Category Archives: education news

education news, national news

Trump’s boasts return to the headlines

Donald J. Trump Jr. had the bad sense to pop off about the college enrollment scandal that has swallowed up the careers of at least two prominent Hollywood TV and film stars.

Junior’s remarks brought out Twitter responses throughout the social media universe discussing how Don Jr. was able to parlay his father’s deep pockets into enrolling at a prestigious school.

And that brought back all those sound bites of Donald J. Trump Sr. bragging about his brilliance.

Which brings me to my point.

I’ve known a lot of wealthy and smart individuals over the course of my 69 years on this Earth. I have made the acquaintance of one billionaire and have become friendly with a number of individuals who are worth millions. I’ve known West Point, Naval Academy and Air Force Academy graduates. I have developed good relationships with many men and women with high-powered degrees from some of the top universities in the United States.

I cannot recall ever hearing a single one of them — be they wealthy or uber-smart — telling me how rich and smart they are. I always knew about their wealth and their intelligence. There was no need for any of them rub it in my face.

Thus, I always wonder when I hear the president of the United States tell us how he went to the “finest schools,” and has built a “world-class company” whether he really is as smart and as wealthy as he claims to be.

I think I can answer the first part of that query. Trump isn’t as smart as he proclaims. I believe that via the nature of the hideous way he communicates via Twitter; I also listen to his spoken syntax as he lies his way through public life.

As for the other part, his wealth, well . . . no one can say for certain if he is as filthy rich as he claims to be. He won’t show us his tax returns.

Therefore, many of us are left to wonder: Is he really that rich? I tend to think not.

education news

AISD trustees need to face some community anger

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A part of me wishes I could write the script for the upcoming election of the Amarillo Independent School District board of trustees.

If I could dictate how this election should be determined, it would have to be on the issue of school board and administrative support of educators who work directly with the children who attend the city’s public school system.

You know where I’m coming from, of course. My issue is predicated solely on the shameful exhibition of cowardice exhibited by the school board when a highly regarded girls volleyball coach resigned after one season at Amarillo High School, which has developed one of Texas’s most vaunted girls volleyball programs.

Kori Clements turned in her resignation letter that blasted administrators and board members for failing to support her in the face of a parent’s gripes over the way the coach was parceling out playing time for her daughter.

The school board remained silent. Administrators did, too. The coach resigned. Members of the community stood up for her; so did several members of the Sandies volleyball team.

The worst part of this story is that the offending parent — who hectored the coach and allegedly made an unannounced visit to the coach’s home to hassle her over playing time — is a member of the board of trustees.

The board accepted her resignation without comment.

So, AISD’s constituents — those who pay the bills with their property taxes — are left to still wonder: What gives with the school board?

Three seats are up for election in May. Two of the incumbents are running for re-election: Jim Austin and John Betancourt; a third one, Scott Flow, did not file for re-election.

I want all the school board candidates to answer the question directly: How do you guarantee that educators have the support of the administration and the board that they deserve?

Hey, I don’t live there any longer. I remain deeply interested in this story and hope it plays out eventually the way it should.

education news

AISD faces big challenges with new superintendent

So, it appears Doug Loomis is going to be the new superintendent of the Amarillo Independent School District.

How does that sound? OK . . . I guess.

I don’t know Loomis. He’s been employed by AISD for three decades. He’s been filling in as superintendent since Dana West quit suddenly in 2018 after just three years on the job.

I have two takeaways from the AISD board’s decision to name Loomis its sole finalist.

First . . .

Trustees John Betancourt and Robin Malone think the school district should have gone outside the district to look for the next superintendent. I agree with them. It’s not that an outsider would have risen to the top necessarily. It merely is that a strong field of candidates from other districts, with other outlooks, different perspectives would have given AISD trustees a wider range of options to consider.

I have argued in the past — during my days as an opinion journalist — for governing bodies to cast a wide net in their search for top administrators. The Amarillo Globe-News made that argument when Amarillo City Manager John Ward left the city; the council then elevated his deputy, Alan Taylor, to the manager’s job. Taylor did a fine job, but the paper argued that the council would serve itself better by conducting a national search. Taylor took the “criticism” personally, even though we said at the time we had nothing against Taylor per se as a candidate for the top administrative job.

AISD could have strengthened the field of contenders by opening it up rather than conducting an exclusively in-house search for superintendent.

Second . . .

Loomis inherits a district in turmoil. Indeed, he is part of the reason for AISD’s tumult. You see, it was on his watch that Amarillo High School girls volleyball coach Kori Clements resigned suddenly after a single season. She blamed the administration for a lack of support when she was confronted by the parent of one of the girls who played for her at Amarillo HS, one of the state’s most heralded volleyball programs.

