AT BISD, LITIGATION OF OLD BOARD MAJORITY HANGS LIKE AN ALBATROSS AROUND NECK OF NEW CREW

By Juan Montoya
Four years ago (2008), the Brownsville Independent School District was the envy of not only the state, but the nation.
The district had just been chosen to receive the prestigious Broad Award (and $2 million in scholarships for seniors). Its school board was then awarded the Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) recognition in competition with hundreds of other boards nationwide.
"For the first time in history, one school district (BISD) was recognized for its progress in eduction students and for the unity of its board," said a current board member. "There had never been another district that had been awarded this recognition."
Coming on the heels of a bond issue approved by the voters of the district of some $136 million for school construction, its reserve fund hoverer somewhere around $148 million. Local architects and building contractors salivated at the thought of getting their hands on some of the loot.
That opportunity came with the results of the election of November 2008.

In one fell swoop, a new majority on the board was created when trustees Rick Zayas, Ruben Cortez, Rolando Aguilar and Joe Colunga formed a majority. From there on, the downward spiral began.

Within months of their swearing in, the new majority suspended, investigated, adn then fired at least three principal players in the BISD structure. They targeted Art Rendon, head of special services who superintendent Hector Gonzales had entrusted with unearthing the malfeasance at Special Services.
Rendon's probing had uncovered inconvenient actions that involved a cynical milking of the due-process hearings that resulted in plaintiff attorneys, education consultants, and BISD attorneys pocketing large sums of cash in a rash of hearings that worked their way swiftly through the filing, skipped the mediation, and went straight for the settlement.
Likewise, Rendon uncovered instances where school board members were getting special treatment for their relatives, including their children and wives, and pressuring administrators to hire relatives outside the normal hiring process. Their actions spurred him to seek the assistance of local prosecutors, Texas Rangers, Medicaid fraud investigators, and, finally, the U.S. Attorney's Office.
For his troubles, Rendon was suspended, and finally terminated. He, apparently, had stepped on one too many toes of those aligned with the new majority.
Gonzales, too, suffered the ignominy of being the superintendent of a nationally-recognized award only to be terminated by the board for alleged wrongdoing.
Gonzales had incurred the wrath of the majority when they learned that he had ordered two audits of the annual fundraiser by BISD Athletic Director icon Joe Rodriguez that found "apparent violations" of BISD policy and potential criminal acts. The baord prohibited the release of the reports and Rodriguez filed a defamation lawsuit against Presas-garcia when she saw it as her fiduciary resposibility to turn the reports to the local district attorney.
The new majority, though, its actions, showed that it would spare no district expense to justify its actions. In the case of both Rendon and Gonzales, the majority approved the hiring of Harlingen legal gunslinger Rick Navarro to find the dirt to justify their actions. After a few months of compiling existing BISD audits, Navarro's firm came up with warmed over numbers and presented them as a new report.
Rendon's lawsuit has been settled and Gonzales' lawsuit is in state court alleging violation of his civil rights under Section 1983.
And even when nothing ever came out of the witch hunt initiated by the former board majority to justify its actions, Navarro profited handsomely from the heavy lifting and got paid $366,755.19 for his troubles.
Meanwhile, district has had to adjust to state budget deficits that have curtailed its operations. The former board majority's custom of going to the reserve funds to balance the disparity between income and expenditures eroded the $148 million in reserves to about $65 million in two short years. The amount of money that BISD had became a shell game that was exposed before the elections and resulted in voters rejecting the candidacy of Zayas and Cortez. 
The former majority also took issue when then-BISD Chief Financial Officer Tony Juarez did not recommend that the Stop-Loss insurance worth millions to its local agent and carrier go to majority favorite and trustee benefactor Johnny Cavazos. They tried to play Juarez against Gonzales and a local federal judge found enough evidence to warrant a trial in Juarez's charges that they conspired to award the account to Cavazos using the district's grievance process to justify Juarez's and Gonzales' termination.
Alas, Juarez refused to play ball and took his evidence (including tape recordings of former and current board members and administrators) to the FBI and filed a lawsuit. The former majority (Zayas, Cortez, Aguilar and Colunga) asked the federal court to grant them qualified immunity and dismiss the charges. The court refused.
Here's where it gets interesting. Nearly three years after the former majority initiated the litigation, the current majority (Catalina Presas-Garcia, Dr. Christina Saavedra, Enrique Escobedo and Lucy Longoria) has tried to put these cases to bed.
However, the firm that was recommended by Zyas, Cortez, et al has repeatedly not heeded their wishes and instead of biting the bullet and admittingng that the former majority may not have had the interests of the BISD or its students at heart when it initiated the litigation, has disregarded the board's wishes and not only fioled an appeal with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, but, whne the court refused to overturn Judge Andrew Hanen's ruling denying immunity to the four defendants, went on ahead without board authority to appeal the appeals court ruling as well.
A local blogger associated with Zayas telegraphed their intentions when even before the appeal motion to reconsider the appeal was fileld, he could not contain himself and proscribed the manner and the justifications of the defendants to motion for a reconsideration. The gleeful blogger, a known associate of Zayas, published his legal analysis and advice even before the request for reconsideration was made public.
"Craig Vittitoe (a principal in the law firm making the appeal) says he doesn't have to talk to this current board," said a BISD source. "He told them that his clients were the members of the previous board majority, not the majority now."
A local administrator said that BISD policy indicates that any actions by the legal counsel must be approved by the board before the attorneys can advance. In this case, however, the tail seems to be wagging the dog.
"It is highly unlikely that the lawyers are not taking the advice of the former majority members on this one," said the BISD source. "This board wants to put that costly litigation behind it. But the way the counsel is acting, it appears they want it to drag along until it influences the next board election next year. Like a relative who's overstayed his welcome, these cases are beginning to smell."