SE English major campaigning for Arlington School Board
by Brian Shults, se news editor

    Kimberly McAliley wants to improve Texas education with her input and ideas in a bid for position six on the Arlington Independent School Board (AISD).

   McAliley, a mother of three children, one in each tier of schooling—elementary, junior high and high school—decided she should provide a voice for her children and area residents with similar concerns.

   She was prompted to run in the upcoming school board election May 4 following current issues of safety, which arose from the recent “riot” at Bowie High School (which one of her children attends), unfair boundaries and a general lack of representation from the SE Arlington area.

   The campaign for position six on the AISD school board comes with challenges from outside political opposition and personal effort.

   Eric Ramsey currently holds the seat and is being challenged by McAliley and fellow newcomer Carl Oehler.

   As a mother, student and part-time sales representative, McAliley feels confident she can fill the position adequately, giving needed individual attention to area residents and voicing their concerns.

   The election is at-large, meaning any voting age citizen in Arlington can vote for AISD school board members regardless of where the citizen lives.

   “I want to go to the different schools and meet with parents, teachers and students and find out what is and is not working and make adjustments where needed. I have a child in each of the three levels of schools and can see the current issues facing them. I think I can provide a wider representation of the diversity that exists in the schools,” she said.

   McAliley recognizes the need to be accessible to Arlington resident.

   “I realize people have different work schedules. I can be flexible in order to meet with the community and hear their concerns and take them back to the board to ensure their voices are heard,” McAliley said.

   McAliley, who graduates TCC in May and plans to major in English at UTA, has lived in Arlington for eight years. At 31, she has decided to take a proactive approach to the education of her own children and other local children. She conceptualized a program for all levels of AISD schools called APPLES, or Adults Providing Protection Leadership Examples for Students.

   The program is designed to employ parents to visit the schools on a weekly or monthly basis and provide an extra pair of eyes for administrators while developing a relationship with the student body and seeing the problems facing public schools first hand.

   “APPLES will be a group of volunteers who can receive special training in how to diffuse volatile situations and use crowd control after being approved with the necessary background checks. They would not be a militant group, but be personable so they can get to know the kids and foster respect,” she said.

   Whether she is elected, McAliley plans to start the program and is currently in the process of beginning it during her campaign.

   She adamantly believes the relationship among students, teachers and parents can change through the program and strike a new tone among them.

   “We are lacking a level of dignity in our schools. As the adults in the situation we have to provide the examples,” she said.

   McAliley said adults often view students as children.

   “We need to step back and see them as our future adults. Instead of treating them as children, particularly in high school, we need to begin giving them a little more freedom and little more responsibility to become those future adults,” she said.

   Listening to their concerns and providing them with an outlet in which the students believe they are heard is imperative to improving the school system, McAliley said.

   “If the students feel that what they are saying is being listened to and making changes, then they are going to feel comfortable going to that school because they helped make it what it is. It will give them a sense of ownership,” she said.

   Recently at Bowie High School, a fight between two girls broke out in the cafeteria. The accompanying hysteria from the students, security and law enforcement caused the situation to snowball into what the media termed a “riot.”

   And with 60,000 students in the AISD and the number rapidly rising because of continuing population growth in the area, further incidents of violence concern parents, prompting them to question the ability of AISD to prevent further occurrences.

   “I went to the Bowie meeting after the riot, and the major issues they talked about was respect. The teachers mentioned the lack of respect coming from the students to teachers and security guards.

   “But the students brought up a good point about the lack of respect coming back to them. Once I can get the APPLES group started, there will be adults who can provide that respect.

   “If we want the children to have respect, we should have adults who can show concern and caring for these kids. If they can feel caring from that adult, then they are not going to get dragged into that kind of violent situation,” she said.

   McAliley’s three most important goals for improving AISD are ensuring safety, communicating with the community and providing the board with the diversity it needs.

   Currently, only one woman is on the seven-member board, McAliley said.

   The need for diversity also includes representation from areas other than the upper income areas of Arlington.

   The needs of all the schools are not being met, while one or two schools are reaping the benefits, because the board consists of people from those areas, McAliley said.

   “To alleviate overcrowding, the boundaries need to be redrawn. For example, Sam Houston and Bowie High Schools lost one area, but gained from another and made no change to help the problem,” she said.

   A common complaint among many parents is that the boundary lines are drawn along income lines, effectively segregating the wealthier students from the middle class and poorer students. It also causes funding to the poorer schools to remain unsatisfactory, McAliley said.

   “There is an overriding representation on the board from certain districts, which happen to be the wealthier districts of Arlington. All of our schools, no matter which sector of Arlington they are located in, should have the equal resources to provide for the needs of our children’s educations,” she said.

   McAliley, if elected, hopes at the next boundary meeting to speak with parents on a one-to-one basis from each school district telling them, in effect, if they do not fill these positions, others will according to their own agenda.

   An additional concern of McAliley and an impetus of her campaign is the recent tax cap election intended to raise property tax slightly, using the money to increase teacher salaries and improve the level of education.

   “As a taxpayer, I am unhappy because I voted for the tax cap in order to provide better education for my child, but instead they are putting the maximum number of students in each classroom.

   “They are going to increase the amount of work teachers have to do and minimize the personal time they can give to students. I feel the election was misleading,” she said.

   McAliley believes that solutions to the funding issues and ability for schools to divide classrooms and provide adequate learning resources rely on modifying the TAAS rewards system.

   The TAAS rewards give $10,000 in funding to schools that achieve the recognized “exemplary status” with a certain number of students passing the standardized test. The emphasis placed on the TAAS test causes schools to perform according to strict curriculum guidelines, which may or may not be the knowledge needed by the students, McAliley said.

   “Teachers have told me the TAAS is a minimal level test, and it is frustrating to teach everything to a minimal level without being able to exceed that and not even be able to teach average,” she said.

   The methods of scoring TAAS, of evaluating the schools based on the scores and of funding go hand-in-hand, McAliley said.   

   McAliley has contacted the Texas Education Agency because she does not like the way TAAS is being used.

   “It subcategorizes the results into race, and that is the way it’s reported to the public. I believe it’s a negative way to present the scores,” she said.

   She believes the scores should be an internal diagnostic tool.

   “The schools can find out where we are being effective, where we are not and where we need to improve. As a diagnostic tool, I am all for TAAS and standardized testing. As a funding tool, as the overpowering dictator it has become, I am against it,” she said.