Four Fort Bend Independent School District trustees, including Board President Steve Smelley, boycotted a special meeting Monday because, Smelley said, the other three trustees were using a student disciplinary issue for potential political gain.
About 120 members of the area Chinese community had packed the FBISD board room by 5:30 p.m., when the meeting was supposed to start, to show support for a student removed from school for creating a computer game “map” depicting Clements High School.
But the crowd was forced to leave, some bewildered or angry, when only Board Vice President Ken Bryant and trustees Stan Magee and Lisa Rickert showed up. Without a quorum, Bryant told the crowd, the board could not legally meet.
Bhuchar was known to be out of the country and hadn’t been expected to attend. But the others took heat in absentia, especially Smelley.
Magee and Bryant told the crowd after the meeting that the board president had failed to notify the district or other board members that he wouldn’t be attending. Magee said officials finally contacted Smelley’s wife, who told them he had attended a business meeting in Dallas.
“The board president didn’t even bother to call,” Magee said later. “Steve missed his own called meeting, and that is a lapse in judgment and poor leadership.”
But Smelley said he and trustees Bhuchar, Cynthia Knox and Laurie Caldwell agreed to purposely stay away from the meeting. He said Magee and Bryant had sought the special meeting, and by policy he as board president had to call for the meeting.
But not attend it.
“It appears certain members of the board are willing to put their own interests for garnering votes from specific groups of people first and are not looking out for the interests of the District as a whole, which is the responsibility of the board collectively,” said a statement sent by Smelley Monday night, which included the names of Knox, Caldwell and Bhuchar.
“Our function as a board is to protect students, faculty and staff,” the statement said. “It is our responsibility to insure the safety of all students of the District. It is also our responsibility to insure fairness and equality to all parties, students and administration when it comes to due process.”
“My God, I don’t believe it,” Rickert said Monday night upon learning of Smelley’s statement.
“I attended a meeting tonight that was duly called and posted by the board president,” she said. “I received information on the meeting in my weekly packet of information on Friday. Two members of the board, Ken Bryant and Stan Magee had made the request. As a trustee, I believe it is my duty to attend called meetings. I attended expecting to get an update from the administration on the progress of its investigation of this case. I never received a phone call from the president indicating he had concerns about the meeting after he called it on Friday.”
Rickert and Bryant, who are campaigning for re-election, “went out there and promised these folks that they could get this resolved. They’re getting played” in an attempt to win votes, Smelley said of members of the Chinese community.
Rickert said Smelley’s statement implies that trustees who showed up for Monday’s meeting ” are not acting in the best interest of the district and are only trying to garner votes. It’s unfortunate that he would attempt to make this a campaign issue, which it is not.
“Since I have been on the board, we have expedited the student disciplinary appeal process under similar circumstances on at least two other occasions,” Rickert said. “Furthermore, I have concerns that one member of the board appears to have polled other members, possibly in violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act, to arrive at a decision outside of a public meeting. This, of course, assumes that the other three board members gave permission for their names to be used on the statement, since it is not signed.”
The Clements senior who was to have been the subject of Monday’s ill-fated meeting, who has not been identified publicly, was arrested by FBISD police several days ago. His family’s house was searched after district administrators were alerted by two or three parents that he and friends were playing the popular computer game Counterstrike, with a map that created a game environment resembling Clements, sources told FortBendNow.
No charges were brought against the student, and the game he and his friends played was stored either on his own computer or a private computer, not on school property, said Richard Chen, president of the Fort Bend Chinese-American Voters League and a acquaintance of the boy’s family.
District administrators have declined to comment on the case, citing privacy restrictions because the student is a juvenile. However, one source close to the investigation said administrators “decided he was a terroristic threat” and removed the boy from Clements. Chen said he is expected to finish the school year at M.R. Wood Alternative Education Center, and won’t be able to take part in Clements graduation ceremonies.
Magee took issue with the administration’s handling of the case, implying that the boy’s treatment resulted in part because he is Asian, and because of the recent shootings at Virginia Tech.
“There is no board policy that says ‘go to somebody’s house because two white parents complained’,” Magee said, adding that district police made the student erase the Counterstrike game and maps from his home computer.
The boy’s mother, Jean Lin, addressed board members in an executive session a week ago, concerned over the district’s actions. About 70 members of the area Chinese community attended that meeting in support of Lin and her son.
Even more showed up to support the family on Monday evening. Several indicated their unhappiness over the evening’s outcome.
Naomi Lam, a former FBISD board trustee who sat in the audience Monday, said the trustees who didn’t show up “should have the courtesy to at least call and let us know so we didn’t all waste our time. I think it was rude. Some people had to get off from work, because the meeting was held at 5:30.”
Lam said she understands some board members feel board policy, which calls for a four-tiered disciplinary appeals process, should be strictly followed, while others favor making a policy exception. That’s in part because the appeals process can take two or three months, “and this kid’s supposed to graduate the first of June.”
She said she might feel differently “if that child had done something wrong.”
However, “it was on his own computer,” Lam said of the game. “He did not play the game on school property. If the child has not violated any school policy, then why punish him?”
Other parents of Chinese students “are worried they will be the next target,” Lam said.
“We take this matter very seriously,” she said, adding that the absent board members should take it seriously as well. “As elected officials, they need to come forward and vote – not make excuses. When I was on the board, if I didn’t like it, I voted against it. But I stood up for what I believed.”
“The real victim here is the family of the child that came tonight in the hopes of having a hearing before the board to resolve a disciplinary action against their child,” Rickert said. “These people don’t deserve to have their issue turned into a political struggle in order to cast dispersions on board members. For myself, I am concerned about both the best interest of the district and what’s in the best interest of our students.”
For his part, Smelley said he felt the disciplinary issue was being used inappropriately by other board members in an attempt to win a block of votes.
And, he said, if Bryant and Magee ask for another special meeting, he would follow district policy and call the meeting, but “I ain’t showing up.”
About 120 members of the area Chinese community had packed the FBISD board room by 5:30 p.m., when the meeting was supposed to start, to show support for a student removed from school for creating a computer game “map” depicting Clements High School.
But the crowd was forced to leave, some bewildered or angry, when only Board Vice President Ken Bryant and trustees Stan Magee and Lisa Rickert showed up. Without a quorum, Bryant told the crowd, the board could not legally meet.
Bhuchar was known to be out of the country and hadn’t been expected to attend. But the others took heat in absentia, especially Smelley.
Magee and Bryant told the crowd after the meeting that the board president had failed to notify the district or other board members that he wouldn’t be attending. Magee said officials finally contacted Smelley’s wife, who told them he had attended a business meeting in Dallas.
“The board president didn’t even bother to call,” Magee said later. “Steve missed his own called meeting, and that is a lapse in judgment and poor leadership.”
