Three days after the stunning ouster of Houston ISD Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan in mid-October, an unexpected move that further divided the already-fractured school board, district leaders gathered for training on how to govern.

Instead, HISD leaders spent four straight hours lobbing blistering accusations of disingenuous, duplicitous and dismissive behavior by their colleagues. Through raised voices and tears, they bemoaned the disintegration of trust and productivity on the board, with one trustee describing his service as “a step below hell” and another likening her experience to “an abusive relationship.”

FULL VIDEO: Click here to see the entire Houston ISD board meeting

The intervention-style airing of grievances, captured on video and reported here for the first time, culminated with Trustee Wanda Adams standing up and yelling at Trustee Elizabeth Santos, angry that board members did not defend her after she received threats while serving as board president in 2017.

“Did y’all come to my defense? Hell no,” Adams shouted as she slowly walked toward Santos, prompting a top Texas Education Agency official in the room to position himself between the two trustees. “So, you want to know how I felt last year? I was quiet the whole year. So, don’t come up here crying ‘woe is me’ when people came to my house, attacked me.”

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The remarkably candid meeting laid bare the dysfunction that critics say has weakened the Houston school board’s ability to serve the district’s 213,000 children and prompted calls for major state intervention over the past several months. The turmoil has stalled efforts to tackle some of the biggest issues facing the district, including poor academic performance among many low-income students, inequities in funding between campuses and unstable administrative leadership. Houston ISD leaders also suspect the board’s disharmony has contributed to the district’s largest enrollment decline in 12 years.

“I have felt like this year (in 2018), there’s been no productive work done by the board,” Trustee Anne Sung said during the October meeting.

Details of the seven-hour mid-October meeting have not been publicly disclosed until now, largely because it was not attended by local media and HISD officials did not post video of the meeting online. The Houston Chronicle obtained a copy of the video through a public records request.

The video depicts a beaten-down board compromised by grudges, clashing personalities and heightened suspicions. Some trustees have said they were unaware they were being recorded during the meeting, resulting in an unfiltered look at the fragmented board.

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“There’s so much back-biting and back-stabbing and all of these little freaking agendas,” then-Board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones said during the meeting. “Every single freaking person here contributed to that. And until we take responsibility for that, it’s not going to change. And the public sees that. They see right through us.”

Trustees spent the final three hours of the meeting reaching some consensus on their next step in light of the public backlash to Lathan’s ouster, including a motion to reinstate the interim leader. Nearly four months later, board members have taken some small steps to improve policies and procedures, though some remain mired in old habits.

The relative inaction does not bode well for HISD’s prospects of maintaining local control over the district. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath has had legal authority to replace the district’s school board since September 2017, the result of HISD’s inability to prove strong governance practices and improve academics at long-struggling schools. Morath has not exercised that option, but Gov. Greg Abbott’s blistering comments about the district’s leadership last month — a “disaster,” he tweeted — and a fresh state investigation into potential Open Meetings Act violations by several trustees raises the stakes for HISD.

Even if Morath resists pulling the takeover trigger, chronically low performance at four campuses could prompt a legally required state takeover of the board later this year.

“As long as we have the divided personalities, it’s going to be very hard for us to see the same goal and the one focus — and that’s educating kids,” Adams said in an interview last week.

‘This is beyond me’

The school board has been riddled with distrust and in-fighting for years, often cutting across the class, ethnic and racial lines that cleave the diverse district. The interpersonal grievances frequently are well known in local education circles but less visible to the public.

The mid-October meeting, however, illustrates how the current iteration of the board — three new members were seated to begin 2018 — became Houston’s most maligned governing group.

One by one, trustees voiced frustration with fellow board members or the district administration, accusing colleagues of undermining them, distorting the truth or offering inadequate support.

Skillern-Jones, for example, spent several minutes criticizing nearly all of the trustees for failing to defend her leadership in 2018, noting that she reluctantly assumed the presidency after Trustee Jolanda Jones scuttled Sung’s candidacy. Skillern-Jones drew flak in April when she ordered HISD police to clear the audience from the room during a raucous board meeting, which precipitated the arrests of two women.

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“I didn’t want to (be president) this year,” Skillern-Jones told trustees, her voice raised. “I feel unappreciated, betrayed and like I’ve been dropped in the grease for all of this crap for nine, 10 months.”

Santos, in turn, accused Skillern-Jones of railroading her opposition by shutting down conversation during the board’s closed sessions, when trustees hold some of their most sensitive discussions.

“Can’t you just lay your shit aside so we can actually work for kids?” Santos asked Skillern-Jones, who denied the allegation.

As the hours passed, the grievances piled up.

Sung, a former HISD teacher, accused Adams of spreading false information about her employment history. Trustee Sergio Lira grew exasperated that “rumors are out there that I’m making political decisions to protect my next election.” Jones suggested board members were not having public dialogue before key votes.

“All of this is beyond me,” Santos told her fellow board members at one point. “How dare each and every single one of us come in here and screw our students over? Because at the end of the day, that’s what’s going on.”

