Damon Barone
From Ballotpedia
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Damon Barone ran for election to the Alief Independent School District to represent Position 7 in Texas. He lost in the general election on November 2, 2021.
Barone completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Damon Barone was born in Newark, New Jersey. Barone received a bachelor's degree in communication studies in 2011 and a master's in nonprofit management in 2019 from the University of Houston - Downtown.[1] His career experience includes working as an EC-6 and ESL educator. Barone has been associated with the following organizations:
- Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc.
- Omega Ryderz
- National Society of Leadership and Success, Honor Society
- Lambda Pi Eta, National Communication Association Honor Society[2]
Elections
2021
See also: Alief Independent School District, Texas, elections (2021)
General election
General election for Alief Independent School District, Position 7
Gregg Patrick defeated Damon Barone in the general election for Alief Independent School District, Position 7 on November 2, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Gregg Patrick (Nonpartisan) | 56.7 | 2,936 | |
 | Damon Barone (Nonpartisan)  | 43.3 | 2,238 | |
| Total votes: 5,174 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Natasha Butler (Nonpartisan)
2019
See also: Alief Independent School District, Texas, elections (2019)
General election
General election for Alief Independent School District, Position 2
Incumbent Rick Moreno defeated Marie Lee and Damon Barone in the general election for Alief Independent School District, Position 2 on November 5, 2019.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Rick Moreno (Nonpartisan) | 41.5 | 4,038 |
| Marie Lee (Nonpartisan) | 40.1 | 3,902 | ||
| Damon Barone (Nonpartisan) | 18.5 | 1,798 | |
| Total votes: 9,738 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2021
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Damon Barone completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Barone's responses.
| Collapse all
I am an Alief ISD alumnus who has a passion for community service, uplift, and empowerment. My family and I believe in the potential that Alief ISD possess, it is important that we not only support the district but support the Alief community. I intend to be the voice for students, by parents, of our community.
- Improve student outcomes.
- Increase community involvement.
- Hold leadership accountable.
The area of public policy which I am passionate about is K-12 early education. As a district, approximately one-third of our students can read at a 3rd grade level. As a former 3rd grade teacher, I noticed that several of my students were not reading on grade level. My focus was on growing students as most of our students are behind 2-3 years when it comes to reading and writing.
I look up to Richard Dove Williams Jr. He may be better recognized as the father of tennis players Venus and Serena Williams. I look up to Mr. Williams and would follow his example because he taught his self how to play tennis. Although he had not achieved success in his personal endeavors to play tennis, he later became the backbone of the more than two-decade long success of his daughters Venus and Serena Williams professional tennis careers, serving as their tennis coach from their youth through their adult lives. Coach Richard Williams became the first person to be inducted into the American Tennis Association (ATA) Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame. The success of the Williams family’s athletic careers are quite amazing accomplishments given their humble beginnings, and the dedication of Mr. Williams.
I would recommend to anyone who may want to understand my political philosophy, for being a school board trustee, to review the Framework for School Board Development on the Texas Education Agencies (TEA) website.
I believe that the most important characteristic or principal of a school board trustee is to objectively look at everything with an equitable lens; a lens rooted in honesty, integrity, accountability, and fidelity.
My commitment to consistently attend all Alief ISD school board meetings and public district meetings for the past six years shows a quality within me which I feel would make me a successful Alief ISD school board trustee.
The core responsibilities of an elected school board trustee is to ensure the creation of a shared vision that promotes enhanced student achievement, while providing the school district guidance and direction for accomplishing the vision. While working with the superintendent to lead the school district towards the vision, school board members measure and communicate how well the vision is being accomplished by the district.
The legacy I would like to leave in my personal life would be for my two children to carry on the torch and raise the bar for the foundation of parenting, higher education, and community involvement that I have set as a standard in my household. The legacy I would like to leave upon leaving the Alief ISD school Board, if elected on November 02, 2021, is to leave the district with student outcomes and growth significantly higher than it is now or would be if I were elected in November.
If I were to choose a fictional character to become, I would be Tony Stark, commonly known as Iron Man.
Some things which have been a struggle for me in my life were: being homeless, being a single parent, attending college fulltime while helping raise a family and working full time.
I believe that the primary job of a school board member is to set the school districts vision using SMART Goals to ensure that all students have the necessary resources and skills to become a productive member of society.
My constituents as a school board candidate are Alief residents.
I would support the diverse needs of Alief ISD students, faculty, staff, and community members by focusing on reviewing the districts hiring data, discrimination claims and statistics against Alief ISD. I would also review salary tables, retention data, diversity policies, and the public actions of Alief ISD leadership regarding potential inequitable practices.
I would utilize technology and a foundation of inclusive decision making processes to build relationships with members of the broader community. The groups, organizations, stakeholders I would specifically target are students, parents, staff with frontline interactions with students, and alumni.
I believe it is important to intentionally recruit with the aim of diversifying Alief ISD’s faculty, staff, and administration. My policy for achieving this goal would be to ensure that leadership at the highest levels, not just on school campuses, are reflective of the diverse community which Alief ISD serves.
In Alief ISD the personal and professional agendas of district leadership have gotten in the way of affording Alief ISD students a quality education. I would address these obstacles by holding district leadership, including myself, accountable for upholding Alief ISD’s mission statement to collaborate with parents and the community, and provide an exemplary education for all students in a safe environment.
An educator’s ability to know its audience (students) fosters good teaching. Students’ abilities to explain complex concepts in their own words affirms and would allow me to measure an educators good teaching effort. I will support advanced teaching approaches by allowing educators and leadership to think outside of the box while differentiating their instructions and efforts.
I would like to expand the curriculum in Alief ISD by requiring the district provide interactive school smartboards in all classrooms, starting with special education classes, English as a second language classes (ESL), and finally to all other educational classes and courses.
The strategies or plans I would advance to ensure the schools of Alief were properly funded would be to review and approve a calendar for the budget preparation cycles, examine budget assumptions, guidelines and targets that Alief administration uses in preparing budgets, study district budget proposals to make sure they reflect the goals and priorities the school board established, hold required public hearings for the school budget, monitor the district’s fiscal activity throughout each academic school year, and hire a new independent auditor firm every 5 years.
The principles which drive my policies for safety in schools are that school districts should implement research based best practices and develop policies and procedures for training school districts threat assessment teams.
I will support the mental health needs of students/faculty/staff by coordinating with education service centers to identify mental health resources throughout the state of Texas and develop a statewide plan to ensure all students/faculty/staff have access to mental health resources.
I believe that technology will play a big role inside and outside of classrooms in the future. Technology can be used as a form of communication with parents, virtual learning, as a means of teleconferencing with other staff members or other classrooms, submitting assignments, file sharing, as well as countless other educational enrichment tools.
I would prepare Alief ISD for technological infusion by recommending that the district stick with one Learning Management System (LMS) and properly train their staff on the selected LMS. Transitioning to a more effective LMS is ok but by the time Alief ISD staff figure out what they are doing on the Learning Management Systems, the district has decided to move on to another LMS.
My views on addressing schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic are to prioritize having safe and healthy environments for our children to learn in, an environment which all staff are confident enough to focus on supporting the needs of students from the time they depart for school, until they return home each day.
To build relationships with parents I would live stream all school board and district meetings to foster inclusion, involvement, and opportunities for parental feedback.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
2019
Damon Barone did not complete Ballotpedia's 2019 Candidate Connection survey.
See also
2021 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Ballotpedia staff, "Email communication with Damon Barone," September 27, 2021
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on September 23, 2021
