By Juan Montoya
Faced with the most important decision they have made while they served as trustees on the board of the Texas Southmost College, six members cast a 5-1 vote to put president Lily Tercero on administrative leave and schedule a dismissal hearing to terminate her employment at the community college.
But why 5-1? Aren't there seven trustees? Was there a trustee absent or abstaining?
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No, it was trustee Art Rendon making his finest impression of a duck as he made hasty exit to avoid voting on the matter. Since Rendon works for the Brownsville Independent School District as an administrator in the Food and Nutrition Service Department, it couldn't have been an excuse having to do with his work. The votes took place after 11 p.m.
And in talking to his friends, we know of no family emergency that required his immediate attention.
And, having been at the Gorgas building earlier that day, we know the air conditioning system was working just fine. So why couldn't Rendon stand the heat of public service?
Perhaps he felt that if there was any fallout as a result of Tercero's termination he could always point to the record and say he never voted to get rid of hapless Tercero.
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It was left to Grampa Dr. Rey Garcia who has adopted Tercero as his grandkid to try to defend her against a compilation of missteps that have cost the college money for awarding a $1 million contract for windstorm insurance without going to the board for approval as she had been instructed to less than a year ago.
She became the third public administrator in recent memory who fell into the insurance trap and signed off on the $1 million dotted line without going to their board for approval.
Mark Yates, the current County Cameron Program Management and Development director was led out in handcuffs when he did the same thing there years ago when he was the auditor.
And former BISD Chief Financial Officer Lucio Mendoza was transferred to another position after he claimed he had signed off on the same type of insurance because the policy was also about to lapse and he flt it was his "fiduciary" duty to prevent that at all costs.
Garcia and granddaughter Tercero should be grateful the police weren't called to charge her as they were called to arrest Yates.
Or perhaps it was because the nursing program, the jewel of college before the the ill-advised UTB-TSC "partnership" decimated the vocational-technical mission of the community college, was put in in its death throes because of her dismal managerial skills.
That's the institutional loss.
On a more personal note, numerous students who had charted a career in nursing and took the first step at TSC were suddenly left out in the cold with no place to go after the mismanaged program was put on notice that unless the remaining students scored higher than 80 percent on the state certification test, there would be no more program. Tercero allowed that to happen
Art Rendon dismissed the educational aspirations of these young people saying: "What's 50 students compared to the needs of the other 5,000?"
It is, after all, as a BISD administrator survivor knows, a numbers game. People's dreams and efforts at getting an education in medical science don't really count for much, do they?
And TSC was conspicuously absent from the list of six community colleges who received federal grants to assist low-income students forge a road to a college education announced by Congressman Fil Vela Jr. Where was Lily?
Even former trustee Kiko Rendon chimed in in support of Tercero. He said the board while he was chairman would give her a TSC bucket list of "objectives" at the beginning of the year and she would have them finished at the end. So what happened to nursing, or the insurance, or the grants? Was that the board and its chairman's fault, then?
Kiko Rendon and his United Brownsville pal Ed Rivera locked $25,000 of the community college's budget funds to pay for the annual "membership" to that organization with negligible returns on the investment. However, this did allow these to fine gents to "get a seat at the table" with the Big Boys and ingratiate themselves with the movers and the shakers the likes of Carlos Marin, Fred Rusteberg, and Julieta Garcia.
Now we understand that Kiko – who was in hock with IBC's Rusteberg over $100,000s in unpaid loans – has taken his game to Mike Hernandez's OP 10.33 as a paid "consultant" to assist his messianic quest to eradicate poverty by October 2033.
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Grampa Garcia, who may have whiffed a bit much of his patients' Novocaine over his long career as a dentist, even went as far as to call Tercero's forced separation a "personal vendetta."
If he wants talk to someone who wouldn't mind getting even with Tercero, he should interview those students whose dreams of working in the medical profession in the nursing field were shunted aside by Tercero's woeful performance as president of TSC.
