I know, I know. You read this story and this blog post — about a bullshit “investigation” into Tonya Grayson, an executive director of DISD HR, and the misdemeanor she got because of a fight with her boyfriend 24 years ago — and thought, “This has nothing to do with Bernadette Nutall.” That’s where you’re wrong. It has everything to do with her and the Tammany Hall-style operation she runs for her friends in DISD.
Let’s deal first with these stories. Are they legitimate? Sure. A DISD investigator is given his walking papers just after completing a high-profile case (the UIL deal). Makes sense we should know if the two were related.
They weren’t. The investigator was given leave because he was “investigating” his boss. Two things about this: One, no one with any authority asked him to do the investigation. Therefore, it was unauthorized. You can’t pull criminal information — even meaningless 24-year-old misdemeanors — by saying you’re conducting and official investigation when you are not. I mean, you can. You shouldn’t. DISD reacted appropriately when it found this had happened by putting him on leave.
So what was he doing? The story hints at the problems between Grayson and the investigator. In truth, it was pretty simple: HR is packed with lifers, some of whom this week were told they would not be coming back for the new school year. The chief above this division, Carmen Darville, was instituting an entire department reorganization, and this investigator didn’t like his place in it. Thus, he was going to screw over his immediate boss, Grayson. The story, then, is one of a pissed off employee trying to burn his bridges out the door.
What does this have to do with Nutall?
A few things. One, I have no idea if Nutall had anything to do with the unauthorized investigation. I do believe she was on a witch hunt against Grayson and Darville because they are shaking up the department. (Which, let’s remember, is their call. Not Nutall’s.) Nutall gets angry if every big decision in DISD isn’t run through her first. This is the very essence of a terrible, destructive board member: Someone who wants to run the day-to-day operations of a $1.6 billion company. But it’s the way she sees her role, as protector of her friends and slayer of her enemies within DISD.
When Nutall found out about the HR reorganization (within DISD, HR is called Human Capital Management, or HCM), she let her displeasure be known. In particular, she asked the Grayson to do something. I don’t what that something was. Doesn’t matter. Grayson rightly told Nutall something along the lines of, “You’re not my boss, I won’t do it.” This is true. State law makes clear that individual board members have no power. Zero, none, nada. Only the board as a whole has authority. (And, since Nutall is routinely on the ass-whipped end of 7-2 votes, you could argue she has less-than-zero authority.) Nutall did what she does when challenged: She pulled the race card, telling the African-American Grayson, “You’re not black enough.”
This happened either shortly before or after Nutall filed a trustee request asking for reams of HCM personnel data, looking for dirt on anyone and everyone she could find. Within a week, the Dallas Morning News filed a Freedom of Information Requests for similar data, which is standard operating procedure, because Nutall leaks like a faucet, so long as a vendetta of hers (against Miles, or people who stand up to her, or some poor soul who looked at her cross-eyed) is advanced.
To reiterate: I have no idea if Nutall had anything to do with the unauthorized investigation into the HR head. I do know that it happened while Nutall was carpet-bombing the very people whom she is supposed to support. I know that race-baiting and demands for authority are par for the course for Nutall. (She told previous board president Eric Cowan last semester that if he didn’t vote with her on an issue, she would publicly call him a racist. Upon hearing that Superintendent Mike Miles let go an FOB — Friend of Bernadette — she told him that he owed her a firing, someone of her choice.) I know that she is vindictive, out of control, and does harm to the district. For someone who makes every issue about race, she somehow makes it harder for poor black children to get a good education because of the way she goes about her job as trustee. I know she is awful.
