By Juan Montoya
Lawsuits filed in federal court sometimes tend to take years to get resolved and adjudicated.
However, the lawsuit filed by 404th District Judge Elia Cornejo-Lopez and her "next friends"– her two children – against the Brownsville Independent School District has moved quicker than most.
Elia filed on Nov. 30, and by Dec. 6 Judge Andrew Hanen had ordered a pre-trial and scheduling conference for January 30, 2018.
The next day, Cornejo-Lopez followed with a motion for a hearing on a temporary restraining order (TRO), which Hanen denied on Dec. 7, two days later.
Cornejo-Lopez followed a week later – Dec. 15 – with a second motion for a hearing on a TRO. Hanen set Jan. 3 at 2:30 p.m. for the TRO hearing and ordered the BISD counsel Baltazar Salazar and Miguel Salinas to appear for the hearing and show cause why the TRO should not be issued.
Before then, however, Hanen must decide if Cronejo-Lopez has decided that she cannot represent herself or any other persons in the Southern District of Texas since she is not licensed to practice before the court or other federal districts. Cornejo-Lopez followed with a motion to allow her to appear "for one time only" to argue for the TRO. Hanen has not made a decision on that motion yet.
Meanwhile, we have been corrected and have been told we made a mistake when we said that she did not have an attorney. Actually, Gustavo Acevedo, of Pharr, is her lawyer. If we had read the docket sheet correctly we would have noticed. Our apologies to Elia and Mr. Acevedo. The docket, meanwhile, now appears free of all other entries other than her filing the complaint and does not list dollar damage demands.
But as we wait for further developments, there are a few noteworthy claims by Cornejo-Lopez made as she presses her case before the court. Among these are:
1. That BISD board counsel Baltazar Salazar had violated BISD policies – and her freedom of speech – by not allowing her to address board members in executive session as set forth in the BISD policy manual on two separate occasions, Sept. 5 and Sept. 12, 2017.
2. That the 13 grievances she had filed on behalf of her children were handed over to Walsh Gallegos who in turn hired Victor Antonio Resendez to investigate the claims before the board would hear them. Cornejo-Lopez said Resendez worked for eight months and never finished the report before he was fired by the law firm. Now, 18 months later, Cornejo-Lopez said she has never seen the report.
3. But Cornejo-Lopez said BISD had summaries of the grievances that they provided to board member Carlina Presas-Garcia on October 2016 which then were sent to the rest of the board members and other BISD personnel and subsequently were posted on social media, local blogs and Facebook. Cornejo-Lopez claimed the summaries were one-sided and slanderous. Walsh Gallegos hired Elizabeth Neally to investigate the leak. She and Resendez were fired on December.
4. That the delays in hearing the grievances will make them moot since one of the students' graduation date may come before they are heard.
5. That the BISD is discriminating and retaliating against her children because she filed complaint with the U.S. Dept. of Education Office of Civil Rights for not allowing her to address the board on their grievances on Sept. 5 and Sept. 12, 2017.
6. That teacher Mayra Kreuger, when she learned of the grievances against her, emailed her fellow teachers asking for their advice on how she should handle them. Cornejo-Lopez charged that by doing so, she emailed it to Adrian Garcia – Catalina Presas-Garcia's husband and BISD head golf coach – as to embarrass, harass, interfere with positive relationships, and with actual malice to cause intentional infliction of emotional distress to her and to L.M.L (her daughter).
7. That the defendants did not allow one of her "next friends" to take a 7.0 GPA weighed AP World History while forcing him (and 781 other freshmen) to take a 5.0 GPA average World geography course.
8. That Area Administrator Terry Alarcon "admitted" to Franciso Zabarte that she altered a government document – the evaluation of A.D. Tom Chavez of Coach Tom Campos – and used the altered document to fire Campos.
9. That as a result of the district giving the AP Spanish test in middle school to 1) Mexican nationals, 2) recent immigrants in the U.S. 3) children whose parents speak only Spanish 4) future first generation college students 5) are tested in middle school to get out of probationary status. Cornejo-Lopez claims that these students who were tested in middle school should not be deprived of the GPA weight given to high school students and wants the BISD to retest them and give them the credit.
10. Claims that Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas lied about TEA rules that prohibit giving GPA weighed credit to students who passed the exam between 2013-2014 in the 2017-2018 school year.
11. That teacher Diego Garcia conspired with Kreuger to make a false report against L.M.L., but failed to report that he had walked in on a female teacher (P.C.) who was "in a compromising position" with a student (A.G.) hiding behind a four-drawer cabinet. She charges that Garcia conspired with the teacher to not report the "suspected sexual abuse of a student/child by his teacher..."