¡Qué bárbaros! Pray for the honeymoon to end
between LISD super Barber & the board of trustees

By María Eugenia Guerra

Laredo Independent School District taxpayers can only pray that the honeymoon between superintendent R. Jerry Barber and the Board of Trustees comes to an abrupt halt, before he finishes fashioning in his own image the same expensive, top-heavy model of administration he built at the helm of United Independent School District across town. Though Barber was able to float that boat at one of the fastest growing, land-rich districts in the state, it is difficult to imagine that the same model could work at a tiny landlocked, no-growth school district that in tax base wealth hovers near the bottom of the state's ranking of 1,000 school districts.
When you put a pencil to his own salary (a base of $175,000 before benefits and discretionary funds totalling over $20,000) and the list of administrative hires Barber has made as interim superintendent and more recently as the contracted superintendent -- many recruited from his old school district(s) -- you are staring at the fiscally daunting sum of nearly a million dollars. Though some of the new hires were replacements for existing personnel and positions, many were not. The trustees agreed to pay Barber a base salary that is $35,000 more than former superintendent Paul Cruz' salary and $42,000 more than Barber earned at UISD.
If only before loading up on new administrators Barber and the trustees had heeded (or even read) Recommendation 7 on page 57 of the Comptroller's 2002 Management and Performance Review for LISD: Restructure LISD's organization to functionally align responsibilities of staff, reduce the number of staff directly reporting to the superintendent and clearly assign accountability and specific lines of authority.
Factor in all the other ways a school district can bleed at the bottom line -- state funding cuts, inefficient operations, costly reassignments of personnel and staff to make way for new hires, costly moves into expensive rented properties. And don't forget to factor in the dismal performance of this starstruck board of trustees that asks few questions and rarely second-guesses its new superintendent. Even overlooking that they hired Barber, embraced Barber, waxed keen about Barber, told us how lucky we were to get Barber -- despite the infamous and unsavory big black mark on his resumé, a sex tape delivered to his office at UISD all those years ago -- they could still act like a board of trustees that entertains discussion and second-guesses the commitment of big chunks of the public nickel to hire the superintendent's pals and to promise some of them raises in the near future.
In the trustees' rush to acquiesce, endorse, and support their superintendent's wish for new hires and shuffles of space and job descriptions, they have taken little notice of the toll in morale being exacted across the district as the rank and file witness the denigrating and sometimes inexplicable reassignments of longtime educators thrown into jobs that don't exactly match their area of expertise or education. Please consider the reassignment of lifetime educator Dr. Cecilia May Moreno, Ph.D., a curriculum and instruction specialist who in her new job as executive director for support services now oversees the district's division of operations, buses and transportation, child nutrition, and construction at the Lyons Street yard, aka LISD Siberia.
For an independent assessment of the LISD board's performance as trustees and the district as a whole, read the Comptroller's Performance Review 2002.
Here are a few of the findings:
o Some LISD board members are not meeting continuing education opportunities. One of the seven board members accrued almost half of the board's accumulated continuing education hours. One tenured board member did not report any training during the reporting periods.
o The LISD board is not using its four standing committees effectively (finance and audit, curriculum, technology and higher education, safety and athletics, and construction). The board reviews in detail some of the same information in both its standing committees and in regular board meetings, resulting in redundant and inefficient use of board and staff members' time.
o LISD board members have become increasingly involved in the daily operations of the district, which could potentially violate their statutory authority as board members. Individual LISD board members interact directly with LISD staff, question administrative decisions, and micromanage district affairs. Interviews conducted with LISD employees and community members alike highlighted this issue. The review team learned of examples of board members directing the organization of the safety office, creating a new district Quality Assurance committee, controlling staff appointments and salary increases, and giving individuals advice on internal operational decisions.
I am especially disappointed in the roles of Board president Dennis Cantu and in newcomer trustee George Beckelhymer, both whom I consider -- in stark comparison to the rest of the board -- at the high end of the spectrum of intelligence and commitment.
Some of the LISD trustees can pontificate with the best of them, as narrow-minded and arrogant public figures can so well do. Others of them are curiously silent. All of them, along with superintendent Barber, have for the moment forgotten they work for you to safeguard the scant educational resources of the Laredo Independent School District.