Gehrig Saldaña

Dallas ISD bloggers understand costs related to construction bond projects. I am more certain they understand even better the higher cost and effect of children who are stuck in low performing schools and in the only Texas school district ranked in the bottom 10 student dropout rate among our nation’s 50 largest cities.

While there may be no visible connection between the DISD bond election and the DISD credit card scandal, let's not discount DISD taxpayers still harbor ill feelings on how the DISD credit card scandal paned out.

Over $1 Million Dollars of DISD taxpayer funds was spent on an investigation that identified over half of approximately 1,400 DISD employees who misused their district issued credit cards. Yet, only a fraction of those employees were criminally charged or assessed departmental disciplinary action. Thus, hundreds of these morally challenged DISD employees escaped with what many DISD taxpayers consider outright theft of DISD taxpayer funds meant to be used to provide a quality education for DISD students.

Judging from Mr. Fischer’s article, the DISD’s press conference held April 2nd to inform the public of their newly created financial transformation strategy only leaves more doubt in the minds of DISD taxpayers who may find it hard to fork out more of their hard earned tax dollars to support the DISD bond election.

The cheerleaders who champion the upcoming bond election need to talk to DISD heads and tell them they need to do a much better job of producing a lot more meat and potatoes when they conduct press conferences meant to alleviate public distrust of the DISD.

Gehrig Saldaña, Chair

SBDM - North Dallas High School