The AISD administration and the board of trustees should have stood behind Clements. Neither of them did. Indeed, the offending parent — the one who harassed and hassled Clements over her daughter’s playing time — reportedly is a member of the AISD board!

I don’t live in Amarillo any longer, so I don’t yet know how much of this controversy has subsided. I have a strong hunch there remains a great deal of latent distrust of the school board and administration over the support they give to their educators and support staff.

Is the superintendent-to-be going to deal with that up front and aggressively?

My advice: He had better.

education news, local news

AISD board deserves a healthy roster of challengers

Political incumbents have gritted their teeth when I have said over the years that all of them deserves to be challenged at election time.

They usually ask, “Why should anyone challenge me if I’m doing a good job?” My answer usually goes something like this: “Because no one deserves a free ride when citizens are given the chance to offer themselves as a candidate for public office.”

The Amarillo Independent School District Board of Trustees is facing a potential plethora of challengers if enough residents want to challenge three incumbents who are up for re-election this year.

Heaven knows the board has earned the challenge, based on its performance in that controversial resignation of Amarillo High girls volleyball coach Kori Clements, who quit earlier this year citing parental interference in the way she was doing her job.

The board didn’t back the coach. Neither did the AISD administration, which answers to the board.

Friday is the final day for candidates to step up to challenge the incumbents whose terms are up this year: Jim Austin, Scott Flow and John Betancourt. Flow hasn’t yet declared his candidacy for re-election.

These incumbents need to be challenged. They need to answer for their non-action in the Clements matter. They need to explain why they dummied up. They must be held to account for the shabby treatment that befell the coach of a vaunted high school athletic program.

They should be challenged even if they were doing a good job. I am sorry to conclude that this bunch has fallen short.

education news, medical news

Vet school gets a huge financial boost

I remain concerned about the fate of Texas Tech University’s planned school of veterinary medicine that is supposed to be built in Amarillo.

My concern has been lessened , though, by a donation that came from former Amarillo Mayor Jerry and Margaret Hodge, who have pledged $10 million to build the school at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center campus in west Amarillo.

Yep, the Hodges have stepped up, as is their tendency when community need arises.

And it did with the recent removal of state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, from the chairmanship of the Texas Senate Higher Education Committee.

I am not predicting that the veterinary medicine school is doomed simply because Seliger is no longer chairman of the key Senate committee charged with legislating the school into existence. However, the generosity of a prominent Amarillo couple helps protect the school and helps guide it closer toward completion.

As for Seliger and his ongoing feud with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, my hope for the sprawling Senate District 31 is that it won’t get stiffed by Patrick’s petulance against a veteran — and accomplished — state legislator.

Let us hope the school of veterinary medicine makes it across the finish line. Texas Tech will reap the reward. Better still, so will the West Texas agricultural community that will benefit from the veterinarians who will graduate from the vet school.

Many thanks, Jerry and Margaret Hodge, for stepping up.

education news, media news, Sports news, State news

Voters retain ultimate power

Two political incidents in the Texas Panhandle have provided significant evidence of just who holds the power in these disputes.

I refer to two dustups: one involving Texas state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick; the other one involves the Amarillo Independent School District Board of Trustees.

In both instances, the voters are getting the shaft by those in power.

First, the Seliger-Patrick battle.

Patrick is angry with Seliger because the Amarillo Republican lawmaker doesn’t always vote the way Patrick prefers. What the lieutenant governor needs to understand — and I am sure he does at some level — is that Seliger works for West Texans, not for Dan Patrick.

Patrick yanked the chairman’s gavel from Seliger, who chaired the Senate Higher Education Committee. Seliger said something supposedly unkind about a Patrick aide. Patrick then responded by pulling Seliger out of the chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Seliger owes his allegiance to the voters of the sprawling Texas Senate District 31. As for Lt. Gov. Patrick, he is acting like a legend in his own mind.

Now, the AISD board.

An Amarillo High School volleyball coach, Kori Clements, resigned after one season. She cited parental interference as the reason she quit; she also said the school district administration didn’t back her.

The chatter around the school district is that the offending parent is a member of the AISD board of trustees.

The board has been silent. It has refused to speak to the issue directly. It needs to do exactly that. Why? Because the board works for the public, which pays the salaries of the administrators and educators and which pays to keep the lights on at all of AISD’s campuses.

The voters are the bosses. The AISD board answers to them, not to each other, or to the superintendent.

There needs to be a public accounting for what happened to make Coach Clements pack it in after just a single season as head coach of a vaunted high school volleyball program.

