GEE, WAS IT REALLY THE CAMERA?

LINK/Pictures

Being the tale of how Edgewood ISD detained a woman (me) for 45 minutes Thursday; by the way, did I mention the 3 armed EISD police officers?
By Peyton Wolcott - August 6, 2006 - 10:00 p.m.

If it wasn't my camera, could it have been the public records requests--asking to see the supe's contract, how much did they spend on their logo, like that?

Whatever the cause--which district officials still have not yet shared three days later--the result was that Thursday afternoon while visiting San Antonio's Edgewood ISD to view some public records, and hopefully to meet however briefly with district superintendent Richard Bocanegra and also EISD PR guy Mario Rios
I was detained by three armed EISD police officers.

Why would anyone ask to view
Edgewood ISD public records?

LINK

A little background's in order. Until 1983, Edgewood ISD was a poor district with few resources, and
then-EISD superintendent James R. Vasquez wanted more money--what supe doesn't? His reasoning was
that more money would solve Edgewood's academic problems. Problem for him was, Edgewood's property
values were low and therefore the school district's revenues were also low because back then local
schools were paid for out of local property taxes. That's how capitalism works. Adopting the mo' money
mantra, in 1984 Edgewood's board filed the first of five lawsuits which brought socialism to Texas school
public school financing.

Thanks to Mr. Vasquez and his trustees--one of whom was First Southwest Company's executive VP Raul Villasenor ---the liberal-leaning courts agreed and thus was born Texas' so-called "Robin Hood" system of
school finance in which "rich" districts send their "extra" money to "poor" districts.

Another good question to ask, 23 years and $30 billion annually later:
"Did Edgewood's lawsuits accomplish their goal?"

Answer
If Texas Edu-missioner Shirley Neeley's announcement earlier this week that Edgewood has dropped to the bottom rung of the Texas accountability rating ladder--academically unacceptable--can be believed, the anwer would have to be a resounding "NO."

Although the average Edgewood parent wouldn't know about this Texas two-step descent from either the large sign prominently displayed on the front door of Edgewood's main entrance (below top) or the large glass one occupying several feet of wall space (below bottom), both of which announce Edgewood's status as a "Recognized School District." Further, there are no notices posted anywhere visible in the main entry
indicating that the district is anything but recognized; how could a parent without access to the Internet know what's true and what isn't?

Also: No Child Left Behind failure
Edgewood has fared similarly dismally under No Child Left behind. Last year, "four Edgewood
schools failed to make adequate yearly progress: Kennedy and Memorial high schools and Truman and Garcia middle schools."
(SOURCE--Jenny LaCoste-Caputo/San Antonio
Express-News)

Edgewood's solution? Same as always: spend more money! Why not, it's not their money! Linda Bononcini, the district's assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction responded to the news by announcing that "the district will try a new reading program this year meant to accelerate learning for immigrant students, and the district will start providing those students with hand-held translators."
(Ibid.)

Edgewood has raised the issue of 'efficiency' in its quest for other people's tax dollars. But has anyone
examined how efficient Edgewood is in its spending of those dollars? This is the direction of my Texas Public Information Act requests--asking the accountability questions no one else has:

Richard, it is my understanding from members of the community and from my telephone conversation this morning with your secretary Gloria (Nino) that EISD is doing business with (former Edgewood board
member) Raul Villasenor and First Southwest (hereafter "First Southwest"). I have the following
questions for you:

1. Is EISD doing business with Ramirez & Company, yes/no? Has EISD done business with Ramirez &
Company in the past, yes/no? Does EISD anticipate doing so in the future, yes/no?

2. How much money has Edgewood paid First Southwest in any capacity during the past 2005-2006 school year, to the nearest $10,000?

3. How has First Southwest come to do business with EISD?
Through a board vote or the vendor bid process or attrition?

Although as a member of the media I would prefer that you answer the above questions very simply with
either "yes" or "no" responses, the dollar amount requested, and a simple one-phrase statement to 3.,
should you be unwilling to do so, please consider this a request for information under the Texas Public
Information Act to view any records possessed by EISD with the requested information. Please note
under TPIA guidelines that this is a clear and discrete separate stand-alone request, entirely independent of and unconnected to any other requests that you may receive from me. Although I am not required to do so under TPIA guidelines, I will share with you that because this information is for a report I am preparing for posting on my website, I expect no charges from EISD.

Richard, kudos to EISD for posting salaries on the district's website. Hats off to you and your board and
staff for introducing this degree of transparency to EISD's operations and relations with the community at
large. Unfortunately, the largest salary--yours--is missing. Therefore, could you please PDF me a
copy of your most recent contract?

