Houston, TX - "If you are looking for a possible road map of reasons why the Fed's have conducted raids on the 3rd floor of the HISD Administration building and at the home of the HISD Chief Operating Officer, you need to look no further than at the serious allegations of corruption and illegal activity contained in the Oct 2019 Texas Education Agency Report and my Nov 1, 2019 press release," said Senator Bettencourt.

These 6 bullets points come from a November 1, 2019 press release from Senator Bettencourt:

1. Board Member Davila threatened a Senior Administrator with their job unless they removed a contract from consideration after the procurement process, because they wanted a Dallas firm to get the work.
2. Board Member Davila met with a Senior HISD Administrator to strategize a way to have bond contracts cancelled and rebid, to steer it to her preferred choice. "Again trustee Davila demonstrates clearly out of bounds behavior, as documented in this report," Senator Bettencourt added.
3. HISD manipulated contract procurement rules through the abuse of Job Order Contracts and multiple change orders. The district not only intentionally split Job Order Contracts to avoid the $500,000 limit, in violation of the law, they approved multiple change orders to projects subsequently increasing the cost of projects showing fraudulent behavior that contributes to a lack of transparency. (see attached)
4. The Board of Trustees violated the Open Meetings Act by meeting in secret to replace the acting Superintendent.
5. Some Board Members made deceptive statements to the TEA investigators as part of this investigation through omission or by making inconsistent statements.
6. A Trustee gave non-public information to an HISD vendor in violation of district policy.

"Corruption at this scale must be stopped," continued Senator Bettencourt. "This federal action today shows just how endemic the problem had become at HISD and why I said back in 2018 that a State of Texas takeover of the HISD Board of Trustees was inevitable." (See October 2018 Bettencourt press release)

Senator Bettencourt will continue to follow these developments at HISD.

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