March 24, 2008 Board Meeting updated March 27, 2008
This is the second board meeting since the SAISD voted to close schools. KTOCG
members would address the board just like they've done at every board meeting since Feb. 25th. We are continually pushing for our college prep for elementary students. We still demand accountability of our superintendent and the trustees. We want TRUE community involvement in the decision making process of our schools. This month we had Nellie Shannon, Gene Garcia, Ben Garcia, Angie Ruiz, and Michelle Reyes speaking on behalf of the Travis Community.
Nellie's three minute address to the Board:
Gene's three minute address to the Board (read it here): "You had a solution and needed to create a problem".
In addition we were very interested in this meeting because the board would be discussing this Early College High School (ECHS) that Duron & Trevino so desperately want to place on our elementary school campus.
We've gotten smarter in this process. We video whenever possible.
Please forgive any sound distortions (when it zooms in/out) as well as any excessive movement during the taping. YouTube limits videos to 10 minutes, that is why there are so many parts to this portion of the meeting.
This first video shows Duron presenting his powerpoint slideshow on the ECHS.
On the agenda it was described as an 'action' item. Early on in this video he corrects himself and says it is merely a 'discussion' item, looking only for feedback from the board.
This video is the conclusion of Duron's presentation of the ECHS slide show.
In this section Duron says there were three campuses they looked at ~ Navarro campus (partner with UTSA), Edison HS (partner with SAC), & Travis Elem (partner with SAC). Ideally, he'd like it to be on or near a college campus. Duron states, that it could be done at Edison HS but that they wouldn't get the implementation grant money. This sent him back to the drawing board. Our initial research show that statement is not completely accurate.
The superintendent now opens it up to questions from the Board of Trustees. We have James Howard asking several questions in this video.
James Howard continues the hard questions. Notice how it seems that Duron stumbles over his words. PAY ATTENTION! Duron says 'the idea is we start at PK' with regards to a college prep academy. This is EXACTLY what KTOCG is lobbying. I caught the SAID's spokesperson picking her nose! lol