As for Art Rendon, "if it quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck," then his not voting in Tercero's firing constitutes a ducking of his responsibility to those who voted for him and the students who looked to him to protect their educational aspirations.
Faced with the most important decision they have made while they served as trustees on the board of the Texas Southmost College, six members cast a 5-1 vote to put president Lily Tercero on administrative leave and schedule a dismissal hearing to terminate her employment at the community college.
But why 5-1? Aren't there seven trustees? Was there a trustee absent or abstaining?
No, it was trustee Art Rendon making his finest impression of a duck as he made hasty exit to avoid voting on the matter. Since Rendon works for the Brownsville Independent School District as an administrator in the Food and Nutrition Service Department, it couldn't have been an excuse having to do with his work. The votes took place after 11 p.m.And in talking to his friends, we know of no family emergency that required his immediate attention.
And, having been at the Gorgas building earlier that day, we know the air conditioning system was working just fine. So why couldn't Rendon stand the heat of public service?
Perhaps he felt that if there was any fallout as a result of Tercero's termination he could always point to the record and say he never voted to get rid of hapless Tercero.
She became the third public administrator in recent memory who fell into the insurance trap and signed off on the $1 million dotted line without going to their board for approval.
Mark Yates, the current County Cameron Program Management and Development director was led out in handcuffs when he did the same thing there years ago when he was the auditor.
And former BISD Chief Financial Officer Lucio Mendoza was transferred to another position after he claimed he had signed off on the same type of insurance because the policy was also about to lapse and he flt it was his "fiduciary" duty to prevent that at all costs.
Garcia and granddaughter Tercero should be grateful the police weren't called to charge her as they were called to arrest Yates.
Or perhaps it was because the nursing program, the jewel of college before the the ill-advised UTB-TSC "partnership" decimated the vocational-technical mission of the community college, was put in in its death throes because of her dismal managerial skills.
That's the institutional loss.
On a more personal note, numerous students who had charted a career in nursing and took the first step at TSC were suddenly left out in the cold with no place to go after the mismanaged program was put on notice that unless the remaining students scored higher than 80 percent on the state certification test, there would be no more program. Tercero allowed that to happen
Art Rendon dismissed the educational aspirations of these young people saying: "What's 50 students compared to the needs of the other 5,000?"
It is, after all, as a BISD administrator survivor knows, a numbers game. People's dreams and efforts at getting an education in medical science don't really count for much, do they?
And TSC was conspicuously absent from the list of six community colleges who received federal grants to assist low-income students forge a road to a college education announced by Congressman Fil Vela Jr. Where was Lily?
Even former trustee Kiko Rendon chimed in in support of Tercero. He said the board while he was chairman would give her a TSC bucket list of "objectives" at the beginning of the year and she would have them finished at the end. So what happened to nursing, or the insurance, or the grants? Was that the board and its chairman's fault, then?
Kiko Rendon and his United Brownsville pal Ed Rivera locked $25,000 of the community college's budget funds to pay for the annual "membership" to that organization with negligible returns on the investment. However, this did allow these to fine gents to "get a seat at the table" with the Big Boys and ingratiate themselves with the movers and the shakers the likes of Carlos Marin, Fred Rusteberg, and Julieta Garcia.
Now we understand that Kiko – who was in hock with IBC's Rusteberg over $100,000s in unpaid loans – has taken his game to Mike Hernandez's OP 10.33 as a paid "consultant" to assist his messianic quest to eradicate poverty by October 2033.
Grampa Garcia, who may have whiffed a bit much of his patients' Novocaine over his long career as a dentist, even went as far as to call Tercero's forced separation a "personal vendetta."If he wants talk to someone who wouldn't mind getting even with Tercero, he should interview those students whose dreams of working in the medical profession in the nursing field were shunted aside by Tercero's woeful performance as president of TSC.
As for Art Rendon, "if it quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck," then his not voting in Tercero's firing constitutes a ducking of his responsibility to those who voted for him and the students who looked to him to protect their educational aspirations.