BISD Fails to Prioritize Student Safety by Hiring Transportation Directors with Zero Experience Running a Bus System

Superintendent Carl Montoya

Is it really necessary to recount the many transfers, terminations and reassignments made at BISD without regard to past experience, educational background or aptitude?  Such critical administrative placements are frequently made out of spite, retaliation, even punishment.

BISD's proverbial dog house, biblical purgatory or penitentiary death row is the position of Director of Transportation.  High school principals like Brenda Fernandez and Hector Chirinos have been banished there and, more recently, Art Rendon, formerly supervising special needs children, was put in charge of the busing of 40,000 students daily to and from school after winning a lawsuit to get his position back. The assignment was obviously payback by BISD's childish administrators.

Are these types of assignments in the best interests of the children, protecting their safety getting to and from school?  Not in any part of the real world.  Of course, BISD is not run with logic or common sense, but like a reality show to see who's last on the island.  Even the forensic audit of 2011 warned this is not the way to run a transportation department safely:

"It is highly recommended that strong administrative action with the possibility of termination be taken against Jose Hector Chirinos (and that BISD) hire professional business people with experience in running a transportation department.."

Hector Chirinos

This is not to single out Chirinos, who just happened to be mentioned in the quote.  In my opinion he saw his transfer from being a high school principal to transportation director as a demotion and gave the district a giant "F U" by chummying up to vendors and ordering hundreds of thousands of dollars of unneeded shit, tires, parts, etc. and letting drivers rack up as much overtime as they wanted. Salesmen around the country understand what happened when they see a mountain of the unnecessary at a school or government agency where the man with the authority to issue a purchase order becomes your best friend.  While Chirinos may have handled the assignment poorly, it was an irresponsible assignment by BISD that set the department up for failure.

Brenda Fernandez, another high school principal reassigned to transportation seems to have made lemonade out of lemons.  Like Chirinos, she knew nothing about running a bus system when made Director of Transportation, but she was a very quick study.  The first thing Fernandez did was get her CDL, so that she could legally drive a bus, not just tell people how to drive one.  What she did with the job, though, does not justify BISD's administrative placement.  After her department was named best in Texas, Fernandez went on to manage bus systems in Corpus Christi, San Antonio and now is Regional Vice President for MV Transportation Florida operations.

BISD has not made its Department of Transportation a priority by hiring a director with actual, real world experience in running a bus system, maintaining a fleet of buses.  Until they do, it can't be said they are putting the children first.