THE BISD SLATE IS REVEALED: IS IT TOO LITTLE TOO LATE?

By Juan Montoya
Even though they never admitted it, we know that Otis Powers, Minerva Pena, Hector Chirinos and Butch Barbosa are running as a slate for the board of the Brownsville Independent School District.
We wonder why they didn't just come outright and said it to begin with instead of trying the keep the association hidden.
What was it that they feared?
It's interesting to see that the uncloaking of the slate came at the end of the early-voting period. As things go, the early mail-in and walk-in vote has determined the result in recent elections. By the time that the discerning reader saw that the ad paid by Barbosa was pushing for the foursome – as did the Mary Rey rehash of her political seduction by the wily boogie man Carlos Quintanilla – they probably had already voted.
As a slate, their platform was contradictory, but they promised the electorate that if they become the majority, they will not do what Presas-Garcia, Enrique Escobedo, Minerva Peña, Lucy Longoria, and Dr. Christina Saavedra have done. Adn they said they would also undo previous decisions by the current majority.
For example, they promise – dangling an illusionary $14.3 million carrot – that they will revisit the HealthSmart lawsuit filed as an election ploy by the former board majority (Rick Zayas, Ruben Cortez, Rolando Aguilar, and Joe Colunga) in the closing days of the 2010 campaign. Zayas and Cortez still lost and the lawsuit died a peaceful death after the new crew took over.
One can claim that HealthSmart owner Ted Parker bought the election to get rid of the lawsuit and embellish an intricate conspiracy at the highest levels, but the fact of the matter is that voters were tired of the performance of the old board on favoritism on personnel promotions, construction cost overruns, the firing of a superintendent who was at the helm of BISD when it was named as the recipient of the nationally-coveted Broad Award and CUBE Award that came with $1 million in scholarships for BISD graduates.
As the revelations of the cases filed by former Special Needs director Art Rendon, Superintendent Hector Gonzales, and former CFO Antonio Juarez became known in their lawsuits in state and federal court, it was obvious that this group had other priorities other than being "All About Children."
The had insurance and construction contracts in mind, favoritism of certain vendors, and the promotion of their relatives and friends to plum jobs in the district.
One of the candidates for Place 3 – Powers – is a self-described good ole boy" who has a half-dozen in-laws working for the district, at least three drawing salaries of $100,000 or more. We have seen in the Gonzales case that Powers doesn't take it kindly when an administrator transferred his kin from a principalship to the central office and takes it personally regardless of whether the transfer might have been done for the betterment of the district. His opponent Argelia Miller had a very effective ad that she only ran one time quoting the Gonzales lawsuit.
– April 2007: Gonzales transferred Mary Tolman from her position as principal of Rivera High School to the Central Office. Trustee Otis Powers was very upset and told Gonzales that this was not right and "this was not going to end there." Powers told Gonzales he shouldn't have transferred her because she was his sister-in-law.
Now, if Powers gets elected as it appears he might be, he will again ride herd over Gonzales and Juarez. A critical piece of evidence in the Juarez lawsuit was a recorded conversation admitted into  federal court that revealed that there was a conspiracy to fire the two men and that Powers formed a crucial part of it.There will be blood on the streets if and unrepentant Powers comes on board.
The timing of another candidate for Place 5, Don Clupper, was also intriguing. Clupper's previous ads were amateurish, contained grammatical errors, repeated words, and a number of embarrassing typos. They were obviously self-produced. We have pointed out before that candidates run the risk of embarrassing themselves when they present their own election pitch. Clupper's previous ads suffered from these deficiencies.
The Sunday ad, however, was effective in its brevity and its themes. He compared the education level between Presas-Garcia and Barbosa against his own. Of course, they were found wanting, which was the object of the ad.
As we were saying, if Clupper hadn't scrimped and saved on his advertising budget and had hired an experienced ad agency or any number of public relations outfits in town, he might have attracted the attention of the electorate.
As it is, he will probably draw enough to make him split the 60 percent of the vote that will be left over from the 40 percent-plus Presas-Garcia adherents in the electorate.
Jose Chirinos, for all practical purposes, is running unopposed as is Minerva Peña. But even if Powers wins and Peña returns along with Chirinos, without Barbosa they will remain a minority on the board to replace Rolando Aguilar and Colunga.
Presas-Garcia may have drawn the ire of the old BISD clique, but her forceful style in having a forensic audit performed and implementing the STEM program at Veterans Memorial High School has drawn admiration for her priorities. That and the releasing of two audits performed on the annual Joe Rodriguez scholarship fundraiser to the DA's Office propelled her to the public's attention.
The fact that the former BISD majotity fought tooth and nail to keep them from the public's eye to the point where they sued the Texas Attorney General and fought the Brownsville Herald's attempt to procure them to the tune of thousands of dollars didn;t leave a good taste with local residents.
Politics being what they are, these acts alone will probably keep her on the board.