MONTOYA SE LOS AMARRA! ATKINSON GETS REINED IN

By Juan Montoya
Brownsville Independent School District's Sylvia Atkinson was once the Assistant Superintendent  for Human Resources (at $113,000).
Then, she was named Asst. Superintendent for Curriculum (at more tha $120,000).
Now, as her star wanes at the district and Superintendent Carl Montoya (no relation to the writer) finally realized that her bludgeon style of administration at both these positions was creating growing animosity within the ranks, unlike Mexico, he finally said enough and found he indeed, have huevos.

Montoya

At yesterday's meeting of the BISD Board of Trustees, he recommended – and the board approved – her transfer to be the Asst. Superintendent for Maintenance and Operations of the district($????)
This is the same administrator who was hired by the former board after they found out that she was contemplating a run for a trustee position against Ruben Cortez. Rather than give her the opportunity to meet her in a campaign contest, she was hired at $98,000 as Grants Administrator, a sort of catch-all position that has served as a transitory position while they find a place to put you.
"The principals are overjoyed,"said a BISD administrator. "They had had enough of her bullying style of management. Everyone is happy once again."
Atkinson's run at the BISD occurred after she had been superintendent at other school districts int eh state. To say that her tenure at the former districts was tumultuous is to put it mildly. In almost every case, she left the districts in conflict and walked away with a nice pile of cash when they bought out her contract rather than engage her in costly litigation and public spectacle.
The straw that broke the Montoya's back was her reported and continuing attempts to undermine his authority. We understand that recently rehired former superintendent Hector Gonzales told her in no uncertain terms that before she spoke with anyone in Human Resources, she would have to get his approval.
Atkinson's career has been marked by constant  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.

Atkinson

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.
Now that Montoya has finally opened his eyes and discovered that Atkinson's performance was undermining his authority, the move the Maintenance and Operations for a former superintendent of schools surely must be the writing on the wall for her stint at BISD.
Whether she chooses to read Montoya and the boards' motives for the reassignment is now left up to her.