Riviera ISD’s School Board President has stated that she was not aware of any extreme deterioration of the District’s facilities, saying, “No one ever told me.”

Other board members, several of whom have served on the board for many terms, were also surprised by recent claims that the facilities need to be replaced.

The Superintendent claims that soon after he was hired by the District, he was alerted that “our aging buildings were in desperate need of repair.”

The Superintendent’s proposed solutions were to implement a RIF (dismissing teachers to “save” money for repairs) or to float an $18.5 Million bond to build a new school.

This lead the community to believe that they had only two choices, to get rid of hardworking teachers, or support the Superintendent’s agenda.

A cost analysis, supposedly showing a drastic increase in funds used for facility repairs, was used as the foundation for the Superintendent’s original claim for replacing the District’s facilities. This figure was questioned. The administration admitted the number contained irrelevant expenses, including salaries, insurance, lights for the baseball field, a bus, water treatment facilities, and many others.

None of these expenses have any bearing on the repair costs of the buildings in question. After deducting these unassociated costs, the figure is approximately $200,000, not the $1,243,003 claimed, verbally and in writing, by the administration.

The public repeatedly asked how much money was historically spent for repairs on the specific buildings the Superintendent wants to demolish and replace. The administration gave differing answers of “$0”, little money, and “I don’t know”. No complete report of District expenses has been released.

The administration continued to use the misleading $1.2 million figure until its legal counsel advised to “remove the misleading information” from the public presentation. Why was the data removed instead of corrected? One might question the supposed “desperate need of repair”.

The Superintendent repeatedly claimed that he had the facilities extensively evaluated at no cost to the district. After repeated requests for a needs assessment expense report, the administration admitted to spending $5000 on one of the evaluations. Were other costs intentionally undisclosed as well? Did this previously undisclosed $5000 study reinforce the Superintendent’s agenda or oppose it? The public has yet to receive the copies of this evaluation, several others, or a factual facilities repair report for the buildings in question.

One might also question the Superintendent’s reluctance to inform the community or involve it in the decision-making process. The first time the public became aware of a bond issue was when, according to the Superintendent, information was “leaked” from a School Board closed session. One might also question the legality of bringing up a bond issue in a closed session. Has the board been mislead down a path of wrongdoing?

The community needs to voice its questions and apprehensions to the Board. Maybe then, the administration will begin to give much-needed answers.
Vern Crocker
“Riviera Patriot”