I will be at EISD's administrative offices tomorrow morning, at a time convenient for you and your staff, to
view these public records related to how EISD spends taxpayer dollars. Should you have any questions, via
return email is the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to reach me as I will be checking emails at least hourly throughout the day today at the following e-address . . . . Thank you,
and wishing you all the best.
Looking forward to meeting with you,
Richard and Mario, tomorrow
morning, if you can spare a few
minutes on short notice.

Whenever I drive up to a school district where the supe's given himself the prime parking spot next to the front door, I know I'm in a district with skewed priorities. According to my way of thinking--tell me if you disagree--the taxpayers footing the bill for the public school enterprise should have the prime parking spaces. Any supe who doesn't get this never learned the most valuable lesson of retail, that the customer comes first.

While I certainly was not expecting to see the rolling out of any kind of red carpet, I had made considerable effort to let Edgewood know I was coming: there were telephone calls, messages left for both the supe and the PR guy, along with the faxes. When I was late leaving--it's a 90-minute round trip--I had called ahead to let the supe's office know my new arrival time.

Walking through Edgewood's entrance I noticed the big "Recognized school district" sign on the front door and took a photo of it. Inside, the receptionist sits in a metal and glass cage; this being new to me in public school districts, I took a photo of that, too, along with several other interesting bits, after greeting her and signing in. We talked briefly; I asked her, Do you live in Edgewood ISD? No. Ah.

There were interesting things on the walls to record, as the "Living Wage Resolution" signed by six of the seven Edgewood board members on July 29, 2003, which "came after a two-year campaign" by the Southwest Worker's Union and its members. (SOURCE--Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice)

It seemed inappropriate to see such a framed resolution in a public school building, especially when the opening lines read, "The Texas Legislature has forsaken education as a priority for Texas"--given Edgewood's unique status as a persistent and successful litigant for mo' money.

A few moments later the receptionist said I couldn't take photographs. Why, there were no children present. "The superintendent." Ah. After pointing out that I wasn't taking photos of school children I took a few more photos. Gloria Nino, the supe's secretary, came out eventually and handed me an Edgewood ISD envelope.with my name on it and a purple post-it which read, "Pickup (sic) contract from
Irma Paine, HR office, HR Adm.," gesturing off to the side.
Okay, and thank you.

EISD's HR dept.

As it turns out, Edgewood's HR is in separate building, and there was another wait, this time for Irma Paine--who apparently has received a promotion to human resources work from her prior Four Seasons traveling-with-the-supe days under Luis Gonzalez, who had by now himself moved on, which for him meant another district, Mathis ISD, northwest of Corpus Christi in San Patricio County. There were some cute young children lined up at a table, coloring, but I didn't take their photos because that's a basic ground rule at schools: no pix of the kids.

Driving out, I noticed the supe's truck still in its assigned parking space. Because persistence is a useful quality in this life, I parked and went back inside the main entrance, asked to speak to the supe's
secretary if she was available, just to let her know that I'd seen the supe's vehicle and might he have just a moment to shake hands in greeting given my three-hour round trip to get there? This was the gist of my message to the receptionist.

EISD receptionist

Another one of the supe's secretaries--just how many secretaries does a superintendent of a school district with declining enrollment need?--came out, introduced herself as Rosemary, explained that he was too busy to see me, then engaged me in chitchat for some minutes, all the while looking over my shoulder. I kept trying to leave and she kept talking.

NOTE: As the remainder
essentially follow the above
format, only the gist is
included below.

Edgewood ISD police officers arrive
To say I was surprised is an understatement. Frankly, I was so taken aback that the next several minutes are still blurry. Having noted that all three wore guns in their holsters, my immediate instinct was survival. Engage these nice people in a friendly way, try to figure out why they were there and what they wanted. Eventually I learned that they wanted me to wait for the district's PR guy, Mario Rios. Why? They had no answer.

The three police officers were very serious although one seemed puzzled as to why they were there. "You seem really nice," he said, as though this were a surprise to him.

Is it an arrest
if you're not handcuffed?
This appears to be a point of law. Although I was not handcuffed, the three police officers all had guns and the one in charge told me to wait for the PR guy. Some folks with whom I've talked said it is an arrest if the police who are wearing guns won't let you leave. Could I have left? I don't know. There were three of them and one of me, and again--I keep saying this, I know, but it is the one key pivotal point here--all three of them had guns. It would have been their word against mine.

