EPISD Board Prepares Puppet Show

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     So, 22-year-old Beatriz Garza, fresh out of college, was “one of the most qualified candidates” for the just-filled school board seat?
     How can Rodolfo Lopez say this with a straight face? Were all the other candidates homeless people and al-Qaida terrorists?
     It all looks fishy that someone with simply a bachelor’s degree in business administration beats out others with degrees, political experience, maturity, political savvy, professional experience, and children. (I’m convinced that you can’t really know and care about the school system unless you have kids who are there or who have been there.)
     The way Garza got in smells. It appears that a block of trustees wants to have a puppet, trusting their judgment instead of using her own, and blindly siding with them at every turn. It’s sad, and it shows that some current board members only wish to expand their sphere of influence instead of provide our community with the quality representation that we and our kids deserve.
     I did think that the previous block of Fuentes-McBeath-Cary had grown tiresome, but I was hoping for Lopez to lose his election bid. From what I remember, one of his biggest campaign platforms was to take it easier on delinquent taxpayers.
     What kind of policy is that? How hard is it to pay your taxes? A person who can afford property should be able to afford the property taxes. It’s like saying, “I bought a new car, but I can’t afford gas.” One goes with the other. You know that when you make your purchase, and if you can’t afford something you own, then you sell it -- or you can wait for the bank, the county, the city or the school district to take it away and sell it for you.
     In the past, many people chose not to pay their school taxes because they saw no deterrent in making that their lowest financial priority. Lopez wants to take us back to those days when millions of dollars went uncollected because people realized they could just toss their tax bill in the trash and nothing would happen.
     Now, Alfonso Nevarez has resigned his seat, and this majority that chose Garza gets to pick another puppet, creating a super majority. If they’re smart, though, they would pick someone actually qualified this time, to make less obvious their lack of concern about really serving the community.
     I try to give people credit, and maybe good things can come from Garza’s selection. For one, the board needed more representation from the south side. If Garza can keep an independent mind and not care about alienating some of the “powers that be,” she could give a lift to Winn and Memorial and their feeder schools.
     Secondly, it should help the Kickapoo tribe and the Kickapoo children to know that they’re not helpless in solving their educational failings. Maybe Garza can help find and provide what the Kickapoo kids need to have success in school. Few of them finish high school and even fewer complete college, so as one who did make it, Garza has the potential to help others find the way.
     Currently, on the EP Alumni message board, a couple of postings praise the “great” accomplishments of the previous school board. Though, I think they fell short of “greatness,” they did do many good things. They also stood out from other boards through something they didn’t do. They didn’t look at every situation and ask, “How can I use this to my own benefit, or to the benefit of my buddies or my family members?” Leading up to the election, they did make some questionable calls, though, and those actions led to their downfall.
     We want our school board members to ask themselves with each vote, “Am I doing the right thing, or am I doing the selfish, self-serving thing?” How about you, Mr. Lopez? Are you going to do the right thing?

