AT TSC, NEW BOARD WILL ADDRESS TERCERO FAILURES

By Juan Montoya
With a president earning more than a $200,000 salary and a "consultant" at another $180,000, it has been asserted that the Texas Community College is paying for two de facto presidents.
Lily Tercero convinced the board way back in 2011 to bring Dr. Leonardo De la Garza, a consultant was also her former boss at Ft. Worth and who was supposed to advice her on getting accreditation for a proscribed period of time which has now stretched for almost three years.
The "temporary" consultant that Tercero hired for the transition from a partnership with UTB to independent accreditation has become a permanent fixture at the college – and most importantly – in the TSC budget.
Initially hired at the recommendation of Tercero way back when in November 2011, de La Garza came on board as a consultant to Tercero  just a month after she herself was hired in October.
And now, five years later, this "temporary consultant" has become a fixture of the Tercero administration when the average life of a consultant doesn't extend for more than six months at best.
Back in November 2011, de La Garza was – and still is – a vendor and associate of Dynamic Campus, an IT firm which specializes in selling Ebooks and Information Technology (IT) to school districts and entities of higher education like community colleges and universities.
By all measures, De la Garza moved fast.
By May 2012 – some six months later – De la Garza had steered a $1 million IT contract to "Dynamic Campus," the computer firm for whom he had worked for more than three years before.
Then, on September 2012, four months after the $1 million pact, the company locked three segments of IT services to Dynamic Campus for an additional $10 million extending into 2015 with an option for another three years.
Who would have thought that from November 2011 to September 2012, De la Garza would have landed more than $10 million in contracts to his former employer?
That was on top of his consultant fees. Among the fees included in the total is a $2,000 monthly retainer and a $1,500 fee for expenses every time he visits Brownsville and the TSC campus.
That majority then composed of Kiko Rendon, Ed Rivera, Dr. Reynaldo Garcia and Art Rendon approved the lates consultant splurge in their last budget before Kiko Rendon and Rivera bailed out of the board.
In that budget for this year, that board's majority approved another $180,000 appropriation for De la Garza.
"We have basically been paying for two board presidents," said a TSC staff member who recently left – as did dozens more staff members at the community college – after having endured the "extreme micromanagement" by Tercero and De la Garza.
"People who have left were discouraged because they love TSC and supported the community college through its painful separation process only to be treated with very little respect by Tercero," she said.
In particular, the former staffer said that the Nursing Progam administrator had confided to some colleagues that she had been urged by the administration to adopt polices that would lower the standards of the program, something that she had refused.
"When you only have 46 percent of the nursing students passing the certification, something is wrong," she said. "Nora (Montlavo) was too much of a professional and couldn't get herself to do it."
Today, the board of TSC trustees will consider items on the agenda that should have been addressed years ago by Tercero and former TSC board president Kiko Rendon.
Among this is the Nursing Program (Item 3) where the state has prohibited the college from enrolling any new students unless this year at least 80 percent of the studetns pass the state nursing exam. The trustees, now mindful of the seriousness of the situation, have partnered with Texas A and M to bring the program up to snuff. But it wasn;t until the state came down hard on TSC that the board was made aware that the nursing program – long the jewel of the college's programs – was in trouble.
"They wer ebasicaly kept in teh dark by Tercero until it was just impossible to cover it up any longer," said the staff member. "Now the board has to step in and fix it."
There's also the matter of the 2016 Tax and Budget Planning Calendar (Item 4). With new trustees Ruben Herrera and Dr. Tony Zavaleta having a hand on planning the new budget, will de la Garza's $180,000 and United Brownsville's $20,000 "membership" dues survive the process? We must remember that Daniel Pizaña, Herrera's opponent, was backed by Carlos Marin, the owner of Ambiuotec, architect of United Brownsville, and job developer for Mike Hernandez's messianic OP 10.33.
Zavaleta's opponent in the recent runoff was Evelyn Cantu, who was the recipient of cash contributions by Marin and his wife Elena. Zavaleta will be sworn in next Monday, but he will have direct input into the budget process after that,
Item 5 will address standing committees that the former board had approved, but that Tercero and chair Kiko Rendon had refused to form. With a new majority on board, Tercero now will have to follow the direction set by the new majority and give in to their wishes. If these standing committees had been in place, it is doubtful that some of the situations addressed by the board would have developed.
However, she can count on the steadfast support of trustees Art Rendon and Dr. Rey Garcia who seem to be more concerned about Tercero than about the interests of the students, especially those in the afflicted nursing program.
Item 7 deals with the degree plan for Childhood Development, a program that was left out in the cold after Tercero refused to accommodate the students.However, Tercero and de la Garza have insisted in funding exprensive "marketing initiatives" that have resulted in questioable results. All that money has not resulted in increased enrollment, which has stayed basically the same. If not for the dual enrollment with local high schools, it would have remained falt or decreased.
With all this turmoil, is it any wonder that Tercero applied to the Laredo Community College for its presidency? We have learned that Laredo said no and didn't rank her as one of the finalists. Applying there when you have results like these back home didn't prove to be much of a "marketing initiative" for Lily.