A monthslong rift on the Waco Independent School District board widened Thursday as Trustee Jose Vidaña accused other board members of blindsiding him by removing him as board president.
The board voted 4-3 to change leadership of the board, appointing Angelo Ochoa as president, Jim Patton as vice president and Taylor Bledsoe as secretary. Jeremy Davis, an ally of Vidaña, lost his role as vice president.
The vote comes after four months of dissension on the board about how to fill a vacant board seat. The three new officers have been on the same side of those debates, preferring to appoint rather than elect a successor, and to choose Everett Phipps over three other contenders, all of them female.
Phipps, an Insurors of Texas official, was sworn in Thursday and joined the majority in the officer appointment vote.
Vidaña took to social media Thursday night to blast the board vote on officers.
“Unfortunately, because I did not always agree with the ‘majority’ of the board, it became clear that certain members had their own agenda,” Vidaña said on a Facebook post on Thursday evening.
“Instead of embracing differing perspectives that better represent our diverse community, efforts were made behind the scenes to remove me from leadership and place themselves in positions of power.”
Vidaña added in an interview Friday that he believes three or four school board members consulted together at some point before the meeting about making the changes.
He did not provide evidence of such communication, which would be illegal under the Texas Open Meetings Act. But he said a board member told him over lunch last week that Vidaña would not be nominated for another term as president.
Under Texas law, elected boards can only make decisions when they have a quorum or majority, in a meeting posted in advance. If a majority of board members confer with each other at different times on a decision, it is considered an illegal “walking quorum.”
Ochoa said he met last week with Vidaña, but he said he didn’t know how other trustees would vote. Board members reevaluate board roles after appointing new members and after an election.
Vidaña said he supports Ochoa and accepts the board’s decision but wishes more communication occurred.
“My biggest disappointment is, be open with me,” Vidaña said on Friday. “If you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it, but don’t do the planning, and then they come and surprise everybody. I’m OK with the decision. My thing is that we’re supposed to be a board, we’re supposed to be open with each other.”
For three months, the board has been split over filling the seat left vacant by former at-large trustee Keith Guillory.
In February, Vidaña and Davis supported a special election to fill the seat, but the deadline to call an election passed without consensus on the matter. That left the board to fill the seat by appointment. Vidaña and Davis wanted public interviews and discussion but were overruled.
The board interviewed four candidates and debated for two weeks, deadlocked on the choice between nonprofit official Marlayna Massey and Everett Phipps.
Vidaña had supported Massey but flipped his vote in favor of Phipps, who also received votes from Ochoa, Patton and Bledsoe. Arash Abnoussi and Jeremy Davis voted against Phipps.
Vidaña said in an interview this week that the board should have called a special election.
“I think we kind of messed up from the beginning,” Vidaña said. “I think we should have let it go into an election. If whoever would have ran for an election would have taken oath of office at this board meeting anyway. So it would have, it would have felt perfectly.”
Board members have received a flurry of criticism from constituents about the choice to appoint another male to a board that had no females.
Among the critics is Joel Scott, a former Waco High School PTA board member who previously campaigned for school board candidate Peaches Henry against both Ochoa and Bledsoe. Henry was among the applicants for the vacant board seat.
Scott said the decision against a special election was a power play.
“Replacing the current officers who voted for a female candidate is a timely example of centralizing power, which is a guiding philosophy of a dominant group mindset.” Scott said in a text to the Bridge.
“The fact that they got the President to switch his vote to the lone male candidate and then have him replaced, is quite a cunning and poignant example of a power play.”
In an interview, Scott added: “It’s sad and ironic and unfortunate that Mr. Vidaña and Mr. Davis, who both were wanting to be public and wanting this to go to either an election and also voted for a female candidate, were punished for it.”
Ochoa and Bledsoe defended the choice of Phipps, saying his finance experience will help guide them forward through tough decisions.
“He also brings a formidable background in finance and fiscal oversight that will be an invaluable asset to our board as we navigate the financial headwinds facing public education,” Bledsoe said in a statement to The Waco Bridge on Friday. “I am confident in our selection of Everett Phipps and am excited to get to work alongside him on behalf of Waco ISD.”
Board members Abnoussi, Davis and Patton did not respond to requests for comments for this story.
Ochoa said he and Bledsoe have a finance background, but as an insurance executive, Phipps brings an accounting background that will be critical for big decisions facing Waco ISD.
“It’s looking at things from a perspective of where can we save money, where can we invest that’s going to give us the most benefit long term for our teachers and our kids?” Ochoa said. “A lot of districts around the state are looking at, they’re closing schools, they are cutting programs. We provide a lot of opportunities in Waco ISD and there’s a lot of kids that benefit from those opportunities.
“If we can prevent cutting those, which means everyone’s going to have to tighten their belt, but ultimately it’s just the sacrifice that we’re making, so that the kids can continue to have the opportunities.”
The board will also have to decide on what to do about the $32.2 million the district received after selling Indian Spring Middle School to the City of Waco last fall.
“Waco ISD is fortunate enough to have that little cushion from our land sale with the city, but that does not mean that in a year or two we wouldn’t be in the same position as everyone else,” Ochoa said.
Waco ISD canceled its May 2 election after no one filed to challenge incumbents in the three open positions, including those held by Vidaña, Ochoa and Abnoussi.
Ochoa said he decided to file for reelection only after seeing no one had filed to run for his seat. This will be his last term as board member.
He said he hopes for more candidates in future elections.
“We got a lot of qualified candidates who applied, so that makes me feel really good that when my term is up, there will be, hopefully, some of those really good people who choose to run in my seat,” Ochoa said.
Disclosure: Peaches Henry is a member of The Waco Bridge community advisory board, which is not involved in editorial decisions.
