Problems with leadership at WISD

There are serious problems with leadership in the Wharton Independent School District.

One of the most important duties of a journalist is to cover local governmental bodies. Whether you think of it this way or not, school districts are the largest governmental units in most any community. They are funded entirely by tax dollars and in fact make up the largest portion of your property tax bill. They are governed by elected officials – the trustees who make up the school board.

Please allow me to pull back the curtain and show you some of the stuff I’ve encountered while attempting to simply cover the news at WISD.

My first example involves the upcoming election for three positions on the school board.

We have been running candidate profiles so that you, the voters, can know something about the candidates before you cast your vote. That is just basic meat-and-potatoes local journalism.

I requested copies of the candidates’ election filing papers – clearly a public record – from the district so that I could get contact information for each of the eight candidates. But so far my requests have been denied.

Superintendent Michael O’Guin’s new secretary is in charge of elections for the district and, with the backing of Deputy Superintendent Denise Ware, they have insisted that I file my request under the Texas Public Information Act and directed me to a link on the district’s website. I did as requested, only to find out later that the link goes to the wrong place.

Since then I have had an exchange of emails with district officials. Now they are seeking an attorney general’s opinion to determine if they must provide the information to me. I know for certain that the information is public and not confidential. I’ve made this request several times in the past with other governmental entities and have had no problem getting the information.

While all this is going on with the school district, the City of Wharton answered my request in less than five minutes. I submit this to you as an example of a failure in leadership. I have written in the past about difficulties getting public information from the district and clearly the situation has not improved.

In the meantime I did my best to contact the candidates by other means. Five of the eight have responded and provided requested information for their candidate profiles. I have no way of knowing if the other three received my request and ignored me or whether they did not receive it. This wouldn’t be a problem if the district didn’t withhold public information from me.

 

Problems at the top

I have attended about 17 monthly meetings of the WISD Board of Trustees. In that time, President Curtis Evans has presided over all but a couple. I have yet to see him run a meeting where he hasn’t made some kind of procedural gaff. It’s usually something minor, like inadvertently skipping an agenda item or calling for a vote before a motion has been made.

He is frequently being corrected on these things and sometimes they just slip by. These are minor things that the public does not see, but they happen all the time.

That’s normally not an issue, but there is more. In the April 22 edition of the paper, Evans ran an ad in which he called out his opponent, Teri Mathis, for mailing a flyer that had the “Paid Political Ad by Teri Mathis for School Board” disclaimer on it. 

In his ad he said, “This statement is problematic as school boards in the state are deemed non-partisan.” His implication was that the disclaimer was not necessary. His own ad had to have the “paid political ad” disclaimer on it because it is required by law. He does not seem to understand this. 

Additionally, both in his ad and in his candidate profile in the next edition, he said he was running for the WISD Board of Directors. It appears he doesn’t know the name of the board he leads. He’s a trustee, not a director.

Yes, these are all minor things, but there are a lot of them. And if he can’t get the small stuff right, what does that say about the important issues?

 

Meeting agendas

Evans and Superintendent O’Guin put together the agenda for each monthly meeting. Most of the time I’m in disagreement about items placed in the consent agenda. The consent agenda is a grouping of items that are considered routine and uncontroversial and are lumped together for a single vote. I’m of the opinion that too many things are placed in the consent agenda that require more public scrutiny and discussion by the board.

O’Guin disagrees and feels more items should be moved from the regular agenda to the consent agenda. He is backed by Tony Williams of the Region 3 Education Service Center, who is leading the board through the Lone Star Governance program aimed at improving board leadership and student outcomes.

At the last meeting, Williams wanted to know why the board didn’t better utilize the consent agenda to save time at board meetings (never mind that board meetings have doubled in length since LSG started). O’Guin pointed the finger at the newspaper (me) and two unnamed board members for insisting that certain items needed more discussion in public.

On a couple of occasions O’Guin has told me that board meetings are not public meetings but meetings that are held in public. I believe that as a governmental taxing entity with an elected board that the meetings are very much public and that citizens have a right to know, investigate, and question each action the board takes.

Williams noted that there seems to be a trust issue between the district and the public. No kidding! If these are small-potato problems it makes you wonder that the whole stew looks like.

Joe Southern is managing editor of the Wharton Journal-Spectator and the East Bernard Express. He can be reached at news@journal-spectator.com.