When Lance Hindt left his post as Allen ISD superintendent in 2016 to take over his hometown Katy ISD, it was a magical story of a star coming home.

The hometown boy who graduated from Katy ISD decades before made a name for himself in the Dallas/Fort Worth region by his adroit handling of a crisis: cracks found in Allen’s new $60 million football stadium.

He was coming home to the district west of Houston to lead one of the state’s largest districts (now 84,000 students) – and to be closer to his elderly father.

His feel-good story ended when several men emerged from Hindt’s past to charge that Hindt, when he was a Katy ISD student decades ago, was a bully in school, once even sticking a boy’s head in a urinal.

When allegations arose that Hindt plagiarized his doctoral dissertation, the board continued to stick by him, so much so that the board threatened Hindt’s critics with a taxpayer-funded defamation lawsuit – a possible example of trustees bullying critics.

Yet even with trustees’ full support, Hindt couldn’t ride out the storm. He resigned a year ago. But he didn’t depart empty handed.

The board approved a final payout of $789,000, an extraordinarily high golden parachute in Texas public education that amounted to two years’ salary plus unused vacation time.

It’s by far the largest buyout of a Texas schools superintendent I’ve ever heard about. To The Watchdog, it reflects – to an extreme -- the obsequious nature of some Texas school boards. For these boards, it’s my superintendent, right or wrong.

As punishment, the Texas Education Agency notified the district that it would withhold $513,000 in state funding, a move allowed under state law to discourage big buyouts. That didn’t work here.

Thus, Hindt’s departure, in total, with the buyout and denied state funding cost $1.3 million.

Now a year later, the district remains bitterly divided, with scars from the drama slow to fade. Some support Hindt, saying he was railroaded out of town by despicable critics. Others point to the principles of academic freedom and truth in learning to say that board members who turned a blind eye to plagiarism charges forgot that their mandate is to provide an ethical education.

Last month it was reported that Hindt’s dissertation, after a lengthy investigation, was removed from the University of Houston’s archival website. This week, a retired teacher told board members in a public meeting that they had been derelict in their handling of Hindt’s problems by their failure to condemn plagiarism.

“How could this district not take an allegation of plagiarism seriously?” former teacher Judy Bou Kheir asked. Your “lack of concern was quite disheartening.... It’s not too late to do the right thing.”

I tried without success to contact Hindt, leaving a message through his son. Katy ISD declined to comment for this report.

Former Allen schools superintendent Lance Hindt denies that he bullied students during his middle school years in Katy. (Stewart F. House / Special Contributor)

Bullying incidents

This saga began when a parent, Sean Dolan, told the board two years ago that the district wasn’t doing enough to prevent student bullying.

Then a former Katy student, who now goes by the name Greg Barrett but whose name was Greg Gay when in school, told the board in another meeting that as a young student decades ago kids teased him about his last name.

“One day at lunch I had my head shoved in a urinal where it busted my lip,” he said. He went home and considered suicide. “I had nobody in the school system to help me.”

He concluded by addressing the superintendent, “Lance, you were the one that shoved my head in a urinal.”

On a video that went viral, Hindt can be seen sitting back and chuckling. He said later he wasn’t laughing, but he was in shock.

When Barrett saw the chuckling, he called out “You want to debate? Because I have witnesses who were there when it happened.”

A witness did come forward. Christopher Dolan (no relation to Sean) said publicly he witnessed the bathroom incident, which took place around 40 years ago.

“He was a bully and he let people know he was in charge. Nobody messed with Lance Hindt,” he said.

Hindt denied the charge, saying bullying was wrong then and is wrong now.

But then another witness stepped forward. David Carpenter is now a criminal court judge in Alabama.

“He was a vicious bully. He was a thug ... who bragged about beating up people.”

The judge added, “I thought he might be in prison somewhere based on the way he behaved in high school.”

The hits kept coming. A TV station reported on a 1983 lawsuit in which a man claimed that Hindt, when he was 18, beat the man and put him in a coma. No criminal charges were filed.

In a letter to district staffers, the superintendent wrote that his past “had been washed away” and he was “a renewed person.”

“When I was young and dumb – I did dumb things,” he said, adding, “I was able to overcome, learn and grow from my childhood mistakes.” Hindt seemed destined to ride it out, but then something else happened.

Plagiarism scandal

Sean Dolan ran Hindt’s 2012 doctoral dissertation through software and found another paper that Hindt apparently copied from.

Supporters, including board members, defended Hindt and attacked Dolan.

At one point, Hindt was seen on TV standing in the middle of a prayer circle with supporters outside the administration building.

Even though a district spokeswoman said there was “zero truth” to the claims, a petition calling on Hindt to resign collected more than 3,500 signatures.

Hindt did announce his resignation, decrying “a vicious ugliness in the ruthless attacks that I and others have endured.”

At that same meeting, the board approved money to hire a lawyer to consider a defamation lawsuit against critics. That sent a signal to the community that the charges were false and critics could pay.

Hindt stayed in office another seven months, but his problems didn’t go away.

The president of the National Association of Scholars, which stands for academic integrity, told the University of Houston in a letter to investigate and possibly revoke Hindt’s doctorate.

Peter Wood wrote that the university “gave this man credibility as an educated expert in his field. On that basis he was appointed to positions of public trust, for which the university bears a degree of moral responsibility.”

The university declines to say whether Hindt’s doctorate was revoked, citing privacy laws. I paid a company to check his degree status but haven’t received the results.

Four months after his resignation, Hindt, wearing a beard, spoke at a 2019 campaign rally for two board members who supported him. He called himself “a recovering superintendent.” Both candidates won (although one was unopposed).

Critics savaged

Sean Dolan, who started it all, filed a complaint with the university. He was relentless. He ran for school board last year but lost to one of Hindt’s backed candidates.

People yell at Dolan in restaurants, he says. A Facebook page is dedicated to reviling him and countering Dolan’s own Facebook page.

Dolan said he is banned from volunteering in the district, and his website is blocked on the district’s servers.

One Dolan critic, Alfredo Castro, told me, “I am not a fan of Sean Dolan or the tactics or methods he uses to promote his point of view. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.”

Kim Gutierrez, who maintains a Katy ISD news page on Facebook, told me critics of the district “are often intimidated, ridiculed and challenged publicly.”

Why this matters

Elected school board members struggle to become independent of their superintendents. But it’s hard. They are indoctrinated to be part of a team. Anyone who leaves the circle of admiration risks alienation in their community.

Dolan told the board at a recent public meeting that it should try to recover Hindt’s huge payout.

Fat chance.

Updated at 5:32 p.m.: An earlier version of this story described the $513,000 withheld from the district by the state for the big buyout as a penalty. The district never paid that amount to the state. Instead, that amount of state funding was not delivered to the district.

Sean Dolan, community activist in Katy ISD. (courtesy photo | Sean Dolan)

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