Texas Education Agency officials have recommended that a state-appointed governing team replace Houston ISD’s locally elected school board after a six-month investigation found several instances of alleged misconduct by some trustees, including violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act, inappropriate influencing of vendor contracts and making false statements to investigators.

The recommendation and findings, issued by TEA Special Investigations Unit Director Jason Hewitt, will not become final until HISD officials have had an opportunity to respond. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, who leads the agency, ultimately will decide whether to oust HISD’s school board. HISD officials have until Aug. 15 to respond, and Morath likely would issue a final decision in the following weeks.

In his recommendation, Hewitt wrote that HISD trustees should be replaced by a state-appointed board due to their “demonstrated inability to appropriately govern, inability to operate within the scope of their authority, circumventing the authority of the superintendent, and inability to ensure proper contract procurement laws are followed.”

The Chronicle reviewed a copy of the report Wednesday. It is not a public document.

The 34-page document, sent to HISD trustees and Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan on Monday, outlines the state’s case for wresting local governing control from Texas’ largest school district, which educates nearly 210,000 children in more than 280 schools.

TEA officials have ousted several Texas school boards in recent years, including those in Beaumont and El Paso ISDs, but have never removed local control from a district as large as Houston ISD.

The takeovers of other school districts often followed extensive financial mismanagement, corruption or district-wide academic turmoil. HISD remains on solid financial footing and received the equivalent of a “B” grade for academic performance in 2018.

The possibility of losing local control over the district has loomed over HISD for months, as news of the investigation became public and the district faced possible sanctions tied to chronically low-performing schools. Leading education and community organizations have been split on whether to embrace state intervention, which could help heal years of division among HISD board members, but at the cost of surrendering local control to Texas bureaucrats.

The odds of HISD facing replacement of the district’s school board are heightened by the fact that TEA officials already have placed a conservator in the district for the past three years due to poor academic outcomes at several schools. The appointment of a conservator is the third-most severe intervention, followed by installation of a board of managers and closure of a school district.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican and frequent critic of HISD’s school board, said he had read the report and is “nearly 100 percent certain” the board will be replaced by state appointees.

“This is a long time coming, and there were many, many times that the board could have made decisions for this not to occur,” said Bettencourt, who declined to discuss the contents of the report. “I think all this is going to come to fruition this month.”

Walking quorum

In their report, state investigators outline multiple years of failed oversight and improper behavior by HISD’s much-maligned school board, which long has grappled with in-fighting and distrust. Conflict within the board reached a boiling point in the summer and fall of 2018 when trustees clashed over whether to retain Lathan, who took over as interim superintendent following Richard Carranza’s abrupt departure to become chancellor of New York City public schools.

Five board members had grown particularly frustrated with Lathan, believing she had not been responsive to their desires for the district and failed to adequately protect them from a threat posed by a community activist.

Through interviews and a review of text messages, state investigators determined the five trustees — Board President Diana Dávila, Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca, Sergio Lira, Elizabeth Santos and Anne Sung — secretly met with former HISD superintendent Abelardo Saavedra in two separate groups to coordinate ousting Lathan and installing him as interim superintendent. The meetings took place at a Houston restaurant on the same day in October 2018, the report said. Investigators determined that arrangement constituted a “walking quorum,” in violation of state law that requires trustees to conduct district business in public.

Three days later, the five trustees voted to replace Lathan with Saavedra, offering no advance warning to the public or the other four board members about the move. Trustees reinstated Lathan within a week of the vote following intense public backlash. Lathan remains the district’s indefinite leader.

TEA officials interviewed trustees as part of their investigation, ultimately determining that Dávila and Lira falsely claimed in interviews with investigators that they only met one-on-one with Saavedra. In separate interviews, Saavedra and Flynn Vilaseca placed Dávila and Lira at the restaurant meetings, the report states.

In an interview Wednesday, Dávila said she provided her best recollection of meeting Saavedra to TEA investigators, and denied that she attempted to mislead state officials.

“They wanted us to remember things that happened six, seven months prior to us being interviewed,” Dávila said.

The four other trustees involved in Lathan’s ouster did not return calls seeking comment. In a lawsuit filed in June by trustees seeking to preempt state sanctions tied to the investigation, lawyers for the school board denied violating the state’s Open Meetings Act.

The TEA’s investigation has been complicated by a state criminal appellate court ruling in February that said portions of the Texas Open Meetings Act involving “walking quorums” were unconstitutionally vague. However, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office issued an opinion in May that the TEA still could take civil action against HISD, including replacement of the district’s school board.

A pattern of interference

The state investigation expanded into a wider review of the board’s actions in March, just as trustees were about to select a permanent superintendent. Through interviews with current and former HISD administrators, as well as a review of documents, investigators discovered multiple instances of trustees — including those not involved in Lathan’s ouster — interfering with day-to-day operations, violating rules related to vendor contracts, failing to monitor job orders and straying from board policies, according to the report.

Investigators wrote that an unnamed former superintendent reported the board’s interference “made it impossible for them to do their job as CEO of the district due to constant trustee involvement.” Former HISD superintendent Richard Carranza, who left the district after an 18-month stint in March 2018 to become chancellor of New York City public schools, aired similar complaints to a state-appointed monitor observing the district prior to his departure.

State officials also identified several instances in which district officials “manipulated contract procurement rules” by splitting job orders into smaller amounts, apparently to avoid requirements that board members vote on the agreement. TEA investigators did not identify specific individuals for wrongdoing regarding those job orders, but faulted HISD trustees for allowing the practice.

Investigators did single out Dávila in their report, accusing her of conspiring with an HISD administrator, her husband and two other individuals to steer a contract to a custodial company in 2016. An unnamed HISD administrator told investigators he attended a meeting in which Dávila demanded HISD cancel a contract with the company, MetroClean Commercial Building Services. The owner of MetroClean also told investigators that the owner of a competing company invoked Dávila’s name while pressuring him into signing a consulting deal. In addition, the report quotes an unnamed former superintendent as saying “it seems like Trustee Dávila wanted to be the superintendent of the district.”

Dávila said she could not respond to an anonymous complaint about her involvement in administrative functions, and that anyone accusing her of improperly influencing a custodial contract is “outright lying.”

“This is a report where you didn’t have to provide anything. You could just say it,” Dávila said. “At some point, it’s unfair that they would mention my name and not the name of the administrator saying that.”

HISD’s school board has continued to operate throughout the investigation, though a TEA-appointed conservator exercised her authority in late March to suspend the district’s search for a permanent superintendent.

Trustee Sue Deigaard said the public “deserves full transparency and to see a final report as soon as possible.”

“Any response that the board is going to make to TEA on the preliminary findings needs to be done expeditiously,” Deigaard said. “Once TEA has our response, they need to work quickly to get a final report.”

Four trustee seats will be on the November ballot, but none of the incumbents has filed for re-election yet.

Trustee Jolanda Jones, who frequently has criticized colleagues who voted to oust Lathan, said replacement of the school board is “sadly, unfortunately” in the district’s best interests.

“I think it’s tragic, but I think the alternative is worse,” Jones said.

HISD also could see its school board replaced in the coming months due to chronically low performance at a few of its 280 schools. If any one of four long-struggling campuses — Highland Heights Elementary School, Henry Middle School, and Kashmere and Wheatley high schools — fails to meet state academic standards this year, TEA officials must close the still-failing campuses or appoint a new school board. Preliminary results are scheduled to be released Aug. 15, with scores finalized in November. State officials have strongly hinted they would force out HISD’s school board before closing schools.

Reporter Andrea Zelinski contributed to this story.