“Let’s get La Feria ISD back in order, and let’s start by cleaning house.”

With the two arrests made by the La Feria police department recently, the questionable and poor decisions made by the school board and administration really come to light. In my opinion, as well as those of other taxpayers, this current administration has created a culture where negligence, bullying and lack of supervision are becoming the norm in our schools and maintenance department. The leadership is expending all their energy on trying to implement controversial concepts like neighborhood schools, intimidate and threaten teachers who disagree with them and trying to cancel creative and traditional productions performed by our students at Sam Houston. Their new pet project is on yet another bond issue that would raise our tax rate by 27 cents! The leadership argues that 70% of funds would come from the state, but that only means that taxes are going up for our fellow Texans just so the leadership can claim ownership of yet another bloated, unnecessary construction project. Where is the oversight and accountability when you have a technician admitting to show up to work high on marijuana? Where is the outrage after finding out that a paraprofessional allegedly sexually assaulted several 4 year old students at one of our elementary schools? Unfortunately, I suspect the leadership will find a way to spin this around by blaming the media or someone else for these incidents.

The other unfortunate situation is the negative reaction we get from some in the leadership every time someone chooses to bring up the way things were in our district. I don’t understand why this conversation brings up so much discontent and discomfort. In the view of many, this school district has suffered tremendously in every aspect during the last couple of administrations. Most people in our community, including myself, have some fine memories of the glorious days of LFISD, when Butch Wenke and Bill Green were in charge of the district. Back then, LFISD had the reputation of being one of the best school districts in the Valley. People from other districts commended our kids for their classy behavior and for being well dressed and groomed at every occasion. We also had a very stable academic program where people from other communities chose to move into LFISD just to be part of this awesome educational system. Unfortunately, over the years our golden reputation has been tarnished with the questionable decisions made by the board, unstable and indecisive leadership at every level and the loss of so many talented and experienced educators from across the district. The school board during the last few years failed to recognize the writing on the wall and continued to ignore concerns brought up by the community. Sadly, many of us believe that the current leadership is directly or and indirectly were responsible for wiping out the greatness of this fine district. Nowadays, we are in the news for things that usually take place at Donna! Let’s get La Feria ISD back in order, and let’s start by cleaning house.

Yosef Mughrabi
Community Advocate