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I am pleased that more grassroot citizens are speaking out and standing for justice. Our system of elected "leadership" feels threatened and will seek to tone us down to meaninglessness. Watchdog groups must have a legal defense fund in place to defend themselves from such attacks! I constantly battle elected officials and their agencies that harass me at every turn. We are stronger as a group so keep fighting.

I agree with you Gladys. Those of us who watch government must have a "legal defense fund" because currently government has limitless use of our tax dollars to retain PRIVATE attorneys who then battle against the public's right to be fully informed and involved.

We all need to carefully monitor these PRIVATE law firm and PRIVATE attorneys ... all funded by our education tax dollars. It appears to me that these private attorneys profit most when they convince school districts to withhold public information and punish citizens who speak up.

Dianna Pharr
www.keepeanesinformed.com

Dear Gladys Dianna and Readers:

I agree that there is no "equal legal protection" as required by Constitutional laws, where public tax money only pays for the legal defense of the schools and not equally for the legal defense of dissenters.
Basically, our tax money is used to defeat instead of defend the voice of public "consent" upon which laws, as social contracts, are meant to be based. The system is backwards.

H.B. No. 3364, introduced by Rep. Garnet Coleman, was designed to create a "Civilian Oversight Commission" and "District Complaint Offices" -- but the bill lost its main advocate, author Marilyn Head of Corpus Justice, who had died of cancer before the bill could pass. Marilyn was a victim of police brutality related to a public school conflict, and she wrote out this plan after finding herself without adequate legal defense while her own tax dollars paid for the opposition. Coleman referred to this bill as the "most powerful piece of legislation" that he has seen.

If you would like a copy of the text, I will send it to you. Please email me at emilynghiem@hotmail.com or yahoo.com

Thank you very much
Yours truly,
Emily

Emily Nghiem
emilynghiem@yahoo.com

Mr. Connelly, I just wanted to drop you a brief e-mail and tell you how much I liked your commentary regarding this issue. Watchdogs across this state and nation continually tell me about the never ending fight to stop district intimidation. We here in Katy have battled it since we formed our group in August of 2005.

GISD will be making a big mistake if they carry out this ridiculous threat. It will give the district, the GISD Board and GISD Superintendent a huge black eye. It will also infuriate watchdog activists everywhere and will be an enormous waste of hard-earned tax dollars.

It is a truly sad day when one realizes that to some the word "dissent" has become a four-letter word.

Chris Cottrell
Co-Founder/Katy Citizen Watchdog$
www.katycitizens.org & www.radiofreekaty.com

Give me a break! Elected officials threatening to sue one of the taxpayers in their distrct for having the audacity to criticize them? According to the Texas Comptroller's website, GISD has more than one non-teaching staff for each teacher, they spend only 43.7 cents out of each education dollar in the classroom, and the school district is rated only academically acceptable. Sounds like more parents and taxpayers need to be criticizing them.

I try not to assume motives, particularly when elected officials are doing things which are really stupid, but it appears the GISD officials are wanting to squelch any criticism.

It won't work. They should focus their attention on the students and deal with the criticism. It appears to be deserved.

Texans need to understand that there is a HUGE pot of money that no one is watching over. It's call PUBLIC EDUCATION.

Without watchdog groups there would be no oversight.

Follow the money...
contracts, jobs, land deals, stipends, travel expenses, excessive nepotism, etc to determine if school administrators, school board "trustees", and Foundation members are "doing it for the kids" or themselves.

I hope those posting on the GISD watchdog web site would consider running for school board in May.
The quickest way to clean up a district is to get a majority of honest child-focused people with a backbone on the school board.
Short of that, all the blogging in the world may not help.

A bit of humor:
Your school may be infested with "Ed Lice".
http://www.lovejoyschools.com/parasite.htm

This whole affair reminds me of the assault on freedom of speech suffered by Michael Savage when the City of San Francisco tried to publicly condemn him for speaking out against the illegal alien invasion.Here, it is the same malfeasance at play..comfy bureaucrats attempting to shut down the opposition while they recklessly fritter away tax payer dollars with no accountability.We cannot allow the "soft totalitarianism" to kick in here in the USA as it has in Europe.The citizens must always be "alpha" in the public domain and with the Marxist Republican in the White House we see a doubling of the budget in the Dept. of Education from 38 billion to over 60 billion annually.This spending must not be used against us.