TOM LAW:
When Tom Law ran for the school board in 2006, he ran as the candidate supported by the Katy Citizen Watchdogs. Also running at that time was Fred Hink.
Both of these fellows were well qualified to run because they were college educated and degreed, had children in the District's schools, and cared about the academic educations of their children.
Tom Law was elected, but Fred Hink was not. (Fred Hink ran against Robert Shaw, and Old Katy came to Shaw's aid. Mr. Hink received 2,891 votes. Tom Law received 2,609 votes defeating Neal Howard (the candidate supported by the insiders), and Gregory Gibbs. Their total votes rank among the top individual vote-getting races in KISD school board history.
Shortly before their election, in an action not taken legally as a posted item on the agenda and voted on in an open session, the KISD school board at the time conspired to create policy changes that would prevent Mr. Law and Mr. Hink (were they to both get elected) from getting items placed on the School Board's agenda. The manual containing the new policy did NOT come from TASB or any legally allowed procedure. It was just concocted by the Board members at the time. Those Board members included Judy Snyder, who was the president, Joe Adams, Eric Duhon, Jackie Birkel, Rebecca Fox, Chris Crockett, and Robert Shaw.
They claimed, as soon as Mr. Law was elected, that the policy to require three board members to sign off on a proposed agenda item, was already a Board policy.
They were lying. Some KISD administrators joined in on the lie.
The vote to make their underhanded policy a real policy did not occur for three months after Mr. Law was duly elected. They placed the matter in the Consent Agenda, and they did not allow Mr. Law to know on what measure he was voting. As a new member of the Board, he did not realize that any Board would collectively act in such an underhanded and dishonorable manner.
A current school board member, George Scott, has repeatedly berated the service of Tom Law citing his lack of action while on the Board. No one understands why Mr. Scott would continue his harangue. The truth is, Mr. Law could not do anything at all because without two others to pose with him any agenda items, his hands were tied. To his credit, Mr. Law often was the only Board member who asked pertinent, intelligent questions at Board meetings. He often was met with silence or dumb stares. He was the only one there, in my opinion who understood the issues. It was during this time of his service that Superintendent Leonard Merrell was pushing the controversial KMAC teacher control/management system. Mr. Law was unalterably opposed to the idea. He single-handedly kept the Board from selling the rights to the system to Region IV for a pittance.
For anyone to constantly undercut Mr. Law's service is misguided and reveals ignorance of the facts of his service.
Years later, in 2009, John Pape who singlehandedly ran and wrote all the articles on InstantNewsKaty.com, posted a story that discussed the events that kept Tom Law from his legal right to act as he saw fit on behalf of those who campaigned and elected him and the citizens of Katy whom he sought to serve.
I also bring the matter up again because the issue of whether or not Board members have to speak to the public through the board president and whether they can place items on the agenda has arisen once again.
Here is the InstantNewsKaty.com story:
KISD Documents Suggest ‘Board Policy Manual’ Never Legally Adopted By Trustees
June 25th, 2009 | by John Pape
A second release of documents by the Katy ISD has again failed to show any evidence of a purported “policy” of school board members speaking only through the board president, nor do the documents show the closely-held “board operating procedures” were ever legally adopted by Katy ISD trustees.
The documents were released by Leslie B. Garvin, the district’s public records manger, in response to an open records request filed by InstantNewsKaty.
A similar request was made by George Scott Reports, a prominent on-line education website.
As with an earlier release of records, the second group of public documents showed no clear-cut policy requiring board members to speak only through the board president.
That policy was purportedly a part of a document entitled “Board Operating Procedures: Quick Reference Guide,” commonly referred to as “board operating procedures.”
The first information request led to the unearthing of the manual, a document not widely distributed within the school district, as the purported source of the policy. A review of that document, however, showed no such procedure.
Beginning at the bottom of page 17 and continuing on page 18 of the Board Operating Procedures in a passage entitled “Dealing with the Media,” it actually suggests someone other than the board president should serve as spokesperson for the board.
“The district and the board works (sic) with local news media to provide information to the community regarding the goals, achievements, needs and conditions of school and educational programs. All written requests for information should be forwarded to the director of communications,” the section from the procedural manual read. “If a board member receives a call from the media, the call should be directed to the board’s spokesperson. The board president and superintendent should also be notified of the call.”
The Board Operating Procedures do not specifically authorize the president to serve as spokesperson for the board of trustees. It also does not restrict individual trustees from making public statements on their own.
There was no indication when the procedures were adopted by the school board; however, the title page said it was “Revised: Spring 2009.”
A review of school board minutes for 2009 found no agenda item, nor any board action, to adopt any revised procedural manual or any portion of the manual. As a result, a separate open records request was submitted to the school district in an effort to determine how the manual came to govern how the board operates without being adopted in a public meeting as required by law.
The new documents shed no light on the question of how a governing document came into being without the school board adopting it. In fact, the records appear to show the procedural manual was revised by senior district staff members with only a perfunctory final blessing by then-Board President Eric Duhon.