TAKS for Parents II

A while back, I posted TAKS for Parents. I figured other teachers would have some funny ideas using the same idea, so I started a discussion thread at proteacher.net and got numerous responses, many of them unbelievably posted as “sad but true.” It was a strong reminder that many teachers and schools across the nation face tougher challenges than we do here in Eagle Pass.
Proteacher.net is a worthwhile site for teachers to check out, with numerous forums, blogs and curriculum ideas. Another site I stumbled across is www.detentionslip.org, which is kind of a “news of the weird” concentrating on education topics. That site targets more of a general audience rather than specifically educators.
Now, parents, get your No. 2 pencils ready. Here’s TAKS for Parents II:
1. Your child punches another student and she denies that it happened, your best course of action is:
A. To listen to both sides patiently
B. To demand proof through a review of the security camera videotape
C. To try and quickly put an end to the discussion by insisting, "My daughter never lies."
-- Juan Valdez
2. If the school day ends at 3:30 and you get off work at 4:00 and it's a 10-minute drive from your office to the school, how long should your child be waiting before you pick him up.
A. 40 minutes
B. 2 hours
C. It depends on how long my co-workers want to stay at happy hour
-- Juan Valdez
3. If your child's teacher calls to make you aware that your child has been off task and disruptive throughout the day you should...
a. tell the teacher that during the hours of 8-3 said child is the teacher's responsibility
b. agree that this behavior is not acceptable and say that you will discuss appropriate school behavior with said child.
c. start complaining about said child's good for nothing father who if he took care of his responsibilities then said child would not be in trouble every day.
-- Nucleus
4. Your child receives a notice that he can particpate in the best field trip ever for the low, low cost of $2 cash, a sack lunch and a signed permission slip. You choose to:
A. Sign the permission slip and while you're at it, tell the teacher what you really think of her on the the back.
B. Skip the cigs one day to fork over the $2 and figure she'll know you are giving permission since you bothered to pay.
C. Give the kid the two bucks with a candy bar and two Dr. Peppers in a sack. Call permission in on your way to work.
D. Tell the kid to ask the cafeteria lady for a sack lunch and that teacher has "special" money for kids who can't pay. Drop the permission slip off at school on the way to your mani-pedi
-- Lottalove
5. "Home Economics."
You do not get paid for another week, and have $40 left in your checking account. You use this $40 to:
A) Get your acrylics filled. You have a date Saturday night, after all.
B) Pay $20 on your child's school lunch account, and save the remaining $20 as "just in case" money.
C) Lend it to your neighbor for him to get his car washed and waxed. He is so HOT!
-- Bookgeek59
6. Your economic stimulus check just came, and your child owes $120 in lunch charges.
A. You buy a Wii and tell your child not to tell his teacher. (He does).
B. You buy a new boat, and hope no one notices it sitting in your driveway. (They do.)
C. You call the school and ask them to stop sending those lunch charge notes home because you can't afford to pay for the lunches.
D. All of the above.
-- Linda2671
7. You send an O'Douls in your child's lunch bag for snack and lunch. When the teacher calls you should:
A. Say OMG I must of grabbed the O'Douls instead of the Snapple.
B. Say I have no idea how that got in my child's lunch bag
C. Say I thought you might call, I wasn't sure if I could send in a glass bottle.
-- Summertime (This is actually true. The parent responded with C)
8. The police call to tell you that they have been summoned to school due to your child's out of control behavior. You must come to school immediately. You respond:
a. I don't have a car to get there.
b. I am under the hair dryer right now.
c. Just take him to jail then.
d. Ask the person who took you to the beauty shop to take you to school NOW.
-- also true
9. The crisis unit calls to tell you that they have been contacted by the police to assess your child's danger to himself or others. They are recommeding that your child be hospitalized immediately.
a. Say you don't approve and hang up.
b. Say he's just playing and you need to control him.
c. Say if you'd beat his a$$ he wouldn't act this way.
d. Say take him then!
-- also true
10. Your school is using Picture Day to raise funds for classroom supplies. Your child brings home a large envelope with cute pictures in different poses. You can buy as few or as many pictures as you like. The remaining pictures must be returned to school. Your best course of action is to:
A. Keep all the pictures and throw away the payment envelope.
B. Claim you never received the pictures.
C. Ignore all notes and calls from the teacher and the school regarding the pictures.
D. Direct your child to tell the teacher daily that you will pay tomorrow afternoon.
E. All of the above
-- CVT (also true)
11. When filling out emergency cards for your child do you:
a) list all of the possible candidates under the father's information
b) write the school's address down under your personal information hoping that no one will notice it since you're not zoned to that school
c) list your cousin's best friend's sister's phone number without telling her that she is the only emergency contact for your asthmatic, highly allergenic child because you're between phones right now
d)write down the actual address to the state prison under the father's information because he may not get out before the end of the school year
-- nicksgirl
12. You roll out of bed at 10:30 and discover the television remote is missing. You:
a) Get up and change the channel.
b) Get up and look for the remote.
c) Decide there are plenty of things you should do instead of watching tv.
d) Call you daughter's school, tell them it's an emergency, have your child (who is already struggling academically) pulled out of class, and proceed to drill her about where she left the remote.
-- Sblack47
13. Your child is failing several subjects due to the fact that you kept him home from school for 2 or 3 days each week. He is finally making some progress in the 4th quarter. After the teacher tells you what a great job he is doing, you decide to dabble in a fraudulent lawsuit and fake that your child broke a limb on your neighbor's property. Do you:
a) Send him to school with the fake broken limb, and tell the teacher "He won't be doing much for the rest of the year"
b) Complain to the teacher and principal that your child cannot participate in PE because of the fake broken limb, and decide to show up during PE to make sure he is allowed to do everything.
c) tell all school personell that the fake fracture is so severe that is the child even moves the limb, emergency surgery will be required
d) Take off the fake brace just in time for field day; show up with 4 toddlers in tow and neglect to supervise any of them. Chain-smoke in the parking lot and let the teachers babysit the toddlers.
e) all of the above.
-- hovenweep
Outrageous, but submitted as true.

