ZENDEJAS GIRDS FOR WAR; DISSES BISD BOARD CANDIDATES

ZENDEJAS GIRDS FOR WAR; DISSES BISD BOARD CANDIDATES
By Juan Montoya
As the November 8 Brownsville Independent School Board elections approach  at least one "stakeholder" in their outcome is getting antsy.
That person is none other than BISD Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas.
At a recent meeting between with members of the local business community, Zendejas did the unthinkable. She told the assemblage that there were people she could not work with in her quest to remain at her $200,000-plus position.
As astounded school district administrators and business people listened, she said that she did not need Dr. Sylvia Atkinson, Catalina Presas-Garcia, Minerva Peña, or Otis Powers on the board if she was to lift the district to higher levels of achievement.
"We couldn't believe that the superintendent would use the meeting to campaign for specific candidates," said a person who attended. "She also said that she preferred to have Philip Cowen and (Hector) Chirinos to remain on the board. It was pretty unseemly for an administrator to openly campaign for members of the board who will be her bosses."
This is not the first time that Zendejas has been heard addressing the desirability of having her hand-picked candidates elected before local business and civic groups.
Superintendents, as we all know, live and die with a majority on the school board. If they cannot have the support of and keep a majority happy, it's time to get packing.
Well, Espy (or shall we say Adelita Zendejas) knows this all too well. She has demonstrated this to Brownsville residents when, in 1995 – with three years left on her contract with the BISD – she left to seek greener pastures elsewhere after her majority vanished.
As survivor of educational bureaucracies, she knew that the writing was on the wall when candidates who questioned her leadership won over her supporters on the majority.
When Zendejas left Brownsville in 1995 she landed a job with the Indianapolis Public Schools that lasted another three years until she was replaced with her assistant superintendent for facilities management.
At the time, a news account of her departure indicated that she had a "bankrupted relationship" with the board there.
When she left, she said that the board's support for her reforms had been "lukewarm."
The Indianapolis board paid her $158,100 – a year's salary and benefits – for her early departure.
It's a pattern that has followed her since.
In San Jose, California, Zendejas resigned two years before the end of her contract with the East Side Union High School District over criticism of her management style. According to Zendejas’ contract in San Jose, she made $225,000 a year. The board also paid her a portion of her salary when she left the district.  As part of the separation settlement, she continued working for the district as a consultant until Jan. 31, 2001 and collected a monthly payment of $14,000 (about $168,000 a year) plus benefits, according to the consulting agreement
At the Alisal Union School District in Salinas, Calif., Zendejas also agreed to leave in 2010 but negotiated a deal where she stayed on as a consultant with the district paying her $168,000 a year to do the same job.
Now back in Brownsville where she has family, Zendejas has nowhere left to go and she is out on the hustings trying to make sure that the "right" candidates win in the November elections so that she won't have to clean up her office of her personal belongings and seek another place to alight.
The math is simple. She has in her corner a majority of the school board that is made up of Joe Rodriguez, Cesar Lopez, Chirinos, and Carlos Escobedo.
Chirinos, who holds Position 7, and who everyone considers the weak link because he won his position in a runoff with Linda Gill by four questionable votes four years ago, is being challenged by the formidable Atkinson, the not-so-formidable Orlando Carlos Treviño, and firefighter/activist Rigo Bocanegra who has campaigned for just about every candidate for every position.
To make matters worse, Chirinos has not formally filed to run for reelection, so her majority on the board is not guaranteed.
If either Atkinson or Bocanegra wins, the majority vanishes. Treviño, Otis Power's uncle, is said to be in the race against Chirinos to avenge his vote to replace Otis as board president. Chirinos voted for Peña to replace Powers as president after she decided to play with the Rodriguez majority. They discarded her after they gained the firm majority with Elizondo.
The same goes for the post held by Peña on Position 6, a former ally who is no longer considered her supporter on the board. Peña is facing challengers Kent Wittenmore (a retired BISD administrator considered Rodriguez's ally, though not necessarily a sure vote) and Roberto Uresti, a gadfly who might be considered a spoiler in the race.
Even more uncertain for Zendejas, is the candidacy of Anna Elizabeth Hernandez OQuin, a successful businesswoman who owns two McDonald's franchises in town. Although Hernandez-OQuin has not filed formally, her appointment of a campaign treasurer form lists Place 6 as the post which she is seeking.
As if that wasn't enough to keep Esperanza up nights, Argelia Miller has entered the running for Position 3, throwing off the equation between incumbent Herman O. Powers and Philip T. Cowen. The Powers-Cowen race was going to be a tossup, but with Miller in the race, the Latina "blind" vote factor could tilt the race in Powers' favor, something that Zendejas dreads.
With such a chimerical mixture of candidates, Zendejas is seeing "moros con machetes" everywhere and has moved to gird her loins for battle the potential hazard to her reign.