Powerful Voices Speak at Round Rock School Board Meeting: Updated 12/15

While I was unable to attend last night's Round Rock ISD board meeting, one nationally-known activist did:  Texas Americans For Prosperity Director Peggy Venable.  Venable presented an open letter to the Round Rock School Board on behalf of Americans For Prosperity, in which she reminds the trustees that they work for the taxpayers and citizens and have no right to censure elected officials with whom they disagree. 

She also noted that similar behavior on the part of the El Paso ISD Superintendent prevented that board from gaining information about illegal activities that eventually led to jail time for Superintendent Garcia.  Venable correctly stated that public records belong to everyone, including elected members of the board.

Regarding the School Health Advisory Council (SHAC,) it seems the Superintendent finally got around to reading the state's education law code and created a new presentation that includes detailed information.  The new document is in stark contrast with the sloppy and unprofessional work submitted by Superintendent Jesus Chavez' administration for 2011-2012.  Of course this battle is far from over; Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards' group, "Texas Freedom Network," has been trying to use local SHAC's to impose radically leftist sex education programs in Texas schools.  Watch for the RRISD Superintendent and the liberal-progressive members of the school board to try to stack the district's SHAC with TFN activists.

If you are not too busy with those Christmas preparations and would like to send a note of support to Peggy Venable and the two board members who are standing up for transparency in government, here is their contact information:

Texas AFP Director Peggy Venable:  Comment on her Open Letter here.
RRISD Elected Trustee Terri Romere:  terri_romere@roundrockisd.org
RRISD Elected Trustee Pauline Law:  pauline_law@roundrockisd.org

Update:  It seems I missed another powerful message that was delivered to the RRISD Board of Trustees on December 13.  A Round Rock citizen by the name of Scott Campbell addressed the board and circulated a copy of his comments.  Campbell's well-written letter reminds me of the scare-mongering perpetuated by RRISD Superintendent Jesus Chavez during the 2011 Legislative session, and the erroneous information he put forth.  Regarding recent board conduct, Mr. Campbell notes that five board of trustee members "have fallen short" of our trust.


Scott Campbell's letter to the RRISD Board of Trustees.
 

Thank you for the opportunity to address the Round Rock ISD Board of Trustees.

Our message this evening is about "trust", the root of the word "trustee", the trust we as parents and community members placed in you when electing you to make decisions maximizing our children's quality of education while optimizing the use of funds financed by the taxes we pay. Recent decisions by five board of trustee members have fallen short of this trust.

The board member these board members have censured on multiple occasions represents a minority viewpoint within the board of trustees. The legitimate concerns she raises on behalf of the community stakeholders are being marginalized. She asks questions and digs deeper for data in the interest of making informed decisions. This due diligence is met by resistance from other board members with statements such as “I/we don't or can't ask those types of questions". While community input is solicited, these board members generally vote with the administration's recommendation.

During the 2011state legislative session, as the state budget proposal was becoming clearer, an error in calculating the remaining RRISD budget impact, including the benefit of $7m additional federal funding, forecasted a $33m deficit rather than a $13m deficit, a $20m error. The board approved a tentative action allocating $15m from the available fund balance to reduce the $33m deficit, while continuing to communicate fear and anxiety to the employees, students and parents. I brought this error to the attention of the board president and superintendent. Rather than examine the numbers more closely, the board president's only response was that the state hadn't finalized the budget. Ms. Occhiuzzi called me at the superintendent's request and after I explained the error, she had Mr. Flores call me who confirmed the error in the district calculations. That day, the incorrect information was pulled from the district website, thereby reducing stakeholder anxiety.  At the time the board of trustees acted on this data, a basic ''gut check" should have exposed the magnitude of the error. In the course of this process, I contacted Ms. Romere. She took the time to understand the data in the interest of making informed future decisions.

We further know that incorrect data was presented during the boundary alignment process and that the recent Student Health Advisory Committee was not formed according to state education law. The Student Health Advisory Committee is only one example where the RRISD Board of Trustees and persons at various levels in the administration are unaware of state and federal law that should be guiding the decision process.