The public needs to know. It has every right to demand answers.

education news

Lessons to be learned from coach/parent confrontation

The coaching crisis that erupted in Amarillo, Texas, a few weeks ago has stuck in my craw ever since it came to my attention.

Absent any explicit denials of what caused the head coach of a vaunted girls high school volleyball program to quit after a single season, I am left to conclude that what she alleged about parental interference is essentially true.

Kori Clements resigned as Amarillo High’s volleyball coach. She blamed parental interference into playing time decisions the coach was making as her reason for quitting. Clements cited a lack of support from the Amarillo school district administration and the board as the catalyst for her resignation.

I won’t get into the details of what allegedly occurred, or discuss the parent involved.

However, there is a stern lesson that must not be lost on parents of children who are enrolled in public schools. The lesson also applies — perhaps even more stringently — to parents of those students who participate in extracurricular activities.

The bottom line? Let the educators in whose trust we put our children do the jobs they are paid to do!

Coaches, or band directors, or theatrical instructors all play a part in extending children’s educational experience. We should trust that they are doing their jobs ethically, with compassion, patience and even love for our children.

Absent demonstrable abuse or incompetence on an educator’s part, parents are asked simply to do the right thing by their children, which is to give them support and to encourage them to do their best. It’s in the unwritten rule book under Parenthood 101.

There appears to be no sign — none whatsoever! — of anything approaching malfeasance on the part of Coach Clements. She wasn’t abusing her athletes or mistreating them in any way. She reportedly was seeking to put the best players on the floor and seeking to manage their playing time to produce the most victories for her school volleyball team as possible.

There is a lesson here for all parents and, yes, for all school administrators.

Just as parents must support their children, school administrators must demonstrate support for the faculty members they hire to educate the children parents put in their trust.

This Amarillo Independent School District story likely hasn’t played itself out all the way. I’ll continue to watch it unfold as time goes by.

But, dang it, man! Let’s not allow the horrendous mistakes — and alleged misconduct — of a fanatical parent cause us to lose sight of the need to protect our children properly or of the need to support the educators who are doing the right thing.

education news, local news, Sports news

Hey, AISD board . . . will you speak to your ‘bosses’?

I want to stand with my friend and former Amarillo Globe-News colleague Jon Mark Beilue, who is demanding answers from the Amarillo Independent School District board of trustees.

The AISD board accepted the resignation of a highly valued girls volleyball coach who quit because of pressure she was getting from the mother of one of her athletes.

The coach, Kori Cooper Clements, lasted one season. The Amarillo High girls volleyball program is among the best in Texas history. What Clements has alleged is shameful interference by a parent.

The school board has remained silent. The school district’s constituents — the board’s “bosses” — deserve an explanation on what has been alleged.

What’s more, the chatter all over Amarillo implicates Renee McCown, an AISD board member, as the offending parent.

So, as Beilue has suggested, it is past time for the board to speak to the constituents. Explain its action or it inaction on this matter.

Here is what Beilue posted the other day on Facebook. Take a moment or two to read it. It’s worth your time.

***

So it’s been one week since the Amarillo ISD school board heard from an angry public at its regularly scheduled meeting, including two Amarillo High volleyball players among 10 there to support head coach Kori Clements, voted to accept Clements resignation, and then has publicly done what anyone who has been paying attention to this board expected.

Nothing.

No word of support for fellow board member Rene McCown who’s been twisting in the wind, no admonishment of allegations of her misuse of her school board position, no announcing they are looking into this troubling situation and will issue their findings as soon as possible.

Nothing.

It’s as if Amarillo voters elected a bunch of Marcel Marceaus, the famous French mime.

To recap quickly, promising young coach Kori Cooper-Clements resigned earlier this month in her first year with the storied program, and also her alma mater. She publicly accused a board member – read, McCown, who has two daughters on the team – of what appears to be greatly overstepping her bounds as a board member with regard to playing time for her daughters, and an administration who did not back the coach and played the political game of siding with the board member.

It has ignited a community firestorm that far exceeds the interest level of a high school volleyball program for the bigger picture of what appears to be a violation of the public trust of a board member, an administration that caved and a board that sits in stubborn silence.

There’s an old axiom in coaching when bad behavior, or lack of discipline on a team, occurs: “You’re either coaching it or allowing it to happen.”

Since I doubt the board is coaching it, let’s just vote for allowing it to happen. Board members can stiffen their backs all they want, but what conclusion should reasonable people reach when a board’s response seems to be just wishing it would go away?

At this moment, the entire public trust of the board from those who vote is about as low as it gets. If they disagree, they need to get out more.

This is not some run-of-the-mill parental interference of an athletic program that occurs frequently. This is not a parent who works at – oh, I don’t know – Owens-Corning who’s raising a stink. No, a board does not need nor should it get involved in those instances.

