Cone family seeks to continue attacks on SBISD from seat on Board

Hello readers, we are approaching our five year anniversary of reporting on major events in SBISD. As promised, we only contact you when there is an actionable step you can take to prevent harm to Spring Branch ISD.

With another school board election approaching next week, we write to update you on a pressing threat to the well-being of SBISD: Sally Cone, wife of the notorious Matt Cone, is seeking election to the SBISD Board of Trustees.

For two years, the Cone family has mounted a series of unfounded and false attacks against SBISD. In a nutshell, the Cone’s and their motley crew of supporters believe that there is a grand, community-wide conspiracy to harm them, with its nexus in the Spring Branch Independent School District.

Of course, there is no such thing at all, but the facts haven’t stopped the Cone’s from filing false claims against SBISD across multiple jurisdictions throughout Texas. Details follow, but the conclusion here is the Cone Family has a problem with truth and facts that disqualify them from being anywhere near SBISD governance.

Sally Cone’s election to the Board of Trustees would cause a vast disruption to the district. Ask around to find out how many people agree. Seriously, ask your principal, district staff, anyone close to the district. They have likely heard one or more of the incidents below triggered by the Cone Family.

As we observed at the CPTA forum earlier this month, Ted Tredennick and Courtney Anderson are the obvious choices to lead SBISD. There is a reason that every single local leader has endorsed them.

Early Voting starts tomorrow, so please take five minutes to cast your vote!

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The Cone Family’s trouble with the truth started way back in 2013. In 2024, we reported on the Cone’s extensive civil history, when Matt Cone was standing for election to the SBISD board. Since his loss in that 2024 election, Matt has acted in a highly antagonistic and scorned manner toward the district and its supporters.

It started in April 2024 when he accused his campaign opponent of “hacking his phone” to extract critical campaign data, a claim Cone concocted out of thin air. Cone called the Memorial Villages Police Department with this false claim, but MVPD did not open a report on the matter for lack of evidence.

Cone then moved to the civil arena, and accused the district, among others, of hacking his phone. This false claim also went nowhere, probably because Cone’s own investigator reported that such a hack was “unlikely”.

In June 2024, Cone attempted to sue this website, SaveSBISD.org, claiming we published libelous statements about the Cone family, which of course we did not. After internalizing that every word we published in 2024 was 100% true, Cone and his attorneys non-suited (dismissed) their own case. LOL.

To this point in Fall 2024, Cone’s actions, while extreme and petulant, were lawfully in-bounds. I mean, I guess we all have the right to file a lawsuit and lose. But, Cone went far further than this in the year that followed, and it is these further actions which are disqualifying for having Matt or Sally Cone anywhere near leadership in SBISD.

In December 2024, Cone turned fully anti-social and anti-community when Cone filed a complaint against SBISD for “Illegal Electioneering” with the Texas Education Agency. This claim against the district was completely without merit and was dismissed by the TEA, without the district even needing to present a defense. Even still, the district does bear financial costs in dealing with Cone’s unfounded accusations.

In February 2025, Cone and an accomplice used false pretenses to gain access to the secure area of the SBISD Administration Building. Cone and his accomplice lied to the law enforcement officer on duty and claimed an emergency need to visit the Asst. Superintendent’s office, so that Matt could submit an application for a place on the 2025 Ballot.

But, once inside, Cone declared that he had no such intent, and instead harassed multiple elderly SBISD employees until he was directed to leave by law enforcement. Those harassed employees reported being “scared and un-nerved” by Cone’s presence in their previously secure offices.

This was a serious breech of the public trust, as Cone and his accomplice exploited law enforcement’s good faith efforts to “help” them with a problem that did not in fact exist, and, subjected staff to emotional trauma.

In March 2025, Cone and his attorney Mitch Little unlawfully issued a subpoena to our cell phone carrier for our cell phone records. This subpoena demanded a year’s worth of data, including our GPS locations and all our electronic communications sent through the cellular network. Cone and Little issued this subpoena, knowingly, without providing any notice to us, making the subpoena unlawful on its face.

Fortunately, one of our astute readers brought this to our attention, and we challenged Cone and Little’s unlawful subpoena in court. After a nine minute hearing, during which Little and his firm were unable to justify their unlawful actions, the Judge rightfully sided with us and quashed Cone and Little’s illegal subpoena.

In May 2025, with his losses piling up, Cone began fabricating even more ridiculous claims against the district, the community, and this website. Cone claimed a grand conspiracy existed between district staff, its current and former trustees, the superintendent of schools, this website, and the larger SBISD community to take various “illegal actions against him”.

