There was a time when people trusted the schools to which they sent their children. They assumed the institutions’ focus was on education — and nothing more.
Sadly, those children — the very reason schools exist — seem to be totally forgotten in the political muck into which the La Joya Independent School District has sunk.
The school board is fighting the possible loss of control to managers and a new superintendent chosen by the Texas Education Agency. State Education Commissioner Mike Morath also has the option of appointing a monitor to supervise but not replace local district officials.
The possible loss of autonomy comes after two former board members and three former administrators pleaded guilty to various corruption charges that arose from an investigation into bribery and kickback schemes related to construction contracts, projects and district purchases.
Local municipal officials have also gotten involved in the matter. Palmview, Peñitas and Sullivan City officials all have passed resolutions supporting state intervention. Palmview Mayor Ricardo Villarreal, an LJISD employee with a pending grievance against the district, has said that the morning after his city’s vote, La Joya’s attorney sent an email that the mayor perceived as a threat to take back land the district donated to the city, which plans to use it for new police and fire buildings as well as a city park.
Certainly, many people welcome a state response to district officials’ malfeasance with taxpayers’ money — and the violation of their trust. Some, however, might worry about the injection of state officials whose bosses themselves have become increasingly intrusive in the education process.
Texas officials, from the governor to members of the legislature and even non-elected department heads, recently have been issuing mandates regarding the display of specific religious texts, the gender of athletes in sports that in some cases were moving toward coeducational participation, and even which bathrooms students were allowed to use. An official state list of banned books includes classics that once were used as classroom texts — written by such noted authors as Mark Twain, Jack London and Harper Lee.
Could state monitoring of district administration also open the door to more intrusion into the actual education process, imposing unreasonable demands on teachers who, we must assume, simply want to teach, and, we hope, can somehow insulate the students from the political morass that currently envelops the district.
In the end, maybe that’s all we can hope for, since the primary focus for our schools should be the education of our children.
Administratively, corruption is, unfortunately, a Rio Grande Valley tradition. And increasingly, state officials have developed an affinity for interfering with the kind of local autonomy they once held sacred. Let us hope that the current battle over control of La Joya ISD will occupy their attention enough to leave the students and teachers alone, and let them focus on education — at least until voters can learn to pay more attention to the kinds of people who seek positions of authority.
