Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Just outside Austin Eanes ISD voters are in the heat of a $150 million bond election that will be decided November 2nd. Locally-funded Political Action Committees on both sides are helping a spirited debate with signs Letters to the Editor and each has their respective websites. As with many such debates the light has shined brightly on the districts Superintendent.
Just when you think public education is as problematic as it can be you go to another school board meeting & it goes wrong in an entirely new way.
Over in East Texas Grassroots AmericaWe the People just gave Tyler ISD Officials a Failing Grade" on Facility Planning. Documents from Tyler ISDs own website opponents believe prove the points they have been trying to make about the Districts ill-conceived & badly-timed $145 million dollar bond package.
No matter how Texas citizens vote on their local ISD bond packages & other local issues Tuesday dont expect many changes in schools this academic year. But wait till next year or the year after the education crisis could not be coming at a worse time.
A lingering recession along with explosive economic challenges from abroad is fostering the decline of our middle class say many experts. This is certain to lead to a diminished position in the world economy they say.
A deteriorating education system can only accelerate the trend.
Then theres the Eanes ISD nestled next to downtown Austin. Many in the tiny-little community surrounding & part of the Eanes Independent School District say Superintendent Dr. Nola Wellman can easily be described as an 
official who is rigidly devoted to the details of administrative procedure.
But one term school superintendents dislike being called is bureaucrat". Apparently the term is offensive.
Her well known devotion to detail is what is making her recent actions so puzzling to so many.
The difficulty started early as the Austin American Statesman did a story September 26th questioning the Eanes ISDs recent board decision to increase Dr. Wellmans compensation by $10000 per year in exchange for her no longer having to submit expense reports to pay her travel and entertainment expenses. District officials stated this would save the District money but the Statesman reporters review revealed that Dr. Wellmans historical expenses never exceeded $6500 in any year.
Perhaps the real motivation behind the move was demonstrated within this statement from the Eanes ISD Board President Paul Stone
Weve got a well-regarded highly sought after superintendent in an exemplary school district and we saw it as a way to keep her.
Its a troubling sign when the President of a school board justifies removing openness and accountability as a requirement to keeping a Superintendent.
This move resulted in the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas giving Eanes ISD an F" in transparency.
Things started to heat up on October 21 2010 when Eanes ISD Board Member Clint Sayers questioned Dr. Wellman on approximately $4.5 million of expenditures from a 2006 Bond set aside for safety security and technology that apparently were not spent on these projects.
Eanes ISD spokesperson Claudia McWhorter has stated
the reclassification is mainly for accounting purposes and to better track the specific projects for the vendors wed use for the specific projects.
The point here is that accounting reclassifications dont require Board approval. The board voted when there was a change in scope or a change in price for projects that were above a certain level" said McWhorter. But as far as any accounting changes moving money from one bucket to another that was still within a project that was not board approved and it did not need to be." Undeterred Board member Sayers has continued to question Dr. Wellman on details related to the accounting reclassification but has been unable to get any details from the school. One would think that with the current $150 million bond package up for a vote Dr. Wellman would be bending over
backward to provide the detail. Her lack of responsive is puzzling to many Eanes ISD residents.
Finally in response to criticism of the bond packages from a group called Citizens for Academic Excellence in Eanes on October 22 2010 Dr. Wellman elected to send an e-mail to all Eanes ISD residents using the Districts systems. The email included an attached document prepared using District resources.
The document directly called into question some of the statements made by Citizens for Academic Excellence in Eanes.
Two Eanes ISD board members Clint Sayers and Dr. Colleen Jones assert that by sending the document Dr. Wellman engaged in advocacy for the Bond proposals and injected herself into the political debate over the propositions. If this is the case Dr. Wellman did so in violation of Eanes ISD policy and Texas law.
On October 26 2010 Sayers and Jones requested that the Eanes ISD in-house attorney Allyson Collins submit the actions of the Superintendent to the Texas Ethics Commission and to the Travis County Attorney for review.
Regardless of the outcome of the election the process has shined many negative lights on the Eanes ISD Superintendent and Board.
Openness and accountability should be embraced at every opportunity. The integrity of the process for school elections should be protected. If an organization the size of Eanes ISD looks to squelch opposition and disregard board member inquiries it calls into question the very fabric of our system of government.
Almost anywhere one looks across the state of Texas the facts are that 50 of the new Elementary Schools from the 2004 & 2008 Bond Elections will be at capacity or overcrowded in less than five years! Thats 8 out of 16 elementary schools.
Nonetheless Texans should simply no longer trust … without verification … the direction many local ISDs leaders are taking them.
With climbing national state and local debt we just cant afford local elected officials who act like Congress. Texas needs elected officials & public servants who pay attention to the details so taxpayers dont have to pay for multi-million dollar mistakes.
Dont forget to study up on & vote for you local school bond plan. Accountability & voter participation will make for A Better Texas".