Job vacancy -- Not Really

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     Apparently a C.C. Winn counselor got pushed around to make room for the new football coach’s wife and several other employees are righteously P.O.’d that they applied for and interviewed for a job that had essentially already been filled.
     For the details, see the comments attached to the previous blog. While those individuals directly affected cry “UNFAIR,” the school district will certainly just shrug off this situation as the price of doing business.
     Did the district do this to give a break to the wife of coach George Ruiz? Sure. One story I heard was that Eddie Baca’s wife wanted a job a Memorial Junior High, and he left C.C. Winn after only 3 weeks partly because a position wasn’t made for her or given to her.
     If that’s true, it seems like the Bacas were overly demanding, because her certification would have qualified her to teach either elementary school or at Winn. Her place didn’t HAVE to be at Memorial. You can’t just let these spouses insist, “I want to teach to teach this subject, this grade and at this school,” and you wave your magic wand and POOF, there it is.
     Hopefully, Mrs. Ruiz didn’t demand that she had to have a counseling job at C.C. Winn. Maybe she would have accepted working at Memorial or at any of the Southside elementaries but no positions were open. If that’s the case, well, the district will say they did what they had to do.
     Did C.C. Winn ask the counseling staff if anyone cared to volunteer to move to EPJ? If they didn’t, they should have. The blog reader asks, “Who is responsible.” The answer to that is Winn principal Jesus Diaz-Wever. Remember, Vera Sumpter supposedly had a similar situation at Memorial with Mrs. Baca and said no. Diaz could have said he didn’t need a new counselor, and if she wanted that job she could look at other campuses, or she would be welcome to teach at C.C. Winn.
     Diaz, though, does what he’s told to do. Someone else made the decision and he went along. An unwanted reassignment stinks for the person moved to EPJ, but school districts have wide latitude for transferring employees, so really nothing can be done. I do wish in cases like this that they would find ways to avoid the sham interviews that waste the time of the applicants, the interview committee and human resources.
     It should happen rarely, but sometimes the person wanted for a certain job opening will be predetermined. Usually, this predetermination becomes obvious after the fact, making the other applicants just feel used and jerked around. Nobody likes preparing an application (transcripts, cover letter, references, resume, and so on), prepping for an interview, then being grilled in a tortuous interview, then finding out they never had a chance for the spot.
     These positions must be advertised, but this can be done in a way that makes it clear what’s going on. If Mrs. Ruiz already had the job locked up, they should have written the requirements in a way that she was the only one qualified. This gives others a hint not to even apply, much less worry about going through the whole interview charade.
     Maybe Mrs. Ruiz knows sign language. So, you write up a position for a counselor for hearing impaired students. She’s the only one qualified. Bam! She’s in. This saves everyone a lot of hassle and saves other possible applicants the humiliation of beings pawns in an underhanded scheme.
     Another concern is that this new counselor, assisted into a job through her husband’s status, will take advantage of her position. “My husband’s the coach. I can show up late. I can take a two-hour lunch. I don’t have to get this work done today. My husband’s the coach.” Most people try to get away with as much as they can. I hope she’s in the minority of people who have the decency and good character to work conscientiously no matter what the circumstances. Maybe she’ll work hard to prove that she wasn’t just given the job for nothing.
     From this controversy, the biggest question, I think, to ask is this: How much is a head football coach worth? Is he worth alienating current employees? Is he worth his salary and his wife’s? Is he worth the distrust and jealousy from the other coaches caused by hiring an out-of-towner instead of a local? District administrators have already answered these questions yes, yes and yes. If these answers prove correct and Ruiz creates a winning Maverick football program, the stepping on toes to get there will be considered irrelevant – except by those whose toes were in the way. If Ruiz proves to be a dud, he won’t be the only one called on the carpet for a bad decision, and for the poorly executed decision-making process.