In late May 2025, Cone hired Wayne Dolcefino to file a completely unsubstantiated complaint against us with the Texas Ethics Commission (“TEC”), the body that regulates campaign finance in Texas. Cone’s complaint claimed, falsely, that Save SBISD and Spring Branch ISD itself were operating an illegal and clandestine Political Action Committee, washing thousands of dollars through non-existent bank accounts, all to prevent him from getting elected in 2024. Absurd.

We fully cooperated with the TEC investigation, answering each of their questions in writing and by sworn affidavit. We even waived our fifth amendment rights and subjected ourselves to 40 minutes of direct examination, on the stand and under oath, by TEC investigative staff.

After the investigators had brought Cone’s case in full, the Texas Ethics Commission deliberated for less than three minutes. The TEC ruled that we had NOT violated any of the statutes as Cone had alleged. The TEC additionally ruled that there was insufficient evidence to proceed to any further hearings. The TEC dismissed Cone’s complaint immediately.

In August 2025, Cone crossed a very serious line by impersonating the Spring Branch Independent School District in a legal claim against this website. Here are the facts:

On August 4, 2024, Cone filed a written Copyright Infringement Claim with our web services company. Therein, Cone blatantly lied, stating that he was authorized to act on behalf of the Spring Branch Independent School District, and that through him as their agent, the district was making seven separate claims of copyright infringement against our website.

Of course, none of this was true, or even plausibly true, because 1) SBISD is a public entity unable to copyright its work product, and 2) Cone sounded like a blathering idiot in his claim.

Cone also falsely claimed to represent SBISD Trustees Lisa Alpe, John Perez, and Caroline Bennett in this fabricated copyright claim.

By falsely swearing (under the penalty of perjury) that he had authority over district affairs, Cone triggered an automated, preemptive, temporary takedown of our website under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). Cone bragged about this achievement on the internet.

The temporary takedown expired 48 hours later and our website was restored. During that time, our web services company had established that Cone was not lawfully representing the district or its trustees, and had lied in his affidavit. Additionally, our web services company determined that there was no copyright infringement at all, as all our works cited fall clearly inside the “fair Use” provisions of the DMCA.

We notified the district of Cone’s actions immediately after he filed his complaint. Spring Branch ISD leadership was shocked to hear about how the district had been placed at risk by Cone’s fraudulent legal claim.  We fully cooperated with SBISD’s criminal and civil divisions in their response to Cone’s unlawful activities.

Aside: If it somehow remains unclear, understand that Matt Cone is a mentally unwell individual. Very unwell. He perceives things that are imaginary as real, and worse, thinks that which is very real (like law) is imaginary. There is overwhelming evidence of this in the Cone Family’s civil history prior to 2024, and Cone’s actions toward SBISD from April 2024 through today. We make this point because it is the only way we can understand Cone’s next action against SBISD:

In November 2025, Cone lashed out at SBISD’s audit firm, Whitney Penn LLP, which has provided assurance services to SBISD since 2015. Cone’s claim? That SBISD’s auditors had failed to find the vast conspiracy against him that was oh so very obvious to him in his delusional state of mind.

Specifically, Cone claimed that Whitney Penn was “negligent and incompetent” because it had “overlooked or ignored patterns of corruption involving SBISD trustees and staff”, including the fraudulent appropriation of hundreds of millions of dollars and the use of those resources to campaign against him. This claim is obviously absurd on its face, but Cone filed it with the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy (“TSBPA”) anyway, expecting it to be taken seriously.

As had happened with every single other of Cone’s ridiculous claims, the TSBPA quickly determined that no such incident had occurred, and gave SBISD and its auditors a clean bill of health while dismissing Cone’s case.

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We take the time to update you on these facts because they show beyond all doubt that the Cone’s are NOT seeking office with the best interest of SBISD in mind. So, why exactly is the Cone Family seeking election to a board of a school district they clearly do not like?

It is obvious, the Cone’s clearly want to harm the district however they can, and the best way for them to do that is by causing chaos on the Board of Trustees. They have tried everything else, it’s the only route they have left.

There have been many more acts of mayhem by the Cone family toward SBISD and its community in the last two years that don’t rise to the level of electoral materiality. We again suggest you ask around; we’re sure you will hear even more stories that we have not reported on here.

As always, we sign off by saying: if you want to remain informed, subscribe and follow us on Twitter. You can also email us at halsey@SaveSBISD.org