The Horace Mann Academy Talk Back Forum has been created to give members of the community a place to voice their concerns regarding our public schools. To post on the Save Horace Mann Blog simply click on the link:
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Tell Superintendent Duron what you think!
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*Please be advised if you use bad language it will be edited.
June, 2008
Child Labor sought at Horace Mann Campus
Patti Garcia
Member of The League for Public School Justice
For those of us with children at Mann, we need to call the school board members. An anonymous tip came in that at this morning's staff meeting, teachers were told to do whatever it takes to pack up all things, including enlisting the help of students during classtime. We encourage you to call SAISD and remind them our children are there to learn. Any use of students to pack up this school is in voilation of child labor laws. Please talk to your children and discourage them from participating. Demand education.
San Antonio Independent School District:
(210) 299-5500
SAISD Superintendent, Robert J. Duron:
(210) 299-5506
Distrcit 7 Trustee, Eliseo E. Cadena:
(210) 733-7271
For a complete listing of other SAISD Board members please visit our SAISD BOARD MEMBERS page on this website.
Update: April 21, 2008
LIBRARIES OPEN? or CLOSED?
Patti Garcia
Horace Mann Parent
After appearing on local news Stations FOX and KSAT, the libraries on the effected campus' have now been opened. Or have they?
"(Superintendent Robert Duron) said no, by all means, the students will be allowed to check out books to the end of the school year," trustee Olga Hernandez said. "We're not cutting them short of anything." My daughter reported to me the Horace Mann Library is open with limited services. Students as of Monday, April 21st were still being told they could not check out any books. She has updated me to report their librarian is off property temorarily.
SAISD Central Offices claims no knowledge of plans to close the libraries this early in the year. Thank you for the efforts of all who called the Central Office and the media coverage one mom from the Keep Travis Open Group was able to get, because of this the libraries are now open and the students of these schools have a fighting chance of the same level of education as all other students in the district for at least a few more weeks.
Continue to be outraged....this is real! Ask yourself what kind of mess you would be in legally if you just decided not to have your child attend classes for an entire grading period. It is policy that even bad weather days are made up before the end of the school year. Classes should be in full, books and learning materials available, business as usual for the nearly 4,000 plus students affected all the way to the last day of school, regardless of the Boards decision to close the 6 schools. Anything less should not be acceptable and they should be accountable. After all it was their decision not ours. They should give up their summer break and break down the schools then, NOT NOW.
FYI: The Horace Mann Library never did reopen to allow the proper use of the facility as it is defined in all other schools in the District. The School closed at the end of they year and SAISD fell short of leaving no child behind on this campus.
Update: April 19, 2008
LEARNING COMES SECOND
Anna Romero
Horace Mann Parent
We found out this week that our children can no longer check out books from the Mann library. Because of district rush to have the school ready in time for the opening of the girls’ academy, Mann Academy staff are being pressured to pack up. This, in spite of the fact that we have more than a month left in the school year!
In spite of the upcoming TAKS test, in spite of our children’s right to be taught and learn, our unwise district staff are all-too prompt to dismiss them and push them away. How hypocritical of them to espouse college readiness for a select group of students who will occupy the Horace Mann building and blatantly ignore the San Antonio ISD mission: “To graduate all of our students and prepare them for success in higher education.”
As taxpayers, we should be outraged! We pay for our neighborhood kids to get a full education. As parents, we should be marching to the district office at 141 Lavaca to tell them that our children need to learn. Regardless of their plans to shut our children out physically, they are not allowed to deny them the skills they need to get to the next grade.
You may also contact our school board representative, Eliseo Cadena by telephone,
733-7271, or by email at board@saisd.net .
Posted April 21, 2008
Re: Urgent Please Read About Travis Plans.
by carl martin
just read couple of stories that were in the express news.
one involved a hispanic kid trying to go to college and that community college is not the best avenue.
also if the saisd wants to prepare kids for college maybe they should focus on this paragraph from the same article
"Jonathan was clueless about applying for financial aid. Luckily, staff from a local nonprofit called Project STAY came to Jefferson and helped Jonathan and other students fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. "
i wonder where saisd advisors were during the year? maybe they should focus a little more on counseling. just a suggestion.
i came out of the saisd education system. i remember everyone trying to prepare you for college. along the way i had great teachers and also had teachers that were clueless.
once i reached high school i remember having school orientation. as we all packed into the auditorium our school counselor promptly announces over the pa system.
most of you are not college material so you better decide which trade class you are going to enroll in.
how did he know this?
long story short. counseling has not improved over the years.
one more note education especially college at whatever level is a business don't let anyone tell you
otherwise. they care more about the bottom line.
also about that local business man who supports duron who is all in favor of his plan.
how many schools in his neighborhood are being hijacked for the same purpose of creating academies and then sending them straight to community college, which again is not the best avenue for a bachelor degree. again these word from the past echo again in my head.
