The LISD magnet school for the performing arts:
the view from Houston Street

By María Eugenia Guerra

A few months ago I read through a five-page confidential memo to then-interim LISD Superintendent Dr. Jerry Barber from his administrative assistant for academics Veronica Martinez. The November 12, 2002 memo regarded concerns about the district's downtown performing arts magnet school which is housed, along with other LISD administrative offices, in some of the most beautiful buildings of the St. Peter's Historical District.
How, you might ask, was I able to read a confidential memo? I cannot tell you exactly except to say it was, as other documents about other issues have been, left at the door to my office.
As I read through this memo that was so charged with incendiary hearsay and allegations of private and professional misconduct of some members of the magnet school staff, I had to keep reminding myself that it was authored by a very well paid school district administrator of great responsibility, the superintendent's administrative assistant for academics.
Ms. Martinez' references in writing about magnet school personnel are presented as findings of an investigation that some magnet school staff and faculty members recall was not unlike an inquisition. Though some effort was made by Ms. Martinez to present academic and campus physical plant issues that need to be addressed at the school, she took enormous license to condemn by insinuation. Below are just a few of the references Ms. Martinez makes to people who work there: "the supposed girlfriend" of another staff member; a custodian who "takes excessive breaks and holds personal conversations with the VMT staff" and "takes the left over food from the cafeteria;" "favoritism among staff members" in the form of the size of class loads, who gets parking spaces, who gets "free food being given to some employees," who got a computer and a printer and the one employee who did not, and in the principal allowing "certain students to use his office computer."
Ms. Martinez further alleges that the dance instructor "uses the Dance Facility for private business," and that a magnet school teacher is the school's caterer of choice.
She alleges sexual harassment by one individual and she names the principals in an "ongoing affair" between two magnet school teachers who actually are single, consenting adults who date.
She alleges "unresolved conflicts" between two guitar instructors and two dance instructors.
The author of the memo cites problems with the lack of a cafeteria at the magnet school campus, the lack of procedure for hiring, the lack of maintenance, the lack of procedure for student recruitment and dismissal, that lesson plans are only checked at the end of the year, the lack of adherence to the by-laws of the site-based decision-making plan.
It is the personal allegations that trouble me, especially those about having affairs on the school nickel or being a sexual harasser. What I found to be so disgusting is that Ms. Martinez presented her points and issues not as allegations, but as findings of fact.
Where did she get her information and where did she get that kind of power to malign and violate in writing on LISD letterhead?
I believe she was sent on an errand to document all she could that was wrong with the magnet school, and that the purpose of the errand was to begin profiling the school and its administrator as negatively as possible so that some slice and dice changes could be made at the downtown campus, changes that in the end might yield a couple of buildings that the district's superintendent needs to accommodate his new hires from his old school district and others.
Over its eight-year history, the LISD performing arts magnet school has come up for review from time to time, and much has been done to tighten its operation. That is especially evident when you compare today's operation with the school's earliest days, days that some of us in journalism remember as days of spending splendor for renovation and landscaping, trendy paint schemes, expensive banners, and education with a swagger.
The school is under scrutiny once again, though not for the same reasons. Ms. Martinez's memo portends the school's future. Buildings students have used for nearly eight years under three prior superintendents are now being called "unsafe." There are references now to the efficient use of space at the magnet school and to how much more it costs to educate per capita at the magnet school versus at any of the other campuses. There's also the subtext of a trustee with an axe to grind for all things that bear the name of the administrator who founded the school, and the larger subtext of "I need this space to put my people in offices." The district has usurped the Leyendecker Home on Houston Street, which was once the magnet school's library and before that the student center. It will become the offices of the Department of Human Resources and is currently undergoing repair from the fire. The old Mabel Cogley Wall home at the corner of Houston and Main, which has been used for classrooms, will likely become administrative offices for some of the new hires or for relocating administrators who have been moved to make room for the new hires.
Ernesto Guajardo has served as the magnet school's acting principal for three years. In the decade that we have been neighbors with the magnet school downtown, I will tell you that he is the first magnet school administrator that is in the trenches with the students and the faculty. Compared to his arrogant predecessors, he has a genuine rapport with magnet school students.
Here's Ernesto Guajardo's reward for service: When he spoke out about what was happening to the building that had been the magnet school library, when he spoke out after being given lip service for why administrators were showing up to measure classrooms that were going to be reconfigured into offices for the new hires, Mr. Guajardo was summarily demoted and put under the supervision of a principal from another school. He was asked to tear up his business cards that called him the principal of the magnet school.
These are my best guesses for what will happen at the LISD performing arts magnet school:
a) Mr. Guajardo is going to be exiled to a portable building in the hinterlands in a measure to let him know that authority is not to be questioned;
b) the $50,000 worth of new library books, $23,000 in shelving and tables, and $20,000 insurance replacement for the library's fire damaged collection will never make it into a magnet school library;
c) LISD administration will by the beginning of the next school year strip away the magnet school's academic curriculum (English, Spanish, Math, Geography) and send it and the teachers of those subjects back to the other campuses.
The district has yet to be up-front about the taking of magnet school buildings for other uses, but why call attention to the single-minded trajectory of this superintendent and his very willing board to stack a top-heavy structure with new hires from the superintendent's former school districts?
When I called the school district's public information office for clarity about what is happening at the magnet school, it was administrative assistant for academics Veronica Martinez, the author of the nasty memo, who returned my call and assured me no plans were underfoot to radically change the operation of the school.
I would like to know what Ms. Martinez' instructions were from Superintendent Barber when she launched on this witch hunt disguised as an official query. What kind of tone has he set for information gathering in the school district? Ms. Martinez lost all credibility in the document she generated when she veered from real issues about the operation of the magnet school to speculation on the private and professional lives she impugned, maligned, and violated in her memo.
Here are two things Ms. Martinez failed to mention in her memo about the LISD performing arts magnet school -- the overall student to teacher ratio is 23 students to one teacher. Ninety-seven percent of the magnet school's graduates go from its conservatory and studio style instruction to college.