South East Bexar County Awareness:Southside ISD school board---time to get even and keep promise

Sticking by their campaign promises; the spending and retribution has begun at Southside ISD. The Southside ISD newly elected board members called the "team" by Ms. Mendelsohn include; Mr. Brewer, Mr. Chavez, Mr. Cannon, Mr. Luna (resigned after 4 months) replaced by another "team" member, John Nolan Wood and Ms. Guzman-Estrada have begun down the path they promised their voters.

It is also obvious from the poll results, that the 'team" supporters feel that their campaign promises are more important than the education of the Southside ISD students. And when the topic and the actions spoken in it are detrimental to the students, how can anyone, other than an amoral individual find this funny. It is astounding at the type of individuals that support the actions of the newly elected "team" on Southside ISD school board which has shown in just a short time that ethical behavior is not a part of their agenda.

I have been covering issues on the Southeast of Bexar County for a couple of years now because of the fact that the media doesn't get involved in South side issues unless it makes for ratings, but after doing this for several years and getting to know how many of the members of the community behave, it is nothing more than shameful what they are willing to do to innocent people out of spite. Then there are others who are so complacent, that they allow this to happen,

The media attended the Southside ISD school board meeting and had very little to say.

One item that the media forgot to mention was the fact the Mr. Luna, who showed up to be sworn in, missed his first official meeting and would continue to miss meetings until his resignation.

Mr. Brewer could not get his gang of 5 to cooperate when it came to making motions and following board procedure. "It was truly comical" is one comment that was made.

Mr. Brewer took what he saw in a "Superman" movie and spoke of wanting programs like that at the district, "because in the movie the parents were lined up to put their kids into these programs, lottery schools" at which generated an outburst from the people in the room, that "this is about the children's education and not reality TV or movies." Mr. Brewer also expressed his support of charter schools. Charter Schools, while they may be great for those that can afford them, take funds away from a district. Mr. Brewer then had an exchange of words with Mr. Knapp as well over the topic of Pre-K.

The attorney for the District had to get up and make motions for Mr. Brewer and "team" as they did not know what they were doing, one time soliciting an outburst from an aggravated member of the board; Mr. Martinez who refused to vote, as did Mr. Knapp; for an item because it was not clear what the motion was and what they would be voting on. As the attorney was explaining the motion to Mr. Chavez and how to put it into words; Mr. Chavez simply said "what he said" as the motion, causing an already frustrated Mr. Martinez to tell Mr. Chavez that he had to make the motion, not the attorney; the attorney is not a member of the board and cannot make motions. It would be clearly understood by those of us familiar with Mr. Chavez and the ESD6 board; as their attorney Mr. Rosenberg wrote many of their agendas and constantly told them how to make motions, like scripts in a movie.

The motion that was finally made was to appoint a committee as per discussion in closed session, to begin working on becoming self operational in the food service department. Since there was no transparency from the board on what the committee will actually be doing or who will be appointed to the committee, once again the "team" are leaving the community members to guess as to what will be done and how it will be done.

Mr. Cannon did say that even if it cost more, you couldn't put a price on getting good food for the kids. "It's worth it", he said.

According to community members that attended the first community meeting in preparing for the possibility of becoming "self-op" for the district food service; a few dozen people showed up, many of them supporters of the newly elected board members, to include Robin Cantu and her mother. Ms. Cantu had an outburst and called a comment my the Aramark Representative "Lie #2". Her mother called former board member Lisa Salazar, who was in attendance, "a piece of trash" when Ms. Salazar who is all to knowledgeable being that she had served multiple terms on the school board and worked with the Aramark Food Service Program; as she tried to bring up points of information that would help in the process of informing the community members.

It has become a joke to anyone who sees the "team" in action, that Mr. Brewer and his friends are clueless when it comes to policy and board procedure. However, they are quickly working down the list of campaign promises no matter what the cost to the district and the taxpayers or what forms of intimidation they have to use to accomplish them.