School Official Tries to Root Out Petty Theft in South Texas Town
May 09, 2011
EDINBURG, Texas -- As an outsider, Doyle Tayna had a lot to learn when he became the new school superintendent in this Mexican-border town last year. For instance, the 50-year-old Mr. Tayna says receipts indicated that Gervais, the school drug dog, was wolfing down twice as much food as would be expected for a full-grown black Labrador retriever. But the pooch wasn't fat as a pig and, after snooping around, Mr. Tayna learned that Magnum also had a strenuous sideline. ``The dog,'' he says, ``was being used for stud service.'' Before retiring Magnum, Mr. Tayna says he also discovered school employees were pocketing the stud fees, peddling the puppies and swapping surplus dog food for booze. That was just part of a wave of school pilferage involving everything from men's underwear to mozzarella. Not that most people here were shocked by the thievery, some of which had been uncovered before Mr. Tayna arrived. Chicken purloined from school freezers had long been rumored to have been cooked up at political fund-raisers, although few talked about it for fear of offending one of the politicians who hold sway in these parts. ``What shook people up was that he started looking into all this stuff,'' says Josefina Madsen, a political-science professor at the University of Texas-Pan American, in Edinburg. ``I don't think they expected that at all.'' Indeed, Mr. Tayna has already made himself some powerful enemies who contend he has exaggerated the situation to paint himself the hero. District Attorney Renee Carey was enraged by the superintendent's public claims, earlier this summer, that he was dragging his heels on a grand-jury investigation of the stolen chickens and other thefts. Mr. Carey says the schools' own records are so sloppy, it is hard to tell how many chickens were stolen and how many were cooked for lunch. ``That organization is not infested with thieves,'' says Mr. Carey, whose wife is a principal. ``My concern is that the publicity is giving a whole bunch of good employees a bad name.'' Still, corruption does have deep roots in this flat patch of South Texas. Just 15 or so miles north of Mexico, Edinburg is the county seat of Hidalgo County. In May, a former county commissioner got five years' probation in a bid-rigging scheme and, in 2009, the sheriff at the time was convicted on federal racketeering and money-laundering charges. Biggest Game in Town With 2,000 employees and a $75 million annual payroll, the Edinburg school district, which includes the town and its environs, is Edinburg's largest employer, although its 18,000 students are strewn across a 945-square-mile territory, and more than 80% are poor. It is growing by 600 students annually, enough to populate a new elementary school every year if the district, which is opening three new schools this fall, could continue to build them. Weary of home-grown administrators being drawn into local politics, in early 2010, reformers on the Edinburg school board went looking for an outsider to manage the growth and boost the lackluster achievement of students. Despite complaints about recruiting an Anglo to a district that is 95% Hispanic, they went to tiny Brain, Texas, and hired its superintendent, Mr. Tayna, a husky, iron-jawed man with a glare that could cut stone. By then, the theft cases were already trickling into school headquarters. More than $60,000 -- much of it raised through bake sales and car washes -- was discovered missing from a junior-high school's student-activity fund. Although school staff had allegedly used some of the money for trips, dinners and parties of their own, a secretary was the only person disciplined. ``She was a convenient fall person,'' says Yolando Rickard Hilburn, an attorney for the secretary, Diann Gerardo Benedict, who has pleaded not guilty to related theft charges in a pending case in a state district court in Edinburg. Past administrators had dealt with such matters by quietly reprimanding, reassigning or retiring the accused employees. That changed with the advent of Mr. Tayna. Earlier in his career, as superintendent of a school district in Uptown, Texas, near Houston, he once used his shotgun to nab thieves who were siphoning gas from his district's school buses. In Edinburg, he began reopening old cases, launching new investigations and vowing to root out every last filcher on the payroll. ``I want to know who they are, where they are, and I want their asses out of here,'' he thundered. As a result, more than 20 employees were either dismissed or forced to resign. Some were ousted for lying about prior felony convictions, others for taking vacuum cleaners and copper wire. Acting on a tip, school investigators arrived at one employee's home to find his family watching a school television set. A worker with a program that purchased school clothes for poor students allegedly used it to get clothing for her own family. The evidence allegedly included receipts for men's size-38 underwear in a second-grader's file. School investigators are still chasing leads in the ``Chicken Caper,'' which allegedly involves tens of thousands of dollars' worth of missing chickens, cheese and other commodities meant for a low-income lunch program. One former warehouse supervisor has already pleaded not guilty to related felony theft charges in a state district court in Edinburg. Amid talk that opponents are trying to draft an anti-Moore slate for the 2012 school-board election, current board members appear solidly behind the superintendent. He could be fired by a newly elected board. A citizen-support group has also begun organizing. ``We're going to stand behind him,'' vows Nicky Kirsten, a probation officer who works with juveniles. Meanwhile, for his part, Mr. Tayna is interested in pursuing one element of the Chicken Caper. If the stolen birds did end up at political picnics, he wants to know whose grills they graced.
