Keep Eanes Informed                                                                                               

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The truth is like the sun.  You can block it out for a time but it ain't goin' away.

- Elvis

No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
 - Abraham Lincoln

Judge each day not by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.

 - Robert Louis Stevenson

All children deserve an equal playing field.

- Ed Allen, Westlake Picayune April 2008

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

- Albert Einstein

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. - Mark Twain

      Keep Eanes Informed 

ex·em·pla·ry   (g-zmpl-r)  adj.

1. Worthy of imitation; commendable: exemplary behavior.

2. Serving as a model.

For five years, Keep Eanes Informed has advocated for open government, transparency and accountability.  For years, we attended (and often recorded) each and every Eanes ISD board meeting (even the 7:30 a.m. study sessions) collected handouts from the meetings, requested board minutes, and posted the information to this site for public review (archive here.)  We also posted notices for school board meetings because when this site began, those notices were not available on the district website.  We obtained and posted other essential public information (that Eanes ISD failed to post on its website) as well including:  district budget information,  bond information, salaries and contracts, construction audits, ADA reports showing noncompliance, board member motivations, transfer students, covered football fields, Eanes ISD facility use, conflict of interest forms for board members, information regarding the industry that has built up around the needs and rights of children, and most recently, check registers showing the expenditure of our school tax dollars. We researched nepotism law and watched as the wife of a school board member was hired as a "permanent substitute."   The more we reviewed, the more concerned we became.

We followed the money.  The district refused to explain the $68,000 of unpaid student activity funds.  We reviewed safety and security reports.  At the same time we reviewed documents regarding the provision of campus keys to unauthorized individuals and groups (who used our gyms at their pleasure.)   Later, our district was re-keyed at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.  We watched the coaches on the fashion runway and hunted missing documentation and absent financial audits although board policy required production of booster club financial audits to the district by July 1 of each year.  Procedures and policies regarding school donations exist for a good reason.  Still, the district ignored our concerns.  Later, emails told the story of a booster club that was missing "$2900 from the donations account" (that's a lot of box tops!) and confused about whether the money in multiple banking belonged to the booster club or the school district.  This confusion could have been prevented with district monitoring as Eanes ISD local policy requires. 

We asked hard questions.  Why are we paying for "Chicks Dig Chaps" t-shirts (for the football players) out of General Fund 199 and thousand dollars in gore-tex windsuits (monogrammed, too) for coaches while at the same time parents are asked to donate basic supplies for core curriculum classes such as paper towels and gloves for AP Biology experiments?  We all know that our teachers are required to be licensed so why is Eanes ISD Superintendent Nola Wellman not certified?   Remember when Eanes ISD told bond voters that the $500K Jumbotron would pay "pay for itself" and then "make money" that would go into our general fund to support teachers?  Instead, we learned through (a tip from an Eanes employees) and a series of public information requests the marketing of that scoreboard was transferred to the Chap Club for fundraising (all under the radar, of course, and with no contract in place.)  Why are our at-risk populations learning in a sub-standard environment?

We've been busy.  Last year, KeepEanesInformed posted all available information and supported a petition drive when Eanes ISD submitted a complaint against a prize-winning physics teacher who had served our children well for decades ... a complaint that could result in the loss of his teaching license.  We ask other important questions this year as well:  Why are we installing millions of dollars in artificial turf on our high school practice fields and high school stadium, too, when:  1) there are legitimate concerns about health risks associated with turf and 2) children in wheelchairs in our schools can't join their friends on the elementary playgrounds and sports fields because they are inaccessible.  Did our district buy turf instead of safety?  Are the total expenditures (and positions) for central administration on the rise in Eanes ISD?

We've heard from Eanes ISD employees, parents, students and community members.  We learned from our conversations that all children matter to our community, not just those who make the school district "look good" on the TAKS test or the football field.   Teachers who wondered how to get funding for training and parents who just wanted their child to learn to read wrote KeepEanesInformed to ask for help.  We've heard time and again that our Eanes ISD teachers and parents are the most important resources for our children.  Our community believes that students, parents, and teachers should have a powerful voice in the operations and expenditures of our school district.  Perhaps the calls and emails that have caught our attention the most are those from parents whose children are being harmed.  Those stories are not posted on this site and yet, are the single most motivating reason for our work.  The children who must leave Eanes ISD are being replaced with out of district transfers who are carefully screened to make the easy demographics of this district even easier.  What a sad commentary.

We've made progress.  The 2006 bond initiative for a covered football field failed.  The superintendent is now certified (link here and here.)  After years of advocacy, Eanes ISD school board meeting notices and minutes are now posted on the district's website, and board meeting handouts are now posted on the Eanes ISD website.  (We advocated for the distribution of board handouts at or in advance of board meetings because it is impossible for the public to follow along in an open meeting without this information - archive here - and were routinely told "we're not ready for the public to see these...")   We've also worked (with the help of law enforcement) to insure that board meeting agendas are provided with the adequate specificity (as required by the Texas Open Meetings Act.)  The district now collects booster club financial audits as required by board policy.  Outdated Eanes ISD policies were updated and contractors (according to Eanes ISD) are now trained and must sign agreements to comply with the privacy rights of our children.  Eanes ISD knows that someone is watching.

We will continue to ask the questions, echo the concerns of parents, students and taxpayers:  Where does the bond money go?  What is the district's priority?  Why does the district say it can't afford teachers and librarians while it continues to hire more and more central administration staff and cover our district in artificial turf?  Why does the district try to revoke the teaching certificate of a nationally recognized science teacher?  Why are parents afraid to advocate for their children?  Why don't we have foreign language in our elementary schools yet we are adding millions of dollars of film labs, video trucks, and video garages at the high school?  How many students will benefit from these millions?  Will the Chap Club (athletic funding) benefit?  In an Internet age, why does Eanes ISD refuse to post its check register?

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