No Easy Run: Politics played large role during McAllen superintendent's tenure

 McAllen schools superintendent Yolanda Chapa knew she was a risk-taker even as early as the sixth grade.

Her school was looking for more baton twirlers and the young Chapa wanted to try something new.

"I never twirled a baton in my life," she said as she recalled her successful audition to join the squad.

That desire to explore new territory continued into her adulthood. After raising a family, Chapa went back to school and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in education from the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg.

She joined the McAllen school district and over a span of 20 years moved up the ranks to become the district's first female superintendent - a post she won despite having never led a school district before.

Chapa announced her plans to retire last week after six years at the district's helm, first as acting superintendent, then as interim superintendent and finally as the real deal.

Her tenure as the district's top administrator hasn't always been easy.

Chapa's appointment to the post in 2004 sparked criticism from a group of residents and supporters of her predecessor Joe E. Gonzales because the school board decided to give her the job instead of conducting a nationwide search.

Gonzales and a number of residents also accused Chapa of orchestrating his ouster by having her allies participate in an investigation of him in connection with an array of allegations.

In 2002 the school board suspended then-superintendent Gonzales and conducted a probe into whether he mismanaged money, created a harsh work environment and misused district resources. The report on the findings was never released to the public.

Gonzales also was under a cloud due to several felony theft charges he faced when he had been superintendent of the San Angelo school district. Those charges were dropped, but Gonzales resigned from the McAllen school district in 2003 amid the allegations.

Chapa, then an assistant superintendent, became acting superintendent after Gonzales' suspension.

Gonzales believes his tumultuous relationship with the board and certain members of the administration came about because he was not from the area. Now that Chapa is retiring, he has no desire to seek the superintendent position again, he said.

Chapa's manner of ascent to the district's top spot wasn't the only source of criticism among her detractors.

Critics also accused her of being unqualified for the job because she had a master's degree and not a doctorate like Gonzales.

But state law only requires superintendents to have a master's degree and superintendent's certificate - both of which Chapa has.

To this day, she denies having had any hand in Gonzales' departure and said she was reluctant to take the position as superintendent until she realized she had support from teachers and staff.

As for the criticism directed at her throughout her tenure, Chapa said she decided early on to focus on doing what she needed to move the district forward instead of responding to their claims.

"I learned I can't live on (my critics') accusations," she said.

One of her goals was to solve the district's dropout problem, so she implemented the McAllen College and Career Transition Initiative.

The program placed at-risk students - who were as old as upperclassmen but only had enough high school credits to be freshmen - at South Texas College. Students in that program would be allowed to start taking electives at the college once they showed they could pass their high-school-level courses.

The program was untested in this area and was not without its skeptics, but Chapa now chalks it up as one of her successes. The first group of 36 students is expected to receive their high school diplomas in the fall - 36 students who quite likely would have dropped out of high school if the program weren't available.

Chapa also expanded the district's International Baccalaureate program to include eight elementary schools and three middle schools.

The Switzerland-based International Baccalaureate Organization is expected to approve those schools as official IB campuses at the end of this school year.

International baccalaureate programs focus on providing students with a multidisciplinary education from kindergarten through high school.

Lamar Academy - currently the McAllen district's only official IB campus - has a notched a graduation rate of more than 99 percent during the six years it has been place.

The McAllen district was the first school system in the Rio Grande Valley to offer the IB curriculum.

"I always hope to motivate kids to go to school," Chapa said. "Graduating high school is no longer enough. They need to go to a university and earn a degree from a university."

But not every idea she brought to the district panned out.

She tried to implement a "redesign" that would have broken up Lamar and the district's three traditional high schools into smaller units called learning communities and would have paired students with mentors.

Chapa saw the program as another opportunity to keep children in school and help them learn better, since it was successful in other school districts throughout the country.

But many teachers questioned its effectiveness, because those districts still had students performing below state standards. Those teachers also noted how stressed out their peers were in the Weslaco and Pharr-San Juan-Alamo districts were after the redesign started in those school systems.

With virtually no support among the teachers, Chapa ultimately decided to scrap the redesign.

She said she couldn't implement a program that did not have the teachers on board. And she knew she wanted to retire and realized it wouldn't be fair for her to start something new only to leave it to others to work it out.

Though she has faced challenges with teachers and various residents during her tenure, Chapa has had a much more amicable relationship with the school board than her predecessor had.

Board president Mark Kent and former board president Richard Moore said that while the previous board experienced turmoil during the Gonzalez administration, Chapa was able to bring the seven-member panel together for the good of the district.

"We're a board of eight," Kent said.

____

Jennifer L. Berghom covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4462.