ATKINSON TAKES THE BAIT, DROPS OUT OF BISD RACE

By Juan Montoya

It was done in the waning hours of the night, more or less during the witching hour.
In a personnel item buried in the back of the Tuesday agenda, the school administration would recommend that the board hire Sylvia Atkinson as the BISD's Grants Administrator at a hefty $87,000 salary.
Atkinson, who just a few days before she was told the grants position would be available if she wished to apply, was set to run against trustee Ruben Cortez, who along with Rick Zayas and Enrique Escobedo, are up for reelection this November.
The duties of the position have been filled by Chief financial Office Tony Fuller since former CFO Tony Juarez's contract was not renewed by the majority on the board which includes Cortez, Zayas, Rolando Aguilar and Joe Colunga.
All four are currently being sued in federal court by Juarez for violation of his civil rights which includes charges that he was fired as a result of not going along with the manipulation of an insurance contract with the district and with conspiring with the four to oust former superintendent Hector Gonzales on trumpeted up grievances.
"Sylvia was going around showing prototypes of her push cards and campaign materials less than two weeks ago"' said a source who saw the cards. "They were done very professionally by a well-known advertising agency in town. She was looking for support for her candidacy in the community and getting people committed to donate to her campaign."
However, sources indicate that some board members approached Atkinson (whose brother Charley is a City of Brownsville commissioner) and told her that if she wouldn't run, the majority would vote to get her the plum position.
Then, on Tuesday, less than two weeks since Sylvia was seen in local eateries trying to drum up support, the administration recommended her for the position.
At least one board member was overheard saying that Zayas had approached her and told her to "Just shut up and vote for Sylvia'," said a source. That board member, Minerva Pena, complained that she resented the way that Zayas was badmouthing her. Other sources indicate that Bertha Pena, a BISD area administrator, did not recommend that Atkinson be hired.
During the Tuesday meeting, both Minerva Pena and Catalina Presas-Garcia abstained from voting on the administration's recommendation of Atkinson for the position claiming that the administration had been unable to answer their questions regarding the hiring.
Pena and Presas-Garcia said they would abstain because they could not get chance to ask Human Resources Department Director Susan Fox on the pool of applicants that had applied for the job, or what system was used to rank the unknown number of applicants.
"Susan Fox couldn't be found," said a source who was at the midnight meeting. "It seemed like she was washing her hands of the matter and leaving it in the hands of superintendent Brett Springston."
"I couldn't understand what the hurry was to fill this position," said Presas-Garcia. "Fuller had been doing the job just fine until now. When we asked for details of the hiring, they couldn't give it to us. They didn't want to discuss it."
As a result, the vote to hire Atkinson was 5 for and none against, with both women abstaining. Escobedo went along with the majority, apparently out of loyalty to family relations.

Many point to Zayas as the pivotal player in the scheme to lure Atkinson to accept the position in return for her not running against his fellow board member and business partner Cortez.
"Rick desperately wants to keep the majority on the board," said one. "If Atkinson had run and beat Cortez, the whole make up of the board wold have changed. Rick couldn't afford that."
Others say that Atkinson's taking the offer from the majority reveals her character, or lack thereof.
"Her credibility just took a nose dive," said a former supporter. "We were set to help her get rid of Cortez, and now she goes and does this."
Atkinson's career has been marked by conflict and charges of favoritism and cronyism in almost every district where she has worked.
When she was at Los Fresnos, a divided community ousted her after a school election with many school employees charging that she kept a coterie of favorites and disdained others.
On December 2005, she resigned from the Los Fresnos Independent Consolidated District after she could not muster the majority vote on the board to maintain her job.
The LFCISD shelled out more than $205,000 in severance pay when she resigned. And, thanks to a law championed by state Rep. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, the state penalized the district for awarding severance in excess of a superintendent's annual earnings and the district took another $80,000 hit in state funding, too.
It was the largest cut to any district in more than two years. As part of Atkinson's severance agreement, Los Fresnos agreed to rescind a number of negative documents from her personnel file, according to documents on file at TEA.
In April 2006, after leaving Los Fresnos, Atkinson landed in the Santa Rosa Independent School District where she served as superintendent for about eight months. After conflict there, she left to take the job of superintendent of Socorro Independent School District in January 2007.
Charges of favoritism and cronyism have followed Atkinson there, too.
Her hiring of Ida Trevino and her husband Guillermo Salinas and Andres and Cynthia Lopez, who all worked with her in South Texas, for the Socorro ISD Police Force, irked some locals who claimed they were hired simply because they knew Atkinson.
Trevino beat out 15 other qualified applicants for the job of task force commander, even though she has a high school diploma and a cosmetology degree. Critics said they believed cronyism played a role in her hiring since Trevino worked briefly as the chief of police for the Santa Rosa School District.
The El Paso Times and KFOX television station have reported that Atkinson had been at the center of an investigation into the district's hiring practices and allegations of cronyism.
Trevino and Salinas left the SCISD after a number of controversies including one where Trevino charged that a district employee had threatened bodily harm on her son, a charge strongly denied by the accused. No charges were ever filed or arrests made in that fiasco.
When Atkinson she left, the SCISD agreed to give her one year salary as severance.
At the time, her salary was $220,900.
Doubtless, Atkinson will now work hard to keep the majority of the board in office knowing as she does the opposition to them, the same opposition she was courting to oust Cortez.
Some are asking that if the hiring was on the up-and-up, why was it done in such a hurry? Other questions also have surfaced such as:
"When she applied for an assistant principal position last year, she was passed over. What makes her so employable now?"
"How is it possible that $78,000 in district funds were apparently used to buy out a political opponent by the majority?" and
"How long will the citizens of Brownsville continue to put up with this type of self-serving behavior by the majority on the board?"