The Easy Way to be Valedictorian

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     In helping your children achieve better grades, there’s a right way, and they're many wrong ways. A Pennsylvania woman this month found that her wrong way of helping could cost her 7 years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
     Caroline Maria McNeal of Huntingdon was charged a week ago with 29 counts of unlawful use of a computer and 29 counts of tampering with public records after being caught using school computers to improve her daughter’s grades and lower the grades of two other girls. McNeal worked as a secretary at the school and used the passwords of other office workers to change the grades and to boost her daughter’s SAT score.
     She probably wasn’t even aware that these were criminal actions, but apparently now McNeal will need to have her Mother of the Year award mailed to the state penitentiary. A jury might have some sympathy for helping your own daughter, but illegally lowering grades of other students is downright evil. McNeal’s lawyer should be telling her to cop a plea because a jury of her peers would want to hang her.
     In all, McNeal is accused of altering nearly 200 scores and grades covering four school years. The situation came to light in October 2007, when an employee of the high school guidance office discovered an SAT score raised from 1370 to 1730. Quite ingenious. When discovered, just claim a dyslexic inputted the data. Probably, some of the grade changes went from 69 to 96, 59 to 95, 19 to 91, and so on.
     It’s scary to think what else this woman might be capable of. My experience is that people who lie and cheat like this have had frequent practice. Certainly, the IRS should be auditing her recent returns. And her Facebook profile probably lists her as a 23-year-old single supermodel.
     I’ve searched to see if McNeal has made any statements in her defense or if her local newspaper might have published more details about this story, but only found many multiple copies of the original Associated Press coverage. I did find this funny statement in another blog: “I guess that calls for a new Latin phrase, to be posted on a Valedictorian's diploma. You've seen ‘Magna’ and ‘Summa.’ Now there's this graduation addendum – ‘Momma Cum Laude.’”
     McNeal’s over the top actions make me not feel guilty anymore about building the Golden Gate Bridge replica out of toothpicks for my 1sg-grade daughter.

Lawmen on the Wrong Side of the Law?

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     Oh, the suspense! Will the FBI investigation of two Maverick County investigators peter out without nabbing more slimebags, or will we see the biggest local scandal since the Kickapoo Casino/Isidro Garza family fiasco?
     If others are involved with this bribe-taking, Sergio Beattie and Guillermo Martinez could be the lucky ones. In any criminal conspiracy, it’s always good to be the first one caught, because you’re the first one given the chance to rat out others and cut a deal to get off easy.
     Some intriguing questions linger with these two caught here recently. Which one will fink on the other first? How high up will the tattle-telling lead? The stool pigeons will get a better deal for each big fish they help land. On this note, I don’t think the FBI would lay out $14,000 in bribe money just to harass a lowly 8-liner establishment, so I’m expecting something larger to evolve over time.
     And another tidbit I’d like to know is who tipped off the FBI to begin with that Beattie and Martinez were likely candidates to betray the public’s trust? That’s really a minor piece of the story, but I always like to know what screw up led to a criminal’s capture. Sometimes the most ingenious plans have some dumb little mistake or accident that blows the whole thing apart. Then, you’re thinking they would have gotten away with this heist except for this one trivial detail.
     Maybe Beattie and Martinez thought they would start small and later move up in the world of criminal enterprise, otherwise, I don’t see how they thought the few thousand dollars they earned in this scheme was worth the risk. I see the allure of easy money in illegal trades – if it’s low risk. What these guys were doing left witnesses and paper trails. Why would they think they couldn’t get caught?
     So, they might go to prison, they lost their jobs, they embarrassed their families, they ruined their reputations and they’ve lowered the general credibility of local law enforcement. When those are the consequences, most people with good sense would tell the bribe-giver where he could stuff his paltry offer.
     It makes it worse that these two who broke the law were themselves law enforcement. If they would themselves break the law, you have to think they were incapable of fairly enforcing laws where they concerned others. How many ways in the past have they taken advantage of their positions or acted immorally, unethically or criminally?
     Eagle Pass defense attorneys love the way this has played out. They can put under scrutiny any investigations against their clients involving Beattie and Martinez. A lot of work will have to be redone and probably a few cases dropped because anything with their names on it cannot be trusted.
     Maybe other officials are not involved with this latest scandal. If they are, hopefully they will be caught. Hopefully, the ones who are caught will get the punishments they deserve, so that in the future, the probable consequences will deter others. Many of them will still be slimebags, but at least they won’t be criminals.

