Tag Archives: Kori Clements.

education news

Amarillo ISD complaint offers opportunity for ethics lesson

A constituent of Amarillo’s public school system, has peeled away the shroud from a story that has been brewing in the community for several weeks.

Marc Henson has filed a complaint with the Texas Education Agency against a member of the Amarillo school district board who, according to Henson, interfered with a high school coach’s ability to do her job. The board trustee, Renee McCown, badgered former Amarillo High School volleyball coach Kori Clements, griping about the playing time being given to the trustee’s daughters.

Clements quit after a single season coaching in one of Texas’s most storied high school athletic programs.

There’s a lesson to be learned, no matter how this story plays out.

It is that elected officials — be they school board members, city council members, county commissioners, college or university regents — have no business meddling in the day-to-day work of the staff members who serve the public.

I am going to presume that Renee McCown received that advice as she was preparing to become an Amarillo public school trustee. If she never received those words of wisdom from senior school administrators or fellow trustees, shame on them for neglecting to inform her.

If she got that advice and then ignored it, then shame on her.

I am acutely aware that all of this is an allegation. However, it rings more credible to me — and to others who are much closer to the matter than I am — every time I consider it.

McCown hasn’t denied anything publicly. Clements’ resignation letter set the table for a heated community discussion. Marc Henson’s complaint to the TEA has blown the lid off the alleged culprit in this bizarre story.

As for the lesson to be learned, it is a simple one. Read my lips: Elected officials set governing policy and then let the paid staff implement that policy. Period. End of story.

Any involvement in the implementation of policy beyond that simple mandate smacks of unethical conduct and must be dealt with sharply.

education news

Resign from AISD board, Mme. Trustee

You are entitled to call me an interloper, an outsider, a peanut-gallery spectator if you wish, but I want to get this off my chest right now: Renee McCown, a member of the Amarillo Independent School District Board of Trustees, needs to resign her seat and disappear from school politics.

I’ll now get this off my chest as well. I am not an entirely nosy outsider. I lived and worked in Amarillo for 23 years. I spent most of those years commenting on public school affairs from my post as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News. Yes, I’ve moved away, but I retain a deep interest in the affairs of the community.

McCown has been named in a complaint filed by an Amarillo ISD constituent, Marc Henson, who has submitted his gripes to the Texas Education Agency. He has accused McCown of acting unethically by pressuring a former Amarillo High School girls volleyball coach, Kori Clements, into giving her daughter more playing time. McCown reportedly was unhappy that her children weren’t getting enough time on the court and told Clements to do better by her daughters.

Clements quit the vaunted AHS Sandies program after a single season and accused the board and the AISD administration of failing to give her the backing she needed to do her job as an educator.

If this is true, and I believe the accusations are credible, then the trustee has committed a serious ethical breach of conduct by interfering in the duties of an educator who answers to administrative staff and to the board of trustees.

Is McCown actually guilty of what has been alleged? I don’t know. I do know that she hasn’t spoken out publicly on the matter. Her silence — along with the silence of her board colleagues and administrators — speaks volumes about what Henson has alleged in his complaint to the TEA.

There have no denials. No responses of any sort.

I happened to be in Amarillo recently and I had the pleasure of attending an AISD board meeting in which Clements’ resignation was the topic of the evening. Several school system constituents admonished the board for its conduct in the matter. They scolded trustees and administrators for failing to give Clements the support she deserved.

I was struck by the amazing body language of trustees. Several of them — including Renee McCown — refused to look their “accusers” in the eye. They all kept their heads down, looking at something on the dais in front of them.

It was an off-putting display of arrogance, not to mention cowardice. It also appeared to my eyes to be highly instructive of what was being said to them directly by the people whose taxes pay for operation of the public school system.

I do not know Renee McCown. However, I know enough about this story to make a couple of presumptions.

  • Her standing is likely damaged beyond repair, given what has been discussed openly and what has been alleged officially at the agency that governs public education in Texas.
  • It will be impossible for her to continue functioning effectively as a steward of Amarillo’s public school system, given all that has transpired to date.

She needs to resign. Moreover, a public apology to the coach and to her constituents would be in order as well.

local news, Sports news

It should hit the fan at Amarillo ISD . . . but will it?

A high school volleyball coach’s stunning resignation is continuing to reverberate around the Amarillo Independent School District.

Indeed, the coach’s resignation has now gone to the Texas Education Agency, which has received a complaint from an angry AISD constituent who is accusing the school board and the administration of unethical conduct.

Hold on, folks. This might get rough. Indeed, it should.

Kori Clements resigned as Amarillo High School’s volleyball coach after just one season. She cited parental interference into the way she was parceling out playing time. She said in her resignation letter that the school board and administration failed to give her the backing she deserved.

