Lancaster ISD exorcises Larry Lewis — at a cost

by Brian Allen of Best Southwest Citizen

Not that long ago, I said it wouldn’t be as simple as just firing embattled former Lancaster ISD superintendent Larry Lewis.

This man has more lives than Rasputin. The Texas Education Agency sent the LISD an extensive list of serious financial errors, any one of them potentially a fireable offense. As a group, they were pretty damning. There was the controversial attempt to corner the market on positive press with Today Newspapers, the hiring of a man eventually convicted for embezzlement as the district’s chief financial officer and the four-day school week proposal. The four-day school week, which Lewis said was all about education but most believed was about finding any way to balance the budget necessary, was the final nail in Lewis’ coffin.

Then an investigation found Lewis making zero interest loans to staff and hiring people without placing them in the budget. The song and dance between LISD and Lewis was like Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, everyone wondered just how much abuse the district would take before filing for divorce. Because lawyers and contracts were involved, it became impossible for LISD to just rip this painful bandage away. Lewis and his attorney have brokered a sweet deal that keeps him on the payroll through July at his $197,600 salary.

Lewis’ official title puts him in an advisory role to interim superintendent Dana Marables. Here’s my advice to Marables regarding Lewis’ advice: Don’t take any of it. I speak from experience. It’s very distasteful to the taxpayers that a guy who mismanaged so much of the district’s money gets to keep his job until he’s comfortable resigning. But it’s obvious after these proceedings that attorney Rick Hill earned every dime of his salary. Just look to July and know that soon this whole process will end. It would have been a crying shame if the only person that lost their job because of Lewis’ miscues was former Lancaster Today editor Steve Snyder.

Even better, Lewis plans to look for another superintendent job in the future. Logic would dictate that no school board in its collective right mind would hire him. But where Lewis is concerned, nothing that happens would really surprise me.