State investigators recommend stripping HISD board
Final report cites multiple violations, calls on TEA head to temporarily replace trustees
Texas Education Agency investigators have issued a final recommendation urging Commissioner Mike Morath to temporarily replace Houston ISD trustees with a state-appointed governing board, concluding the district’s elected officials engaged in multiple acts of misconduct that warrant stripping them of power.
In a report summarizing the agency’s nine-month inquiry, state investigators determined that multiple HISD trustees violated the Texas Open Meetings Act, misled investigators, improperly interfered with vendor contracts and repeatedly overstepped their governance role. Morath will decide in the coming weeks whether to accept the investigators’ recommendation.
“The above recommendations will enable HISD to function in the best interests of students, while policies and procedures can be implemented to address the issues raised in this investigation,” read the report, which is signed by TEA Special Investigations Unit Director Jason Hewitt and was released late Wednesday.
If Morath opts to oust HISD trustees, a state-appointed board likely would not take over for several months. The replacement governance team likely would remain in place for two to five years, with elected officials phased back into power.
The TEA’s final report largely mirrors the findings and recommendations outlined in a confidential preliminary report delivered to HISD trustees and subsequently obtained by multiple media outlets in early August. HISD board members responded in writing to the preliminary allegations, denying many of the state’s findings and accusing TEA officials of conducting a biased, sloppy and incomplete investigation. The
trustees’ claims of innocence, however, did little to sway state investigators, who dismissed many board members’ statements as lacking credibility.
“I’m disappointed, but not surprised,” HISD Board President Diana Dávila said Thursday. “Historically, preliminary reports and final reports change very little. We knew we would not get a fair trial in this situation. From the very beginning, TEA went into the district in January with the intent of taking over HISD.”
While Morath has not publicly commented on possible sanctions in HISD, district stakeholders and state legislators widely believe the school board will be replaced in the coming months due to the misconduct investigation or chronically low performance at Wheatley High School.
Texas law allows Morath to levy various sanctions against school districts with elected or administrative officials who violate state codes. A state-appointed conservator has monitored the district for the past three years, with an appointed board seen as the next step in punishment.
A separate Texas law mandates that Morath must close Wheatley High School or strip power from the school board after the historic Fifth Ward campus received its fifth straight failing grade in August. HISD is appealing Wheatley’s rating, though districts administrators expect the appeal to fail.
The potential for a state-appointed board has split local education and civic leaders. Advocates for change, including the city’s largest chamber of commerce and some Republican legislators, argue HISD’s school board has failed to behave appropriately and create the conditions necessary for raising student achievement at low-rated schools. Following the release of the final investigative report Wednesday, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican and frequent critic of HISD, said the document “confirms open meetings violations and especially disturbing procurement issues.”
Others, including HISD’s largest teachers union and some Democratic legislators, have derided state intervention as an undemocratic seizure of power from local voters.
“With the state approaching it the way they are, I don’t think it’s fair,” said Larry McKinzie, a longtime education advocate and HISD teacher who is running for the district’s school board. “I’m always a proponent for elected officials or people that are part of the community being able to run the community.”
The state investigation largely stems from an October 2018 decision by five of the nine HISD trustees to replace Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan, who had been on the job for six months following Richard Carranza’s abrupt departure. The vote, which quickly was rescinded following public backlash, came with no advance public notice and stunned the board’s four other trustees.
The five trustees admitted they met in two separate groups at the same restaurant with Lathan’s chosen replacement, former HISD superintendent Abelardo Saavedra, days before the vote. State officials concluded that the board members and Saavedra discussed his appointment as interim superintendent, in violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act.
As evidence, they pointed to statements by Saavedra and the fact that Trustee Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca brought a copy of Carranza’s contract to the restaurant. Trustees ultimately voted to offer Carranza’s salary to Saavedra.
In response, several trustees said they did not discuss Saavedra’s appointment at the restaurant, which they said invalidated any Open Meetings Act violation claims.
“The meeting with Dr. Saavedra was not secret, and it was not an interview,” Trustee Sergio Lira wrote in a legal declaration to investigators. “It was an opportunity to communicate concerns and questions I had and gain the benefit of his experience as superintendent in many schools districts, including Houston ISD.”
State investigators also concluded Dávila and Lira made false statements to investigators about the meeting, both claiming that they met alone with Saavedra at the restaurant. Other trustees and Saavedra contradicted them.
Dávila and Lira responded that they offered their best recollection of the meeting, but state investigators were unconvinced. They said Dávila’s “failure to remember key facts is selective” and it is “hard to imagine” how Lira forgot about the presence of fellow board members.
Beyond the Lathan ouster, TEA investigators took aim at Dávila for a purported meeting in 2016, in which an unnamed HISD administrator accused her of scheming to cancel a custodial contract awarded to MetroClean Commercial Building Services and steer it toward another company, ABM Industries. MetroClean’s owner also told state investigators that an ABM official approached him to negotiate a consulting deal at the direction of Dávila’s husband.
Dávila denied the meeting occurred and the board’s lawyers blasted TEA officials for refusing to name the administrator. TEA officials concluded that Dávila’s denial “lacks credibility” based on her “demonstrably false and dubious statements in this investigation.”
“Even though the administrator is not identified, the presence of evidence corroborating this allegation, and the evidence that Board President Dávila has failed to cooperate with this investigation, requires the agency to sustain this allegation,” TEA officials wrote.
TEA officials also found that multiple board members interfered with day-to-day operations, failed to properly monitor vendor contracts and fought among themselves — all of which contributed to the determination that the school board has a “demonstrated inability to appropriately govern.”
In response, the board’s lawyers said state officials are overlooking the district’s years of stability under recent governing boards. HISD received the equivalent of B grades each of the past two years under the state’s academic accountability framework, while also maintaining a balanced financial sheet.
“Instead of spending so much time focused on the distant past, TEA’s investigators should have spent more time focused on the district’s current condition, which shows that Houston ISD is an academically and financially healthy school district with an upward trajectory,” HISD’s lawyers wrote.