April 22, 2019

For Immediate Release: DeSoto Pastors Publicly Address Challenges Facing DeSoto ISD While
Remaining Confident
(DeSoto, Texas) DeSoto Pastors are uniting across denominational lines to use their prophetic voices to
help bring about stability, civility, and accountability to a school board and district that has been
maligned in the community and media over the last few years.

Several pastors have met with school board officials and administrators behind the scenes prior to and
after the hiring of the new superintendent, Dr. Deandre Weaver, in whom they have a great deal of
confidence to lead the school district forward through these turbulent, yet hopeful, times. These pastors
have amongst them former school board members, teachers, and other credentials that give them the
credibility not only to pray for the district’s meetings, but to provide much needed wisdom to this school
board, to the school district and to the city during this pivotal time of transition. The lives of those who
will be impacted further as this district closes a school, lays off employees, and deals with the fears of
their next steps are in our congregations. We cannot remain silent at a time like this.

Some of the areas of concern that these faith leaders want to see improvement in and are going to hold
the school board and administration accountable to are as follows: (1) Making a visible display of the
focus in the media and in daily operations shifting from being school board focused back to being
student focused (2) Board Dynamics that allow the Superintendent to do the job that a superintendent
is paid to do, and not the board doing the job of a superintendent (3) Holding the board accountable for
modeling healthy and mature relationships for our children and citizens instead of the toxic
environment displayed in board meetings (4) Better communication from our board with pertinent
information including items that should be shared with the district and community before the media is
contacted (5) Personal agendas placed aside for the well-being of the students and district you are
charged to be good stewards of and for the restoration of confidence from the citizens who placed you
in office. This includes an even more inclusive and diverse staff that reflects our city and region. We
support the children no matter who is hired in administration or elected into public office. We expect
the same of the leaders in our school district. This happened under the majority of the current board’s
watch. We as pastors are here to help it improve under ours.

This accountability will come in the form of holding individual meetings with school board members and
administration to periodically discuss your performance in the 5 previously stated items, as well as
continued attendance at scheduled and called meetings of the district. We will request updates in
person more frequently than when you are running for office, but also throughout the school year. As
Nathan the prophet of God confronted David the King who represented the government to be a better
leader, we stand together for the children and this community with that same spirit of accountability.
We look forward to our time of not just praying together, but working together for this brighter future
we will have together in DeSoto ISD.

Our faith is strong in God. We, our children, and this city need it to be stronger in our School District
leadership overall. We understand we have much to overcome, but we can overcome it together and
not divided. We are here to help with that process and believe these steps along with others will help us
patiently rise to our highest levels of excellence and soar as the Eagles we are. We are DeSoto!
Pastor(s)

Ed Johnson III

Christopher Henderson

Bishop Robert Nichols jr

Kevin Strempke

Kelly Wolverton

Jason Neising

Gregory Drake

Joseph Rasheed

Curt Krohn

Marcus D. King (Chair of Coalition of DeSoto Pastors) Contact:desotopastors@gmail.com and

mdking26@yahoo.com