The Board of Education's Role

At this point, this situation with Dr. Diaz and LCPS is all about Lonnie Briseno. And strangely enough Lonnie has found himself in a secret little a trap.

It was Lonnie who engaged in a personal vendetta against Bob Ogas and it is still Lonnie who, contrary to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, does not judge people according to the content of their character. Instead, Lonnie is most interested in the color of our skin.

It will be up to the Hispanic leadership in this community to recognize Lonnie Briseno for what he is (a cleverly-disguised racist). And it will be up to the Hispanic leadership to smoke him out, because this fatal flaw is far too sensitive for any non-Hispanic to ever address in a public forum.

Lonnie's story begins and ends with his personal obsession with ethnicity. It was Lonnie who pushed for LCPS to hire Martinez instead of seasoned veterans within the school district. Using his considerable ability to persuade, Lonnie conned the rest of the board into hiring Louis Martinez over superior local applicants who could then, and still can lead LCPS.

The rub between Robert Ogas and Louis Martinez was as much about the wishes of Lonnie Briseno as it was about anything else. The Ogas family challenged Briseno politically and of course when Lonnie speaks candidly, we learn that the Ogas family members are simply not the right sort of Hispanics. At Mayfield, Bob Ogas had the audacity to manage based strictly on merit rather than ethnicity.

Clashes between Briseno's stooge (Martinez) and Ogas were inevitable. And eventually the sheer incompetence of Martinez resulted in embarrassment to the district and his firing.

As the search for the new superintendent to replace Martinez began and Joanne Patton calmed LCPS down during the interim, Lonnie Briseno was right back to his old tricks. Deftly, he managed to steer the rest of the LCPS board into another terrible hiring decision. Since Lonnie required a Hispanic surname above all else, (including a competent administrator), he was once again instrumental in leading the board away from qualified local superintendent candidates, and towards the hiring of yet another incompetent manager, one, Sonia Diaz.

The atrocious conduct of Sonia Diaz has received incredible space on this site, so the details will be spared on this entry. Diaz condescending style has made her thousands of enemies in record time while she was simultaneously breaking numerous state laws.

What has not received proper attention during this lengthy nightmare is the behavior of Lonnie Briseno. Examine Briseno's comments at the press conference on Wednesday after Diaz was REMOVED. He was not truthful about anything. It was Briseno who kept the board in session all night defending Diaz. It was Briseno who then voted with the other four board members when he knew he would be the lone vote in favor of Dr. Diaz. Briseno's vote was made so he could cover his political tracks, while he attempted to keep his options open. Re-read his comments at the press conference. They contradicted his own vote. Lonnie was unwilling to show courage with his vote, though he did attempt to defend his stooge at the press conference.

Those of us in the district know that Dr. Diaz sees the world as a caste system. She has spent considerable time cultivating relationships with powerful people, while humiliating those of us she sees as her inferiors. In anticipation of her possible removal, she attempted to call in her markers with local leaders.

As members of other branches of government have begun to assess this disaster, their dilemmas border on the edge of comedy. So far, it appears that Diaz has succeeded in convincing a couple of naive legislators (who ran unopposed) to make uninformed and completely asinine statements in her defense. No doubt their statements reflect twisted emotions and ignore the mounting evidence of legal improprieties that will eventually prevent Dr. Diaz from ever having any credibility in this district again.

The motivations of these legislators, in the aftermath of her removal, are actually pretty simple. Like Lonnie Briseno, they would like to somehow save a second Hispanic surname superintendent from embarrassing what they perceive as their group of people. It is unfortunate that these people are so easily torn between the real issue of competency and the bogus issue of ethnicity.

The political problem for ethnicity-minded legislators is serious. If they go through the painful legal steps necessary to remove an entirely incompetent school board, they will also have to remove Mr. Lonnie Briseno.

And so it is now poetic justice, that Lonnie is about to learn that there are political limits to his ability to have it both ways. Since Briseno's vote made it unanimous to put Diaz on paid leave, he affirmed that the evidence supporting the allegations made against her was already formidable.

Readers of this bog can rest assured that Lonnie Briseno personally engineered the hiring of Louis Martinez and Sonia Diaz. And he did so for terrible reasons. He will probably get away with his deplorable behavior. But if he is removed, justice will be served. And then again, if he survives, it will be the citizens’ job to make sure he does not engineer the hiring of yet another incompetent stooge.

Blogger comment: A relative, who teaches in another district, that Diaz had promised a Public Relations position to a member of one of the interview committees who backed her hiring. There was a part-time job posted for a community or business liaison. I wonder if this was the promised job. It is not on the LCPS website now. Has it been filled? I was also told that the position was for a legislator's wife. Interesting.