Former Donna superintendent awarded $1.2 million

McALLEN — Plaintiff’s attorneys described it as a chance to send a message to school districts across the state: Political influence has no place in educational hiring decisions.

On Friday, a federal jury agreed, awarding former Donna schools Superintendent Andres Martinez $1.2 million in damages in what his lawyers described as one of the largest penalties assessed against a school system in a case of its kind.

Martinez, who served as the Donna school district’s chief administrator during part of 2001, sued the district and several of its then school board trustees, alleging they had conspired to illegally fire him because he refused to hire, promote or give raises to political operatives who supported the majority faction on the board.

Once he was let go, trustees led by then School Board President George Hernandez worked with two attorneys to bog down the former superintendent’s options for legal recourse, ensuring he never received a proper appeals hearing with the Texas Education Agency, Martinez’s lawsuit states.

"Mr. Martinez did not want to play politics," his attorney Kevin O’Hanlon said. "He wanted the people in jobs that could educate kids, not because they were someone’s relative or supporter."

Eileen Leeds, an attorney representing the Donna school district in the trial, did not return after-hours calls to her office Friday evening but had previously described the former superintendent’s lawsuit as motivated by money.

"One of the main issues here is greed," she told jurors during closing arguments Thursday.

While rumors of political spoils system-based hiring have plagued small school districts across the Rio Grande Valley for years, Martinez’s case stood out because the actions of his political opponents were so brazen and well documented, O’Hanlon said Friday.

"How many times from the trustees that testified in this case did you ever hear a word about the kids?" he said. "We work for the citizens. We don’t work for the school board."

O’Hanlon’s client first took the helm of the district in January 2001 after serving in the school system for more than three decades. But within three months as the schools chief, he had already encountered problems with board members.

In the run-up to the May 2001 school board election that brought Hernandez and slate-mates Ancieto Santana and Richie Moreno onto the board, the group demanded Martinez reassign several district employees to higher-profile or better-paying jobs.

The list included several of their relatives and political supporters in positions ranging from personnel director to principal, O’Hanlon said.

Martinez not only refused, he issued a district-wide memo barring district employees from any political activity during working hours and transferred several employees he felt were violating that rule to jobs where they would be more closely supervised.

Among them was Arturo Castillo, who served as campaign manager for Hernandez, Santana and Moreno.

"Hernandez determined to terminate Mr. Martinez’s employment … because he considered the reassignment of Mr. Castillo to have been refusal to support his candidacy for the board of trustees," Martinez’s lawsuit states.

According to the document, Hernandez and his political allies later used the decision to transfer Castillo against Martinez.

Board members encouraged Castillo to sue the district in what O’Hanlon described as a "sham lawsuit," claiming that his transfer was a form of political retaliation. The district settled with Castillo for an undisclosed amount and against its attorney’s advice, but later used that suit as cause for firing Martinez.

In August of that year, the board voted to suspend the superintendent but never officially voted to terminate his contract. O’Hanlon described the lapse as an acknowledgement that Martinez’s firing would never stand up to review by the Texas Education Agency.

But school district lawyers maintained it was an oversight magnified by the trustees’ ignorance of the law.

Before landing in front of a federal jury this month, the dispute between the former superintendent and the district went through four different lawsuits and before five different courts and administrative bodies. The state’s education commissioner twice ruled during that time that the school district had violated the terms of Martinez’s contract, but the school system has done little so far to repay him for it.

In the time since Martinez’s firing, Donna schools have hired and let go of five subsequent superintendents and many of the board members named in his lawsuit.

Hernandez — the only schools trustee who remains on the Donna board — lost his title as president in 2008, a year after a federal grand jury indicted him in a bribes-for-votes scandal involving the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school district.

The criminal charges in that case stem from his work as a private contractor and construction consultant and not from his work with Donna schools. But news this week that he intended to plead guilty to those charges prompted lawyers for the Donna school district to move Thursday for a mistrial in Martinez’s case.

They feared Hernandez’s status in the PSJA case might unduly influence the jury to view him as a criminal. U.S. District Judge Randy Crane denied the motion to declare a mistrial after visiting with jurors, who ultimately assessed punitive damages against Hernandez in the amount of $10,000.

Other board members and attorneys representing the body were ordered to pay Martinez amounts ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 in addition to the $1 million sum the Donna school district must now pay out for breaching his contract, denying him his appeals process and for the attorney’s fees accrued over the eight years since his dismissal.

BREAKDOWN OF JURY’S VERDICT:

$536,000 for breach of contract

$280,000 for violation of due process rights

$212,050 for attorneys fees in lawsuits leading up to the current case

PUNITIVE DAMAGES:

$87,750 Gustavo Acevedo Jr., former school district attorney

$87,750 Jaime Munoz, former school district attorney

$10,000 George Hernandez, current Donna ISD school board member

$10,000 Ancieto Santana, former Donna ISD school board member

$2,500 Richie Moreno, former Donna ISD school board member

$1,000 Saul Mata, former Donna ISD school board member

$1,000 Eloy Infante, former Donna ISD school board member

TOTAL: $1,228,050