Home Rule

By Felix Alvarado

April 27, 2014

To understand the Home Rule concept we must first understand the basics behind the Texas school system.  The Texas Legislature develops the laws that govern school districts and school districts are autonomous entities. 

As autonomous creatures, school districts are disparate little kingdoms each with a royal court and an appointed king or queen that serves at the pleasure of a majority of the royal court (school board).  The appointee has dictatorial powers checked only by a majority of the royal court. The superintendent could be an enlightened or not-so-enlightened despot.

The Roman Empire is an example of what happens when an empire can no longer protect itself.  It was the attack of the barbaric Germanic tribes that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire resulting in the birth of many small kingdoms.

Kingdoms come under attack once in a while.  These attacks have a tendency to confuse the kings subjects who don’t know who should get their loyalty.  Europe was once a multitude of little kingdoms each with its own king or queen.  Eventually, the most powerful kingdom gobbled up all the surrounding kingdoms and thereby a large kingdom was forged, one out of many.

The kingdom is being besieged and the threat is real.  What we see in Dallas is a big kingdom being invaded by a larger army called MONEY.  Another way to put this is big fish (MONEY) have a tendency to eat little fish.  A well-organized army of MONEY can conquer a loosely organized kingdom especially from a surprise sneak attack.  Such was the case on election night we the MONEY army attacked and started gathering signatures to convert DISD from a regular school district to a Charter district.  Of course the motive is that some other system can do a better job of educating our children than the current system.

There is cloak and dagger drama with supposed friends all of a sudden wearing the green uniform of MONEY.  With a 1.6 billion dollar budget there is a lot of MONEY to pass around in DISD.  It is like one of the MONEY catching booths where you get to keep all that you can grab.  There is room for a lot of greed.  One would have to be pretty naïve to not believe that awarding of contracts does not affects how some members of school board cast their vote. 

The Louisiana state legislature acted swiftly taking advantage of the disorientation following Hurricane Katrina to pass laws that facilitated the creation of charter schools to replace the public schools. 

For years everybody’s favorite bull’s eye for what ails education has been the teacher.  Someone has to take the fall for the poor performance of students and that someone is the teacher.  Attacks on teachers have been a constant and steady.  Teachers went from being tenured, not having to worry about suddenly being fired, to renewable contracts mostly at the whim of principals.  The demand for fire at will contracts for teachers has been incessant.  Yes there were a few bad apples in the barrel but the solution was to get rid of the whole barrel because of one bad apple was hardly appropriate.  It was like principals bit off their nose to spite their face.  The only defense teachers had were teachers unions or organizations and their power is limited because teachers lack the most powerful tool in labor arbitration, the right to strike. 

Home Rule is a bad idea whose time has not come. It has disoriented the entire school structure creating uncertainty as to which direction the district is going to go.  The change to Home Rule is a topic that does not even belong on the table.  The disruption would create confusion and chaos in the third degree.  Basta!!!!