Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Controversial year for CCISD Superintendent

Marketplace \| Services \| Contact Us \| Community \| Arts & Entertainment \| Local Guides

Friday, December 31, 1999

Controversial year for CCISD Superintendent
Performance of the district is the legacy Saavedra wants
By Darren Barbee
Caller-Times

David Pellerin/Caller-Times

CCISD Superintendent Abe Saavedra continues a practice he started in the late 1960s, when he ran cross-country and track, in a daily early morning run along the bayfront.
All eyes followed the well-dressed man from the back of the packed, inhospitable room. Abelardo Saavedra moved rather unhurriedly past the hostile crowd to his seat. His face was unreadable, neither calm nor troubled, his deep jowl lines stoic and expressionless.
   The Oct. 11 meeting of the Corpus Christi Independent School District board came nearly a week after the Caller-Times had published a list of dinners that Superintendent Saavedra and board and staff members had eaten on district corporate credit card accounts over a six-year period. The tally came to more than $20,000. The public also learned of $14,000 paid with taxpayer money for maintaining Saavedra's personal vehicles.
   That night, Saavedra listened without response to tirades, even-keeled criticism and demands for his resignation.
   Privately, though, Saavedra was shaken by the resentment. He'd lost weight. He couldn't sleep. District staff members saw a visibly distressed superintendent.
   Lost in the furor, Saavedra felt, were the strides the district had made in his seven years as the "CEO of the company."
   "This has been one of the most difficult years for me professionally," Saavedra said, "just very, very difficult. But it's helped me grow quite a bit on a personal level. I'm at a different personal level than I was a few months ago."
   He balanced the outrage of the community with the knowledge that the meals and the maintenance were minuscule parts of a district budget that in 1999 had a general fund of more than $71 million.
   "When we budget, we don't have conversations in the $20,000-$35,000 range," Saavedra said. "We talk about hundreds of thousands, millions. Those are just simple facts. That's where the taxpayers really get hit in the pocketbook."
   Because of his part in improving education in the district - and for his self-described role as a lightning rod in the CCISD board travel and credit card controversy- the Caller-Times has named Saavedra its 1999 Newsmaker of the Year.
   Sources of fury
   One part of New York City's Tavern on the Green restaurant overlooks the lush grounds of Central Park. From the restaurant's colorful ceilings, in dining rooms called the Crystal Pavilion and the Chestnut Room, ornate lamps and chandeliers hang in gaudy elegance.
   In such settings, Broadway producers host opening night galas, Hollywood stars toast their premieres and the New York Yankees have twice celebrated their World Series victories.
   In the fall of 1998, Saavedra and a dozen staff members and trustees sat down at the restaurant for a $454.92 meal. As the evening closed, a few minutes shy of 7 p.m., Saavedra signed the bill and added an $85 tip. His signature consisted of a perfunctory looking 'A' followed by the slashing, nearly illegible scrawl of a last name.
   Of Saavedra's 144 meals with board and staff members during his six years as superintendent, that Sept. 26, 1998, dinner would become one of the most infamous.
   After Caller-Times reporters sifted through reams of American Express records, a list of meals charged to Saavedra's card was printed. Talk show hosts, community leaders and other media picked up on the glaring $539.92 Tavern on the Green meal and saw it as one example of Saavedra frittering away taxpayer money.
   Saavedra has said he won't resign until the controversy is behind the district. The reason for that may be partly his desire to clear his name and partly his desire to preserve the legacy of his administration.
   "If I exit during the (height) of controversy, obviously the controversy becomes the legacy," Saavedra said. "If I exit during the time of non-controversy, the overall performance of the district becomes the legacy."
   "I think we were being responsible," Saavedra said. "I wouldn't call it an extravagance. I wouldn't call it being frugal. Since the 1980s, when I was still an assistant superintendent, I've made trips to New York for the purpose of bond ratings. Having a $50 meal in New York is not an unusual situation for anyone, quite frankly."
   On the same trip, Saavedra and Mary Kelley, CCISD director of community, business and governmental relations, had a $34.23 lunch at the Waldorf Astoria.
   The meals weren't, as some have angrily denounced them, an extravagance without purpose. Saavedra and Kelley had been waiting for Hayes Mizell, the director of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation's program for student achievement.
   And what hasn't been known is that the meals, including the Tavern on the Green bill, the New York hotel bills and airfare for the group, was reimbursed by the foundation, Saavedra said.
   Mizell, one of the foundation's point men for millions of dollars worth of grant money, was supposed to meet with Saavedra and Kelly at the Waldorf Astoria.
   "I was supposed to show up and I didn't," Mizell said.
