In the face of pressure from parents and players, the Weslaco Independent School District Board of Trustees voted to reinstate Zeke Rodriguez as Weslaco East head boys basketball coach Tuesday after hearing a grievance filed by him.
Interim Superintendent Richard Rivera, who was not with the district at the time of the coach’s removal, said Wednesday that the removal was the result of a student making an allegation that Rodriguez used inappropriate language.
“There were no witnesses and of course he said that he didn’t say that, so that’s kind of where it stood,” he said.
Rodriguez, who has held the position of head coach for three years, declined Wednesday to speak with The Monitor.
Weslaco trustees laid blame for bungling the investigation into that allegation at the feet of former superintendent Dino Coronado, who exited the district last month amid contention.
Board trustee Ben Castillo, who made the motion to grant Rodriguez’s grievance, called it a tough decision resulting from an “unfortunate circumstance,” saying he was making the motion “as a result of the investigation by the previous superintendent being done improperly.”
Coronado Thursday disagreed with fault being placed at his doorstep.
“Superintendents do not conduct investigations, they report the findings to the board,” he wrote.
A group of players and parents confronted the board with public comments Tuesday, defending Rodriguez’s character and describing his absence as a blow to athletes.
“We have a game in one hour that we should be getting ready for, but we are all here supporting our coach, which we feel is the right thing we should be doing right now,” Carlos Roman, a Weslaco East athlete, told the board. “We would rather take a loss, because a real loss is playing another game without him as our coach. We see him as more than just a coach; to many, he’s a mentor, role model and a father figure.”
Many of Rodriguez’s defenders echoed that sentiment, describing him as something more than an average coach.
“When I was a teenager, he encouraged me to stay off the streets, not to hang around with the wrong crowd and to stay focused in school,” Lucio Garza, parent of a sophomore basketball player and a friend of Rodriguez’s, said. “He believed in me and was a mentor in my young teenage life. He was first in my neighborhood to go to college and play college basketball. When he would come down to visit, he would continue to motivate me to play basketball, finish high school and go to college, no matter what I was going through at the time.”
Weslaco ISD has been plagued with human resources issues for over a year.
A forensic audit completed in 2021 that indicated areas of concern in that department ultimately led to the termination of former director Melva Segura.
The board heard a number of lively public grievance hearings last year that were generally rife with allegations of mismanagement.
An administrative re-organization conducted over the summer by Coronado did not appear to be popular with all on the board, and trustees again discussed Tuesday human resources and corrective actions in response to the audit.
