In June of 2006 all seven CISD school board members attended the Summer Leadership Institute training session in San Antonio. Although the school board is more than willing to increase their allowance for meals and mileage to match state employee guidelines, they still have a problem with cutting back to state guidelines of $85 per day for lodging.

One would think after all the articles about excessive lodging costs at $157-219 per night per room that the new school board members would at least make an effort to correct the problem. Not so. Board members stayed at the Emily Morgan Hotel at $179 per night for a total tab of $4,163.00 and this does not include SLI registration costs. In comparison, registration fees for the 2004 TASA/TASB convention held in Dallas at the Adolphus Hotel ran $3,180 and lodging fees ran $4528.38 at $174 per night.

Now let me explain to you why this is not their fault. The blame lies with a San Jose, California housing company known as Convention Housing Management which supposedly books all the rooms and the school board has to use them to get a room. The school board has to accept what they give them - a roll the dice scenario. However, a call to the Convention Housing Management revealed that the school board is not obligated to use their services.

I personally and privately told a board member they are making themselves look bad, and suggested the school board find a way to get rid of the housing management company. We have several local travel agencies who would probably love the business and it would support our local economy. I myself could book a room on the internet at the Emily Morgan Hotel for $169, so the school board is not getting any good deals.

Another bone of contention is valet parking costs which are strictly forbidden under state employee guidelines. Well, mandatory valet parking of $18 + tax is house rules at the Emily Morgan Hotel, and of course we were forced to use this service at $19.74 every time a car returned to the hotel. The only bright and shining star in all this is that school board president Donna Boles placed her valet parking charges of $77.45 on her own personal credit card. In my book you just got a gold star Mrs. Boles. The other school board members charged it to the taxpayers.

Since I brought up the problem, then I'll propose a solution

1) Get rid of the housing management company and book your own rooms, or else hire a local travel agency to do it. Stay within state guidelines for lodging. (I personally located $85 hotel rooms in the area of the convention, so there are reasonable rooms to be had.)

2) We wrote each board member a check for gas at $140.58 and used 30 cents per mile as a cost which times seven members comes to $984.06. Why not load up two of the new CISD passenger vans with the seven board members and save the cost of seven personal vehicles going down the road to San Antonio and back. You all have to be together anyway so maybe you could use the road time to practice team building in an informal setting. If the vans used $200 worth of gas each you still saved $584.06. If I allowed you another $200 in gas just to ride around, you still save $384.06. The bonus is that you aren't putting wear and tear on your own personal vehicle.

3) If all seven members took a car then the total bill for valet parking ($77.45 x 7) would be at least $309.84. For two vans it would cost you possibly $154.90.

4) Finally our biggest expense is the Emily Morgan Hotel rooms at $179 each. If you doubled up in rooms you would only need four rooms and not seven. Since there are five guys, the odd man out gets a single room to himself and you each rotate to be fair. This would have saved you $716.00. If you used the $85 state rate you would have saved $3,568. Teachers bunk up all the time.

The only problem that I can see with this solution involves numbers 2 and 4 - and that being if you hate each other. However I am open to suggestions.

The hotel chosen by the California booking service, the Emily Morgan hotel, does have an interesting history. It is a grand gothic structure almost next door to the Alamo and across from San Antonio's well-known tourist attraction, the Riverwalk.

The Emily Morgan Hotel is a five star luxury hotel and has rooms for weary travelers ranging in price from $209 to $409 per night. It offers some of the best skyline views of San Antonio. The name itself is rooted deep in 1836 Texas history

The presumed historical facts are simple and limited. Emily D. West, a teenage orphaned free Negro woman in the northeastern United States, journeyed by boat to the wilderness of Texas in 1835. Colonel James Morgan, on whose plantation she worked as an indentured servant, establish