   Twelve months later, Saavedra returned to New York City. He and Maria Goodloe, assistant superintendent for instruction and school services, were there to attend a meeting, again with Mizell.
   Mizell kept that appointment. And the meeting was a success.
   The long run
   Saavedra rises at 5:30 a.m. nearly every day to run four miles along the bayfront. It's a habit he picked up at Miller High School in the late 1960s, when he ran cross-country and track.
   "It takes a certain level of self-discipline to haul yourself out of bed every day," Saavedra said.
   In high school yearbook photos, the picture of Saavedra in his track uniform is of an unsmiling young man. His reputation, similarly, was as a serious student. Saavedra's explanation for the unsmiling portraits, however, is less enigmatic.
   "I had crooked teeth," Saavedra said.
   But he was serious about education. Saavedra's father was a valedictorian at Benavides High School who dropped out of college during his freshman year. His mother made it just past the third grade.
   "Opportunities were a lot different for minorities back then," Saavedra said.
   They grew up poor. Saavedra's father taught in a one-room schoolhouse. By junior high, Saavedra said he knew he wanted to pursue education as a career.
   "I wanted to emulate my dad," Saavedra said. "That was what kind of motivated me to do well in school."
   His mother, meanwhile, also was a source of inspiration, despite her limited education. From her, Saavedra learned to value the character of a person over pedigree.
   "We were poor, but it was never 'if we went to college'," he said. "It was 'what are we going to do when we went to college'."
   The realization of his parent's expectations, and his own ambition, was that in January 1993, Saavedra headed the district that had taught him to read and write.
   "He's a product of the system," said Linda Bridges, president of the American Federation of Teachers local chapter. After working with Saavedra for almost 20 years, she has seen him both as teacher, when he was a member of the teacher's union she represents, and administrator.
   "He has a connection to it other superintendents don't because he's been both a student and an employee," she said.
   His close ties to the district both help and hurt Saavedra, Bridges said.
   "It helps because he knows who the players are, their strengths and weaknesses," she said. "It also hurts because he's somewhat too close to the situation. If you've worked with principal Joe and teacher Mary, sometimes it's hard to understand that Joe and Mary shouldn't be around anymore.
   "Some of that impartiality gets blurred because you've been around everybody too long," she said.
   Even before he won the job in 1993, Saavedra witnessed the political pitfalls that come with the position.
   In 1993, the choice for superintendent became a battleground for racial disharmony. Hispanic community leaders were critical of the selection process that, at one point, eliminated Saavedra and two other internal candidates, all Hispanic.
   The board eventually gave Saavedra a second look.
   Chris Adler, then the school board president, said the board didn't bow to pressure groups. She said the board had reassessed Saavedra's candidacy because trustees felt they had relied too much on the advice of their search firm.
   Saavedra's knowledge of, and commitment to, the district also impressed Adler, she said.
   At one point during the interviewing process, the board had set up a phone conference with a candidate. When the phone system failed, Saavedra scrambled to get it working again.
   "He knew this was a guy he was running against, but he was still down there, running around, trying to get phones hooked up," Adler said. "I thought that was pretty admirable."
   Saavedra's status as an insider also gave him an edge, she said. And it went beyond simply being the associate superintendent for support services at the time of his selection.
   "Abe was a very good assistant superintendent," Adler said. "All the way up from being a student to a teacher, he knew the school district inside and out."
   Lessons from strife
   The scandal this year has taken its toll on Saavedra, who felt the weight of "vicious personal attacks," that supporters say included jokes about his daughter on talk radio.
   The controversy began with allegations that board members Frank Reyes and Manuel Flores had misused district travel expense accounts. But once district credit card records were published, showing that Saavedra had spent more than $14,000 worth of gas, tires and oil changes to maintain the various trucks and cars he has owned, Saavedra found himself reeling.
   Letters to the editor, some dipped in racial anger, and talk show commentaries blasted the superintendent for his spendthrift ways. Saavedra said the maintenance costs were reasonable.
   "I took it very personal," Saavedra said. "I obviously take responsibility for the lack of financial management in these very controversial areas. At the same time, I feel the district is on the right course in all other areas. I'm at the point now where I know exactly what needs to be fixed. Not only will I come out of this as a better person, but the district will come out of this as a better district."
   Saavedra's friends call him a funny, thoughtful man with interests ranging from physical fitness to carpentry. Professional acquaintances call him competitive, not timid or arrogant, but occasionally stubborn.