Greedy teachers union invites backlash

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     About 700 New York City public school teachers draw full salaries to spend their days playing games, reading, painting, piddling and gossiping, according to a recent article that drew outrage across the nation. Union rules prevent these teachers from being fired or being in the classroom while awaiting disciplinary hearings that may be months or even years into the future.
     My first reaction to this as a teacher is that we need a union like that in Eagle Pass. I’m sure most other people react with, “That’s just plain crazy.”
     EPISD sometimes sees teachers and administrators put on paid leave during investigations of wrongdoing. The difference between us and New York is that it doesn’t happen that often and the investigations wrap up quickly. Teachers can be fired immediately if caught red-handed in their wrongdoing, but they usually know not to be that blatant with actions that might result in termination.
     Another difference in New York is that the teachers cannot be assigned to other duties. So they draw their salaries while sleeping, selling real estate, learning tai chi, earning graduate degrees and teaching each other yoga.
     Such deals result from myopic union leaders who care only about greed and nothing about the well-being of their employer and nothing about the public perception of themselves or their bosses. Such lack of foresight by the UAW helped push GM into its current bankruptcy. What good does it do to have the union’s advantages once that union has bled the employer out of business?
     Here’s a situation reported about GM that exactly mirrors the NYC teachers:
     “Unbelievably, at its assembly plant in Oklahoma City, GM is actually obliged by its UAW contract to pay 2,300 workers full salary and benefits for doing absolutely nothing. Since G.M. shut down production there last month, these workers have entered the Jobs Bank, industry’s best form of job insurance. It pays idled workers a full salary and benefits even when there is no work for them to do.”
     Generally, I give begrudging support to unions. I think they’ve kept this country from a state where the executives of corporations make billions, while the average workers live in poverty. My dad belonged to the railroad union and as he rose in seniority and neared retirement, he was doing well for someone with a 7th-grade education. Without that union, I probably would have grown up poor instead of being middle class.
     However, too many unions achieve their members’ benefits when times are good, then refuse to let go of any gains when their companies hit rough spots. If GM workers, for example, had allowed some givebacks over the years, it might have helped that company stay solvent.
     Unions for teachers, police, firefighters and some others have an advantage in this way, because nobody worries about a city, county or school district going bankrupt. These unions can push hard at contract negotiation time because they can insist that their employer either find the money for raises or increase taxes if they have to.
     Police and firefighters, I think mostly have reasonable salaries, but they do in some places get benefits beyond what they deserve. Due to their union protection, they also are difficult to fire and know they have leeway to act unprofessionally with little fear of serious consequences.
     Unions must realize that when they protect their members like this to an unreasonable extreme, they’re just shooting themselves in the foot. They damage the reputation of their profession. They lose public support. They lose political support. Finally, they might risk putting themselves, and/or their employers out of business.
     The NYC teachers’ union needs to pull back. They shouldn’t insist that a member under investigation cannot be temporarily reassigned. They’ve created an insane situation that everyone can see is the union’s fault. So, I’ve reconsidered. Eagle Pass DOESN’T need a union like that, and if we had one, I wouldn’t want to belong to it.

