Former OHS principal reprimanded

Less than a year after accusations of impropriety in standardized tests, the former head of Odessa High School has been relegated to a closet in a storage room.

Documents released to the Odessa American as part of an open records request reveal Denise Shetter butted heads with campus subordinates and district workers downtown over testing practices, culminating in a reprimand and her eventual removal as principal.

She is now the director of research and development with the district, and said her job is to “help to whatever projects are going on.”   

Ironically, the former star principal was hailed by the Ector County Independent School District board and district administrators for her success in turning around TAKS scores at Bowie Junior High, one of the main reasons she was hired at OHS in 2010.

At some point, the district began building a file on Shetter with emails and relevant documents periodically added to it. While not explicitly stated, the tone in some emails suggests administrators’ disenchantment with her as an employee.

“Let’s print this and add it to our documentation,” an August email from ECISD Chief of Staff H.T. Sanchez regarding Shetter read. “It has begun, again. For the file,” reads another email from Sanchez that month.

Now, as she toils away the rest of this school year in a closet office, earning her full salary, she waits to see whether her contract will be renewed at the end of the year or if her pending grievance regarding her reassignment has soured all chances with the district.

Reprimands

Shetter received two reprimands July 27 by H.T. Sanchez, the chief of staff for ECISD, for testing violations and misuse of special education personnel after incidents earlier in the year, according to documents provided as a result of an open records request with ECISD.

Previously, the reprimands were not made public nor were the actual reprimands included in the request — even in a redacted form — after a bureaucratic error on the district’s part led to Shetter requesting the rescission of the reprimand.

“Based on the fact that due process was not afforded to me ... I am formally requesting that this written reprimand be removed from my personnel file,” she wrote in an Aug. 30 letter to Sanchez.

Perhaps more importantly, she didn’t want it used as evidence to get rid of her.

 “Upon removal, this documentation will be expunged from my record and may no longer be used, in isolation or in aggregate, to support a recommendation of termination or non-renewal to the Superintendent of Schools and the Board of Trustees for the Ector County ISD,” Shetter wrote.

Shetter said she has not received notification the reprimands were removed. Superintendant Hector Mendez said he wasn’t sure whether the reprimands were still part of her personnel file.

Supplementary documents indicated that Shetter was cited for numerous violations relating to the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS), a group of tests aimed at the language skills of students limited in English.

Shetter said the 40 violations she was cited on out of a possible 8,150 were mostly for things such as a missed signature or a form filled out incorrectly, or were out of her control.

When the accusations first came up, she asked ECISD Instructional Services Director Tommie Robinson if she could go back and make it right by obtaining proper signatures, Shetter said.

When Robinson said to leave it alone, Shetter said she did.

The Texas Education Agency outlines 48 different incidents in a letter to the district, mostly regarding TAKS infractions but also including TELPAS violations at OHS and Burleson Elementary.

No further action was taken by the agency, according to the letter, and the TEA left it up to the district to fix the problems it outlined.

The second reprimand was for her use of special education personnel, in which she was accused of leaving two special education aides as teachers in a class instead of moving them out of the class as the administration requested, Shetter said.

As documents indicate, John Quisenberry and Victor Pallares were listed as teachers in the Virtual High School class, but Shetter said they in fact were moved out and it was not changed in paperwork.

One offense, which she was accused of in former OHS Assistant Principal Yolanda Carr’s whistleblower complaint was improper moving of students before the TAKS test, although Shetter was never reprimanded for that accusation.

Shetter said that’s because it never happened and the complaint was based on conversations and emails alone.

Because some students become eligible credit-wise to take the exit-level TAKS test in the middle of the year, Shetter asked Robinson in an email whether it was OK to move certain students up a grade level to take the test for fear that the students were at an enhanced risk of dropping out early.

“The question was if they got their credits at semester to be a junior, could I give them the exit-level TAKS?” she said.

Robinson said in a reply email to Shetter that the moves would raise accountability red flags and that students can only be moved once a year, at the end of the year.

Shetter said she did not act further on the idea.

Whistleblower accusations

Shetter, however, denies that she should have even been held responsible for TAKS and TELPAS violations because she said she was not the testing coordinator for the school.

Documents obtained by the Odessa American through an open records request, created by District Testing Officer Debbie Reedy, show Shetter as the testing coordinator for TAKS and TELPAS, the only principal at ECISD to be named the sole testing coordinator for each.

Shetter contested this assertion, and attached emails between she and Carr to show that Carr was the testing coordinator, if not on paper then in practice.

Carr, who was herself moved first to the downtown Administration Building and then to Permian after a complaint regarding several of Shetter’s practices, accused Shetter of asking assistant principals to request teachers re-rate students on the TELPAS tests.

Shetter denied Carr’s accusations, and ultimately Robinson’s office cleared Shetter of any wrongdoing. Robinson’s office did note that moving students that close to testing time might not be improper but that it could look bad.

A new position

The Community Outreach Center sits just east of Grant Avenue on Clements Street, and in the back of the building in a room filled with stacked chairs, junk-filled tables and artificial plants, light comes out of the Shetter’s door.

With only a desk and small shelf, Shetter spends most of her days working on the few projects Ector County Independent School District administration assigns to her. But she said she works hard on those projects, such as an anti-bullying campaign.

“I’m trying to be positive. I’ve given nine years to this district as an administrator,” she said. “I won an award in 2009 (World Class Leader in Education Award). I don’t think my work ethic has changed that much.”

Mendez did not give a substantive reason for her relocation, and has previously denied it was tied to any specific incident including the testing allegations.

He said instead the move was made “based on reviewing the interests of the district,” which Shetter said was also the reason she was given.

As to why an employee making more than $100,000 per year was put up in a closet, Mendez said those decisions are made based on need.

“It’s a workspace,” he said. “Obviously, if you look at her job title, how much space does she need?”