Commander Frailey & His Puppeteer Working Majority Board’s Oppressive Tactics Of Protecting The System Must End: It’s Up To The Public To Help Proctor & Huckaby Eliminate This De facto Government Censorship Immediately

Let me break the news to Alton Frailey and his band of puppeteers that form the working majority of the Katy I.S.D. school board.  Katy is NOT Frailey’s administrative Center of Truth.

Alton Frailey is a highly-paid government bureaucrat armed with a contract that does not serve the interests of public education in general or Katy I.S.D. taxpayers, students, parents, and classroom teachers in particular.

It is time to stop protecting the position of superintendent of schools held in this community at this time by the itinerant bureaucrat Alton Frailey.  Gordon Brown, Linda Woodward, Hugh Hayes, Leonard Merrell, and Alton Frailey all have one thing in common:  they come and then they go.

Read my column The Path Forward: an outline for achieving reform in public education

Back in the days of Brown and Woodward, school board members gave more than lip service to holding administrators accountable.  It was not enough, but it was a different era in which the current power system was only beginning to evolve. Superintendents worked for a lot less money.  While they had multi-year contracts, they never got completely off the corners of the chair and fully comfortable.

If there is going to be reform in Katy I.S.D., then the first and easiest step that must be taken is to open up the ability of individual board members to place items on the agenda of school board meetings.  Right now, (if you are not the president of the board), it takes three members to even get an item on the agenda.

Let’s be clear.  While this policy of restriction was put in place by prior school boards (which included some current members), every single member who operates under it today is responsible unless they take aggressive action to change it.

This policy was put in place to protect the superintendent of schools from the general public if the voters chose to put reformers on the school board.

The best, most effective way to control the public debate is for the powers in government to effectively use the principles of censorship to block issues from reaching the public arena.  In this case, that’s the formal meeting of the school board.

Currently, the puppet-working majority on the Katy I.S.D. school board striving hard to insulate its commander in chief from reform members Dr. Bill Proctor and Terry Huckaby requires three members of the board to approve placing an item on the agenda.

Voters thought that they had achieved that critical number with the election of Henry Dibrell.  But, Dibrell has been inconsistent in his dedication to the reform agenda.  If Proctor and Huckaby take this initiative and the public swells to their support, Henry will have to decide what side of the street he is most comfortable walking.

Now, here’s how to end this oppressive nonsense of the working majority.

1. Proctor and Huckaby need to seek to place on the agenda an item (or items) of business to revoke all current policies, procedures, and practices outlined in any official document (policy book, procedures manual, school board procedures manual, et al) of Katy I.S.D. that requires three members of the board to place an item on the agenda.  Any one member of the board (let’s remember that this board member was elected by the people to get there) should be allowed to place an item on the agenda of a school board meeting.
2. Proctor and Huckaby need to seek to place on the agenda an item (or items) of business to revoke all current policies, procedures, and practices outlined in any official document (policy book, procedures manual, school board procedures manual, et al) of Katy I.S.D. that restrict the ability of an individual board member to in terms of the numbers of questions or the time limits on questions each are permitted during the course of an official workshop or board meeting.
3. If Proctor and Huckaby are rebuffed by the other members of the board in getting a third member to help place these items on the agenda, then they should declare a public policy war on the board’s working majority by taking these actions:
   1. At the next board meeting at which the item they sought would have been on the agenda but is not, they need to sign up during the public comment section of the board meeting.  They need to step down from the board table; resume their roles as private citizens; and address the remainder of the board during the public comment section. When they are finished with their comments, they go right back up to the board table. Such a powerful action will command the public’s attention in a way that has never been done in this community.
   2. Their request to have these items on the agenda of the “next meeting” should come well in advance of the the deadline for agenda posting while informing the superintendent that they are prepared to take the measure public in time to force the other board members and the superintendent to relent.
   3. If the time deadline for the other board members or the board president or the superintendent to agree to placing the item on the agenda comes and goes, Proctor and Huckaby should issue press releases or press statements asking the citizens of Katy to pack the meeting at which they plan to do Number 1 above.

This game of oppressive tactics used by the current working majority of the school board and the superintendent must end.

What Proctor and Huckaby seemed dedicated to accomplishing is creating a sea change in the manner by which the board operates and the superintendent and his team are held accountable. Reformers have been griping about this oppressive squelching of public input for about a decade, perhaps more. It’s time to end it.

It is time to force Cheerleader in Chief Rebecca Fox, Defender of the Status Quo in Chief Joe Adams, and lackey Neal Howard to vote in public to protect this policy of de facto government censorship.  It’s time to force Henry Dibrell to decisively choose on what side of the street he wants to walk.  And Robert Shaw is still in our prayers.

One final point.  Any idea advanced by Frailey or his puppets on the board that this would create chaos at the board table are categorically false.

Importantly, the board’s majority can use parliamentary procedures to table an item on the agenda or end discussions on a particular item. The difference?  If Frailey and his puppets decide they want to reject an item for consideration that has been placed on the agenda by one board member, the board can invoke parliamentary rules.

If Frailey and his puppets decide they have heard enough debate on a given subject, the board can invoke parliamentary rules.

However, what they won’t have is the luxury of private, back door veto of public policy debate.  They’ll have to vote in public.  Let Neal Howard take his opposition to this to the voters in May.