MEALY-MOUTHED HERALD DEFENDS DISCREDITED TSC PRES

"Editorial critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors.”— Attributed to Ernest Hemingway

By Juan Montoya
This morning's pathetic and spineless defense of discredited Texas Southmost College President Lily Tercero by the editorial writers at the Brownsville Herald is a classic example of the kind of critics Papa Hemingway was talking about in the quote above.
The Herald, after all, is the only game in town and its coverage of higher education here has been characterized by its championing of the disastrous 20-year "partnership" between the University of Texas System and TSC under the direction of their darling Julieta Garcia, who was ready to hand the assets of the 90-year old institution to her masters in Austin.
It wasn't until the TSC trustees refused to approve her plan and went through with the separation – and suffered the umbrage of pro "partnership" adherents and the Herald's editorial writers – that they found out how out of touch they were with its readers and the local residents as well.
Then, after Garcia and her UT masters were sent packing, they turned a blind eye to Tercero's shortcomings and say her dismissal has "raised some questions."
Why, they ask, was she ungraciously dismissed after five years of "praise and positive reviews?"

Well, those praises and positive reviews were made by Kiko Rendon, the former chairman of the TSC board who has now hooked up with Mike Hernandez III's OP 10.33 as a "consultant" and who was so deep in hock to IBC's Fred Rusteberg that he could not say "no" to giving $25,000 a year for TSC's "membership" to United Brownsville.
In fact, a record search of local courts revealed that IBC wasn't the only one that Rendon had stiffed, it was just the biggest one, defaulting on a loan well past $100,000. IBC, United Brownsville and Rusteberg literally owned him.
A toast to Kiko! At least he didn't discriminate and was an equal opportunity offender.
The Herald hypocritically calls for "transparency" in the process involving Tercero and hints at the "dark political history of South Texas" and warns that any secrecy will only raise questions.
The Herald never asked for transparency from TSC's Garcia when she ignored the voters of the district and spent the $120 million she wanted to construct buildings even after her initial call for a bond issue that large was voted down. She then accepted a $68 million bond issue approved by the voters, and went about picking the TSC bones clean to come up with the rest, voters be damned.
TSC district taxpayers are still paying for her excesses.
Where was the Herald then demanding "transparency?"
Or how about when Garcia "transferred" herself a $34,000 raise to her already bloated $215,000 salary from the TSC English Dept. while calling for cutbacks to the UTB-TSC budget and personnel salaries?
This kind of selective morality and "transparency" by this has-been newspaper has been all-too evident in their coverage of the Brownsville Independent School District as well. After the trustees placed a retreaded Esperanza Zendejas as interim superintendent, there was a great hullabaloo made over the selection process and trustees talked of a national selection process, of community selection committees, of consultants to guide the selection process, etc.
Then they accepted Zendeja's watered-down resume and shelved their promises to the public. Where was the Herald then putting their feet to the fire and demanding transparency?
Or how about the BISD's coverage of the expenditures of millions gained from the Tax Ratification Election on such high-priority items like installing artificial turf not only in high schools, but also on middle school fields and even an indoors practice field for Rivera High School?
One main vendor championed by "Coach" Joe Rodriguez (Paragon) pocketed millions of taxpayer and state money. Where are the Herald's demands for explanations on the BISD's priorities and transparency?
But we digress. We were talking about TSC.
Here's a few.
Why did it take three tries for TSC to gain independent accreditation? This dragged out the process for three years because Lily and her $180,000 a year "consultant" (her former boss in Dallas) couldn't quite get it right.
And why did a consultant whose shelf life is usually six months stretch out into four years with a $180,000 annual price tag? And why was this consultant (Leonardo de la Garza) allowed to sell TSC his company's IT and Ebooks services that amounted to almost $11 million without other companies being considered even after he was being paid by TSC for his "consulting" services?
And while we're at it, why did it take the newspaper months to finally report that under Tercero's watch the school's nursing department is on shock probation and the program issued a death ultimatum if its students don't score above 80 in the state certification exam this September? What happens to all those students and their families who sacrificed to put them through school only to find that TSC and Tercero's administration had failed them?
And how about Tercero's failure to apply for the $1.7 million in  U.S. Department of Education Talent Search Program grants announced by U.S. Representative Filemon Vela? Schools in South Texas like the  University of Texas Rio Grande Valley UTRGV, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, Coastal Bend College and Texas State Technical College (TSTC) all got a piece of that pie.
The grant funds will support academic, career and financial counseling for students from low-income families to encourage them to graduate from high school and pursue post-secondary education. But TSC did not bother to apply. Why? Don't we have low-income students who need encouragement to attend college? Doesn't the Herald want its readers to know?
We understand that trustee Rey Garcia DDS, has decided to be Tercero's paladin and try to pin the blame for the president's failures on pressure from board members, particularly on chairwoman Adela Garza. Garcia was the lone vote (5-1) against dismissing Tercero. The other vote, in the person of trustee Art Rendon, high-tailed it out of the meeting before he had to vote on the issue and left Grampa Garcia to defend Lily alone.
We have learned that Garcia went whining to the Herald and that he is requesting for all emails between Tercero and chair Garza to be made available to him so he can then pass them on to the "transparent" Herald.
A Chinese saying, almost as ancient as Grampa Garcia, says that one should be careful what one wishes for. If those emails show that Tercero was reluctant to be "transparent" with her board chair and withheld information from board members to the detriment of them performing their fiduciary responsibilities, Garcia (and the Herald) could well wish he had never requested them.