San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Puig resigns, has post at TEA
During the months that Marc Puig spent in limbo, suspended as superintendent of South San Antonio Independent School District since December, he began working part time for the state agency that is investigating the district.
So when the school board voted to begin termination proceedings in May, he had a new job lined up.
“It was a no-brainer for me,” Puig said by email last week. “I accepted a once-in-a-lifetime, full-time opportunity to work for the Texas Education Agency, so I enthusiastically moved on as quickly as possible.”
The South San ISD board was ready to move on, too. It unanimously accepted his resignation at a special meeting June 21.
Puig will be a TEA senior governance adviser, “providing leadership, guidance, and support to districts across the state with the goal of improving student outcomes,” he wrote. “Naturally, ethical standards always guide the agency, thus TEA has explicitly prohibited my involvement in any matters pertaining to South San ISD.”
That includes an ongoing probe of the district he ran for less than two years. It was a comparatively long tenure for South San ISD, which has churned through eight superintendents or interim superintendents in a little over a decade, but Puig’s falling out with the board had a uniquely bizarre ending.
The board suspended Puig on Dec. 4 pending an investigation into an accidentally recorded conversation between himself and board President Ernesto Arrellano in which he suggested the district hire Arrellano’s brother as a construction consultant.
Arrellano sounded enthusiastic about the idea but later
said he was joking. Puig later said he mentioned Arrellano’s brother as a “metaphor or symbol” for how difficult it is to find quality people to hire. Whatever the case, Puig’s direct criticism of the board on the night it suspended him made it hard for any return to a normal relationship.
In May, the board proposed Puig’s termination and suspended him without pay. To this day, it is unclear how far the district’s investigation went or what it found. Puig’s lawyer has said he has no idea. But the tension with the board had been simmering since September, over a personnel matter that Puig was handling.
“Dr. Puig and the Board have reached a mutual agreement that allows Dr. Puig to pursue other interests and permits the Board to pursue hiring another Superintendent,” Arrellano said in a statement read at the June 21 meeting.
The district did not respond to a request for a copy of the voluntary separation agreement. Puig said there was no severance package but that he didn’t need or expect one.
“I only desired full reinstatement to my position as superintendent with removal of reprimands and retroactive restoration of my salary, or back pay compensation,” Puig said. “South San ISD gave me all of this — so a mutual separation was easy for me at that point. I have dropped my complaints against them as well — this is a clean break.”
On May 24, Arrellano sent Puig a letter explaining the reasons the board proposed firing him. It accused Puig of violating board policy by hiring consultants and paying them without asking for the board’s approval, contracting with an outside law firm for services that included preparation of a confidential report of an investigation into the district’s high school football coach, hiring a director of human resources without the board’s approval and skirting TEA requirements in hiring teachers.
The letter also blamed Puig for districtwide student failures and said he was unable to consistently recruit and retain teachers and administrators and generally displayed a lack of respect to the board — including the suggestion that the district hire Arrellano’s brother, which the letter said would have violated his contract and state law.
Puig filed his grievance against the school district on June 6, saying his suspension without pay came without written notice or an opportunity for a hearing, in a violation of state law. It also claimed it violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law.
“By virtue of the Board’s unlawful actions, I have been stigmatized by public disclosure of a false termination and suspension without pay, injuring my professional reputation and hampering my ability to gain similar employment in the future,” the complaint stated.
Interviewed last week, he pointed out that South San’s STAAR scores have shown improvements from 2019.
“I am entirely grateful for the opportunity to have served the children of South San ISD,” Puig said. “Understandably, our mission and circumstances were unduly arduous and undoubtedly contentious at times, however, our collective commitment to improving student outcomes remained steadfast throughout.”
At least five campuses have earned an overall “B” rating, which Puig said “is a high-water mark for South San since the advent of STAAR testing.”
“I commend the South San teachers, principals, nurses, and staff for their willing sacrifice and unyielding commitment to improving student outcomes despite the many obstacles — a sure sign South San is headed in the right direction academically. I wish them all the best.”