South San will keep paying 2 supers
The South San Antonio Independent School District will keep paying two superintendents — including the one its board suspended early in December.
The board voted 4-1 on Wednesday evening to extend the contract of Interim Superintendent Henry Yzaguirre another four months, with an automatic renewal of four months after that. Trustee Gilbert Rodriguez voted against it, and trustee Connie Prado abstained.
On the advice of the school district’s lawyer, Mark Sanchez, the board took no action on the employment status of Marc Puig, the superintendent who was placed on paid leave Dec. 6 pending the outcome of an investigation into a conversation between Puig and trustee Ernesto Arrellano, then the board president, that was accidentally recorded.
Puig’s salary for the 2021-2022 school year is $225,000 per year, according to the Texas Education Agency. Yzaguirre is currently being paid a daily rate of $886. He was also paid $6,195 for services rendered from Dec. 7 through Dec. 15, according to his contract.
If the district’s investigation of Puig has begun, Puig is not aware of it, said his attorney, Neal Adams, before the meeting.
But the South San ISD spokeswoman, Alexis Castillo, and the district’s state-appointed monitor, Abe Saavedra, said the investigation has started and is ongoing.
“Paying two superintendents puts the district in a more difficult financial situation,” Saavedra said. “I think the board is trying to come to a final conclusion, one way or the other, whether they will continue with Dr. Puig or not.”
Saavedra, a former South San superintendent, said “one of the first steps” to make that decision is completing a “summative eval
uation” of Puig, which the board unanimously approved Wednesday.
It includes “everything that has occurred from the last evaluation until now,” Saavedra said. “Would the investigation be part of that? Most likely because that happened in that window. But it is not just that, it is everything
that has occurred from evaluation to evaluation.”
Puig was hired in June 2020. The board voted for a two-year extension of his contract on May 17, 2021, increasing his salary by $25,000, Adams said.
“We are not aware of anything that happened between May 17, 2021 to the day he was suspended that would be any reason for him being suspended with pay,” Adams said. “He ought to be on his job performing his contract. He
stands ready, willing and able to fulfill the terms of his contract.”
Asked about the recorded conversation between Puig and the board president, Adams said it is a “non-issue from a legal perspective.”
Puig’s relationship with the board began deteriorating in September, when he was reprimanded by the board for “dereliction of his employment duties to the board,” after a conflict regarding a personnel matter.
Puig’s short conversation with Arrellano on Nov. 17, which was accidentally recorded after a meeting, featured Puig suggesting the district hire Arrellano’s brother for construction consulting. Arrellano sounded enthusiastic but later said he was joking. The investigation was supposed to find out what was said during gaps in the transcript.
Saavedra was appointed after a TEA investigation of the South San board that found a majority of trustees had acted outside their authority in taking over day-to-day operations of the district from the previous superintendent, Alexandro Flores. The current board is under a TEA investigation based on complaints that trustees interfered with Puig’s duties, including his suspension of an employee.