By Juan Montoya
By all accounts, Marylin Burns Elementary's Second Annual Bandit Bunny Run and Egg Hunt held April 7 was a huge success.
Many local businesses participated and the school figured to rake in somewhere around $4,000 for student services and teacher support.
But soon, stories that something shady had occurred on the way to deposit the cash in a local bank started to spread in the school and across the Brownsville Independent School District. Fueled by these leads, we filed an information request October 10 to get at the bottom of the story. In our request we asked for all reports by the BISD administration and its police department or any campus or district correspondence concerning the alleged theft of the funds. We also asked for any referrals on the matter made to the Brownsville Police Dept., the Cameron County District Attorney's Office, or any other law enforcement agency concerning the alleged theft. The request also included any disciplinary actions generated in the case. They wrote the AG that "The District believes that information in documents responsive to this request may be excepted from disclosure under the TPIA section §551.108 Exception: Certain Law Enforcement, Corrections and prosecutorial Information. Accordingly, pursuant to Texas Government Code §552.301 (3), within 15 business days of its receipt of the request, the District will submit to your office written comments providing reasons why the stated exceptions apply that would allow the information to be withheld, and copies of the documents about which the District is seeking an opinion."
Well, as you can see from the letter sent to us by the BISD lawyers, this amounts to a back-door confirmation that something amiss did happen.
For those who contributed to the fundraiser, it is only appropriate and proper that they know what became of the efforts to help the school, and not to protect any potential wrongdoers.
Will the BISD, Burns Principal Alma S. Garza, and her assistant Leticia Bohn have the courtesy to let the parents, students, staff, and sponsors know the real story?