"most of you are not college material so you better decide which trade class you are going to enroll in."
my understanding about community college it acts like a trade school. it fills the educational needs of the community businesses.
is about representation and how the school board who was elected to represent you is not doing its job and representing others who do not reside in the affected communities.
also keep in mind this word. it keeps coming up allot lately. empty nesters. i heard this from a few school board members.
they all been drinking out of the same kool-aid pitcher.
Posted April 16, 2008
THIS JUST IN FROM
KEEP TRAVIS OPEN
UPDATE ON THE
KEEP TRAVIS OPEN SIGN
HOG WILD AT 1824 N. MAIN STREET HAS COME OUT SHOWING SUPPORT FOR OUR SCHOOLS AND HAS AGREED TO HANG THE KEEP TRAVIS OPEN SIGN ON THEIR PROPERTY.
Travis Elementary has kept it flag high since before the February 25th, 2008 vote to close the school as an Elementary School. They have proudly displayed a banner stating: KEEP TRAVIS OPEN hanging on the fence at Travis Elementary. Friday, March 28th, 2008 someone from the SAISD Central Office called Elementary School and told them the banner has to be taken down because they have received too many complaints from the community about the banner.
First, Superintendent Duron told the schools being closed, that we the members of the community did not advertise our schools enough resulting in low enrollment. Now they want to disallow us to "advertise".
KTOCG and the Members of this Coalition believe this is an attempt from Superintendent Duron to hush our attempts to thwart the unfair school closures. We support KTOCG hanging their banner and request community support in calling Faye Gonzalez at (210) 299-5775 and tell her you want the KEEP TRAVIS OPEN banner back up immediately.
Posted March 28, 2008
San Antonio Independent School District: A Classic Lesson in Arrogance & Unaccountability
By Frank (Pancho)Valdez
Within the past 30 days the SAISD Board of Trustees has voted to close six public schools, citing a decline in student enrollment. SAISD Superintendent Robert Duron told an assembly of about 300 parents and students at Travis Elementary that the school was underutilized with an enrollment of 320. Yet SAISD Board president Julian Trevino and Duron support converting Travis into a college prep high school for about 60 students!
This same rationale was made to explain the closing of Horace Mann Academy, a middle school with an enrollment of over 520. Duron and his board wish to convert Mann into an ALL girls academy for about 100 students with the remaining space to be made into district administrative offices! So much for underutilization! The tragedy is that there are SAISD schools with less enrollment yet they were spared the ax! We ask WHY?
Travis elementary currently has a teacher student ratio of about 1:15. A ratio that is considered to be excellent for teaching as well as for learning by most education professionals. Duron however disputes the value of small teacher to student ratios and is obsessed with running SAISD as a “business.”
Well Dr. Duron, public schools are NOT a business! The first priority of public school systems should always be what is best for the children and the communities that the children reside in! Duron not being from San Antonio has no concept of this as he has no real connection here.
With what has been discussed one has to ask what is the REAL agenda of SAISD? With banker Tom Frost calling the shots behind the scenes, this is anyone’s guess!
There are two thoughts on Frost’s interests in the affairs of this inner city school district: 1) the closed school properties could be up for sale with Frost’s bank having some financial gain in this. 2) The other thought is; what better way for the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce to perpetuate low wages in San Antonio than to continue implementing inferior education for inner city children?
Yes, these may seem somewhat farfetched to those who choose to ignore the fact that the public school systems in Bexar County are the last forms of defacto segregation. The fact that in San Antonio separate and unequal remains a reality may not sit well with the powers that be, but it sits even less with those of us with children in the inner city school systems!
This post was written by Keep Travis Open Community member Frank (Pancho) and originally posted on the Keep Travis Open website. -Frank Valdez is a parent of a student at SAISD, a professional social worker and an activist with 40+ years of experience in the civil rights, labor and peace movements.