Data is "hard". This is why it is incumbent on each board member to ask questions to ensure they are    making informed decisions based on correct information.  

   

The recent censure of Ms. Romere resulted from her quest to ensure valid data. Based on data provided after the August vote allocating $25m for the Success High School, I calculated the cost per student to be 2-3 times that of the recently built Cedar Ridge High School. With more recent data, the cost per student appears to be on the order of 4-5 times. While we believe it is critically important to meet the education needs of the Success students, a more affordable option meeting these education needs would be  to allocate funding from this $25m to complete the final phase of Round Rock High School without the need for an additional bond election; and rather than tearing down building 100, remodel this facility to house the Success program. This will save taxpayers millions of dollars. Thus, Ms. Romere's request for more accurate data was justified. I have requested analysis of this approach from Mr. Albers and Dr. Chavez. I first shared this approach with Dr. Chavez at the August community meeting with the superintendent and more recently during the December community meeting with the superintendent.

In closing, we ask the five board members who represent a majority on the board to reevaluate their actions and ensure they are acting with the 11trust" placed in them by their stakeholders starting with a reevaluation of the plan for the Success High School, including community input.

Thank you for your time.

 

RRISD Stonewalls, Possibly Violates Open Meetings Act?

Unsurprisingly, the Round Rock School Board has refused to comply with Trustee Romere's request for public records.  Of course these documents are subject to open records and any citizen can request them, but the district makes sure it is very costly to do so. 

One of the reasons they claim they will not comply is due to the time frame for which Romere wants to view RRISD Board communications:  April 1-26.  But this time frame in and of itself is very interesting since it includes not only the communications prior to the Board's decision to censure Romere (April 24) but also all communications prior to the decision to extend the Superintendent's contract and raise his salary to $260,000 (April 19). 

This begs two questions:  What does Trustee Romere know/suspect, and what could the RRISD Board possibly fear becoming known to the public?

Even more serious, however, is the appearance that the RRISD Board may have violated the Texas Public Meetings Act.  Romere's attorney Ross Fischer has released text messages that Romere received from RRISD Board President Chad Chadwell.  Chadwell indicates that four board members requested the censure, and two others were "interested" after "we discussed the procedure with Bill."  Presumably 'Bill' refers to the RRISD attorney Bill Bingham. 

It appears that the Board discussed this matter without notifying Trustee Romere or the public as required by law. 

When questioned about his text message by the Community Impact Newspaper, Chadwell replied,

“We had actually added a discussion of her censure to the next agenda at a closed session meeting on April 19—she was not in that closed session, she had left,” Chadwell said. “So it was not discussed outside of a meeting.”

Is Chadwell admitting the Board added discussion of a possible censure to the April 19 meeting during the closed session?  If so, he should check the wording of the Texas Public Meetings Act, which requires that agenda items be posted prior to a Closed Meeting and that the accused must have the opportunity to request an Open Meeting.  Since it appears that President Chadwell allowed the matter to be discussed without 1) posting the agenda item, and 2) without notifying Trustee Romere, he may have violated the law. 

The law states:
And, Section 551.041:
As for Romere leaving the meeting, we presume she did so after all of the posted agenda items had been discussed.  Had she known there was another agenda item, would she have left?

One must wonder what else board members have discussed outside of the rules of the Open Meetings Act.  Is that why Romere has requested communications for the month of April? 

In their public comments regarding their rejection of Romere's public records requests, RRISD Board members claim they need to know why and what exactly Romere is looking for before they can comply.   My guess is that both Romere and the Board know very well what she is looking for, but no-one is talking, yet.

138

A governmental body shall give written notice of the date, hour, place, and subject of

each meeting held by the governmental body.

The notice of a meeting of a governmental body must be posted in a place readily

accessible to the general public at all times for at least 72 hours before the scheduled

time of the meeting, except as provided by Sections 551.044–551.046.