CORRECTION: This story incorrectly reported that Houston school board president Paula Harris attended Yates High School. Texas Watchdog regrets the error.

The president of Houston's school board took credit in an e-mail last year for helping oust a previous principal of a historic high school in her district -- and noted to the school's principal at the time that she had helped him get his job.

Paula Harris, whose district includes Jack Yates High School, scolded then-Yates Principal Ronald L. Mumphrey in summer 2010 for criticizing the Houston school superintendent and other school board members.

Harris told Mumphrey that she had helped “the community get rid of the previous leader and put you in his place" in a May 27, 2010 e-mail obtained by Texas Watchdog.

“How soon we forget!” she added. Harris also cc’d the message to Houston Independent School District Superintendent Terry Grier.

The involvement of a school board member in hiring and firing a school principal, and personally reprimanding a principal, violates the separation of powers that is supposed to exist between a school district’s board of trustees and its administrators, said one national expert.

It also contradicts statements by three HISD trustees in recent weeks that Houston school board members are not involved in personnel decisions.

"It is up to the superintendent, not board members, to recommend candidates to be hired,” said Gene Maeroff, a New Jersey school board president and founder of the Hechinger Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City.

“The board may only say yes or no to those recommendations,” Maeroff wrote in an e-mail. "The superintendent is the only person (and in some places, the business administrator) who works directly for the board; everyone else works for the superintendent."

Mumphrey was ousted from his post a few months after the tiff with Harris, after being accused of sexual misconduct. He retired a few days after that.

Another e-mail obtained by Texas Watchdog shows that Harris also met with the two job candidates seeking to succeed Mumphery at the school in the Third Ward.

“I am proposing a schedule that will include a meeting with you with each candidate,” Aaron Spence, chief of HISD's high schools, wrote Harris on Dec. 3. “We’d need you there for the two 30-minute meetings with the candidates just to give you a chance to get to know them.”

Reached on Sunday afternoon by phone, Harris said she did not remember writing the e-mail to Mumphery but said she did not choose the Yates principals.

Harris, who recently served as grand marshal for Yates' homecoming parade, said that “the community got rid of (Winston Steele, Mumphery’s predecessor at Yates). Good!”

Steele left Yates in 2008, the same year Harris joined the school board.

HISD’s board president continued, “The community is real active in picking principals. I was facilitating meetings with the community.”

Harris said the meetings she had with the two principal candidates applying to succeed Mumphery -- Samuel Coleman and David Edgerson -- were part of a community meeting and occurred before that community meeting.

“I didn’t pick the principals,” Harris said. “The community did.”

Coleman, who worked under Grier while both were employed with the San Diego Unified School District, got the job. Harris' friend, Assistant Houston City Attorney Arva Howard -- who was admonished by her own boss last week for sending an e-mail in support of Harris -- was on the Yates parent panel that helped vet the candidates.

But Coleman resigned after five months. Marla McNeal-Sheppard currently serves as principal of Yates.

“I am extremely excited that the administration has the best principal Yates has had to date,” Harris said of McNeal-Sheppard, who was principal of Lamar Fleming Middle School immediately before arriving at Yates. “She is an excellent person. So, all those little e-mails and calls are behind us.”

The Houston school board president has been under fire for months for voting on contracts involving a friend's company and arranging meetings with HISD staff members for friends who wanted to do business with the district.

She is running for re-election for a second term on the school board in the Nov. 8 election, in which she is being challenged by former HISD administrator Davetta Daniels.

School board members aren't mentioned in HISD's policies for how principals are to be hired. One policy says regional superintendents -- high-ranking administrators whose jobs were done away with in a recent reorganization  -- review the applications and select the principal candidates "through the interview process and in collaboration with the chief academic officer."

At the same time, Houston school board members Harvin Moore, Carol Mims Galloway and Anna Eastman have told Texas Watchdog in recent weeks that HISD trustees are not involved in district personnel decisions. Their statements were made in response to questions about the hiring and salary of HISD's top communications officer, Aggie Alvez.

A spokesman for the school board also recently said that district policy forbids trustees from taking questions and problems directly to HISD employees. Instead, trustees are supposed to contact the HISD Board Services office.

An e-mail to Grier and HISD spokesman Jason Spencer on Friday asking the same question also did not receive a response. Spencer did not return a message left on his cell phone or an e-mail sent to him on Sunday afternoon asking whether it was appropriate for a school board member to involved in the search for and hiring of a school principal.

