SISD audit: Findings not illegal, but unethical

Twenty-one anomalies were found at Socorro Independent School District. One of which the district is taking very seriously. Although the issue isn’t illegal, it could be unethical.

It’s called the EIE regulation, created in 2007 by Superintendent. Dr. Sylvia Atkinson. She’s now assistant superintendent for support services at Brownsville ISD.

The EIE regulation allowed the district to hold the transfer credits of Mexican students. Regardless of how many credits they had when they enrolled in Socorro school, and regardless of what age they were, Socorro would put them in the ninth grade.

After they completed the ninth grade, those transfer credits would be added, giving the student just enough credits to skip the 10th grade and the STAAR test, and into the 11th grade.

This is where the question of ethics comes in. Dr. Pam Padilla writes in the audit that this tactic made state accountability ratings “inaccurate or misleading.”

“Important questions that need to be answered include but are not limited to are one, who is primarily responsible,” said Dr. Jose Jose Espinoza. “Two, who was involved? Three, who knew about this practice and should have reported or stopped it.”

Espinoza knows four people that were in Atkinson’s cabinet when the regulation was created.

They are Pat O’Neill, assistant super of administration; Dr. Cynthia Lopez, assistant superintendent of secondary education; Rebecca O’Neill, assistant superintendent for elementary education; and Dr. Holly Fields, director of secondary staff.

So he put them on administrative leave.

“Once the second review takes place and the facts prove that individuals could have stopped it were involved and the evidence show that termination is needed, I have no problem making that recommendation,” Espinoza said.

The former superintendent of the Socorro school district told the San Jose Mercury News the findings of the audit released Tuesday, which indicate 21 “anomalies” in the classification of students, were “overblown.”

“I don’t think anyone was attempting to circumvent state assessments,” he told the newspaper. “I’m disappointed that the (Socorro) board and superintendent have elevated and presented it as potential cheating. I don’t think it is.”

De la Torre served at SISD from 2009 to 2012, when he left the district to take the top position at the Santa Clara Unified School District near San Jose, California.