"At the time, we were discussing school issues, talking about local control and that people locally should be involved in their community, definitely on school issues," Alonzo said. "In a lot of cities like Houston (with an estimated 587,000 non-citizen residents) there are parents who are legal residents, they're in line to become citizens, they pay taxes, they can go to PTA meetings, but they can't elect their local school board members."
"The biggest involvement they can have is to allow them to make decisions that affect their children," Alonzo said