Take your shoes off and sit a spell
Forget Netflix, and instead, go online and search for the “PSJA school board meeting Sept. 12.” The video link will pop right up. Take your shoes off and sit a spell. Maybe grab some popcorn and watch this school-district novella crank right up in the middle of a school board election.
Then skip ahead to the 58-minute mark and watch some board members try and explain why the district’s compensation manual is basically a mess, not a mess, but should be approved just the same.
The same compensation manual was a mess last year, Trustee Jorge “George” Palacios said in so many words, and here we are again 12 months later, with nothing changed, but yet he was being asked to approve it by the district’s administrative staff, which was recommending its approval.
The Split Four years ago, Palacios ran on a slate with the trustee sitting to his left, Carlos Villegas, along with current Board President Rick Pedraza. Because they ran unopposed, there was no election, and the three men were ushered into office in November 2018.
Two years later, November 2020, Cynthia Gutierrez won her first election to the school board, running on a slate with the two Zambrano brothers, Jesse and the younger Jorge, and Jesse Vela, who was set to start his third term on the board.
Between the two elections, though, in the fall of 2019, longtime Superintendent Daniel King retired, which brought in the current supe, Dr. Jorge Arredondo, who seemed to have a penchant for hiring out-of-town talent.
Up until the spring of 2021, few things at PSJA were making the news. Everything was coming up COVID. Aside from the pandemic, the most often talked about scuttlebutt from inside the district had to do with the new top administrators being hired, almost all of whom hailed from outside the district.
“Doesn’t PSJA already have enough good employees from within the district to promote?”
At least that was the common refrain. In approximately March 2021, the board basically split 5-2, with Villegas and Gutierrez going head to head with the “Z faction,” comprised of the two Zambranos, Pedraza, Palacios, and Vela. The main issue was “new hires.”
According to Villegas, as mentioned in a story published in The Advance May 12, 2021, the district had voted two months prior to hire a new attorney, accountant, and software engineer.
“I have a concern because come to find out,” Villegas said at the time, “we have custodial positions that haven’t been filled, which have a direct impact on our campuses. Maintenance staff positions that we haven’t filled, which have a direct impact on our campuses. Security staff positions. We haven’t filled several positions, and I know that we use a lot of this staff for essential duties and responsibilities around the district. The reason I bring all of this out now is that we seem to be saying, ‘It’s okay; we don’t need these people right now.’ Maybe not, but we’re hiring all this new administrative staff.”
Gutierrez voiced her support in what Villegas was saying.
“I feel that if we have $140,000 to spend on a new attorney, might as well use those $140,000 to hire four or five security guards, or four or five maintenance level staff members. I think that would alleviate some of the impact that the lack of staff is having on our employees.”
As the public would come to find out, Gutierrez would become one of the most outspoken trustees on the board.
From the same news story published May 12, 2021: “There’s a lot going on,” said Gutierrez. “People like to go around and say I betrayed this and that (the Zambrano slate, of which she was a part). There’s never betrayal. You make a choice of supporting somebody, then you look at the facts in front of you, and you make a decision who you want to support, who you want to be with. I just don’t want to be anybody’s puppet. I just don’t want to be told what to do. That’s why I started raising my hand and asking questions.”
In response, the majority faction — the Zs, with Pedraza, Palacios, and Vela rounding out the pack — quit commenting to help flesh out news stories. None would return phone calls or text messages, except for Jesse Zambrano, but everything he said was off the record at the time, adding nothing to the news stories being written.
Current Events
Which leads us to today, and last week’s Sept. 12 school board meeting.
In some ways, it’s a testament to the old adage: some things never change.
If you’re new to this drama, and you’re wondering why Trustee Dr. Cynthia Gutierrez is standing during the entire school board meeting, it’s because Jorge Zambrano showed her disrespect (her words) during an Oct. 18, 2021 school board meeting.
During that regular board meeting, then-Board President Jorge Zambrano told the district’s IT department that it needed to remove “Doctor” from in front of Trustee Cynthia Gutierrez’s name because it’s “misleading.”
