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Parents and community members press CFISD on PBIS, attendance rules, digital tools and other concerns during public comment
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Summary
During the Sept. 8 Cypress‑Fairbanks ISD board meeting, public commenters criticized PBIS and its cost, urged revision of absence rules that affect exam exemptions, asked the board to pause a move to a cloud‑based Adobe environment for media classes, and presented a county sidewalks initiative.
Multiple speakers used the public‑comment portions of the Sept. 8 Cypress‑Fairbanks ISD board meeting to raise concerns about district programs and policies and to urge specific actions.
PBIS criticism and cost concerns: During agenda‑related public comments, speaker Julie Riggs (registered on the agenda) challenged Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), calling it ineffective and expensive. She told the board that PBIS costs "$50 to $90 per student" and, using the district enrollment as a multiplier, asserted a conservative total of about $5,900,000. The speaker urged trustees to "follow the money" and asked for greater scrutiny of program contracts. Those cost figures were presented as a public comment claim and were not verified by district staff during the meeting.
Attendance policy and exam exemptions: Parent and teacher Denise Guzman described medical events that caused her daughter to miss school and explained she created an online petition with about 1,788 signatures asking the board to reconsider a policy that limits absences and affects a student's ability to exempt finals. Guzman said the district’s reduction of allowable absences (to three) makes students with legitimate illnesses pressured to attend school prematurely. The petition seeks a reevaluation of the absence‑for‑exemption rule; the item was presented during citizen participation and will require any formal policy action to be taken by the board through the usual policy process.
Digital tools for art and media classes: James Smiley, speaking as a parent and community member, said Advanced Placement and multimedia classes are due to lose a local installation of Adobe software and be transitioned to a cloud platform called Itopia. He asked the board to "hit pause on this one" and to find funds to keep district‑based laptops with full Adobe installations in classrooms to avoid harming students who need full local‑application performance for fine‑motor creative work. Smiley argued that cloud access is inadequate for some classroom art and digital‑media workflows.
Sidewalks initiative: Olivia Lee, representing Harris County Precinct 4 Commissioner Leslie Brown’s office, briefed trustees on a county sidewalks initiative called "Sidewalks for Precinct 4." She said the county had built about 50 miles of sidewalks in the past year, with a little over 14 miles inside the CFISD area, and invited trustees and the public to submit locations for Phase 2 by scanning a QR code on the flyer she distributed.
Other public comments: Speakers included a representative of the Cypress‑Tomball Democrats who said the group is participating at board meetings and urged the board to be nonpartisan; another speaker requested the board implement Texas Senate Bill 11 provisions regarding voluntary prayer time and asked for the item to be placed on a future agenda.
The board did not take action on these public comments during the meeting; many of the items raised would require separate agenda items or policy changes to produce district action.