The exact nature of what Mumphrey said to draw Harris' ire is not entirely clear, but Harris' began her e-mail by congratulating Mumphrey on yet another appearance before the Harris County Commissioners Court to receive another commendation for Yates' boys' basketball team.

The Jack Yates Lions are winners of repeated state basketball titles in recent years and have been named by national publications as among the best high school basketball programs in the country.

County records show that on May 25, 2010, two days prior to Harris' e-mail, the Commissioners' Court was slated to honor the Yates team.

Word of Mumphrey's comments, whatever they may have been, got back to Harris.

"At this time of transformation please be very careful on the words that you use to describe the Superintendent and Board members to the public and especially other elected officials," Harris wrote.

"We are working extremly hard to gain public approval with the many initiatives that we are trying to do and the entire team has to present a united front with these efforts. There are many ears listening and waiting to hear from you, as a leader, on the direction of this district. Choose your words carefully.

"Thank you for giving me credit for showing up at Yates events but I also do many things for your school and the community that you may not see directly, including helping the community get rid of the previous leader and put you in his place. How soon we can forget!"

Harris told Texas Watchdog that her admonishment of Mumphery over his alleged critical remarks of board members and the superintendent was appropriate.

Mumphery’s e-mail reply to Harris, written less than two hours later, included an apology.

"I was totally shocked about your references to statements attributed to me," he wrote. “Someone, at best, has misrepresented, misquoted or misinterpreted me. “I was in the presence of Commissioner El Franco Lee, Edwin Harrison, and our basketball coach, Greg Wise. Our conversation about the District and Jack Yates was positive and a collaborative effort was established."

Lee, the powerful longtime commissioner for Harris County Precinct One, and Harrison, then Harris County's financial services director, have ties to Harris' campaign treasurer, local bond attorney Franklin Jones Jr. Harrison left his longtime post earlier this year after being accused of going on taxpayer-funded luxury junkets with Jones and other county bond lawyers to New York City, Costa Rica and elsewhere.

When Harris County Judge Ed Emmett questioned Harrison's role in the junkets -- as well as the county's hiring of Jones' law firm, Greenberg Traurig -- Lee bit back at Emmett.

"I am always careful of my words and complimentary of you and your efforts on behalf of Jack Yates High School," Mumphrey continued. "I am fully committed to the direction in which Superintendent Grier is taking in this District. I am aware that there are always many ears listening and many times as many interpretations or misinterpretations as there are ears listening."

"Please know that I apologize for any misconceptions. I have not forgotten your role then or now. I appreciate all that you do for Yates High School."

He closed by saying, "I am truly a part of Team HISD!"

Whatever Mumphrey said in criticism of Harris and the district, it is not recorded on the archival video of the live webcast of the commissioner's court meeting that day. Mumphrey's brief comments at the podium included thanks to the commissioners, who had given him a standing ovation, and praised the basketball players.

“They didn't just play basketball. they're student athletes," Mumphrey said, "and I want to emphasize 'student.' Every child on that team is going to college, and I don't mean junior college ... At Yates High School, not only are we building athletes, we're building students.”

The video also shows Lee complimenting the team’s “unbelievable, unbelievable accomplishment,” and then-Commissioner Jerry Eversole teasing Harrison, seated in the audience, about his loud tie. (Harrison said it was a Yates tie.  “Take it back to Yates, because it's blinding me,” Eversole said.)

HISD officials put Mumphery on administrative leave in September 2010 after Grier received an anonymous letter accusing Mumphery of sexual misconduct. Mumphery filed retirement papers a few days later.

An internal investigation later said Mumphrey had been accused of sticking his tongue in the ear of a teenage cheerleader years ago during a sexual advance. The victim was, by then, an adult employee of HISD. The district attorney's office reviewed the case and declined to press charges, a district spokeswoman said at the time.

Harrison pleaded guilty last month to felony charges of making false statements to obtain credit and tampering with a governmental record. He received five years of deferred adjudication probation and a fine of $2,500.

***
Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

Photo: Students leave Yates High at the end of the school day. Jennifer Peebles/Texas Watchdog.

Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.



Like this story? Then steal it. This report by Texas Watchdog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. That means bloggers, citizen-journalists, and journalists may republish the story on their sites with attribution and a link to Texas Watchdog. If you do re-use the story, e-mail news@texaswatchdog.org.