The Examiner 9/5/13 Edition Editorial by Don J. Dodd. Three cheers or six bits for King Reece The motivation that provoked BISD board president Woodrow Reece’s comment to Channel 12’s Angel San Juan that the district would now go after the $2 million from the Justice Department coffers fortified by Walker’s Electric last year doesn’t matter as much as the fact that the district — after years of mismanagement — needs the money. We need to first educate the kids, and education can be very expensive. For Reece to claim his actions are spurred in an effort to heal a community he has had a large hand in polluting is offensive and a thinly veiled suggestion that the ratepayers of the district are as feeble-minded as he is. Whether Walker was found guilty in a unanimous jury verdict of bilking the district for millions has never been the requisite for claiming the money; just being the victim was enough to claim the fine the Justice Department assessed.Reece and company not only suggested that claiming the bounty available was wrong since Walker had not been convicted, but that the district did not see itself as a victim of his multiple frauds. If you saw your neighbor come into your house and steal your money and your keepsakes, but you were the only witness and the court could not get a conviction on your witness statement alone, would you consider yourself a victim? Would you consider your neighbor a thief? Would you apply to the victims fund to get some of your money back? According to the thinking of Reece and company, if you answer yes to any of those questions, you yourself are not only dishonest, but lack character and the sensibilities required in an elected official responsible for millions of taxpayer dollars. BISD teachers who spend their paychecks to buy supplies the district says it can’t afford, the students who go without instructional materials, and the parents who are frustrated with the substandard education their children receive in BISD are all victims — and it is not a gesture of reconciliation to claim the money stolen and rightly owed to BISD stakeholders, but a responsibility. King Reece, try this if you really want to heal the community. Say you were wrong, and say it to those on the BISD Board of Trustees who stood against you and tried to convince you and your cohorts to acknowledge that BISD was wronged by the extortion of millions of dollars meant for the district’s children and their education. That, sir, would be an act of trying to heal the community, and may possibly instill a tiny bit of the trust lost by oh-so-many acts of dishonor over the past several years. As we have said for weeks and will continue to say, if you want the best education for our children and if you care about the community you live in, all trustees should voluntarily resign their positions and ask the Texas Education Agency to appoint an interim Board of Trustees. What better education to give our kids than the lesson that what’s good for the children always supersedes our own selfishness and need to hold on to power at all costs?
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 02:27:44 +0000
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