Divided She Stands

Five months after the school board approved Edison's contract, Parrott and her compatriots sued in state court. (Parrott ally Brashear didn't join the suit; he says he prefers to fight "within the system.") Their contention: DISD's Edison contract violated state law by yielding management of public schools to a private company and by sending a higher share of per-student spending to Edison schools than the district average--$5,715 per Edison student compared to about $3,500 districtwide. "We need to make sure that we have a fair and equitable system for each child," Parrott said. "They deserve it."

Edison's supporters say the critics' cost figures are incorrect because they exclude centralized costs such as food service and transportation. With those in the mix, backers say Edison and non-Edison schools get nearly equal funding. Meanwhile, DISD attorney Eric Moyé calls the lawsuit anti-democratic. Parrott and the others couldn't handle losing a vote, he argues, so they urged a court to usurp an elected board's power to forge contracts. "I don't think...there was a good-faith legal dispute," Moyé says.

While the lawsuit did attract a lot of attention when it was filed, in retrospect its premise seems thin. Because of the vagaries of funding formulas and court mandates, spending varies widely among DISD schools. About 80 schools get more than the district average, particularly learning centers and magnet schools (see "Separate and Unequal," May 24, 2001). Funding disparities are especially prevalent in schools with large Hispanic populations, but Edison's critics have never raised a stink about that.

Furthermore, the state education code allows districts to contract with private entities for educational services. So it was no shocker when, after more than a year of litigation, Judge Ashby bounced the lawsuit. "The agreement...does not violate Texas law," she wrote in a June 5 order granting DISD "summary judgment," a legal tactic used to quash weak cases.

One month later another moment of truth arrived for Parrott. Judge Ashby scheduled an October 22 jury trial to determine whether the Edison critics will have to pay their opponents' legal fees.

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If Parrott is forced to pay DISD's lawyer bills in the Edison case, she might end up blaming Don Venable for the size of her debt.

Venable, who isn't a lawyer, filed most of the case's paperwork. A former trustee who, over a decade, fired numerous legal salvos against DISD, he began in the early '90s with a lawsuit charging that DISD misspent bond money; more lawsuits proliferated when DISD sued him for telling the district's investment banker about his bond money suit. Although Venable caught flak for refusing to settle his many lawsuits, he earned enough respect to get elected in 1997 to Seagoville's DISD board seat.

It wasn't meant to be, though. The longtime gadfly quit just 10 months later, citing health reasons. Last year, he joined the Edison suit at Parrott's request. While Stovall and others worried he would make the suit about himself rather than Edison, Parrott insisted he be included and still defends him. Without Venable, she says, "We wouldn't have gotten this far." Yet after filing numerous motions--actions that drove DISD's legal bills higher and higher--Venable abruptly dropped out of the lawsuit in October.

At the same time, Venable struck a deal with DISD to settle three remaining lawsuits. Now living in Coppell, he says he wants nothing more to do with DISD. Venable won't elaborate, but Rick Finlan, Venable's former legal partner against DISD, says Venable decided to give up after another lawsuit in federal court tanked. Last September, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans deemed "frivolous" an appeal stemming from a 1995 Venable suit, in which he protested Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's speaking date at Lincoln High School. Six years ago, Venable faulted DISD for leasing space to Farrakhan at a lower rate than other functions, but DISD says it had the right to do so.

In an agreement negotiated by attorney John Martin, DISD agreed to "forever discharge and hold harmless Venable." But if DISD attorney Eric Moyé prevails, Venable will receive no amnesty. He says Venable is still liable for legal fees because the Edison suit isn't listed in the agreement. (Martin agrees.) Upset at this news, Venable calls Moyé a "bully" motivated by "personal animus." Moyé shrugs off the charge and says Venable doesn't have the right to unilaterally duck and run from a lawsuit he filed.

With Venable's and Parrott's mounting legal troubles, it seems that the age of the gadfly has ended altogether in DISD. Things are downright peaceful these days because DISD has reined in the three biggest yappers of yore: Finlan, Venable and Parrott.

But for a while, Parrott and the others thought they had a chance. Venable, a former paralegal, produced a blizzard of motions. At one point, he audaciously asked Judge Ashby to strike a provision allowing schools to contract with private companies from the Texas Education Code. Section 11.157 was passed, he reasoned, "without any legislative history or context with which to define its intent or parameters."