Tonight, after about 2.5 hours of public comment with scores of speakers supporting Superintendent Diana Sayavedra, the Board of Trustees voted 4-2 to force her resignation, with Daniel Call and Valerie Beals dissenting and Osterland abstaining.
Moments later, the Board appointed CFO Martha Aguirre as Interim Superintendent, even though she was one of the architects of the school closures that sparked Hanany’s vendetta against Sayavedra in the first place.
Leah Hanany, Jack Loveridge, Alex Cuellar, and Mindy Sutton chose to ignore the teachers, students, and parents and terminate the employment of the best EPISD superintendent in a generation.
We have never seen such an embarrassing display of ignorance and incompetence in a group of elected leaders and feel certain that hard times lie ahead for our public school system.
Leah Hanany rivals Cassandra Hernandez for her sheer malevolence and Machiavellian greed.
The good news is that Aguirre is capable enough to balance the budget and, in fact, was scheduled this morning to present a FY 2026 spreadsheet with a deficit of only $11 million, thanks to a sudden infusion of State cash, but her meeting was cancelled. Thus, the Board will have to shave only 7 days from the 70-day fund balance, breaking Cuellar’s promise but balancing the budget.
EPISD will live another day, thanks to the hard work of Sayavedra, CFO Aguirre, and COO Pierson, but in FY 2027 there will be no State funds to bail out the district, which will have lost more than 2,000 more students according to current projections.
Near the end of the meeting, Trustee Call stated: “I feel what a lot of you are feeling right now. It feels like tonight that the forces of darkness, corruption and selfish ambition have won.” This sparked the usual outcry from Hanany and Cuellar, who protested to Attorney Collins that they were under personal attack.
It was disturbing to see that two officers on the Board overseeing the education of our children have no understanding of the meaning and spirit of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Hanany, Loveridge, Cuellar, and Sutton are a menace and we will be watching them closely from here forward.