Sam Talamantoz, M. Gonzales and T. Aguillen
These were their names. I have them written down on a small Edgewood ISD PD business card in a
somber shade of blue; the card also bears the case number although it hasn't done much good as I still
now, almost three days as of this writing, do not know why they detained me on Thursday afternoon.

When was this going to be over?
Aside from the fact that there seemed no definite arrival time for the PR guy, I was concerned about my next appointment. I finally told Sam Talamantoz, who appeared to be the one in charge--although this was confusing because all three had entirely different uniforms on--that I wanted to go to my car and get my copies of the Texas Public Information Act faxes I'd sent, perhaps that might help them understand why I was there. He finally agreed to walk out with me. En route I finally thought to call someone I know in San Antonio on my cell; it felt reassuring to have at least have one person on my side hear what was transpiring. It was only after we had reached the parking lot and I was retrieving the faxes from the file folders on the front seat of my car, wishing very much I'd organized them better, that Marios Rios, Edgewood's PR director, showed up.

Who are you and what are you doing here?
This seemed to be the gist of the officers' and Rios' concern. They seemed to be wanting my press credentials.

Folks, this concerns me a great deal. This was the same thing I heard last month from SBOE chair Tincy Miller in Austin, that I was taking photographs without visible press credentials during the state school
board meeting. Fortunately that day both David Anderson, lead attorney for the Texas Education Agency, and Debbie Ratcliffe, education commissioner Shirley Neeley's press officer, were both there to set her straight, which they did, visibly and immediately, that anyone can take photographs during a public meeting. It bothered me that the SBOE chair was not more familiar with our open meetings laws.

And the same concern carries over to the situation in Edgewood on Thursday, far more important than the inconvenience of my being detained for 45 minutes however distressing the circumstances.

My concern is that Edgewood ISD for that day, Thursday, conducted itself like a medieval city-state, a power unto itself. It felt like any third-world country today ruled by a military junta or a dictatorship. It did not seem like part of our great republic where citizens--any citizen, anybody with a camera--are entirely free to take photographs in government buildings, especially we-the-people-owned government
buildings with no posted "no photography" signs and no children present.

On Thursday Edgewood ISD had police officers in their employ who were authorized to carry guns and question people, and the district exercised its prerogative to have the police officers detain me.

WHAT AN INTERESTING BUSINESS MODEL:
Make it your customer's responsibility rather than your secretary's to make sure you receive phone messages and faxes. Rios said he'd not seen any of my 6 faxes or 2 phone messages, said also he didn't know I was coming, intimating it was my fault that he didn't know.

Follow up
Later that night I called a friend in a nearby community, asked if he knew anything about Edgewood ISD's police department.

"Yeah, they're trigger-happy," he said. "They just shot a kid they followed off school property, a few months ago." Sure enough, there's a press release on the district's website explaining their side of the May incident. I do not know yet whether the young man survived, nor do I know the circumstances. I did not know until the moment I read the press release that public school district police officers were authorized to follow unarmed citizens off school district property.

L E S S O N S L E A R N E D

The bigger picture
We're seeing a pattern of harassment across our great nation, as school districts use a taxpayer-funded display of force against those who oppose them.

o On the East Coast, dad David Parker was arrested and carted off to jail for the night when his kindergartner's principal refused to follow Massachusetts' parental notification laws. More here

o Also on the East Coast, Miami Dade teacher Bennett Packman lost employment for a year when he refused to go along with a phony drivers ed credentialing scheme.

o On the West Coast, Captain James Olsen was greeted at his child's middle school one day last year by law enforcement personnel and presented with a "No trespass" letter by the school district--for refusing to go along with Bainbridge Island public schools' rewriting of World War II history in favor of the Japanese. His wife, Mary Dombrowski, was then followed with their daughter throughout the entire run of a day-long field trip by a police officer in a squad car. More here

o Here in Texas, such abuses of authority have become commonplace. Pat Yezak and Nancy Gadbois, the Bremond moms whose efforts to have their superintendent brought to justice (see the mug shot in the top right corner of this page) have cost them dearly: Nancy, the mother of four, has not
been allowed to volunteer in any of her children's classrooms, and Pat, an active substitute teacher until she asked to see the district's audit , has not worked at Bremond ISD in the three years since.

I know another mom who for reasons of privacy would prefer not to have her name used who was similarly barred from a child's school; this is one of the kindest and most loving people I've ever met.

The schools like us so long as we're content to volunteer and raise money and write checks. When we start asking questions, asking for accountability, everything changes.

Is this still the United States or are we in danger of becoming something else?

Everyone listed above is a member of our mainstream culture; we're the PTA, PTO moms and dads. If the schools harass and intimidate us, who's next?

