Alicia Sebastian, who has represented District 2 on the San Antonio Independent School District Board of Trustees since 2019, is employed as the director of after-school programs for Essence Prep, a public charter school that opened in 2022 with a focus on serving historically at-risk Black children.
The overlap of her elected and professional roles has drawn conflict of interest charges in recent days from disappointed community members and parents who are reeling from a vote Monday to close down 15 schools, including several on the East Side where Essence Prep is located and set to open a new school next year.
“I’d also like to know, are you here to represent Essence? Or are you here to represent District 2?” asked Jacob Ramos, a parent, at the school board meeting Monday. “Because we have been losing students to schools like the one you work for.”
Around 20% of recent enrollment lost has been attributed to charter schools, according to the district.
Sebastian, who previously served in a marketing role for Essence, on Wednesday rejected the claims of a conflict of interest as “ridiculous,” pointing to the decades of declining enrollment that led the district to recommend closing schools in the first place. Essence also was not founded until years after she was elected to the board.
“If you go by the data, you see that those schools were on the list to get closed … years ago,” she said. “I’m one of five board members [that voted for the closures], I don’t have the power to make that decision exclusively.”
Conflict of interest raises ethical concerns
Questions about a possible conflict of interest also were vetted by attorneys from both SAISD and Essence two years ago when she started her current role there, according to Sebastian, and both cleared her.
But even the appearance of a conflict can damage the public’s trust in an elected official, according to John Pelissero, a senior scholar in government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
“Both an actual conflict of interest, and a perceived one, present ethical problems for the operation and trust in governments,” he said. “The public has to have trust in the officials that they elect to represent them … and they have to have trust in the government itself … or it undermines the legitimacy of the government and the actions that it takes.”
Sebastian said she hadn’t received questions from fellow board members or concerned community members regarding a possible conflict before the vote.
That was echoed by SAISD School Board President Christina Martinez, who said there would have to be some form of financial gain for there to be a conflict of interest that would require Sebastian to recuse herself.
“We have a very strict, well-defined code of ethics,” she said, adding that the code requires trustees “to recuse or abstain … if there is an economic benefit to the trustee.”
“There is no economic benefit to the trustee in this case, and to really try to tie those things together is unsubstantiated,” she said.
Pelissero, who previously served as a school board member in Chicago and is now the director of a charter school system, disagreed.
“The job that he or she has is to market the positives of the charter school system, and to be in a position to potentially benefit that charter school system by participating in a vote to shutter schools in the city is a problem,” he said. “It is an obvious conflict of interest and the proper thing for the school board member to have done would have been to have abstained from the vote.”
Even if Sebastian had abstained, the school closure vote still would have passed, with four other trustees voting for the proposal and two voting against it.
Regardless of how the vote came to pass, however, parents and community leaders vowed Monday night to fight efforts by charter schools to recruit students from SAISD.
Essence Charter tried to partner with SAISD
Rose Hill, a longtime president of the Government Hill Alliance Neighborhood Association, said during the school board meeting Monday that Essence had a fight on its hands.
“We’re not going to let you come into our neighborhood,” Hill said. “We’re going to fight you for every child, because those kids belong to us, and when it’s on us, we take care of our own first.”
Akeem Brown, the founder of Essence Prep, said he was caught off guard by those comments, particularly because the idea for the school was initially planned as a partnership with SAISD — the opposite of a competitor — something he said he has remained open to.
“I can’t stand that language, because we’re not in the business of kidnapping kids. We don’t steal kids,” he said. “Parents have a choice and they make that active choice when they register at any school.”
The goal of Essence Prep, which has 184 students, is to “affirm the identities of Black and brown kids,” a philosophy that Brown says has attracted parents away from the district, which has regularly underperformed regarding the education of Black children.
Brown said he saw a partnership as one way to “serve and support a school on the East Side of San Antonio” to change the trajectory or narrative, specifically for Black students.
“But they just told me no, straight up,” he said.
Sebastian, who didn’t know Brown at the time, said she questioned former Superintendent Pedro Martinez about the rejection.
“The concept was something that I felt like we could have definitely used in the district,” she said. “He pretty much told me I needed to choose either the district or charter schools.”
At the time, the district was already partnered with multiple other charter schools to operate campuses.
“I just felt like it was kind of hypocritical, honestly, that we weren’t giving all partners opportunities to even come to the table and see what they were offering,” Sebastian said.
Laura Short, a spokeswoman for SAISD, confirmed that Essence expressed interest in an 1882 partnership but said the district couldn’t disclose why they were not selected.
Brown, who moved on to form the public charter school after being rejected, said he suspects the focus on race for the school concept, which was pitched during the politically fraught period following the death of George Floyd in 2020, played into the reason it was rejected.
District, board looks forward to academics
The closure of schools was touted as a solution to deep historic inequities that were continuing to widen across the district.
Superintendent Jaime Aquino said the job of the board and district now is to make sure the consolidation results in real change for students, families and staff.
“As we heard 60% of our students are graduating SAISD not college-ready in reading or English… limiting them from an opportunity to lead a productive life,” he said. “That is a crime and a sin that needs to stop.”
Sebastian echoed that, explicitly calling for more to be done for Black students.
Looking forward, she hopes the community will look at her record and advocacy on the board and not cast aspersions based on her day job.
“I honestly think it is very unfair that people are using this to say that I’m corrupt,” she said. “Because I’ve been working here for two years, but I have been saying the same thing for a very long time.
“I have nothing to hide. I have nothing to gain other than just the hopes that we’re able to get our students all caught up. That’s it,” she said.
