The Weslaco Independent School District completed last month a Texas Education Agency corrective plan that was the result of a complaint submitted in May 2020.
According to Superintendent Dino Coronado, that plan required they add language to its district improvement plan regarding sexual harassment training.
“We just had to add the language that we were all trained in identifying sexual harassment and discipline management programs,” he said.
The incident that preceded the complaint occurred in October 2019 and involved two students, Coronado said.
“From reading the report, one kid was harassing another kid, and I guess it went beyond a discipline issue. And when we handled the discipline at that point … I guess the parents didn’t appreciate or didn’t like the outcome of the student punishment,” Coronado said, noting that he wasn’t with the district at the time.
Coronado said the pandemic delayed the process for the complaint. “The parents had filed the reports to TEA in January of 2020, and I think what happened was with COVID and everything else it just kind of got a little delayed,” he said.
Weslaco ISD went through a series of scandals and controversies last year and earlier this year, although things have been markedly quieter at the district in recent months.
Coronado says the complaint is effectively in the rearview mirror for the district and referred to it as a leftover from the district’s recent period of controversies.
“We think it’s behind us. We’re a little proactive, we had a third-party trainer come in and do it for us. But we’re pretty satisfied…As the new guy, just trying to clean up the stuff that was here before, whether it would have been me or somebody else, some of that stuff still would have happened,” he said.
