Burnt Orange Report

More on the Wilmer-Hutchins ISD Saga

By Vince Leibowitz

While most of Texas is focused on what the Texas Legislature is going to do this time around to make a (further) mess of education, health care, our court system and the state in general, folks in the Wilmer-Hutchins Independent School District in Dallas are facing problems of their own.

If you've never attended a school board meeting anywhere in Texas, you know that school board politics (the trustees are elected) is as nasty, dirty and disfunctional as most other brands of local politics (water boards, city council, etc.). However, in the case of WHISD, it seems to be much worse indeed--and it's not just political infighting such as what plagued Dallas ISD during the Yvonne Gonzalez days:

Dilapidated buildings, a $3 million debt and allegations that students cheated on state standardized tests have pushed the Wilmer-Hutchins school district to the brink.

And there's more: an indicted school superintendent, local and state investigations into possible misuse of tax money and a desperate plea to taxpayers to save the school system.

"This thing's like an onion," said attorney Phillip Layer, who filed a lawsuit against the school district on behalf of several residents. But as you peel back the layers, "it keeps growing though instead of getting smaller."

Wilmer-Hutchins' survival likely hinges on voters approving a referendum, likely in May, to allow the school district to tax property owners at a rate higher than a nearly 50-year-old local law allows. The district also must restructure a $3 million loan due in March.

Taxpayers have already paid a higher rate for at least 20 years, even though school officials can't prove they ever got voter permission to exceed the 1956 local cap of 90 cents per $100 of assessed property value. Over time, the rate has gradually been increased to about $1.50 per $100, right at the maximum allowed by the state.

If the referendum fails, Wilmer-Hutchins will lose about 30 percent of its revenue, or about $6.1 million per year, interim superintendent James Damm said.

"It comes to a vote of survival of the district," he said.

Wilmer-Hutchins is located about five miles south of downtown Dallas, where gritty urban decay meets cotton fields. The district draws from the tiny cities of Wilmer and Hutchins, along with part of Dallas and the south suburb of Lancaster.

Its 3,070 students are overwhelmingly black or Hispanic, and poor — 78 percent of them received free or reduced-price lunches during the 2003-04 school year.

Eliminating about 80 jobs and closing three small schools should result in a balanced budget for this year, Damm said. But there's nothing left to chip away at the roughly $3 million fund balance deficit the district built up over the past two years.

Although I think a local tax cap of 90 cents per $100 valuation is beyond nuts, I can't figure out why the district "can't prove they ever got voter permission to exceed the 1956 local cap." Did election results magically dissappear? Was an election ever held? Did the trustees just forget about the cap? Did previous counsel tell them such a cap was unconstitutional?

This isn't the first run of trouble for WHISD. State monitors have been in and our of the district since the 1980s, and took over the district's operations in 1996 and 1998.

According to the Denton Record Chronicle, the most recent problems became apparent in August, when storm damage exacerbated years of accumulated maintenance problems and delayed the start of classes at the high school. Following that, official investigations of the district's finances resulted in corruption allegations, "document shredding, double payments for expenses and the illegal use of property tax revenue to pay off a loan. The FBI and the Texas Rangers joined the district attorney's investigation in September."

To me, though, the worst part of all of this is the move to dissolve the district all together:

Longtime resident and former school board member Lionel Churchill said he's cautiously pleased with the district's progress under Damm and the TEA team.

But, he said, "when the monitors leave, will there be behavioral modification in this district or do we go back to business as usual?

"We will, unless we see some really significant changes in the culture of this school district," Churchill said.

Churchill said his group, Wilmer-Hutchins ISD Concerned Citizens, has collected 2,000 signatures on a petition calling for the district's abolishment.

But Damm urges residents not to give up on the district as it works to boost achievement by restructuring the curriculum, renovating school facilities and raising teacher salaries.

"We can make those kind of changes here and make this a quality instructional program that everyone can be proud of," he said.

Although I'm sure most residents in WHISD are most concerned about losing their autonomy, I'm more concerned about what type of precedent a dissolution election could have on other districts across Texas.

For example, Van Zandt County has seven independent school districts--all with instruction for grades k-12. Two are very tiny, 1A schools--one doesn't even have football, the other has six-man. There are a lot of districts scattered across the state. Anti-tax advocates seem to have problems with little school districts like these because their property taxes are almost always set at the $1.50 cap (soon to change, given whatever the Lege does) for local property taxes (excluding debt service). A lot of anti-tax advocates seem to believe they'd get more for their money of operations were consolodated with nearby larger districts. What they don't seem to realize is that those districts would have to increase their tax rates significantly to pay for facilities operation, instruction, personnel, busing, etc. in the event of such a consolodation. And, if I remember correctly, voters in both the district wanting to consolodate and the district absorbing the other school have to approve of such a measure, which makes it at least a partial long-shot.

In my mind, whatever the Lege does with school finance this session, steps need to be taken to ensure the survival of smaller ISDs.

As for Wilmer-Hutchins, I don't think they're beyond help, but I do think they need some serious changes.

Vince Leibowitz is County Chairman of the Democratic Party of Van Zandt County. As a former journalist, he's covered numerous school board meetings, and was twice named to the Texas Association of School Boards Media Honor Roll for his coverage of the Van Independent School District and the Canton Independent School District.