She quit one of the state’s premier volleyball programs after a single season. Clements, a 2006 AHS graduate, walked away.

Are you still with me? Here’s the fun part.

Marc Henson, an AISD constituent and the parent of future AHS students, has filed a complaint with the TEA. He names AISD trustee Renee McCown specifically as the parent who interfered with the coach’s playing-time decisions, which reportedly affected McCown’s two daughters.

Henson said he wants McCown to resign from the board. He also believes the allegations against her are credible. He also believes the administration is complicit, along with the board, in fomenting what he calls unethical conduct.

I have tried to soft-pedal the alleged involvement of a particular trustee in this mess. Marc Henson’s complaint has more or less blown the lid off the matter.

According to KFDA NewsChannel 10: The complaint alleges Renee McCown, an AISD school board trustee, spoke with the former coach privately about her decisions, athletes and playing times on the volleyball team, specifically targeting her two daughters.

What he is alleging here is a serious breach of ethical conduct on the part of an elected public official. That a member of the AISD board would meddle into the coaching decisions of an educator is reprehensible on its face. What we well might have witnessed is a case of coercion and intimidation that has no place in public education — at any level.

What’s more is that the school board has remained silent about it. It hides behind some policy that mutes the board because we are dealing with a “personnel matter.”

Henson wants the TEA to invoke some form of punishment against the Amarillo public school system — presuming the allegations prove true.

This saga has some way to go before it finishes playing out.

My hope is that the TEA gives this complaint serious attention.

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.

local news, Sports news

One AISD incumbent is out; will other two get the boot?

Three incumbent Amarillo public school trustees’ seats are to be decided in an election this coming May.

Two of them are seeking re-election: Jim Austin and John Betancourt. The third, Scott Flow, did not file to run for another term. More than a half-dozen challengers have filed for the election of the at-large seats.

It’s all just as well. The incumbents are on the hot seat. The election might turn on how the school board handled the resignation of a popular Amarillo High School coach, who left the AHS vaunted girls volleyball program after just a single season.

Kori Clements quit, citing a lack of administrative and school board support in the face of pressure she was getting from a parent who didn’t like that her daughter wasn’t getting enough playing time. The school board heard from constituents this past month and did nothing, other than accept the coach’s resignation without comment.

It has been a pretty disgusting display of reticence. The coach deserved better from the administration and from the board.

Oh, I guess I should add that the offending parent also is a member f the Amarillo Independent School District board. Shameful . . . if true.

So, do not be surprised if trustees Austin and Betancourt get the boot in May. Given their conduct in the Kori Clements matter, they will have deserved it.

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.

local news, political news

Potential tumult awaits officials in Amarillo

A still-small part of me wishes I could settle into a ringside seat in Amarillo, Texas — where I used to live — to watch what might be a burgeoning political tumult involving two elected governing boards.

One of them is the Amarillo City Council, the other is the Amarillo Independent School District Board of Trustees.

Under the city charter, all five council seats are up for election in odd-numbered years. In 2017, voters elected an entirely new council, which had been roiled in dispute, tension and dissension.

The city has continued its march toward a serious economic revival in the two years since the new council took office. The council did manage to ensnare itself in a controversy involving policies governing public comment at public council meetings. I am not sure whether that tempest has subsided entirely.

Were I to vote in Amarillo, I likely would cast my ballot in favor of returning all the incumbents, if all them run for re-election. That cannot happen, as I now live in Collin County. However, I retain a considerable interest in Amarillo politics. It’s tough to shake it off after living there for 23 years, spending most of that time on post at the Amarillo Globe-News.

The Amarillo ISD board, though, is facing an entirely different circumstance. Three board members’ seats are up this year. AISD voters have a chance to select three new board members. It is my strong hunch they’ll have that chance, given the mess that has been stirred up on the board.

You might know the story. I’ll recap it briefly. An Amarillo High School girls volleyball coach, Kori Clements, quit her job after a single season. She walked away from one of the state’s most storied high school athletic programs, citing what she called parental interference; she also stated publicly that the AISD administration –and the school board — did not have her back.

It gets complicated. The allegedly offending parent reportedly is a member of the school board, who clearly should know better than to meddle in the work of a school district employee. That board member’s seat is not one of the three seats to be decided this year. Her term ends in 2021.

My equally strong hunch is that the three seats to be contested are likely to change hands, given the school board’s stone-cold silence on the coach’s resignation or on the issue that allegedly brought it about.

To be sure, I’ll be watching from afar. I simply hope for wisdom and discernment among voters when they go to the polls later this year. This election could be one for the books.

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.