Posted March 12, 2008
The following article was sent by Carl Martin a Keep Travis Open supporter. This is a good article for Horace Mann Academy supporters to read. For more comments from Carl Martin on Keep Travis Open issues please visit www.keeptravisopen.com
Unreasonable Agendas will Jade the Public
By Heber Taylor
The Daily News
Published February 25, 2007
One of the court cases that defined what school boards can and can’t do behind closed doors went into the books as Cox Enterprises v. Board of Education.
The case was filed by the Austin American-Statesman against the Austin school board. The school board posted an agenda that said it intended to meet in executive session — meaning behind closed doors — to discuss personnel and litigation. The newspaper questioned what the board was up to. But it couldn’t get a straight answer. Most people assumed the board was making a routine personnel decision — maybe hiring a teacher. In fact, the board was hiring a superintendent.
The outrage in the community was considerable. People who take the time to vote for elected officials want to at least have the opportunity to try to influence their thinking on important decisions. People felt they hadn’t been represented by their school board members — and, in fact, had been had.. School board members responded with the classic argument: They said the law allowed them to do that. But a court disagreed. The case set several precedents.
First, the law requires that a governing body give the public advance notice of the subjects it will consider. The court ruled that notices such as “personnel” or “litigation” were insufficient. The court said that the hiring of a superintendent was not in the same category as ordinary personnel matters. Because the matter was of such great public interest, the school board had an obligation to inform the public of what it was going to discuss. Similarly, the school board was discussing a major desegregation case. The court said listing that discussion under “litigation” was inadequate. As the Texas attorney general puts it, “notice must be sufficient to alert the public, in general terms, of the subjects that will be considered in the meeting. … The courts have also ruled that the more important a particular issue is to the community, the more specific the posted notice must be.”
The principle that the public is entitled to know what a school board is doing before it makes a decision is clear both in the law and in court precedents. That’s why we find it baffling that some school boards have taken the position that they can list all the possible things that might come up during an executive session and count that as reasonable notice. At every meeting, the public is told the school board might meet in executive session to discuss something very important. But it might not. You have to show up and wait outside to see.
Does that sound like advance notice? Or is it just the opposite? Isn’t it in fact crying wolf so often — every time, actually — that the posted notices become meaningless? And isn’t that providing no notice at all? This trip into a surreal legal world would be funny if it weren’t so important. At a time when public schools, particularly, are complaining about a lack of public involvement, many school boards behave in a way that makes it impossible for a normal taxpayer, working full time, to keep up with the issues that are vital to public education. They post ambiguous and meaningless notices and then make decisions behind closed doors. The public quickly realizes it has no say. So it becomes jaded and disillusioned. Why bother to become involved at all? That’s hardly what the public schools need right now. But many school boards are working hard to create just that kind of culture. The most disturbing part of this scenario is that the people who are elected to represent voters, instead of feeling a responsibility to inform them of what’s going on, feel the need to argue that the law allows them to get away with this kind of charade. It’s a sad view of public service.
Posted March 11, 2008
For over a decade, vouchers have been the bane of my existence, and it will continue to be. The very people who claim they want to give vouchers to private schools because they care about the "pobrecitos" (English= poor little ones) in the West and East side are the very ones who have fought us on:
• Decreasing teacher-student ratios; • Funding for building and improving instructional facilities;
• More funding for low-wealth schools (Alamo Heights is the only property wealthy district in Bexar; 9 out of 10 school districts are property poor);
• Teacher pay increases; and
• Better healthcare for Texas children.
The list goes on, but we need to sleep over here.
We must improve our public schools. SAISD is our district. We pay taxes. We have a right to make sure they are better. We have a right to a public school in our neigborhood.
Anna Romero
Horace Mann Parent
Posted March 7, 2008
What is going on? My daughter reported to me that all hell broke loose today at Thomas Jefferson High School. Three food fights in the cafeteria, a brawl in the hallway, a gang fight and reports of at least 7 other fights were rumored to happen. She said the Campus Officer had to take out his club in the cafeteria and there were arrests. At the end of the school day, dismissal was done in sections of the school with students told they must leave the campus immediately.
Since Dr. Chavez announced his resignation as Principal of Thomas Jefferson (and his wife also resigned as the principal of the new girls school being put in Horace Mann) all control has been lost on that campus. Is Duron so caught up in his stardom for beating us down and supressing us that he is unable to take care of the properties that are still open?????? Is this an example of how they will make sure our children who are being sent away from their own neighborhoods will be protected?
We need to call SAISD tomorrow and ask to speak to Duron for an explanation on what is going on the campus of Thomas Jefferson High School AND IN THIS DISTRICT.
Patti Garcia
Horace Mann Parent