January is School Board Recognition Month in Texas and Alamo Heights ISD is celebrating its trustees for their dedication and commitment to the district and its students.
“I want to thank our AHISD Trustees for their dedication to our district,” said Superintendent Dana Bashara. “These seven volunteers are true champions for public schools and for our district, and they are a real blessing to our community.”
The theme of this year’s School Board Recognition Month is Leadership for Tomorrow’s Texas, which highlights the service of Trustees and their commitment to creating meaningful educational experiences and opportunities that prepare students for college, careers, and beyond.
Serving AHISD are:
David Hornberger, Place 1
Brian Hamilton, Place 2
Ty Edwards, Place 3
Hunter Kingman, Place 4
Clay Page, Place 5
Lauren McLaughlin, Place 6
Carey Hildebrand, Place 7
Visit the AHISD Board of Trustees website to learn more about each trustee and the work of the School Board.
The following column by Board President David Hornberger originally appeared in the Winter 2024 edition of our School Views publication.
Trustees At Work
David Hornberger, Board President
Recently I had the opportunity to share this message at the Greater Heights Night fundraiser and felt that the message lent itself well to this column. It helps to know that I have an irrational love for the game of football. And, yes, I realize that my friends reading this are likely already rolling their eyes. But it’s not just for the game itself; I love football because it’s about sacrifice, courage, and brotherhood. It’s about putting your personal safety in the hands of your brother and risking yourself so that your brother can succeed, knowing that both of your successes lift the entire team, a family. Maybe we don’t admit this because the sport glorifies toughness and because love supposedly is soft, but there is no doubt that love for each other drives the greatest teams. And those of us watching want so desperately to feel that same love, to be included in that same family. There is an innate attraction to the combination of these elemental forces - risk, courage, love, and family - that captivates our souls. That’s why I love football.
It’s family.
And this place - Alamo Heights- it’s family. We’re not parents and teachers and students and administrators. We are a family, slugging it out for each other, sometimes imperfectly but always with heart.
I have seen this over and over again; it’s an unstated perk of the volunteer jobs I’m honored to have here. Our staff consistently goes above and beyond their job description in big ways, like creating the 09 Academy to support - indeed to embrace - our special needs students who need a little more help for a little longer. I’ve watched many graduations at the Excel Academy, witnessing stories of grit and redemption and never giving up on each other. I’ve seen students tearfully thank their teachers for being transformative in their lives, for helping them see their unique spark when it was difficult to find. I’ve seen parents run to aid teachers struggling with illness or cancer. I’ve seen families take in children that aren’t their own; I’ve seen them show up with piles of HEB gift cards and say, “please give these to my neighbors who are in need right now.” Over and over again I’ve seen us rise up and say, “here I am; I won’t give up on you. How can I help?” Because that’s what family does. This support, this sense of family, fosters a stable environment in which our students can reach new heights, like recently producing a record number of National Merit Scholars and attaining the College Board’s AP Gold Honor Roll for success on the AP exams.
This spirit of family endures in our community and is the cornerstone on which our school district was built. And we can’t find this anywhere else. A lot of us look for it. Hard. Even Cat and I tried the whole Austin thing thinking it was still the Austin of the 1980s. Nope. We made it for 2 and a half kids and then took a huge financial risk and moved home. We move our families here because we just can’t find this spirit in any other place.
But politics in Austin are putting our family at risk. Some twenty years ago, I talked about all of this with Coach Fenley in one of our last conversations. For all his intensity and fire, he sure carried a lot of wisdom. He was encouraging me to go to grad school, and we also talked about our shared love for public schools. He was hopeful that one day we’d figure out how to fix public school funding in Texas (again, this was twenty years ago!). As I remembered that conversation, it hit me: we alone in this community can’t change the politics in Austin.
But we alone can take our future out of their hands and put it back into our own.
It helps to first know how school funding works in Texas for Alamo Heights: basically, the state of Texas dictates our property tax rate that funds our operations. But the state only allows us to keep a portion of that tax revenue, calculated on a per student basis, called the basic allotment. The state pockets the difference, depositing it into the state’s general fund. This works fine in theory but when that basic allotment doesn’t increase to keep up with inflation - and the state just saves the rest of our money in their savings account - things get bad for us in a hurry. Like every family in America, our school district has experienced shocking cost inflation relating to insurance, health care, energy, transportation, and employment. With no material increase in our funding from the state since 2019, the state has a huge surplus on top of an enormous rainy-day fund while we have incurred multiple years of budget deficits - including a current debilitating and unprecedented deficit approximating $2.5 million. (this is after our gift from the School Foundation) Our administration has discussed this precarious situation with staff on every campus, and all employees are aware of the dire straits facing our schools because of inaction from Austin. We will have no choice but to consider inefficient tax increases, sending more money to the state’s overflowing savings account, or to cut programming for our children. In short, we need help to fund our schools. And we need it now.
Our community, though, has a choice. We don’t have to wait on state politicians for help. We are a family, and we take care of our own. As proud stubborn Mules, we fight for Heights. Always. We can provide on our own the financial support to preserve the schools that have empowered our children and have kept our community so precious for so many generations. We want our children to have the community that so many of us did, that many grandparents had, that even some great grandparents had; the same community that draws so many new families to it every year. It’s because of this school district, because of this family.
There is no better investment than investing in our children, to paraphrase a beloved Cambridge principal from long ago. Public schools accept all children and, when done right, foster a powerful sense of family and community built on shared sacrifice and shared success. When Alamo Heights rallies together out of this spirit of family, when we sacrifice for each other, there is no stopping us. But we need everyone’s help - please consider giving whatever you can, and as often as you can, to the Alamo Heights School Foundation. It is time for us to come together to fund our schools.
This Alamo Heights family is worth it.