EPISD Trustee Talks About District’s Board In 2006

ABC-7 continues to dig deeper into the case involving Dr. Lorenzo Garcia, once the head of El Paso’s largest school district. Garcia is currently on unpaid administrative leave following his arrest on corruption charges. Garcia is accused by the FBI of cheating the El Paso Independent School District out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through an overpriced contract with the district he allegedly helped secure for a friend in 2006.

The contract was approved by the EPISD Board Of Trustees in July 2006. David Dodge is the only current EPISD board member who was also a trustee back then.

“It was, at that time, a year of hope,” said Dodge. The school board had just hired Garcia in February of 2006 and trustees were hoping for an improvement in raw test scores throughout the district.

Dodge said there appeared to be nothing unusual about the contract that is now being scrutinized by prosecutors. That contract, involving a Houston company named Infinity Resources… & Associates, was awarded a sole-source $450,000 contract. Prosecutors allege Garcia lied about the actual value of the contract and went out of his way to portray it as a sole-source vendor.

Dodge said the contract with Infinity was one of many that year and that the board trusted its leaders in making sure everything was legitimate before it reached the board room. “As a board of directors we have to depend on the day to day managers of the school district, the number one being Doctor Garcia, to say to us, ‘if you buy this for me, I will raise scores.'”

So if the feds are right and the contract is a crock, where was the oversight?

Dodge said back in 2006, the superintendent himself and the department doing the purchasing were the only ones responsible for vetting vendors. “You needed to get the superintendent’s approval and that’s it,” said Dodge. “Then the superintendent brought it to us and said, ‘I’ve looked this over, this is correct. These people say they’re sole source and here’s the letter that says they’re sole source.'”

Dodge said there is more oversight today than there was back then due to a separate scandal involving two former trustees. “The change was made after Mena and Cordova were arrested by the feds,” said Dodge.

Sal Mena and Carlos Cordova are two ormer trustees who pleaded guilty in a separate corruption case involving EPISD contracts and different companies. Coincidentally, Mena and Cordova were also trustees in July 2006 and voted in the Infinity deal.

Dodge said news of Mena and Cordova’s corruption charges were a wake up call that changed purchasing protocol to make it have more checks and balances. “We said, ‘Oh my God, let’s take a look and tighten this ship up,” said Dodge. He added that now, the process is more “centralized” and goes through the Chief Financial Officer before a vendor’s proposal reaches the board.

It’s important to emphasize Garcia’s case is not connected to the one Mena and Cordova’s cases. ABC-7 is still working with EPISD administrators to find out exactly what the vetting process is like for school vendors.