This is much different. This is one of your own who has allegedly inserted herself into the process almost from the moment Cooper-Clements was hired last March and attempted to use her position for personal gain that is not in the best interest of AISD.

That demands an internal investigation and public accountability to a public that put this board in that position in the first place. It demands transparency and getting on top of this instead of sticking their heads in the nearest Sod Poodle hole. To not do that is an insult to Amarillo and reeking of arrogance.

This goes beyond the tepid statement last week of a policy that “AISD does not comment on personnel matters out of confidentiality and respect for our employees.” This is a bigger matter than that, and the board knows it. Or should know it.

So as the board continues to play the public for a fool by remaining silent and invite even more questions, and the same public is left to wonder if board members can just play by their own rules, maybe the question is exactly that: Is the board coaching it or allowing it to happen?

education news

Upcoming school district election might portend big change

I am not normally a betting guy. I mean, I don’t even play any form of the Texas Lottery.

However, I am beginning to sense from distance away that the upcoming Amarillo Independent School District board of trustees election is going to be a barn-burner.

Three trustees are up for re-election later this year, but they are entering a campaign season fraught with questions — and a good bit of anger — among AISD constituents. Many voters appear to be steamed at the way the board handled the resignation of a popular high school girls volleyball coach and the circumstances reportedly surrounding it.

Kori Clements quit her Amarillo High School coaching job. She cited parental influence as the reason for her resignation. The school board has remained silent on the issue. Trustees got an earful from constituents the other evening. Then they accepted Clements’ resignation without comment.

Oh, and one of the trustees — Renee McCown — reportedly is the offending parent who hassled, harangued and harassed Clements over playing time policies involving one of McCown’s children.

McCown is not one of the candidates who will stand for re-election this year; her term expires in 2021. I hope to be able to hear how she might campaign for re-election in two years if she decides to run for another term.

Meanwhile, seats occupied by trustees Jim Austin, Scott Flow and John Betancourt are up for election this year. They, too, will have some explaining to do. They’ll need to justify — again, assuming they all run for new terms on the board — their decision to clam up publicly about a resignation that captured the community’s attention. I get that it’s a long-standing AISD policy to not comment on personnel matters. My sense, based on my attendance at the recent AISD board meeting, is that voters likely won’t care about policy; they likely might demand direct answers to direct questions.

Here’s a question that might get posed to candidates as they run for election to the board: Do you believe the school system has provided sufficient support for its educators, the individuals that the community entrusts to care for our children while they are attending public schools?

Kori Clements said she didn’t get it from the administration, or from the school board while she sought to fend off a hectoring parent.

Amarillo voters have been known to clean house on their governing bodies when circumstances merit it. They did it in 1989 when they replaced virtually the entire City Commission; the city’s economic condition drove voters to rebel against the status quo at City Hall. They did so again in 2017 when they replaced the entire City Council, some of whose members engaged in open sniping and quarreling with senior city administrators.

Amarillo’s public school system well might face a similar uprising — this year and in 2021.

education news, local news, medical news, political news, State news

Keep our eyes on Texas Tech vet school progress

I have spoken already on this blog about some of the damage that can be done to West Texans who depend on their state senator to look after projects that provide direct benefit to their part of the state.

I want to discuss briefly one specific project: the Texas Tech University System’s plan to build a school of veterinary medicine at its medical school campus in Amarillo.

Why mention it? Because a veteran legislator, Sen. Kel Seliger, an Amarillo Republican, has been yanked out of the chairman’s seat on the Higher Education Committee. Seliger lost the chairmanship he has occupied for several legislative sessions.

The loss of that seat could cost the Panhandle dearly. My sincere and adamant hope is that it does not endanger the veterinary medicine school that Tech wants to build in Amarillo.

The Tech Board of Regents has signed on. The Amarillo Economic Development Corporation has committed tens of millions of dollars to it. The Panhandle community supports the vet school, which would be the second such college in Texas; the only other vet school is run by Texas A&M University, which quite naturally has been pushing back against Tech’s plans to build the school.

The school of veterinary medicine will provide a direct boost to Amarillo and the Panhandle. Tech has established a need for such a school, which could cater to large-animal veterinary care in a region known for its livestock.

Does the Seliger removal from the Higher Ed chairmanship put the vet school in dire peril? It must not! However, there is the possibility that the Panhandle’s lack of a voice on the Higher Ed panel could work against the forward momentum that is building for the completion of the project.

Lt. Gov. Patrick has done some damage to the Panhandle with his apparent vendetta against the region’s senior state senator. Let us all keep our eyes and ears open to the legislative maneuvering as it involves the Texas Tech school of veterinary medicine.