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The divide

The board’s in-fighting most acutely manifested around the search for a permanent superintendent to replace Richard Carranza, who unexpectedly left the district last March to become chancellor of New York City public schools. Before leaving Houston, Carranza blasted trustees for overstepping their governance role and failing to hold meaningful conversations about issues, according to a state-appointed conservator.

Trustees unanimously voted to appoint Lathan, who previously served as HISD’s chief academic officer, as interim superintendent on an indefinite basis. They delayed starting the superintendent search until after mid-August, when the district would learn whether four long-struggling schools would trigger major sanctions. All four ultimately met state academic standards, staving off punishment.

Within weeks, a clear divide emerged across racial lines, though trustees have said they did not act on the basis of race. The board’s three black trustees — Adams, Jones and Skillern-Jones — all endorsed Lathan, who is black, arguing she had a proven track record of improving academic performance. HISD’s four Hispanic trustees — Diana Dávila, Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca, Lira and Santos — did not want to retain Lathan permanently or preferred to conduct a nationwide search first.

In late September, Adams moved to give Lathan a one-year contract with little public notice, a motion that trustees ultimately declined to consider in a 5-4 vote. Some trustees complained that they were not given adequate notice about Adams’ motion, though other board members disagree.

Three weeks later, the board’s four Hispanic trustees and Sung blindsided their colleagues by voting to replace Lathan with former HISD superintendent Abelardo Saavedra, who had just announced his plans to retire from his position as superintendent of South San Antonio ISD. Saavedra said he spoke individually with all five trustees before the vote, while the district’s three black trustees and Sue Deigaard were left out of conversations. The move infuriated district observers who said the vote lacked transparency.

At the time, Dávila and Flynn Vilaseca said Lathan’s continued presence as interim superintendent would scare off candidates unwilling to challenge an incumbent. Sung said she thought Lathan’s administration did not move swiftly enough on key issues.

However, comments by trustees during their mid-October meeting, held three days after the vote to oust Lathan, show the issues ran deeper.

Multiple trustees said they believed the district needed a change in direction, frustrated with Lathan’s leadership. Santos and Sung said Lathan’s administration did not positively engage trustees on important issues. Three trustees vaguely alluded to “safety” concerns; Flynn Vilaseca later specified in an interview that she believed Lathan’s administration and HISD police were not adequately responsive to threatening behavior toward her from members of the public.

“I kept looking at the dynamics of the district, looking at the possibility that someone that’s been here before can perhaps bring us some stability and get the work done that needs it in our schools,” Lira said during the meeting.

After remaining virtually silent for the first four hours of the meeting, Lathan suggested some trustees unfairly pinned issues on her and undermined her tenure from the outset. Lathan did not point her accusations at specific trustees with the exception of brief jabs at Santos and Flynn Vilaseca.

“I don’t feel from the very beginning that I had a fair chance to do what I needed to do in the interim place,” said Lathan, who had made few public statements about her treatment by trustees to that point. “What occurred last week publicly has also been (similar to) things that have occurred behind the scenes.”

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Lathan declined an interview request for this story.

‘A healing process’

The hostile back-and-forth prompted Saavedra to back out of the job during the meeting. He told trustees that they were the district’s problem, not Lathan’s administration.

During the meeting’s final three hours, trustees made an abrupt turn, engaging in cohesive talks about next steps for the board. They unanimously agreed on several moves and future motions: publicly apologizing for their behavior; reinstating Lathan; setting an end date for the superintendent search; hiring executive coaches for the board and Lathan; agreeing to a resolution of reconciliation; and requesting a new state conservator.

Notably, Flynn Vilaseca and Lira told Lathan that they believed she remains the front runner for the job permanently.

“I don’t even think others are going to come close to you, because you have done the work,” Lira told her.

Board members issued their public apology the next day, but the détente did not last long. Jones and Santos exchanged insults during a public meeting in November, a violation of the reconciliation resolution. When the TEA announced its investigation into potential violations of open meetings laws, Jones and Skillern-Jones publicly criticized their colleagues, suggesting they had put HISD under greater threat of state intervention. The board’s black trustees also have said they remain suspicious of the impartiality of the superintendent search, believing Lathan continues to be unfairly targeted.

“I think there’s a complete lack of trust,” Jones said. “They’re not honest. If they had honest critiques, I’d listen to them.”

Board members also have not hired executive coaches or engaged in coordinated efforts to reduce interpersonal strife.

At the same time, some trustees are working on policies designed to foster healthier interactions, board members communicated extensively about several low-performing schools last month, and executive coaches remain on the agenda.

“I’m hopeful that, in the next couple months, you’re going to see us change the way we do business as a board and be more focused on our kids and their learning,” Sung said in an interview.

Trustees have offered differing views on whether they can repair the damage and refocus on issues like budgeting and student achievement. To make that happen, they agree change is needed.

“There’s a healing process that’s required as part of all of this,” Flynn Vilaseca said in an interview. “I think that there’s potential. I think that there’s some tangible things that we are starting to work on.”

jacob.carpenter@chron.com

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