WESLACO — It appears Weslaco ISD Superintendent Priscilla Canales may be departing the district a full year earlier than she intended to.
The district’s board will consult with its attorney on a voluntary retirement agreement with Canales at a special meeting Aug. 5, according to an agenda the district released Monday evening.
The board will also consult with its attorney to release a request for qualifications for a superintendent search firm and deliberate on naming an acting superintendent.
Canales and Board President Armando Cuellar were not immediately available for comment Tuesday evening. They were in another special meeting discussing, among other things, level-three grievances filed by three district employees.
When asked for a comment on the meeting and Canales’ possible departure, a district spokesperson said the superintendent intends to release a statement sometime Thursday.
There have been signs pointing to an ouster for months.
Canales escaped being suspended pending the result of a forensic audit by a bare majority in May. Just last week the board discussed preliminary findings of that long-awaited forensic audit and the superintendent’s “future plans with Weslaco ISD.”
Canales announced her own future plans last semester, days after the board launched the audit, saying she intended to retire at the end of the 2021-22 school year.
With a public release of the forensic audit’s finalized findings imminent, it appears the timetable for that retirement has been accelerated considerably.
Cuellar described the audit findings discussed in closed session as a “rough draft.” It’s still not clear when the public will see those findings, although the board voted to post them online and discuss them in open session earlier this summer.
Change has been the norm at the district since a new majority won in the November 2020 elections.
Late last year the board terminated its contract with its general counsel.
In May the district lost longtime Athletic Director Oscar Riojas, at the same time Canales voiced concerns over staffing shortages that had left the district “overloaded.”
According to a news release from earlier this year, Canales is the first woman to serve the district as superintendent and has been at the helm since 2016, the capstone on a 30-year career in education.
The release listed a long list of WISD achievements made during her three-year tenure, including 48 new state academic distinctions, high state accountability and financial ratings, literacy initiatives and crisis management through flooding in 2018 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Canales was also named the Weslaco Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2021 “Woman of the Year.”