   Jennifer Bowen, a longtime friend, said he pays attention to how he looks. Socially, he seems genuinely interested in people, she said.
   "That's always impressive to me," she said. "It's an indication of how he lives his life."
   What she's seen recently more than anything else, though, is a man under strain.
   "I've been amazed at how sad that is," she said. "I've also been applauding his restraint."
   Saavedra said an objective look at the district's financial management would show a fiscally responsible system, and that the district has also made strives in gaining recognition and improving test scores.
   Since October 1993, 10 months into his role as superintendent, the Texas Education Agency reported that the district lagged behind the rest of the state in graduation figures. The statewide rate in 1992 was 92.2 percent, while CCISD rated 90.9 percent.
   The TEA also categorized five campuses as low performing, meaning that 20 percent or fewer of the school's students passed all of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills tests taken.
   This year, 30 schools in the district earned the top two rankings the TEA gives schools, and Miller received an acceptable performance rating.
   To earn an exemplary rating, a school must have at least 90 percent of all students, as well as 90 percent of black, Hispanic, white and economically disadvantaged students, pass all parts of the TAAS. In addition, its annual dropout rate must be 1 percent or less for all student groups and attendance must be at least 94 percent.
   Factors of ascension, division
   Despite such success, when the controversy had reached its pinnacle, three board members - Vicki Rothschild, Pinky Brauer and Dorothy Adkins - asked Saavedra to step down, at least temporarily.
   The four other board members (all men, including three Hispanic) gave Saavedra their public support.
   It was yet another crack in an already fragmented board, and one that Saavedra had already recognized was not cooperating, Bowen said.
   "He said he needed to get this board together," Bowen said. Saavedra even considered holding a retreat, Bowen said.
   "Can you imagine the quandary if he'd spent $5,000 bringing in a speaker and having a retreat with them?" Bowen asked. "He'd really be in hot water."
   The perception that the newest mingling of school board members isn't working together well has troubled some.
   "The thing that is most disturbing to us (the AFT) is the inability of the board and the superintendent to function cooperatively," AFT president Bridges said. "Because that does have an impact on the system. I do think the controversy has kept them from being focused on the big picture."
   For Saavedra, the board's dysfunction is the low point of 1999.
   "I'm really disappointed that we, the governors of the district, myself as superintendent and the school board have failed our employees, our students and our community," Saavedra said. "The governance literally have taken the wheels off this district for the last six months. We all share in the responsibility of fixing it."
   Quiet man, lacking in ego
   Mizell, while working for the McConnell Foundation, has dealt with superintendents from a variety of schools over the past eight years. He said Saavedra impresses him with his quiet depth and his involvement.
   "Sometimes you encounter superintendents who are big egos," Mizell said. "They are kind of full of themselves. They see themselves as a kind of high-powered salesman for their school district or their own agenda."
   That's not the case with Saavedra, he said.
   Saavedra's lack of ego has, in part, helped the district receive about $2.3 million in grants from the foundation since 1993, Mizell said. Six school districts started with the foundation in 1994, securing grant money for middle school reform. The CCISD is one of three that still receives funding.
   "I think he's very serious about improving the school system and doing his job," Mizell said. "He knows that there are people in the school system who have stronger instructional backgrounds than he does and he, in a sense, sets the course for them to follow and lets them follow it."
   While supporting teachers, Bridges said she's had big fights with Saavedra in the past over issues such as terminating teachers accused of crimes before they are convicted.
   "I'm not sure he's motivated by what the public thinks," Bridges said. "He's motivated by an issue. He stands up to us (the AFT) or the public based on his beliefs."
   Mizell said he doesn't feel the controversy has hurt the district enough to withdraw funding.
   "There is a whole picture here and one has to look at and keep perspective on that," Mizell said. "I know that communities and school boards have to make their own decisions about these things. But all I would say is that you cannot necessarily assume that standing on every corner is a potential superintendent that can achieve what Dr. Saavedra and his team have achieved.
   "And I would emphasis 'team'," Mizell added. "He didn't achieve it by himself, and he knows that."



Staff writer Darren Barbee can be reached at 886-3764 or by e-mail at barbeed@caller.com

| Talk about this story | Next Story | Home |

[ Printer-friendly version ]
[ Subscribe to newspaper ]

SEND THIS PAGE TO A FRIEND

[an error occurred while processing this directive]