Report: E-E ‘losing focus' on financial crisis

EDCOUCH - "Petty politics" threaten to derail the Edcouch-Elsa school board's ongoing efforts to tackle a $5 million cash crunch, according to the district's state-assigned financial monitor.

Trustees continue to point fingers and have yet to enact policies that would sustain reforms once the current fiscal crisis is averted, Texas Education Agency conservator Fred Liner said in a series of reports obtained by The Monitor.

"Petty politics have redirected board energies to less important items," he wrote in a report dated Feb. 1. "The task of returning the district to financial solvency is not the main focus."

School board members echoed Liner's concerns last week but were quick to point to their political opponents as the source of the ongoing problems.

"These guys are in a tough spot," said Juan Jose Ybarra Jr., a member of the board's minority voting bloc, of the majority group. "They've got promises to their supporters they have to fill."

Members of the majority did not return calls for comment Friday but have publicly excoriated the minority, which held control of the board until November elections shifted power on the board.

 POLITICAL HIRING

The TEA assigned Liner in October to oversee district spending after successive audits showed dwindling cash reserves, overstaffing and problems tracking school district property that threatened to bankrupt the school system. Under agency rules, he must file monthly status updates on the district's progress.

The first such report - dated Nov. 30 - laid out Edcouch-Elsa's dire financial situation. Years of using district employment as a means of garnering political support for board members had made the school system the Delta's No. 1 employer and contributed to a $10.1 million overall debt.

"The situation in Edcouch-Elsa (Independent School District) was caused by poor governance and management but surfaced as a financial issue," Liner wrote in January.

Since then, board members have taken bold steps including eliminating more than 20 percent of the district's workforce and cutting all unnecessary expenditures, but political motivations have re-emerged as a factor in their decision-making.

During the most recent round of staff cuts last month, board members seemed more concerned with who should lose their jobs than which positions could effectively be eliminated, Liner said during an interview last week.

A board vote last month to terminate Superintendent Michael Sandroussi also threatens to drive the district further into debt. Because the school district chief had two years left on his contract, Edcouch-Elsa may have to pay his annual $160,000 salary through 2011 unless it can show just cause for his firing.

The school system may also have to shoulder additional legal costs should Sandroussi decide to sue.

But members of the board's majority voting bloc have defended Sandroussi's firing as a necessary step in ending an era of overspending and mismanagement under an old board majority.

Sandroussi has maintained he only enacted policies dumped in his lap by that board. And those trustees have taken their fair share of abuse from the community and opposing board members. Many - including board members Ybarra and Domingo Rodriguez - have stopped showing up for most meetings.

 EXTERNAL PRESSURES

Hoping to heal some of those rifts, the school board had a team-building seminar in January. But the exercise quickly devolved into another round of finger-pointing, Ybarra said.

To put the district permanently in the black, trustees will have to move past their political differences and enact policies that will put an end to politically based hiring, Liner wrote in January.

Decisions to post the district's monthly payroll and check registers on its Web site are positive first steps to ensuring a more open government, he said last week.

"For the most part, really, they have done very well," Liner said. "But they are receiving external pressures not to reach financial solvency and they're going to have to fight them."