It’s a huge swing. Courtesy of yesterday’s landslide recall election, Sunnyside School District has gone from a 3-2 majority supporting Superintendent Manuel Isquierdo to a 4-1 majority which is likely to scrutinize his every move, and maybe get rid of him early. But after the much-deserved victory celebrations are over, it’ll be time for people to take the stars out of their eyes and realize change is going to be a long, slow, expensive haul. Let’s have high hopes for the new board, but let’s also have reasonable expectations.
Isquierdo has little credibility left in the district or the community. The new board would probably be wise to get rid of him and look for someone who is less of a self-aggrandizing salesman and district bully and more of a solid educator with vision and integrity. But getting rid of Isquierdo won’t come cheap. It’s going to cost over half a million dollars for the district to buy out the remainder of his contract.
Is it worth it? He’s got two years left on his contract. That’s two years of board-superintendent pitched battles and gridlock. And it’s probably two more years of voters denying the district a much-needed bond override. It’s going to be hard to make positive change when the district has to cut millions from its budget. Should they give Isquierdo a half million dollar check to get the district back on track sooner rather than later? It’s a tough call. The new board will take flak no matter what it decides.
As a side note, Isquierdo has long touted one accomplishment: that he’s raised the district graduation rate. That’s not nothing, right? Well, it may actually be nothing if he cooked the numbers as board member Buck Crouch insists. And it’s very likely Crouch is right.
On his Three Sonorans blog, David Morales has a strong analysis of the actual Sunnyside graduation stats compared to the numbers Isquierdo trumpets. Anyone who likes number stuff (I do) will probably enjoy plowing through Morales’ analysis, but here’s a short summary for the rest of you. Morales says Isquierdo low-balled the 2007 graduation numbers to make it look like grad numbers grew after that. Then he added people who graduated in 5 or 6 years to his 4-year graduation numbers and compared them to grad numbers for other districts which don’t include the late grads in the count. Finally, he cited the actual number of graduates rather than the percentage of students who graduated. Since the district grew during his tenure, the number of grads went up significantly, but the percentage of students graduating just inched up a little. If Crouch and Morales are right, it’s just one more reason to get rid of Isquierdo.
This article appears in May 15-21, 2014.
The Board does not have to buy out Isquierdo’s contract. They can fire him for cause and avoid paying him a dime extra. Surely, his unethical and possibly illegal behavior constitutes the necessary cause to fire him. Of course, he will contest this firing in court. But the Governing Board will get a lot of community support for a willingness to fight this in court. As Robert Goodloe Harper said during the XYZ conflict with France, “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”
In fact hiring lawyers to fight any lawsuit following Isquierdo’s firing may actually cost the district less money …
They can re purpose or change his job…. move him into substituting or something else, in the trenches with all the other hard working no raise getting teachers. That’s what should be done, give him a job where he can see how difficult it is to graduate every student, or deal with broken laptops, or network issues, or just the stress of a 40 student classroom.
Why do they have to ‘buy’ him out? Can’t they just fire him for gross misconduct and having a really bad evaluation.
I’m glad the election went the right way, but I’ve got to ask, why only 15% voted when you were mailed a postage paid ballot and all you had to do was place it in the mailbox? Apathy will destroy us…
This now marks the real test for Buck and Daniel. Can they lead with integrity and openness as the public expects. Certainly one of the new members comes with a lot of experience. The task is not only to be putting student needs first, but to be SEEN to be putting them first. Meanwhile, the losers will not go gently into oblivion. They will be carping and shrieking as evidenced already in Gonzalez’ comments. They must do nothing that smacks of possible illegality in dealing with Izquierdo or his minions.