According to Dr. Gutierrez, she never asked that “Doctor” be placed in front of her name, but since that’s how she was named when she ran on a slate with the Zambranos (Jorge and his brother Jesse) and Jesse Vela during the November 2020 school board race, at their bequest, she said, she now finds it odd that it’s suddenly a problem.
Gutierrez is licensed to practice medicine in Mexico, but not in the U.S. It was Jorge Zambrano’s contention that placing Dr. in front of her name (doctora in Spanish) would confuse people on this side of the river, making it appear that she was licensed to practice in Texas.
During that October 2021 board meeting, Gutierrez said that if Board President Jorge Zambrano had a problem with “Doctor” being placed in front of her name, he could have handled it behind closed doors. Instead, she said, he chose to humiliate her in public fashion.
As such, she said, she would continue to stand during board meetings until he apologized. In a show of support, Trustee Carlos Villegas said he would stand with her, which is still the case today. Watch the Sept. 12, 2022 video, and there the two of them are, still standing, approximately a year later, with still no apology in sight.
In the interim, Rick Pedraza was named board president, and it’s with him that Gutierrez now seems to butt heads the most.
In fact, during the school board meeting last week, speaking to Pedraza, Gutierrez asked him if he was going to do the same thing he did to her in executive session when something didn’t go his way?
Then she broke into the look of a child, saying, “Na-na-na-na-na-na-na,” like a kid would who didn’t get his way.
For his part, Pedraza tries not to react, but it’s clear that he can’t completely tune her out.
“You only have three minutes to speak,” Pedraza told Gutierrez last Monday, indicating that each board member had the same amount of time to address the compensation manual.
“Then I’ll keep speaking,” said Gutierrez, indicating that she found it ridiculous to limit discussion when it came to something as important as the compensation manual, which dictates how much of a stipend will be paid to each position. How much will an assistant principal earn?
The problem is, the playing field isn’t level, according to Villegas, Gutierrez, and Palacios. The district has a mismatch on its hand — a higher position pays a lower stipend over here, while over there, a lower position is paid a bigger stipend.
Palacios also indicated that he had mentioned the year prior that assistant principals weren’t being adequately compensated, but here he was a year later, and nothing in the compensation manual had changed.
I don’t get it, he said, shrugging his shoulders.
The problem, said Gutierrez, one of many, is that the superintendent doesn’t return her phone calls, and the board president refuses to have a workshop or special board meetings to discuss the compensation manual, which she described as “all over the place.”
Jesse Zambrano said the district has had a workshop and several meetings to discuss compensation.
Gutierrez said there has never been a workshop, and that the “meetings” should be singular, “meeting.”
It got so down deep into the weeds last Monday that when Cynthia Gutierrez brought up the fact that the district was, in her opinion, spending money on things she deemed unnecessary -- a new baseball field, land purchases -- her nemesis, Jorge Zambrano, said, “..yeah, like the natatorium.”
Meaning, she voted to honor the contract that the district had with Pharr to split the cost of the $26-million swimming facility. The district was a year behind paying its share, 50/50, and the city was threatening to sue.
Gutierrez told Zambrano she was glad he had brought that up, because it’s important to remember, she said, that when the contract was inked between the city and school district, his brother, Jesse, had been the Pharr EDC attorney who had drafted and signed the contract even while he was on the school board.
She hadn’t been on the board when the deal was initially struck or approved, she said, but she believed in honoring one’s commitment in the form of a written contract, and the city had done nothing to sever the contract, so, yes, she had voted in favor of paying the city what it was owed.
But with regard to Jesse Zambrano’s part in the contract, while simultaneously working for the EDC and being on the school board, Gutierrez had one thing to say: “Conflict of interest,” she said, looking at both Zambrano brothers, as Pedraza reminded her that she had run out of time.
In the end last Monday, the board voted 4-3 to not approve the compensation manual. George Palacios and Jesse Vela sided with Gutierrez and Carlos Villegas.
“What I want people to know,” said Villegas, is that I’m not saying that we should lower anyone’s stipend. I’m not saying that at all. I am just saying that we should build more equity into the compensation manual, so that everyone is being justly and evenly compensated.” Stay tuned. More to come.