On September 1, longtime DISD Board of Trustee member Ron Price announced that he will not be seeking a fifth term. His tenure will be remembered both for his tireless advocacy on behalf of District 9, as well as simmering controversies—many of them involving weighty issues of race, ethics and accountability. Price leaves in the shadow of a budget debacle that led to the dismissals of hundreds of teachers, a widely-criticized attempt to extend the terms of Board members from three years to four, and on-going questions about the Board’s commitment to transparency and ethics.
First elected in 1997, Price can boast several successes. He was instrumental in the creation of the all-girls Irma Rangel Leadership School, the Police/Fire Academy at James Madison High School, and in the creation of W.B. Travis Magnet High School. As budget and finance chair from 2003 to 2005, he oversaw a $1.1 billion district budget and a $1.3 billion bond program. He has emphasized behavior and discipline, pushing for strict dress codes and uniforms for elementary and middle schools. His tenure has seen improved test scores and higher teacher salaries.
For his part, Price isn’t bashful about his accomplishments. “From an education standpoint, I’m leaving my successor a fresh-off-the-assembly line Rolls Royce. Out of 38 schools, 11 are Exemplary and 7 are Recognized. We have five National Demonstration schools in my district, and we have the first all-girls public high school in the history of Texas. We have the most unique and probably the best arts magnet high school in the nation in Booker T. Washington Arts High School. So we have a lot of great things in place.”
But to his critics, Ron Price is symptomatic of a Board of Trustees that has gone astray from its core mandate of overseeing DISD schools, while adhering to the same standards of accountability that it demands of its teachers.
Many see the upcoming elections as a turning point. Dallas Friends of Public Education, a newly-launched coalition of parents, teacher and taxpayers, aims to exert strong reformist pressure on the Nov. 3 election by carefully vetting candidates. At a September 1 press conference, the group’s spokesperson, retired State Representative Harryette Ehrhardt, issued a sharp proclamation of the group’s intent: “Our group is here to remind candidates for the board that the students and their needs must be at the heart of everything they do, and that begins with board trustees providing basic, competent administration.”
The DFPE website lists five core issues: “Fiscal Responsibility and Transparency”, “Respect for the Voters and Their Right to Vote”, “Basic Ethical Standards”, “Magnet Schools, Learning Centers and Comprehensive Schools”, and “Using Fair Standards to Evaluate Teacher and Student Achievement”.
These issues loomed large during Ron Price’s tenure. Not only did he vote along with six of his fellow trustees in favor of extending the current term (which led to the cancellation of the May elections), but he and his colleagues were put in the awkward position of being forced by the Texas Attorney General to repeal the extension once it was declared illegal (forcing the Nov. 3 special election). District 9 candidate and Dallas NAACP President Juanita Wallace says about the cancelled election: “That is absolutely ludicrous. They lost their credibility with the community, and it caused other people to lose faith in them. Once you lose faith in a person, you can’t trust them on any level.”
Price has made headlines with his cell phone bills and frequent travelling at taxpayer expense. He has twice been fined by the Texas Ethics Commission for campaign finance violations (the most recent, a $3,500 fine for discrepancies in campaign finance reports filed in 2006 and 2007, Price blames on honest error in filling out the paperwork).
Price downplays the significance of the fines. “You know how many people get fined by the Ethics Commission? Almost everyone in the state gets fined by them. When you’re fined for turning in your paper work late, I don’t think that’s unethical. You just gotta turn the crap in on time.”
Price is equally dismissive of the larger perception of rampant self-dealing on the Board. “None of my colleagues are law-breakers. They all are great people. That is such a false perception, in regards to people not being ethical. We’re not running around with private accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Understand that this is big-city politics. People will run with manufactured stories.”
Also raising eyebrows is Price’s past association with Frankie Wong, chairman of Houston-based Micro System Enterprises, who was convicted last year of bribing a DISD administrator to obtain computer technology contracts. In 2004, Price accepted $25,000 in campaign contributions from Wong and two associates, and chaired the committee that oversaw Micro System contracts. Although Price has denied that Wong had any influence over his committee (and has never been implicated in the larger bribery scandal), such episodes have made ethics a large concern for the current crop of candidates for the Board.
“The bottom line is that the board at some point has gotten away from the children and more into politics and money,” says Wallace. “We’ve got to make sure our community knows that we are all about doing the right thing. How we do that is to show them fiscal responsibility and accountability.”
The issue of fiscal responsibility erupted last year when budget shortfalls forced the dismissals of hundreds of teachers. As reported in the Dallas Morning News, a school board auditor’s report later found that the budget crisis had been years in the making and was mostly the result of administrative lapses—sloppy budgeting, hiring hundreds of unbudgeted teachers, bad accounting and mismanaged grant money.
It will fall to Price’s successor in District 9 to rebuild public trust in light of recent history. Rossi Walter, a financial consultant and one of Juanita Wallace’s opponents in the election, has vowed to make transparency a key part of his plank. “We as trustees and we as a community have to take a serious, hard look at the budget and find out where the heck the money’s going,” Walter said. ”I think we have to take a look at non-teacher positions that are administrative positions, and ask are we getting the most bang for our buck, and find a way to get more money into the classroom, to the kids that need it. If something’s not working we don’t need to be spending money on it, but the only way we’ll know is if we look into the budget, find out where the money’s going and ask ‘Is this really working?’ Show me the data.”
Adds Juanita Wallace, “There’s no way that budget should have been passed by the Board before the citizens had an opportunity to look at it. “
The overwhelming majority of District 9 students are Black and Latino, which means that the issue of race casts a shadow over any discussion of the needs of Dallas’ schools. With his outspokenness on the controversial issue of DISD learning centers—including an outburst at a November 2007 board meeting in which he explicitly accused Hispanic trustees of targeting programs that aid Black students—Ron Price has bolstered his image as a fighter on behalf of the Black community, while also giving ammunition to those who stand ready to accuse Black elected officials of “playing the race card” for engaging in such strong advocacy.
The learning centers, special schools formed in response to federal desegregation orders, have recently come under scrutiny for what some see as the exorbitant resources they receive in a time of tight budgets and in light of reports questioning their overall effectiveness. In May the Board decided, amid considerable rancor, to trim staff at learning centers and magnet schools. This was done partly in order to make DISD compliant with Title I, and thus eligible for hundreds of millions in federal funds.
Price’s support of the centers puts him on the same side as many in the Black community, some of his fellow Trustees and, significantly, the reform-minded Dallas Friends of Public Education, who list support for learning centers and magnet schools among their five core principles.
Ron Price’s tenure has been long, eventful, and viewed favorably by many. Negative perceptions of him may have less to do with anything he is personally responsible for and more to do with the fact that he happened to be one member of a body charged with overseeing a mammoth school district during a tumultuous period in its history.
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
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