If nothing else, Diana Garza gave the Weslaco school district a piece of her mind Tuesday.
Garza was there for a public grievance hearing asking the district to award her about five months of salary she says she lost over not being able to work after seeing a teacher bully a student who was suicidal, a grievance that was ultimately denied by the board.
Garza spent much of her time at the podium wagging her finger at the board and shrugging off her attorney, hurling about allegations of internal retaliation at a district that’s weathered significant allegations of misconduct and wrongdoing over the past year.
Grievance hearings aren’t necessarily uncommon at Hidalgo County school districts, although Weslaco ISD has held a significant number of them over the past year.
Grievance hearings held in public are fairly uncommon at districts in the county, at least recently. Weslaco has held two grievance hearings publicly within a week of each other, not to mention a high-profile contract termination hearing held publicly last semester..
Mark Robinett, Garza’s attorney, said the grievance stemmed from an Oct. 17, 2019 incident.
“For some time prior to October of 2019, she felt that she and the administration at that time were not getting along,” he said. “The administration did not like the fact that Ms. Garza was pushing for particular students to get treated properly.”
Robinett said specifically that there were two students who he said Garza felt were suicidal because they were being bullied by a teacher. Administration waved that claim off, Robinett said, but on Oct. 17, 2019, she saw that teacher bully one of those students again.
“And at this point, Ms. Garza just lost it, she couldn’t take the fact that this was going on anymore,” Robinett said. “And it hit her hard. She was stunned by it. She was traumatized by it.”
He said when it came time to return to work the next January, she didn’t feel she could come back to work due to the incident. A specialist told her she needed to take time to heal, Robinett said, and on Jan. 6 she requested to be placed on FMLA.
“And she was on that for a few days, and that was covered by the few days of sick leave time she had,” he said. “At that point, if she wanted to continue to be paid, she had to return to work. So she couldn’t go back to being a counselor and those duties.”
Garza requested a reasonable accommodation, Robinett said. She couldn’t go back to being a counselor, but she would be a teacher.
Robinett says administration wouldn’t allow that. He said the administration told Garza she was on administrative leave without pay and that she was told if she wouldn’t work as a counselor she’d be non-renewed, so she filed the grievance and missed most of the rest of the year.
“Without earning a salary when she was ready to come and do something positive for the kids of Weslaco ISD all during that time, but she was not allowed to,” he said.
Garza returned to her work in June as a counselor, Robinett said, but had missed about five months of salary.
Legal counsel for the district asked the board to hold findings at lower grievance hearings that would support a nonpayment of back pay for Garza.
A determination was made in March of last year that the district would not reassign Garza and she was placed on FMLA, attorney Ceclilia Garza told the board, adding that the district didn’t necessarily have to meet Garza’s request for a reasonable accommodation.
“Like I said, it’s a last ditch effort, you need to have a vacancy, and it doesn’t mean immediate. It doesn’t mean … to be a reasonable accommodation does not require that you immediately put somebody in that position, there is a time period that you can look at,” she said.
Cecilia Garza said that when the grievance was filed in May, Diana Garza’s doctor had determined she could come back to work as a counselor, and that she came back to work in that capacity. She noted that there were two periods last spring where she was on FMLA leave without pay.
“Based on the investigation that was conducted by the level 1/level 2 hearing officer, it would support a non-payment of back pay,” Cecilia Garza said. “It would support a correct placement on FMLA. So there is nothing that the district did that would be inconsistent with placing Ms. Garza on FMLA.”
Two trustees did vote for granting the grievance in part after an executive session: Jesse Trevino and Jaclyn Sustaita.
Both of them said they had issues with the grievance timeline.
“I don’t understand, you know, our procedures for grievance,” Trevino said. “Obviously, it’s disturbing to hear some of the reassignments, and ‘I’m gonna reassign you, and I’m going to non-renew you.’ You know, it’s hard to look the other way or say ‘You know what, it didn’t happen,’ because of what we’ve seen previously.”
Sustaita also expressed concerns over the grievance process, but noted that the district has changed superintendents and legal counsel since the grievance began.
Diana Garza voiced a number of other complaints in the hearing, among them that other staff had been accommodated.
“Administration has accommodated when they wanted to,” she said.
Garza also described a culture of silence that other employees have described and instances where she claimed she was retaliated against.
“I thank God publicly that the people that have retaliated on me, God has weeded them out one at a time,” she said. “Two former superintendents are not here anymore. Counseling director is gone. My department at Silva Elementary has always been targeted.”
Garza specifically described one instance in which she claims she was punished with reassignment for disagreeing with rewarding a scholarship to a staff member’s child.
Abel Aguilar, assistant superintendent for elementary education and leadership and one-time prospect for interim superintendent, was the primary target of that tirade. He said he was part of that scholarship committee, but disagreed with Garza’s characterization of the way events played out.
“But we had a whole committee,” he said. “I in no way gave them any ‘This is what you’re gonna do or this is the decision that you’re gonna make,’ it was a wide range of opinions that we do have documentation on that.”
Aguilar also said the superintendent at the time made the call to reassign Garza.
“That did not come from me,” he said.
