I have lived in Riviera for over 41 years. In all of these years, I have seen many changes in our small town. Most of them have been good and for the benefit of our community.

I wish I could say the same about our school. For over thirty years at least, parents have been struggling to educate their children, fighting diligently to obtain good administrators and especially good, qualified teachers, who are the foundation that erects that educational building: Our children, Our future.

We, (the community) have had good and bad superintendents in the past. Some would listen and take action, some would listen with no response and then others would just ignore us.

For the last ten years, I thought I had seen and heard it all. Superintendents who come from cities and bigger towns than ours, who don’t know the country life-community we live in, try to impose inner city laws and regulations, and fire or not renew contracts of well qualified teachers.

I thought nothing could shock me anymore when it came to superintendents that have come and gone into out school like swinging doors, but now we have a Nightmare on Seahawk Drive! We now have a controlling dictator who wants to control not only our school, but our whole community. The children were ordered to wear uniforms to school. Why?! But, they not only have to wear them to school, but home sports, out of town games and other functions as well, like a military school!

What this man doesn’t know or doesn’t care is that this is a poor community and some families have more than two or three students in school. These parents cannot afford to keep buying or replacing uniforms that could be stained or damaged at such games or outings. He should be focusing on the wellbeing and education of our children. He has lost a lot of good teachers and administrators because of his juggling (teachers) around.

Example: Why would any superintendent in his right mind switch an elementary principal who has been there for years to a high school, when she knows nothing of disciplining high school students? Or a teacher who has taught nothing but high school students for over twenty years as an elementary principal? It makes no sense! The only thing he is doing is hurting the students, because he has teachers who were teaching kinder and pre-kinder move to fourth and fifth grade, and don’t know what to do. These are just a few examples of what’s going on. He is messing everything up by trying to fix something that “ain’t broke”.

I know that a lot of you are thinking, “The school board is to blame,” and you would be right. I am urging the school board members to take action because that’s what they are elected to do.

I went online to inquire about UIL regulations and was told that this decision was a local school district decision. So board members, unite and take action and…

May God Bless You,

Zulema Longoria