BISD settles with Gonzales, Juarez [The Brownsville Herald, Texas]

Aug. 22--The Brownsville Independent School District on Tuesday settled lawsuits against it by two former top administrators, agreeing to pay a combined $1.5 million in damages and to rehire the two men to high-paying jobs.

By a 4-1-2 vote the Board of Trustees settled lawsuits with former Superintendent Hector Gonzales and former Chief Financial Officer Antonio Juarez. Trustees Enrique Escobedo, Catalina Presas-Garcia, Luci Longoria and Christina Saavedra voted for the settlement, Minerva Pena voted against, and Joe Colunga and Rolando Aguilar abstained.

Gonzales received a settlement of $800,000, the majority of which will be paid by the district's employment practices liability insurer. In addition, Gonzales will be engaged as a consultant for $144,000 per year for two years.

Juarez received a settlement of $700,000 to be split equally between BISD and its insurers. He will be hired under a two-year contract at an annual amount of $154,106 inclusive of salary, benefits and insurance.

"The positions are working positions subject to termination for nonperformance. The payments include attorney's fees," BISD said in a statement.

"The board took this action to avoid costly litigation that had a significant potential for damages and attorney's fees far in excess of the settlement," the statement said, adding that BISD took the action in consultation with its employment practices liability insurer and lawyers representing the district.

"The board did not want to risk large jury verdicts and judgments, which would have to be paid from district funds," the statement said. "Rather it chose to pay a potentially much smaller amount from district funds. The potentially larger amount of several million dollars would have severely hampered BISD's abilities to deliver its quality educational services to the students of Brownsville. The settlement monies paid by BISD will have an impact but not at the disastrous level a jury and court could have awarded."

BISD fired Gonzales in September 2009, adopting the recommendation of independent Texas Education Agency hearing examiner Victoria Guerra, who heard the case against him. Gonzales appealed but TEA upheld the decision. After his appeals were rejected, Gonzales filed a lawsuit against BISD, which has been working its way through the courts.

The case involving Juarez concerns a lawsuit he filed in January 2009 claiming that board members sought to coerce his participation in manipulating BISD's stop-loss insurance contract. Instead he went to the FBI, according to the suit. Most of the case has been dismissed, but a trial was pending to determine whether the nonrenewal of Juarez's employment contract was retaliation for going to the FBI.

BISD counsel Arturo Michel said there were significant factual issues in both cases.

"The courts determined that there was a factual dispute, likely to be considered by the jury, of a conspiracy by trustees, former trustees and employees to take action outside legally required methods to terminate or nonrenew the employment of Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Juarez," the statement says. "If the jury believed the plaintiff's evidence, then it could have determined that trustees did not simply make the wrong employment decision but in fact acted illegally in a conspiracy to violate constitutional rights.

"The potential damages a jury could award under this scenario was the motivation for settling and for the insurer readily tendering the limits of its liability policy," the statement says.

Significantly, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the court could not grant qualified immunity to the four BISD trustees in the case before the trial began, that such immunity would have to be granted at trial, Michel said.

Qualified immunity protects government officials from prosecution for acts committed in the process of performing their duties. The settlement protects the trustees from individual liability, Michel said.

The settlement terms dismiss all claims and lawsuits in exchange for the payments to Gonzales and Juarez.

Michel said that BISD is disputing its insurers grouping the two lawsuits in the same policy year with a lawsuit by former Special Services Administrator Art Rendon. BISD last year settled that suit for $300,000 and reinstated Rendon to a position as administrator of BISD's transportation department.

"The insurance companies assert that the claims are related, including the same type of alleged illegal conduct. BISD is disputing the insurers' position that only one policy coverage year applies," the statement says.

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