Former EPISD administrator: I was asked to follow ‘immoral and illegal’ directives

The trial of five former El Paso Independent School District administrators accused of taking part in the district’s cheating scandal got off to a quick start on Monday.

Former Jefferson High principal Dr. Steven Lane, who found himself in the middle of the scandal to artificially inflate schools’ federal accountability scores, was called by U.S. Prosectors to testify Monday.

Lane, who eventually went to the FBI with his concerns, was on the stand for nearly three hours. He testified about being asked to follow what he called “immoral and illegal” directives from former superintendent Lorenzo Garcia, former assistant superintendent Damon Murphy, former associate superintendent and current defendant James Anderson and campus directors Priscilla Terrazas and Vanessa Foreman.

Garcia pleaded guilty and served two and a half years in prison. Murphy has pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in July. Anderson has pleaded not guilty.

“I was supposed to help raise the English scores in the entire district,” Lane said on the stand. “But I never spent day doing the job I was hired for.”

Instead, Dr. Lane described a climate of fear in EPISD, especially for those who wouldn’t follow directives from EPISD administrators like Anderson.

“People started getting fired,” Lane testified. “They were removed under false pretenses and it started causing a level of fear I’ve never seen before. The fear was just indescribable.”

In meetings at district offices, first with Murphy and later with Anderson, Lane said he was initially asked to work with campus director Priscilla Terrazas.

“Campus directors are supposed to assist principals in helping the school become successful, working together to help kids,” Lane told the jury of six men and six women. “In reality, it’s like waking up with a horse head in your bed. Your career is not in jeopardy, it’s over.”

Lane said principals were being asked to write up reprimands on employees for no reason, including Jefferson administrator Patricia Scott, who had blown the whistle on the cheating scandal while at Bowie.

“I was told to write her up for asking a question,” Lane said, “When Dr. Garcia and Dr. Murphy came to campus. I know they were going after her and at the time I knew they were going after me.”

Lane said he was also asked and not to read transcripts of students transferring from Mexico until June and classify them as freshmen until then in order to avoid 10th grade TAKS testing. Once their transcripts were read in June, they were directed to jump them to the 11th, once again to avoid accountability testing.

He added he was “ashamed” of having signed off on mini-mester credit for students knowing what he was doing was not ethical.

“There were grades, but there wasn’t any work,” Lane said of the mini-mesters. “There wasn’t any assessment. There really wasn’t anything.”

Lane was eventually fired by the district for insubordination, but called back that weekend to return to Jefferson. He said he returned only because it was the only way he could protect teachers, administrators and students at the school.

“I did express my concerns many times,” Lane said. “I said it would not pass the front page of the newspaper test. In other words, if it was on the front page of the newspaper what we were doing, everyone would be in trouble.”

In addition to Anderson, former Austin principal John Tanner and assistant principal Mark Tegmeyer are also charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government. Former Austin assistant principal Diane Thomas is charged with retaliating against a witness or a victim. Former Austin assistant principal Nancy Love is charged with retaliating against a witness or victim and false declaration before a grand jury.

The administrators allegedly engaged in schemes designed to discourage at-risk students from registering in schools, to underrepresent at-risk student populations within the schools and fraudulently award class credits to students to falsely increase graduation rates of schools, change attendance records of students and manipulate students grade levels to avoid state accountability tests.