McAllen ISD Board Trustee proved to be an original

McAllen ISD Board Trustee Debbie Crane Aliseda chose not to seek reelection this year, and for one, I’m going to miss her. In fact, her last meeting was this Tuesday.

As a newspaper guy, trustees like Crane won’t sell newspapers. No scandals, no juicy gossip, no questionable business deals, no pizza pies, no drunk parties on SPI.

It’s the shady people who keep the news business in, well, business, not straightshooters like Crane Aliseda, and, no, she’s not paying me to write this. I just have a lot of respect for her and her family.

Some years, in some Hidalgo County jurisdictions, The Advance really had the stories to publish, based out of the same community, because the crooks elected to city government were related to crooks (blame it on the DNA) who worked for the ISD in the same city, or vice versa, and what with the crossover business dealings, we had some real stories to write, and that was before they ever made it to federal court.

Okay, sure, McAllen ISD had its sex gossip in March 2023, some of it allegedly involving district A/V equipment and a desk (you don’t want to know), just before the May school board election, but none of it involved Crane Aliseda.

Booooring.

Vela Weighs In

Yet, all joking aside, I liked Crane Aliseda’s time on the McAllen ISD board (12 years) because she wouldn’t blindly go along with the majority just to go along, as some trustees have been known to do over the years. She never minded being the dissenter on a split vote, usually along with Danny Vela before he left in 2023 after suffering through 16 years of public service.

Plus, Crane was willing to be quoted, speak her mind, AKA, what public officials are elected to do.

When told this week that I was writing this column about Debbie Crane because I wanted to salute her time on the board, because I liked her style and respected her votes, and asked him to offer up his opinion of her as a board colleague, Vela said she was one of those people with the “highest integrity.”

Sincere and honest, he said.

“We didn’t agree a hundred percent of the time,” Vela said, “but I enjoyed my time on the board with her. She’s just a wonderful person.”

Like me, Vela is somewhat of a cynic — after 16 years on the board, he had seen a lot — so praise coming from him is high praise indeed.

“She was also a meticulous record keeper,” he said. “We could have a question about something that happened back in the day, and Debbie could look through her records and find it. She voted her mind, based on what she thought good for her constituents.”

Crane Looked at Data

Asked before the May board election why she was so often part of the minority vote, 4-3 or 5-2, Crane said she didn’t base her votes on friendships or emotions.

“I’m a big spreadsheet person,” she said. “I look at lots of data, and data doesn’t lie.”

Crane Aliseda is married to a popular local attorney, Ernie Aliseda, and her family is well-known throughout the county as givers. They contribute more to the community than they pull out.

One of her brothers, Randy Crane, is a U.S. Chief District Judge working out of McAllen, while one of her other brothers, former McAllen City Commissioner Scott Crane, tragically died from a massive coronary in December 2014 at the age of 50.

“With regard to public service, I learned a lot from Scott,” said Crane. “He was a visionary, really.”

Crane said that during her 12 years as a McAllen ISD board trustee, she always went with what the data showed.

“Even if I wanted to vote one way because I felt strongly about it from an emotional standpoint, I’d stick with the data, because data doesn’t lie.”

Doesn’t matter if it’s someone’s pet project, the data always determined how she would vote, she said.

“I remember one of them (a fellow trustee) telling me once, ‘Debbie just vote with us because you’re going to lose anyway, so what does it matter if you vote no, and we all vote yes?’

“That’s the point, isn’t it? All you have is your vote as a trustee, and you have to use your vote by voting a certain way. Even though I would know that I was going to lose, I still voted no because I knew that’s my only voice. In the end, that’s all you have is your integrity, your voice.”

The Next Gen

Asked what she would tell a new candidate today seeking public office, as a school board trustee, for example, Crane said: “Know your data. That’s my biggest thing. If you don’t know something, the district has the experts who do.

“Also, just read everything. I think that’s the biggest thing. Before you have a meeting, you get a 500-page packet, and you’re supposed to read it. You will find that the majority (of trustees) don’t. They’re very trusting of the administration, and not that there is anything nefarious going on, but sometimes, people in education have been in that circle their whole lives, and they don’t think about the bigger picture, the business side of it.”

All their friends are in academia, said Crane.

“They’re all drinking the same Kool-Aid. So you have to stop drinking the Kool-Aid, read the data, and think about what are the unintended consequences of this action.”

Some trustees forget that a school district, education is, in essence, a business, she said.

“Because the district you’re running is a business, and some people forget they’re running a business, they forget the business side of things.”

Case in point, said Crane Aliseda, the chain-link fences currently being erected around school campuses.

“Like our fences. Should we really be putting up chain-link fences around (school campuses). Is that the best thing for the city of McAllen when (people, including out-oftowners, are driving) around the city and see all these chain-link fences? Or should we invest in nicer looking fences?”

Granted, the state mandates chainlink fences (around school campuses).

“But maybe the district should have been working with the city so we could instead perhaps build nice fences? It’s little things like that, that I think when you’re a trustee, you look at a little bit differently, and ask, what can I do? Like, how will it benefit the city and not only the school district?”

Even though her three terms on the McAllen board were split — went off in 2015, came back on in 2017 — 12 years constitutes enough late meetings, endless mounds of paper to read, for any one person. Amazing that Danny Vela lasted 16.

Still, she will be missed by those interested in good school government.