“Allen Vaught. Do nothing rep-except for one non-creative, “duh” bill concerning child seats. But maybe doing nothing is better than screwing up?”
- Burka Blog 10 worst/best legislators
How do bad things keep happening in all of the school districts in HD-107, Representative Vaught? Your bad dog bill, your coal plant bill which you are hoping will quiet those pesky autism parents, the discriminatory pre-school voucher (which pissed off autism parents across the state), protecting criminal backgrounds of anyone who works for public schools… your latest moves don’t cut the mustard. We haven’t seen enough “proactive solutions for neighborhood schools” to hold Texas public schools accountable to children and taxpayers. In fact, some of your legislatin’ may have made things worse. Lots worse.
It’s a good thing the Dallas Morning News found out about the wild west gambler running Mesquite ISD’s sports programs before you supported the Farrar Amendment, Representative Vaught, or the DMN may not have been able to warn Longview ISD that a criminal was headed their way. Mesquite ISD sure wasn’t warning them, just as MISD didn’t warn the TEA or the families they theoretically exist to serve.
Please read one of the best DMN articles I’ve read in a long time and connect the dots for yourself: http://www.dallasnews.com
When Mesquite police told district officials last year that their popular, affable football coach was pawning school-owned electronics and sporting goods, they told the cops to shut down the investigation. He gave it all back, they said. We’ve got it under control. We don’t need your help.
When Dallas Morning News reporters got wind of this and contacted district authorities, the response was dismissive: We don’t know what you’re talking about.
Instead of reporting the allegations to the Texas Education Agency, which the law says must be done within seven days, authorities quietly announced Halpin’s retirement in an abrupt, purposely misleading press release that cited “health reasons.”
And when Halpin started hunting around for a new job, Mesquite officials remained resolutely silent. Letting some other hapless district unknowingly hire a guy known to boost and hock school property was evidently a lesser evil than an embarrassing headline.
It was our reporters who had to clue in the Longview Independent School District, which was talking to Halpin about a new job, about the real reason for his resignation.
“God almighty, are you serious?” gasped the Longview athletic director when contacted by The News.
It wasn’t until reporters began filing open-records requests that the Mesquite district finally alerted the TEA to the case – a month after the expiration of the seven-day disclosure period that the state agency requires.
“We reported it in what we thought was a timely manner,” was all MISD Superintendent Linda Henrie had to say. The school board has backed her up, not elaborating on whether Mesquite lingers in some kind of unstable time sector where “seven days” and “six weeks” are about the same thing.
From the looks of my own neighborhood school, I’d say Representative Vaught is living in that same unstable time sector where 2 terms just aren’t enough to fulfill those juicy campaign promises.
Coming Soon: Updates on UB’s neighborhood school
