Regardless of the Rhetoric, Children's Safety NOT A High Priority at BISD

Dr. Carl Montoya, Superintendent of BISD

BISD Superintendent Carl Montoya mouths empty platitudes about putting the children first, but is powerless to control the mindless musical chairs shifting of department heads out of their comfort zone into unfamiliar territory.  

This practice didn't start with Montoya, but he's been too weak to stop it, himself being a mere pawn of a few trustees who only pretended to advertise the superintendent's job because, in Montoya, then interim superintendent, they had found a perfect "fit" for their agenda.

Hector Chirinos, former
Director of Transportation

No administrative position has been used more frequently as sort of a BISD purgatory than the role of Director of Transportation.  
High school principals, administrators who've fallen out of favor somehow have been routinely and vindictively placed in this department so critical to the safety of BISD students.

The oversight of the safe, daily transportation of 50,000 students, critical maintenance of a huge fleet of buses and other vehicles, route scheduling and the work schedules of over 300 employees is not something you toss to a newbie just because of some personal slight or personality conflict, not if you REALLY care about the safety of kids.

Consider this:  If the Brownsville Independent School District actually advertised for a Director of Transportation would they hire a high school principal from Indiana without any experience in running a transportation department?  Hell no!  

Then giving that assignment to former high school principal Hector Chirinos or former special needs director Art Rendon or former Porter High School Principal Brenda Fernandez, is equally mindless as it puts the safety of the children in jeopardy.  Even if, over time, the new administrator gets somewhere near up to speed, why do that? 

Former Porter High School Principal Brenda Fernandez, to her credit, threw herself into the job, quickly getting a commercial driver's license so she could drive the buses she supervised.  During her tenure the BISD Transportation Department received an award as the best school bus system in Texas.  She has since upgraded her job status twice after leaving Brownsville, now managing a large bus system in Florida.

Chirinos took a different approach as Director, getting chummy with the vendors, ordering hundreds of thousands of dollars of unneeded parts, tires, parts and electronics.*  Anyone experienced in sales understands when a public entity orders a truckload of unneeded items, the authorized purchase agent received an "incentive."   That was Hector's big "F U" to the BISD administrators sticking him in Transportation.

Please don't ever tell me BISD puts kids first.  Not when they use the position of Director of Transportation as punishment for those who do not "play ball" with the Superintendent and trustees.  

From El Rrun Rrun blog by Juan Montoya about Chirinos' performance as Director of Transportion:

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"Let's start with the little things. Chirinos kept something called an "Activity/Motivational Fund Account" in his budget which came from the profits of the vending machines at Transportation against BISD policy. That was put to an end with no accounting of the proceeds and the money now goes to the district's miscellaneous revenue fund like all other departments. It was, in other words, a slush fund.  Chirinos even diverted the revenue from transportation department vending machines into a fund he controlled.  "Control" of the department was maintained by allowing inordinate amounts of overtime to drivers and employees.
The auditors found an inventory that kept steadily growing from 2007-2008 to 2010-2011, finally decreasing in 2011-2012, when Chirinos was gone.
* During those four years, the accumulated inventory increased by $325,868. It wasn't until Rendon took over in the 2011-2012 budget that it decreased by $277,749.
* Of the 3,841 parts with a value of $792,535 in inventory, approximately 698 items with a value of $89,144 had become obsolete. They no longer fit any of the buses on the district's fleet. The district had to eat the loss.
* The useful life of 46 tires worth $5,020 had expired. These tires could no longer be used or sold.
* Variances in the inventory due to "miscounts, theft, disposal or removal from inventory without corresponding record" totaled $16,092.
The auditors recommended that the department implement a "just in time" outsource method with vendors that would reduce inventory, and save warehouse space and costs. That "JIT" system is now in place.
When the auditors visited the Transportation warehouse in 2012 they found it stacked to the roof with and "excess amount" of miscellaneous office supplies that included three LaserJet printers still in the box that had been purchased in 2009 and 2010. Cases of paper clips, file folders, computer paper and other office supplies filled the sides of entire walls.
* Curious to see whether a sample audit of 200 fixed-assets would turn up any discrepancies, the auditors found that a camera worth $589, a battery backup worth $477, at least four radios worth over $300 and an external hard drive worth $263 were missing."
* During a 100 percent fixed-assets inventory, auditors discovered that 11 items totaling $100,377 could not be located in the department."