The border county of Hidalgo has hit the headlines again, with the latest accusations of corruption leveled at the border’s school district. The assistant principal at the Donna North High School has been arrested for shoplifting two bottles of perfume from a JC Penney Store. It is not the first time the school district’s leadership, which serves 15,000 students, has been in trouble with the law. Previous offences have included failure to account for over $1 million of missing funds, missing every single benchmark of academic achievement and a Superintendent and Trustee who stand accused of bribery and obstruction.
According to Watchdog, nepotism is rife in the district’s assigning of government contracts, and there is a total reluctance to trim the swelling bureaucracy which keeps most of the county in employment. The district, which is poverty stricken and on the Mexico border, gets $126 million in annual state support and has one of the highest local property tax rates in Texas but is constantly “underfunded”. As if this wasn’t enough, the district is still being scrutinised over allegations which surfaced in January of teachers carrying on inappropriate relationships with students. Finally, trustees are implicated in a federal investigation involving so-called “politiqueras”, who trade drugs and cash for votes. As a local businessman told Watchdog, “Mexico’s problems become our problems.”
With federal government spending growing all the time, one might wonder why the corruption allegations in Hidalgo are not being more quickly resolved. The Donna district has yet to be cited for the millions which have mysteriously vanished from its book as the corrupt bureaucracy rumbles on.
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