Fort Worth School District Deputy Superintendent Robert Ray announced his resignation yesterday, though he will continue in his current role until school restarts in August. He planned to retire several years ago, a district official said, but he stayed on at the request of Superintendent Walter Dansby. Ray is the third top district official to resign in the last two weeks, following Dansby and Deputy Superintendent Hank Johnson.
A spokesperson for the district said Ray has offered to return on a limited basis to assist with his project of continuous improvement if needed.
He wants to continue hovering in the district business. If he resigned and retired, he needs to go home and have a life. Under his leadership, the African American educational gap widened. He and Sherry Breed had the power to close that gap, but it did not happen. The project that he developed to implement the Baldridge model is creating consternation amongst administrators.
Next in line for resignation:
Dr. Michael Sorum, who crashed the academic and created an unnecessary bureaucracy and spent millions of dollar orchestrating a curriculum framework that disabled teachers’ creativity.
Sammy Monje, the cheerleader and sport man, he has messed up so many times that employees joke about it. “Did Sammy do that?”
Mauro Serrano, a retire-rehired employee, who helped Dansby to bring back the old times
Sherry Breed, an aspiring preacher but she preached in the wrong church. Closing the achievement gap of African Americans was her crusade.
Michael Menchaca, the man of all secrets.
Rufino Mendoza, the advisor
Bertha Watley, the lawyer-adviser, who under her nose the district have lost many cases and many millions.
@ Tukuluarko, I totally forgot about Sherry Love-Breed! what is going to happen to her when Daddy Warbucks is really gone? In fact, what will happen to all of the Walter Dansby cronies who have been riding his coat tails for promotions and big raises? This city needs to definitely wake up and demand an internal audit by a company who has no ties to the board or to any of the muckity mucks up in the central office. I think there is more than meets the eye and the Palazzolo case was just the beginning. The majority of the cabinet (and the BOE) are the same people involved with Walter Dansby, Johnson and Tocco before them. the BOE needs a massive overhaul too! Moss needs to not run again and take all her relatives working for the district with her, Robbins needs to go back to being a lazy bigot, Sims needs to wake up and go back to sleep, Needham needs to just go away, and Jackson also needs to just go away, maybe with Needham. @ Fed-up, you are right, we have Paz, Avila and Ramos. I think they have allowed the politics and the perks get to them too. We all had high hopes for the new blood, but it seems this whole board needs a total blood transfusion! I will hold my breath on Linares, because she is only going to hold the fort down on paper. Good luck Dr. Linares and Godspeed, you’re going to need it for sure.
I agree with you Tukuluarko. It is to my understanding from several excellent resources that Rufino Mendoza walks around almost every single morning of the work day with a coffee pot in his hand and he walks around to different offices spending anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes at each stop. The taxpayers of FWISD pay this man to do this! Does anyone but me see a problem with this?! While we are at it, I’ve also learned that Mendoza had to hire a “retired” person to come help him out 2 or 3 days a week because he is so behind in his work. Hello?! Again, does anyone other than myself see a problem with this?! There are many things within FWISD that has to change. I’m in favor of a complete “house-cleaning” of the BOE as well as all upper-echelon. There are some really “old bones” up there in management and senior management. I think the district could use fresh new blood in these positions who are tech-savvy to complete overhaul this current mess that the district is in. If things do not change for the better, I can see where more and more parents will be searching out home school options, charter schools, private schools and other districts in order for their children to receive a much better education. And if the City of Fort Worth is capable and able to step in and do something about the mess, please by all means do it!
Surprise surprise! Not! Everybody knew this was coming. Next on the agenda should be Sorum! I hate that it has taken this long and peoples lives have been affected, but better late than never. Make no mistake that the game players are up to their usual. Now they hire Linares back? Everyone knows the only “cleaning” she will do is her office. There is a reason the BOE hired her back, and I hear that the hiring, was more an appointment, from Needham! Lets be clear that Linares, I am sure, will be making big bank for ensuring the bodies are still buried. The next hire undoubtedly, will be another Needham cronie, again, to keep the corruption under wraps. It is not a coincidence that Needham has been in the BOE for 18 yrs! My only hope is that of all the rats that are jumping off the sinking ship, it will take only 1 to rollover on everyone else. It is already happening in some shape or form. I loved what Palazzolo’s lawyer said on tv “We are not going away”! That sentence spoke volumes to me and hopefully it will speak volumes to the taxpayers of this city. Maybe the DA or FBI will have enough to investigate, now that the “proverbial ISD pot” is spewing!
Is it me or are these people who are retiring, really not retiring at all? They give Walter Dansby a fancy title and now Ray is going to be still available? @Tukuluarko Bertha quietly left a year or so ago. I think they more like pushed her out thankfully. I hope they totally clean house and then they go for the board members. has it really been about the kids?
Very few people really retire once they’ve been downtown. For them the district is just a bank that they can continue to withdraw from until they become to infirm to even pretend to work. Linares coming back is another example of that. It would be nice if the newer members of the board would show real leadership and fight to bring in someone that would really work for the students and had faith in teachers to do what they’re trained for but so far all they’ve done is walk lockstep with Needham. FWISD will continue to fall and fail so long as we have the BOE we have and if the citizens of Ft. Worth keep them, that’s exactly what they deserve.
How about Michael Steinert’s top heavy departments? The department of Student Engagement and School Completion is a joke!
Hiring Chris Riddick is a joke! What exactly does he do?
Hope Linares researching each dept duties.
Until pissed off citizens run good candidates against Moss, Jackson, Sims, Robbins, and Needham nothing on the BOE will change. I didn’t include Sutherland only because she’s marginal and will go with the majority. It doesn’t do any good for us to complain until that happens. Whoever runs against these useless, greedy, spiteful, lazy, hateful, etc. members of the BOE will have to fight and give details of the ways that the board has mismanaged the district for so long. It will have to come out all the relatives hired, yards of concrete poured at the districts expense, kickbacks, and more that have taken place over the years in order for them to get voted out and new people in. Unfortunately the proof for these things is sketchy. We may KNOW what they’ve done but can it be proved and would a new candidate be willing to fight that dirty to win. Our children and the FWISD’s employees deserve someone that will fight that hard for them but until we find candidates that will do it nothing will change.
Wonder if Palazzolo would consider running in 2015?
You go, JP! That would an awesome idea! I would work on your campaign for sure!!!
All good comments. In order to get rid of central administration and the trustees, someone will need to take the 2013 FWISD Internal Audit to a lawyer/CPA for analysis of how egregious the board and administration has been in squandering taxpayer money on everything but educating our kids. The City Council and Chamber of Commerce definitely needs to worry about how poorly FWISD has and is being run. The Chamber certainly could undertake a survey of realtors to learn how new people coming to our area are voting with their feet to choose “anywhere” but Fort Worth due to our public education system. As someone who works with parents with children with learning disabilities, I can tell you I get calls weekly from realtors on this issue. Secondly, the Baldridge “Total Quality Management” is a good system. I know as I was a participant at a large AF hospital. However, it takes a strong, respected upper management…something FWISD has lacked… to successfully implement this program. There are plenty of “education think tanks” to consult for the best program for schools but it seems either the board lacks the skill set to know how to access these programs or the administration is too weak and dysfunctional to move in the right direction. We can all preach to the choir about how troubling the last 4 years have been but until this community organizes parents and citizens to insist on global changes in this community, we will just be talking to ourselves.
We need to clean out more than just the upper echelon. While we do have some great campus level administrators most, including the learning network directors, are jokes. They were put in place because the would act like a puppet for those above.