VOTE TIE ON RINGS KEEPS TOXIC ISSUE ALIVE AT BISD

By Juan Montoya
For the third time, the trustees on the board of the Brownsville Independent School District cast a 3-3 vote with one abstention and decided not to accept after-the-fact donation of $25,060 in championship soccer rings by a ring maker associated with a company for whom trustee Joe Rodriguez is a vendor.

Board president Cesar Lopez said he wanted to put the toxic issue to rest saying it had cast an "awful dark cloud" over Porter. Appropriately, trustee Carlos Elizondo, the Brownsville Fire Dept. Fire Chief, had come to the meeting aboard the department's hazardous materials fire truck and parked outside in the front parking lot. (Someone also pointed out that Elizondo had parked the fire truck on a handicapped parking space and it appears from the picture sent to us that he might have. But closer inspection shows that it is merely a sign directing visitors to the handicapped ramp on the side of the main building. Closer scrutiny comes with the territory.)

The three voting against accepting the donation by Herrf Jones – Laura Perez-Reyes, Minerva Peña and Dr. Sylvia Atkinson – said they were worried about potentially negative consequences for the student'athletes and heeded the advice of legal counsel saying that accepting the donation would constitute a violation of the district's own policies.

Joe Rodriguez, who is registered as a vendor with BSN Sports, which merged with ring maker Herrf Jones in 2013, participated in the discussion but did not vote on the issue despite complaints by Peña that he shouldn't join the discussion. Rodriguez joined with BSN Sports as a "consultant" and that firm merged with Herrf Jones three years later under the Varsity Brands umbrella. http://www.bsnsports.com/press_releases/merger%20-%2006-25-13.pdf

As such, he is prevented from discussing or voting on any item dealing with those companies. However, since the issue first surfaced in the board's January 17 meeting, he has discussed and voted on the issue a number of times.

In one vote which ended in a 3-3 tie, the donation from the vendor was not accepted. In another the following month, he cast his vote that resulted in another tie that prevented the district from asking the Texas Education Agency for assistance to resolve the matter.

"There were two mistakes made here," he said over Peña's protests that he could not join in the discussion. "One I've already mentioned (procurement of goods without a purchase order) and the other is that in the business world you are not supposed to send anything down without a purchase order. If you do. you have to swallow the bill."

Rodriguez bristled when Atkinson commmented that she found his comments "very interesting."
I registered as a vendor with BSN," Rodriguez said hotly.

Even though the invoice sent by Herrf Jones to Porter indicated that two free rings were added as a "volume discount" for Rodriguez and superintendent Esperanza Zendejas, none of that was mentioned at the meeting. There was also no mention of the fact that Zendejas emailed Herrf Jones competitor Jim Ramirez, of Josten's, on June 21, five days after the Porter soccer team beat Frisco in Georgetown for the championship that she, Porter Principal Hector Hernandez and athletic coordinator Tom Campos had already decided to give the business to Herrf Jones.

An audit conducted by BISD Co-lead Auditor Arvin Tucker said Zerndejas had indicated there was no money budgeted for the rings and "negotiated" a donation of the 28 $885 student rings and that the non-players, would pay the $995 for theirs.

Peña said she was concerned that down the road students would become ineligible for athletic scholarships for college or lose their amateur status if it was known that they had accepted the expensive rings in recognition for their performance as students athletes.

Rodriguez tried to say that the UIL had changed the rules to allow students to receive gifts on August 1, 2016.

However, legal counsel Salazar Baltazar corrected him and said that the changes didn't apply to second parties making the gifts, but rather to gifts made by the school districts to students. The three voting to accept the "donation" were Rodriguez, Carlos Elizondo and Lopez. Peña said that in order to protect the students, she would rather have the district pay for the rings.

"I don't know how many times we've paid bills after the purchases had been made," she said. "We've done it before and I'd rather protect the students and pay for them."