Our freedoms are secure only as long as we continue to exercise them.

Classic Edgewood/public school solution:
Buy a new reading program! Buy hand-held electronics!
Spend more money even though there is no empirical evidence to support so doing, this is Edgewood's reaction to their bad news. Isn't there anybody on staff or on their board able to step back a moment and point out that if it didn't work before, why would it work now?

Still more questions
Howsoever legitimate any of these questions might be, public school administrators don't tend to like answering them. Worse, they generally act as if they don't have to. In fact, administrators generally act as though they're spending their own money in their own schools and shouldn't be questioned. So parents and taxpayers are generally forced to resort to the Texas Public Information Act, the trick being to frame questions designed to produce a paper record, because just like a teenager who doesn't want to clean his room, you can't force a superintendent to answer questions. But wait, there's more.

Then there was WOAI's 2003 investigative reporting:
"Even at Edgewood, one of the poorest school districts in the state, we found superintendent Luis Gonzalez and his administrative assistant, Irma Paine, staying at the Four Seasons," reported local television station WOAI in a piece entitled "School Superintendents Splurge." The report doesn't say which Four Seasons, or the purpose of the trip, or why a superintendent of a district so poor they
felt the need to wage five lawsuits against Texas taxpayers for mo' money felt the need to stay in such a grand hotel at taxpayer expense. We don't know what the super and his assistant's staying in such a grand hotel at taxpayers expense had to do with Edgewood schoolchildren's classroom experience. The piece also doesn't say why Gonzalez felt the need to take his administrative assistant with him at all on
a business trip. Is this common practice in school districts, for supes to take their administrative assistants to fancy hotels? Had Gonzalez fixed Edgewood sufficiently that he could go elsewhere, Dallas or Houston, and fix their schools for them? Along these lines did he and Ms. Paine perhaps set up a mini-school in the Four Seasons lobby, perhaps give classes in something relevant between holes of golf or whatever public school educators do at a Four Seasons luxury hotel?

So this is what I walked into Thursday in San Antonio. Maybe they were a bit grumpy, maybe they were a bit defensive. Maybe they've seen the future and were frightened for their jobs.

The following were faxed after Thursday's detainment incident at Edgewood:

Richard, presumably you know by now that I was detained by three armed EISDPD officers yesterday
afternoon while taking photographs at the EISD administration building located at 5358 West Commerce
Street, San Antonio, Texas 78237.

Richard, I would like to view EISD's documentation regarding the professional background, training,
and education (including continuing education) for the following EISDPD officers: (1) Sam Talamantoz, (2) M. Gonzales, and (3) T. Aguillen.

Richard, I would like to view any EISD public records regarding its policy forbidding photographs in
the administration building(s) by members of the public (the "Policy") along with stated authority for the
Policy, to include names of any places where the Policy is posted where members of the public might
see the Policy. The Policy was neither posted on or near the district's front door yesterday (of
which I have a photograph) or on what appears to be the district's official bulletin board, for which I also
have a photograph. I would also like to view any EISD public records regarding its policy and authority for
requiring citizens to obtain the permission of Mario Rios and/or EISD's director of communications
or similar title before taking photographs in administration buildings where there are no school
children present.

I am writing to you in your capacity as the official custodian of records for EISD; while I recognize that it is
entirely possible that you may elect to delegate authority for responding to this request, I note an old
expression my Marine husband uses: You can delegate authority but you can't delegate responsibility.

In connection with this, I would like to view EISD's documentation for Case #2006-03923 including but not
limited to paperwork detailing the case. I would expect such information to include but be not limited to the name of the person who asked EISDPD to detain me, and the cause stated for my being detained. In the event that locating responsive documents may take some time, I am most interested in the public record noting EISD's stated cause for detaining me, and would like to see this at the very earliest opportunity.

Unfortunately, because of yesterday's incident it does not appear to be safe for me at this time to set foot in any jurisdiction controlled by EISD and/or EISDPD. Therefore, how do you recommend that I view such documentation?

Although as a member of the media I would prefer that you simply PDF and email responsive documents,
should you be unwilling to do so, please consider this a request for information under the Texas Public
Information Act to view any records possessed by EISD with the requested information. Please note
under TPIA guidelines that this is a clear and discrete separate stand-alone request, entirely independent of and unconnected to any other requests that you may receive from me. Although I am not required to do so under TPIA guidelines, I will share with you that because this information is for a report I am preparing for posting on my website, I expect no charges from EISD. Should you have any questions, via return email is the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to reach me as I will be checking emails throughout the day today at the following e-address . . . .. Thank you for your anticipated assistance.