TRANSPARENCY QUESTIONS

 

Question 16

Through a public information request of a communication between Superintendent Gearing and the current DSISD School Board, CEEDS became aware that DSISD is attempting to transfer the Travis County portions of DSISD to Lake Travis ISD.

These taxpayers and their children have been members of Dripping Springs ISD since its 1940 founding and chose to remain within DSISD in its 1981 split with Lake Travis ISD.

DSISD has not publicly communicated to anyone, including the affected property owners, that these discussions are underway.

Should the affected Travis County property owners have already been notified?
If not, at what point should they be notified?

In light of recent news coverage regarding conflicts of interest of Dripping Springs’ local elected officials, please disclose and describe any possible financial, property, or employment conflicts of interest—for yourself, your spouse, either of your employers, or you or your spouse’s parents or children—that could bring into question your actions as a Trustee on the DSISD School Board.

Please note that the employment conflicts of interest prohibition also extends to any and all clients of your employer, not just your employer itself—so in addition to above, please disclose and describe any and all clients of your employer who do any business with DSISD or who conduct business or operations or have holdings the school district may purchase goods or services or property from.

In compliance with Chapter 171 of the Texas Local Government Code relating to conflicts of interest, will you file transparent conflict statements prior to any vote or discussion affecting these potential conflicts of interests and abstain from any vote or discussion on such matters, including during secret/closed session?

Many members of the DSISD community believe the School Board stacks District Committees with members hand-picked to advance the Board Member’s personal agendas and beliefs or advance special interest agendas, rather than prioritizing those members' representativeness of the overall District.
 

For instance:

• the new Walnut Springs Elementary Design Committee was comprised exclusively of DSISD employees, 
• the new Elementary #5 Design Committee having a super-majority of DSISD employees,
• the Student Health Advisory Council’s (SHAC) two 2019 “community representative” appointees both being publicly-opposed to the Scott & White sex ed curriculum that was supported by a super-majority of the community, 
• creating a secretive COVID-19 Task Force instead of utilizing the SHAC that’s charter encompassed such health-related matters and duties, 
• the creation of a DSISD employee-led Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Advisory Board that’s overwhelmingly comprised exclusively of District employees, again instead of having the SHAC oversee and implement, and 
• the Long Range Facilities Planning Committee being comprised of approximately one-half DSISD employees who are not all taxpayers.

Do you believe that DSISD’s recent committee structuring and division is sufficiently representative and without bias?
Or should DSISD do better?
How so?

The $132 million May 2018 Bond was the most expensive in DSISD History. DSISD’s next bond will be even larger. In a media interview regarding the 2018 Bond, former Superintendent Gearing put a pricetag of $400 million on DSISD’s next bond.

Regarding accountability, do you believe DSISD should place one large (possibly $400 million), omnibus bond on the ballot or instead put forward several smaller project-specific bond propositions that would provide voters with greater opportunity to decide which components/projects they are actually willing or able to pay for?

Please note that having multiple propositions is a common practice. For instance, Hays CISD’s 2020 Bond, ultimately cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, called for six different bond propositions.

In response to many errors and misadministration by DSISD and Hays County Elections—much of which were ultimately admitted to under oath at trial with DSISD's lawyers not disputing those failings and merely arguing that such failings would not have changed the outcome—in the May 2018 Bond Election, CEEDS filed a Election Contest against DSISD.

In response, DSISD counter-sued CEEDS, which expedited the legal proceedings, increased legal costs to taxpayers (for both CEEDS and DSISD—DSISD spending our tax dollars), and would have required CEEDS to post a $5 million forfeitable bond in order to properly litigate the case along standard (already expedited) timelines.

DSISD lawyers even knowingly scheduled the trial for a date that DSISD School Board President Carrie Kroll—one of CEEDS's key witnesses—would be on an Alaskan vacation and accordingly unable to be present at trial. DSISD lawyers did not inform CEEDS’s attorney of Kroll’s planned absence until her lawyers volunteered that her impending departure flight, on the very same evening as her deposition, required that the deposition be conducted quickly—this being just a few days before the scheduled trial.

While DSISD ultimately prevailed in the consolidated and expedited legal proceedings, we believe DSISD did so only through legal maneuver and loophole—not on the merits.

In fact, in a communication produced via Public Information Request, from former Superintendent Gearing to the DSISD School Board dated December 2018 regarding the transfer of the Travis County portions of DSISD to Lake Travis ISD, Gearing specifically stated that an “election issue” continues to exist for the Travis County portions of DSISD—one of the primary issues raised in CEEDS's Election Contest.

Further, during the course of these legal proceedings, DSISD spent $456,963.53 on high-priced San Antonio attorneys from the largest law firm in Texas, while the costs to DSISD for holding the original election were only $5,864.87.

In the event that the outcome of a future Bond Election comes into question, would you support counter-suits against taxpayers and costly legal proceedings, or would you advocate for holding a new election in order to achieve a clear and definite outcome?

Additionally, please speak to what, if anything, DSISD should have done differently following the questionable passage of the May 2018 Bond by a margin of 1% and upon learning that taxpayers called for a recount and filed an Election Contest.