other board members brought up the concern of hiring employees without proper vetting. The last thing KISD needs is to hire questionable people and offer contracts if they dont end of meeting vetting criteria later. Great point! They also dont want to use the verbage, Fast Track.

Decision was to offer a contract pending approval of the board at a regularly scheduled board meeting. Teachers will get paid up until that point but may not be formally given the contract if vetting finds causes of concern. This way KISD ins’t stuck in an expensive contract if they dont plan on hiring. They will only use this “fast track” solution for non-administrative personnel. So, HERE! Ya got the job, but not really. You can go work for us, but you may or may not really have the job later. Imagine how a prospective teacher would feel about that.

School board members Ms. Yaklin and Mr. Crites were opposed.