Saturday, January 28, 2017

TERCERO'S UNILATERAL DECISION TO COST TSC MILLIONS

By Juan Montoya
The minutes of the Sept. 20, 2012 meeting of the Texas Southmost College board of trustees had an item (#8) dealing with the granting of a three-year contract for providing textbooks and instructional materials for students in the varied courses, marketing and online instruction.

Only one vendor, Pearson Learning Solutions, submitted a bid to the Request For Proposals (RFP). Curiously, it was the same company, that Dr. Leonardo De la Garza, TSC President Lily Tercero's former boss and $180,000 consultant had worked for and that he also recommended.

Tercero and then-VP of Finance and Administration Chet Lewis recommended to the board that the contract be awarded to Pearson. The RFP contract term was for three years, starting in the Fall of 2013 with an option for renewal in 2016.

The board then instructed Tercero to enter into the contract with Pearson Learning Solution for the materials and services.

Just this week, the new TSC board was handed an invoice from Pearson Solutions for just over $1,072,796 million for eBooks and online services to cover the costs of the existing contract. But lo and behold! they found out that instead of the three-year contract they had specified on the RFP that Tercero had signed a contract for four years.

The TSC board back then, with chairman Kiko Rendon, apparently missed the discrepancy, and the college was on the hook for a year that they hadn't approved. This Thursday, the new board bit the bullet and extended the contract for yet another year to cover the gap between the time Pearson stops providing the service and a new vendor is approved.

Like it or not, with Pearson going out of of the LMS business next year, and a need to transition to a new Learning Management System, they  paid the vendor, and covered the college until December 2017.

Additional payments of $1,000,000 will have to be made to cover the Spring of 2017, $50,000 for Summer 2017, and an additional $1,000,000 for the Fall of 2017.

Meanwhile, the search is on to find a new LMS provider for electronic books and materials. If the original RFP had been followed, the process to select a new LMS provider would have been over last year. Instead, the new board gave itself a few months to complete the process.

Why did Tercero bypass the parameters of the RFP and unilaterally sign on for four years?
"She pretty much did what she wanted," said a TSC administrator. "As long as she had Kiko and a majority on her side, she pretty much did things on her own with or without board approval."

This is just the latest revelation of Tercero's maverick actions during her tenure at TSC. She was terminated in August 2016. She has been president since 2011. At her firing, trustees cited her unilateral renewal of a windstorm insurance contract without board approval. Later, it was revealed that she had used the rubber stamp signature of former trustees Kiko Rendon and Ed Rivera to sing checks totaling millions of dollars.

The total amount that was approved by Tercero where the name of one or both former trustees was used to countersign the payments totaled about $1,502,082.

After her dismissal she sued the trustees and TSC claiming she was denied due process and that there were no grounds for her dismissal. She asked the court to have the college pay her for the three-year contract that was extended by the board majority under Rendon before the next trustee elections where the majority changed.



14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just another example of how tax dollars are wasted by those elected to educate out children. It seems that all connected with public education are corrupt. Whether in BISD or TSC or the UT System, corruption seems to rule....meaning the taxpayers are abused. Are all governments and elected officials corrupt???? It seems so. And yet the voters, parents and taxpayers of Cameron County don't seem to give a shit. It seems that the public supports corruption and demands it.

Anonymous said...

All of Brownsville is corrupt.

Anonymous said...

This political advertisement paid for by Adela and Associates (Trey and Ruben).

Anonymous said...

We need to put the grown-ups back in charge because the present leadership managed to fire Dr Tercero in August and put the college accreditation in jeopardy in just 5 short months. Adela Garza and Ruben Herrera are clueless to the needs of the college and are just focusing on $$$$$ contacts while the academics and instruction deteriorate.

Anonymous said...

Adela has been a board member since 2008. All this happened under her watch, why didn't she say something? Now she gets put in charge as Chair in June 2016 and gets acreditation for the college in trouble by January 2017.

Anonymous said...

"Stupid is as stupid does." Great decisions Adela Garza and Ruben Herrera, way to ruin a successful college that took 5 years to rebuild in 6 months.

Anonymous said...

Who is in the board majority that is messing everything up?

Anonymous said...

Once Dr Tercero wins her lawsuit and the college has to pay her over half a million dollars due to the Chair Adela Garza's and board member "Attorney" Ruben Herrera's erroneous decisions orchestrated to take full control of the administration of college business, Juan will you apologize for being on the wrong side of this issue?

Anonymous said...

Lock her up.....

Anonymous said...

Looks like they need a consultant to come and fix things, they should call Dr Leonardo De La Garza because they are obviously screwing things up without him.

Anonymous said...

Juan why don't you talk about the accreditation problems caused by your inept board majority?

Anonymous said...

Adela, Ruben, Zavaleta, Trey and Raymond.

Anonymous said...

Better yet, lock them all up. All five of them.

Anonymous said...

This entire fiasco needs an FBI investigation. Do not mess with our kids damnit.

rita