BISD SETTLES WITH RENDON: REINSTATEMENT AND VINDICATION

By Juan Montoya

In a perfect world, if a school district administrator was sent into a department and uncovered clear evidence that a gaggle of lawyers, educational "educational consultants and advocates," and inept diagnosticians were conspiring to fleece the district and fatten their wallets at the expense of Special Services children, he would doubtless have been cheered.
In a perfect world, if that same employee discovered that school board members and their families were receiving special treatment not given other people and reported it, he would doubtless be given a raise, if not a promotion.
In a perfect world, if that same administrator had stopped the gravy train and turned over the evidence to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, he doubtless would have been recognized for his zealous endeavors to straighten out a corrupted system.
But the BISD after 2008 and was far from a perfect world.
Instead of plaudits and recognition, Special Services Director Art Rendon – a former Sheriff Department investigator – was placed on a one-year paid suspension, and then fired by the board majority in retaliation for reporting the fraud to authorities.
The majority – Rick Zayas, his business partner Ruben Cortez, Rolando Aguilar and KJoe Colunga – then hired legal gunslinger Rick Navarro or Harlingen and paid him $100,000s to get the dirt on him to justify his termination.
Undeterred, Rendon sued the district and the board's majority in federal court and charged that the administration, its local legal counsel, and the majority of the board had asked him, in effect, to turn a blind eye to the alleged abuses.
He said that since 2006, when he first uncovered the scam going on the department, that the due process hearings had become the equivalent of an ATM machine for attorneys who would file a grievance, skip over the mediation part entirely, and move on to the settlement. During the gravy days, scores of lawsuits totalling $100,000s in settlements were paid out.
He said that the fraud and abuse was so rampant that it made the department's billings for due process hearings shoot up during the 2007-2008 school year.
Rendon provided not only Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos with evidence concerning the suspected fraud and abuse in the due process hearing system for special education students, but also made the information available to other law enforcement entities such as the U.S. Attorney's Office, Medicaid fraud investigators, and the Texas Rangers, with little success.
He also said he provided information concerning the district's need for additional licensed specialists in school psychology. Allegedly improper LSSP evaluations provided the basis for allegedly fraudulent due process hearings, which at one point were costing BISD $12,000 per day, according to a memo provided to board members prior to a Dec. 16 board meeting.
The lawsuits centered mostly around the use of unscientifically-supported evaluations of special needs students by unqualified testers.
The law firm defending the school district at one time sent Rendon a letter which he shared with BISD counsel Mike Saldaña and superintendent Hector Gonzales where legal counsel advised the district not to use the flawed evaluation tests because they were "legally indefensible."
Rendon filed a Whistleblower's lawsuit against the former majority on the BISD board (Rick Zayas, Ruben Cortez, Rolando Aguilar, Joe Colunga and former superintendent Brett Springston) after he was terminated from his position after he went to law enforcement and federal authorities over what he called the abuse of the due-process system to milk the district of hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements.
In his lawsuit, he charged that the BISD misdiagnosed students with bogus psychological tests in "an effort to profit at the expense of children with special needs," and get federal and state funding."
He claimed he was fired after the contacted authorities to report what he believed was "systemic fraud and abuse of the system."
Rendon claims that a consulting firm BISD hired to review the tests determined they were "not scientifically valid" and "legally indefensible."
He claims the district's legal counsel and Corpus Christi attorney Christopher Jonas, who represented BISD parents and their "special needs children," profited from the testing, as it led to excessive due process hearings about the children's educational needs, and "outrageous" bills for legal services.
The people who had been benefiting from these outrageous practices blamed Rendon and Gonzales for killing the goose that laid the golden eggs, and moved to remove Gonzales and Rendon from the picture.
So what if some normal children were labeled "special needs" incorrectly and vice-versa with some children in need of special services diagnosed as "normal?"
The district had good intentions, and the professionals administering these flawed test were basically "guena gente, no?," if not really qualified.
Since Rendon left, many of these issues have been addressed and a diagnostic evaluation of the misevaluated Special Needs students undertaken. Due process hearings are no longer the gravy train they used to be, causing no small amount of chagrin and vindictiveness in the individuals that had profited from the scam.
Things dragged on Rendon's federal case for years and when his lawsuit was not killed outright and survived a summary judgement by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, the insurance company saw the handwriting on the wall and reached a settlement with the former Special Services administrator rather than throw more good money after bad with the lawyers.
At their meeting Tuesday, trustees approved (4-2-1) their counsel's recommendations that the lawsuit be settled and to put the affair behind them.
Voting for: Enrique Escobedo, Catalina Presas Garcia, Luci Longoria, Christina Saavedra.
Voting against: Rolando Aguilar and Minerva Pena.
Abstaining, Joe Colunga.
Few details of the settlement are available, but there is at least an offer of reinstatement and a substantial cash amount to make up for the long years Rendon and his family spent in legal limbo and exile from his profession.
Rendon was philosophical about the end of the legal battle.
"I come from a family where we are taught that even if there is no money involved, there comes a time when you have to take a stand when you see something happening that is not right," he said. "My family and I were put through a lot of hard times, but in the end it's worth it to see things set right."