"O todos hijos de dios, O todos hijos del diablo..."
Here we go again with Da rings.
There is an item on Tuesday's agenda before the board of trustees of the Brownsville Independent School District.
That item reads: 10. Recommend allocating $13,000.00 for the purchase of State Championship rings for the Lopez Lobos Powerlifting team.
Coning on the heels of the botched "donation" of the $25,060 to pay for 28 rings for the the Porter Early College High School championship soccer team, it appears that the district is now trying to get its procurement procedures right. If you recall, after the $31,020 invoice for 41 rings was delivered to Porter, no one seemed to know who had ordered the rings, or who was going to pay for them.
And even though no one acknowledged who had ordered them, it quickly became apparent that Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas, the athletic coordinator, and the principal for Porter had decided which vendor was going to provide the rings.
That vendor turned out to be Herrf Jones, a company that had merged with BSN Sports in 2013. BSN is represented by vendor Joe Rodriguez, a BISD trustee who used to be the district's Athletic Director. Xendejas and the Porter bunch emailed a rival vendor, Josten's, five days after Porter won, that they had already decided his competitor was going to get the business. Each student ring was valued at $895, with rings for 11 non-athletes included valued at $995.
Herrf Jones included two "volume discount" rings for Rodriguez and Zendejas for free.
Later, Zendejas auditor Arvin Tucker that the non-players had agreed to pay for their rings and the vendor decided to "donate" the rings to the students once he found out that an investigation on why the district's procurement process was not followed.
This is related to another item on the agenda questioning the manner in which companies are chosen within the procurement process in the Purchasing Dept. functions. Who decides who gets the business, the Athletic Dept., or the BISD Administration or the Purchasing Dept.? That question was never answered at a previous meeting with a Purchasing Dept. staffer saying that the Athletic Dept. made the choice, and the superintendent arguing that Athletics merely made the recommendation and that it was up to Purchasing to approve.
That item reads: 63. Presentation and discussion regarding the process by which the Athletics Department and/or the Athletic Director reviews and selects vendors for the campuses.
This time it isn't the Porter soccer team that gets the rings. This time it's the Lopez Lobos Powerlifting team. So what happens when BISD tesams who have won state such as Science Fair, History Fair, Art, Ballroom Dance, and Career and Technology, ask for their rings?
And never mind the chess teams who have not only won state, but national championships, something no football, soccer, basketball, baseball team has ever won, and probably never will.
Are they entitled to a ring, too? And if the BISD doesn't buy them rings, can they sue for discrimination of their sport or UIL competition?