The school board of the Donna Independent School District (ISD) has cleared two school security employees who had been accused of improper texting with students. The move comes on the heels of other sex related scandals in the border community’s school district.
The district suspended the two security guards without pay on January 28th, according to a report by KRGV TV 5. After the two guards’ names were dragged through the mud in the local news media, the school board has cleared them of any wrong-doing, according to a new report on Wednesday by KRGV. Donna ISD School Board President Albert Sandoval confirmed the guards had been cleared.
The school district appears riddled in alleged sex scandals but at least one of the incidents appears to be politically motivated retaliation. Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz reported on Monday that “a teacher at Donna ISD, Carlo Cordova, the son-in-law of the current superintendent Jesus Reyna, had intimate relations in 2014 with an 18-year-old woman while she was a student at the school.” Ortiz wrote that the allegations appear to be a power grab by school board members attempting to oust Reyna from the superintendent’s office. A school board meeting, the second this week, is scheduled for this coming Friday to address the subject of Reyna’s employment status.
Ortiz also reported on Wednesday that the school board’s attorney, Robert J. Salinas, is a convicted felon who spent time in prison for money laundering charges related to drug trafficking. Donna ISD Police Chief Roy Padilla has connections within his own family to drug cartel related crimes. His brother, former Hildalgo County Sheriff’s Office Commander Jose Padilla, was sentenced to more than three years in prison after admitting to taking money from a Mexican drug lord in exchange for favors.
A prior school superintendent, Alfredo Lugo hung himself after federal agents began to ask questions about an election bribery scandal where a group of women working in this district’s school board election bribed voters with bags of illegal drugs, beer and cigarettes in order to buy votes for their candidates.
The political power plays and alleged scandals highlight the culture of corruption that continues along the South Texas border region. Recent events have seen scandals in neighboring Progresso where the former mayor and his brother who controlled the school board were sentenced to prison over a bribery case involving school district contractors. Even the county’s former sheriff, Lupe Trevino, was arrested and sentenced to prison after admitting his taking of bribes from Mexican cartel bosses.
Bob Price is a senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas and a member of the original Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.
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