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03/30/05 No, but
we have been running them a close second!
This week has been down right embarrassing if you
have been paying attention to the wrong doings on Ross Avenue (DISD
Headquarters).
Our resident wife beater questioned the integrity of some other DISD Board members
when his handpicked search firm delivered a recommended candidate for
superintendent whose pigmentation wasn't dark enough. He wasn't mucking
enough in DISD matters, the wife
beater went down to Wilmer-Hutchins to play his one-card hand -- the race
card. The wife beater then headed back to Downtown in time to accuse two
decent school board members of having a conflict of interest regarding
prospective superintendent Michael Hinojosa.
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Questions arise
about DISD candidate;
2
trustees on panel with likely candidate urged to recuse themselves
10:34 PM CST on Monday, March 28, 2005
By TAWNELL D. HOBBS / The Dallas Morning News
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On the eve of a meeting scheduled
today ? when the Dallas school board could announce finalists for the
district's superintendent job ? questions started emerging about ties that
one likely candidate and two trustees have with a nonprofit organization.
Spring ISD Superintendent Michael
Hinojosa, one of two veteran educators whose names surfaced as candidates
for the DISD superintendent job, serves on the board of directors for the
Texas Business and Education Coalition. According to its Web site, the
nonprofit association brings business and education leaders together to
improve the Texas public school system.
Dallas Independent School District
Trustee Jack Lowe serves on the coalition's board, and Trustee Ken Zornes,
who announced his plans to leave the DISD board in May, has taken a paid
position with the Austin-based organization.
... "I'm thinking that both
[trustees] should recuse themselves from any further action at all ? no more
deliberations, and especially not to vote," Trustee Lew Blackburn said
Monday about Mr. Zornes and Mr. Lowe. "I can see where people might think
that he [Dr. Hinojosa] made some deals if he gets the job."
... Last week, two trustees accused other board members of tainting
the selection process by making backdoor deals.
... When contacted by The Dallas Morning News on
Monday, DISD board President Lois Parrott said she did not know about Mr.
Zornes' job with the coalition.
... "I would say it's highly inappropriate, and
the board must look into this," said Trustee Hollis Brashear. "Mr. Zornes'
involvement with one of the finalists could cloud his judgment."
... Mr. Lowe said he should not have to recuse
himself from the superintendent search. He said the coalition's board of
directors, which meets a couple of times a year, did not hire Mr. Zornes. He
said, to his knowledge, that he has seen Dr. Hinojosa twice.
... Mr. Lowe added that the coalition's
board includes some of Texas' top leaders and superintendents.
"If the best superintendents in the
state are on there ? and we say we ought not to hire them ? that's crazy,"
Mr. Lowe said. "
... Trustee Jerome Garza said he doesn't believe
that Mr. Zornes' new job presents a conflict of interest.
"He has integrity," he said. "He's a
very valuable person."
John Stevens, executive director of
the coalition, said ... the coalition's
80-member board of directors considers issues
in public education and makes recommendations. ... |
The Texas Business and
Education Coalition includes most school superintendents and many school board
members from all over the state. It's a non-profit. There's no
opportunity for a conflict of interest. If having a membership in the
Coalition was the vehicle that made them aware of Dr. Hinojosa, it was money
well spent.
Since wife-beating Price likes to join every organization he can (on our dime),
the only reason he might not be on the TBEC is because it's a local group and
attending one of their meetings would not allow him to travel to the Washington,
DC area on our dime.
Do you know why Lew Blackburn
is sounding very familiar to you -- beyond his term on the school board?
It's because he is an employee of the Wilmer-Hutchins Independent School
District. Did they ever find all those missing computers?
Lew Blackburn holds a Ph.D. When he was first elected to the School Board,
he was with East Texas State University. In his first term on the board,
he took an administrative position with WHISD. It was and is very
inappropriate for him to serve on the Dallas School Board while he is employed
by another school district.
Oh, yes, there's another item to remember about School Board member Hollis
Brashear. This is the guy who had the press box of the new,
taxpayer-funded football stadium named after himself. Talk about conflict
of interest!
Things were going so well at the DISD, that wife-beating school board member Ron
Price went down to Wilmer-Hutchins ISD to call the state's effort to clean
things up for the children "racist". How original!
There are racists on the Dallas
Independent School District Board, four of them. They are Hollis Brashear,
Ron Price, Dr. Lew Blackburn and Joe Thug May. On this particular vote,
Joe Thug May broke ranks with his fellow racists to vote for Dr. Hinojosa, only
because Dr. Hinojosa is not Anglo.
What is so ridiculous about all this brouhaha is that Dr. Hinojosa is leaving a
rich school district where the kids get educated and get educated well to come
back to this hell hole. The only thing I have against Dr. Hinojosa is you
have to question his judgment to leave Spring for Dallas, but then this is his
hometown. His elderly parents are here, and his brothers are here.