In a transmittal letter accompanying the requested documents, Garvin noted the updating was essentially handled by Bonnie Holland, the district’s assistant superintendent for governance and legal affairs.
“I would like to point out that there was no written communications from Mr. Frailey regarding the publication of the manual, directives to print the manual or communications to the board regarding transmission of the publication to board members. Updating of the publication was handled by the office of the assistant superintendent for governance and legal affairs, which arranged for the printing and delivery to the board office,” Garvin wrote in the letter. “Copies were delivered to board members among their regular district mail in late spring, so there is no written documentation of its distribution. The document is not available in electronic form that is accessible to board members on the laptops they use during board meetings.”
Included in the newly-released documents is a draft copy of the updated manual with a handwritten note from Holland to Frailey.
“Mr. Frailey, the board operating procedures manual has been reviewed and revised consistent with policy,” the note, which is signed “Bonnie,” said.
It did not say who specifically reviewed or revised the manual.
In a different handwriting below the original message was the response, “Looks good to me. We need to let Mr. Duhon see the draft copy before it is printed.”
The response message bears only initials, but is believed to have been written by Frailey.
A draft of the procedures labeled as “final” bears a note dated Feb. 6 that reads, “Mr. Frailey – Mr. Duhon has reviewed this and approved. Your turn.” It bears the initials “B.J.” [That would be B. J. Alvarez, the Board secretary. MM]
Additional documents show the updated manuals were “approved” on Feb. 24, and signed off on by Holland. They were delivered on March 4. A total of 50 manuals were printed and delivered to the district.
The professed president-as-spokesperson policy came to light after InstantNewsKaty attempted to obtain statements from school board members in the wake of their controversial decision to spend more than $5 million on artificial turf for football fields at the district’s six high schools. The vote came during a board work study session instead of a regular meeting, and no public input on the proposal was obtained.
In response to that request, Trustee Chris Crockett said the board had a policy that only the board president could speak for the group.
“According to our board procedures, only the board president, Mr. Duhon, can speak about matters of board business,” Crockett said in an e-mailed response.
No other board member responded to that inquiry.
At the time of the initial request for comment, Trustee Eric Duhon was serving as board president. He has since been replaced in that position by Trustee Joe Adams.
In a follow-up message to every board member, InstantNewsKaty asked all trustees for clarification on that policy.
No trustee, including purported spokesperson Adams, responded to that message.
In a recent posting on the George Scott Reports website, Scott said it was ironic that Crockett, in an effort to avoid media questions over the artificial turf issue, may have inadvertently led to the discovery of a body of “policies” that were never legally adopted by trustees, and appear to have been imposed on the board by district administrators and the board president.
“The irony is that without Katy ISD board member Chris Crockett’s apparent compulsion to rationalize her intellectual cowardice for refusing to answer questions about her service on the board, the public may never have been privy to a closely-kept document called ‘Board Operating Procedures: Quick Reference Guide,’” Scott wrote. “However, by citing board ‘procedures’ as an excuse to refuse answering questions about her vote to install artificial turf on the school district’s high school football fields, she’s opened a much more serious issue. Now, because of Crockett, the board has stepped ‘in’ more than plastic carpet masquerading as grass.”
Scott also called for an investigation to get to the bottom of the controversy.
“The time has come for answers - once and for all. If the board and the district won’t provide the answers, then some agency of government with regulatory or investigative authority should step up and provide the public the answer,” Scott noted.
Another request for comment has been sent to Adams; however, it has been his past policy to neither respond to, nor acknowledge, any request for comment from InstantNewsKaty.
Responses
/CommentsRoss Raymond says:
June 25th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Voters would never tolerate or knowingly send a person from our community to serve as a school board trustee and expect them to tolerate the rules you cite. Board members can't speak to the public about Board action, trustees are limited in work study meetings (where they are supposed to ask the tough questions before spending our money) to two questions and/or five minutes; at open meetings elected trustees are given one minute for a question and response and if lucky get a second bite at the apple, and then they vote to spend millions and millions of our tax dollars.
Then you tell us these rules might not be binding articles at all, just something the president and/or superintendent agreed to which limits the free speech of elected officials. Was this lifted right out of a script for a Saturday morning cartoon?
If for no other reason than what you cite in this article I have to ask the question. If a person will take a Board seat and accept these ridiculous rules for their behavior based only on the strength of someone told them they needed to without force of actual policy or procedure, how in the world can they be the type of person we need sitting on such a powerful elected body controlling our money and our childrens
' lives? Obviously they will never ask the probing questions we need answered. If these rules were accepted by a previous Board then we need someone to stand up and suggest we take a new approach and change them. Either way, this cannot be allowed to stand.With each article the situation is more ludicrous and the fascination we have with how far afield of normal and customary the Boards behavior has strayed continues to grow.
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Mr. Raymond has said everything that needs to be said on the matter, and yet, we still, as of May 2017, have a school board that follows these rigged rules! MM