About the Public Pool and E.Pee

Eagle Pass Daily -- www.eaglepassdaily.com -- City and regional news, opinions, and photos.
     Lately, with the high temperature topping 100 daily, many people know the place to be is the Eagle Pass public swimming pool. An outstanding facility to begin with, recent improvements have helped keep this place hopping through the summer – well, for at least two months of the summer.
     With ideal swimming weather here from at least May through September, it seems like they could find a way to have the public pool open for more than just half of June, all of July and half of August. I know the lifeguards go back to college and so on, and more excuses, and so on. It’s just too nice of a place to waste for almost 10 months of the year.
     The public pool hours also have always puzzled me. Why do they have to wait until 4 p.m. to open? I guess partly because so many Eagle Passans won’t get out during the hottest part of the day. I even hear this phrase sometimes: “It’s too hot to go swimming.”
     How can that be? To me it’s like being out in freezing weather and saying, “It’s too cold to stand by the fire.” If you’re cold, you find a way to get warm, and if you’re hot, you find a way to cool off. I don’t think it can ever be too hot to splash into a nice cool pool.
     I’ve never heard any discussion about extending the pool hours, or ever known why those hours were set that way to begin with. I assume everyone except me pretty much agrees with the way it’s being done. I might agree, too, if I knew the explanation.
     Attendance at the pool would probably double (and maybe it could stay open more) if so many parents weren’t unreasonably afraid of pee in the water. Some parents have told me that’s the reason they would never let their kids go there.
     To me these parents are germaphobes denying their kids fun because of their exaggerated fears. As far as a pool goes, it would take a lot of pee to make a difference in billions of gallons of chlorinated water. Even at that, a little pee on your skin never hurt anyone.
     Even ingested internally, pee has no ill effect. POW’s have told stories about drinking their urine in order to survive in the concentration camps, and the space shuttle astronauts recently drank water filtered from their pee collected while in orbit. They said it was great.
     We once spent a day at Garner State Park and this woman near us had a chair in the river with the water up to her chest. In about 5 hours she drank a case of Budweiser, and never once got out of that chair. This woman either had a bladder like a beach ball, or she pissed enough in the Rio Frio to make it lukewarm. I don’t think she could drink that much and hold it that long, so the second possibility makes more sense. Luckily, we were upstream, but the people downstream didn’t seem to care.
     A kid once told me that his uncle put a chemical in his home pool so that if anybody peed, it would make a bright red cloud around them. On the surface, that’s a good lie to tell because you think, “Who’s going to have the nerve to try it out. Think of the shame if everyone knew you peed in the pool.”
     Such a chemical doesn’t exist. I never believed it did, but I did an Internet search today to make sure. I was surprised to find this story shows up under the urban legends at snopes.com where it goes on to explain that even if kids believe the lie, it still probably won’t stop them. For one thing, Snopes says, if anyone else is in the pool, some kids would pee and just blame the poor guy next to them. Other kids would just be like, “Wow! I pee and it turns the water bright red? I gotta try that!”
     The possibility of a urine detecting chemical has gained credibility through its fictional existence in TV shows and movies. A Wikipedia entry describes a Nickelodeon Adventures of Pete and Pete episode in which “Wee-Wee See” is used to “catch a pool-peeing perpetrator.”
     Kids who have seen that show would believe you have such a product, but I really don’t support using such lies. Eventually, kids learn the truth, and your credibility is damaged. Then, you tell them something important like not to dive headfirst into the shallow end of the pool because they could break their necks and never walk again, and they’ll respond, “Whatever. You’re just saying that because you’re lying there and don’t want to be splashed.” Then, they’ll immediately dive into two feet of water.
     So, back to the subject I digressed from 600 words ago. Maybe the public pool could be even more successful and be open more by convincing the people of Eagle Pass that it uses Wee-Wee See and nobody’s peeing in the water anymore. In the past, I’ve seen the people here believe bigger lies than that.