Dr. Hinojosa is a graduate of Sunset High School, and he wants to give back to
the district where he earned his high school diploma. It's so incredible
to know there are still public servants like Michael Hinojosa.
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Bridge building lies ahead for Hinojosa;
He faces DISD board
that divided along racial lines in his selection
09:23 PM CST
on Wednesday, March 30, 2005
By
TAWNELL D. HOBBS and TOYA LYNN STEWART / The Dallas Morning News
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Michael Hinojosa knows what it's like
to be welcomed by small school districts excited at having a bilingual
educator with his credentials.
But when he sought the top job in the Dallas
Independent School District, Dr. Hinojosa got a
quick taste of a big-city power struggle between blacks and Hispanics.
Dr. Hinojosa, superintendent of
the 28,000-student Spring Independent School District, was selected Tuesday
night by a Dallas school board that voted along racial
lines. Six white and Hispanic trustees approved him for the job,
but the board's three black members did not offer
their support. Two black trustees voted no; another abstained.
... Trustee Ron Price, who abstained from voting
Tuesday, denied that race is a factor in the decisions he makes on the
board. ... As far as black trustees sticking
together on some issues, he said, that's more cultural than racial.
They know what it's like to be black in this
country, he said, to observe poverty in their neighborhoods and to be passed
over for jobs because of their race.
... Trustee Jerome Garza also said he doesn't
believe that race played an issue in the vote or that the board is divided
on racial lines. He did question why the three black trustees didn't support
Dr. Hinojosa. He also wondered how they will explain their actions to DISD's
Hispanic parents, whose children comprise about 63 percent of the district's
enrollment.
... But trustee Hollis Brashear, a black board
member who voted against Dr. Hinojosa, had his own theory: "If anyone draws
a conclusion that some only wanted a black candidate, they can attach that
perception to the other group and say they didn't want a black candidate."
... One leader of the local League of United Latin
American Citizens chapter accused the board's black trustees of trying to
keep a Hispanic from being named as the next DISD superintendent.
... |
There is fear and trepidation
among three racists on the school board. It was one thing for them to make
life difficult for a White guy like Dr. Moses, but they are going to have a
tough time second guessing and nitpicking a self-made Hispanic man who started
from the bottom as the youngest son of a poor immigrant family.
Dr. Michael Hinojosa is the American Dream! He was not even born in the
U.S., but here he is -- the sole candidate to head up a huge school district in
his hometown. How many districts are headed up by a graduate of
their own system? Can you imagine what a role model he will be for the
Hispanic children who make up 63% of the DISD?
Dr. Mike Moses did some great things for the DISD. There is no way the
last bond election would have happened without his leadership. He could
have done so much more, but he had to waste so much time dealing with Price,
Brashear, Blackburn and May.
We are losing the sane voice of Ken Zornes, but Dr. Edwin Flores has filed for
the District 1 seat. I have met this young man, and have the same concerns
about him as I have about Dr. Hinojosa -- why would he want to be on the school
board? Dr. Flores is a lawyer with a Ph.D. in immunology. Can you
imagine the good Dr. Flores can do for Dallas school children?
I have the distinct pleasure of announcing that I will be able to vote for Dr.
Flores because for some reason, Joe Thug May drew my neighborhood out of DISD
District 8. He left our school, Burnett Elementary on Kinkaid in District
8, but drew all the houses around it out of District 8 into District 1.
Joe Thug May's sole purpose in life is to re-segregate this city into ethnic
barrios. He's so insecure that he can't believe a qualified Hispanic
candidate can't win a district unless it is over 70% Hispanic. Dr. Edwin
Flores is going to win election in a very conservative, White district.
Hollis Brashear, Lew Blackburn, Ron Price and Joe Thug May are dinosaurs.
They are lost in the fantasy that they must continue to fight for power against
the bad White man. Do you know why they refuse to grow and mature?
It's because they are such losers in their own right that they have nothing to
offer except the race card.
While the likes of Brashear, Blackburn, Price and May stagnate in a movement
that has left them behind, men like Edwin Flores and Michael Hinojosa are out
there succeeding on their merits and talents and minds. It's easy to
understand why Brashear, Blackburn and Price would not want someone like Michael
Hinojosa as DISD Superintendent. They cannot challenge him and question
his understanding of the needs and obstacles of 63% of the children in the DISD
system.
Parents of children in the WHISD system are in a terrible situation. Their
children are in a
system being administered by incompetents like Lew Blackburn. They have a
school board that is more dysfunctional than the DISD School Board. They
have a new superintendent who is not qualified to hold that position and got her
training as an assistant to the former Superintendent and now indicted Charles
Matthews. Pretty hopeless!
Parents of children in the DISD system have reason to be optimistic. DISD
taxpayers may see our money used more effectively. Guess things are
looking up for us!
Welcome home, Dr. Hinojosa.
sb
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