Forina cleared

Is there a human mole inside McAllen ISD leaking confidential school board/supe info to someone who then blasts it across social media so that Person A looks better than Person B in the eyes of the public?

Of course if anyone believes something told to them by an anonymous social-media poster on blind faith, with no valid source, public documents to back it up, then please don’t vote in the next school-board election.

Two weeks ago, McAllen ISD met during a regular board meeting, part of which included discussion in executive session of an internal investigation conducted by one of the law firms that represents the district. At its heart was a complaint filed by a woman, the assistant director, who worked in the district’s communications department, against her direct supervisor, Jake Berry. On the quick heels of that (a day or two), a second complaint was filed against the original complainant by a young woman who reportedly worked under Berry.

Let’s just say, some people found the timing odd.

Exactly what the complaints entail hasn’t been made public, and all attempts by this newspaper to gain any public documents related to these complaints have all been forwarded by McAllen ISD to the Texas AG’s Office, seeking a legal opinion. The district claims the matter should be kept confidential for multiple reasons, citing personnel issues for one.

During another story written about this matter and published in The Advance Dec. 28th, Berry was quoted as saying he wanted to tell his side of the story, but had to wait for the go-ahead from his attorney. (Source: The Monitor). His longtime buddy, School Board President Tony Forina, up for re-election this May, told The Monitor that he had done nothing wrong.

During the Jan. 11 board meeting, trustees, including Forina, the school attorney, and the superintendent met behind closed doors to discuss the investigation. Then they came out from executive session, and the board, including Forina, voted to sign off on the investigation, which included the part that said, indeed, Tony Forina had done nothing wrong with regard to school complaints.

The Back Story

Supposedly the back story follows. If I got any of it wrong, please email me at: greggbwendorf@gmail.com — and I’ll set the record straight if indeed I’m wrong. I’m pretty confident so far with what my sources have told me, but we shall see: For years, Norma Zamora- Guerra ran McAllen ISD’s Community Information Department with her trusted lieutenant, the capable Mark May, by her side. This duo churned out all of McAllen ISD’s news, both print and broadcast, for close to two decades. Then Zamora- Guerra retired. In almost any other school district, the most sensible choice to replace her would have been Mark May. Instead, the district reportedly changed the job qualifications for both Zamora-Guerra’s old job as department director as well as that of a new assistant-director. Suddenly, with the change, a guy like Mark May with his bachelor’s degree couldn’t replace his former boss. Instead, you needed someone with a master’s degree, and it just so happened, wouldn’t you know it, that Tony Forina’s old radio buddy, Jake Berry, had a master’s degree. So did the woman hired as his assistant director.

What directly led the assistant director to file a complaint against Berry isn’t entirely clear, even though I have a clue, offered to me by several sources.

Not long after she filed her complaint against Berry, a young woman who worked in the same office as the two of them filed one against the assistant director.

Hence the December board meeting to authorize an internal investigation.

The complaints apparently included what took place at a fishing tournament this past fall, which had on hand many school personnel, albeit off the clock, so to speak, and talk related to sexual-innuendo, profanity, heard inside the Community Information Department. Apparently, that had never proven a problem to the youngest complainant until the older complainant filed a complaint against Berry, her supervisor. Or so the story goes.

Fast forward. Even though McAllen ISD hasn’t said this publicly, reportedly from at least two sources, both Berry and the assistant director have been transferred, and Mark May is taking the lead at the Community Information desk where he should have been after Zamora-Guerra’s retirement, before the district just so happened to change the job qualifications to exclude May from the application process.

“Thank you, Mark, but this job’s not for you.”

Speaking of which, have you ever heard the job requirement for a school district’s public information officer requiring a master’s degree? I never have, but then came McAllen ISD, which can exhibit quirks from time to time. Remember the pizza lady on the board whose business used to sell, I think, more than $100 grand worth of pizzas to the district?

First question I had was, should her family business be profiting from the board, even if it is legal, and with the obesity today seen among so many kids, do schools even need pizzas inside their cafeterias?

Off topic. Sorry.

Back to the recent complaints and how they ended. Apparently, there was enough in the attorney’s report to say that both the director and the assistant were guilty of at least some school-related malfeasance, call it what you will.

Here’s the kicker, though, which was alluded to at the top of this column – does McAllen ISD have a mole on the inside?

The Jan. 9 executive-session meeting during which the investigation was discussed along with what penalties should be meted out was only heard by select parties: the board trustees, the school district superintendent, Jay Gonzalez, and legal counsel, and maybe a very few select others.

Yet, approximately a week later, an anonymous social media post went out that had enough classified info in it to know it came from someone in the know, on the deep inside. The tweet focused on the older female employee, AKA, the former assistant director, and took more than a few personal swipes at her. Jake Berry’s name, however, wasn’t mentioned in that social media post. It was all anti-assistant director. Everything was her fault.

So who is the mole, and who is doing the posting on social media, running down the very same woman who filed the original complaint?

Popcorn and a novella. Hopefully, the district will change its job requirements, drop the required masters’ degree, and give Mark May the job for as long as he wants it. In the meantime, he continues to serve as interim director.