High-paid Texas school administrator and detractors provide comic relief

When a tremendous controversy would arise back in the day here in Beaumont, Texas, USA, one would be advised to stay home, if one’s home was in a safe neighborhood, or to literally head for the hills of East Texas.

Today, people just call each other names and spew slurs behind made up names on the local newspaper’s comments section after a controvery. It might surprise some to know that someone who worked as a journalist for more than two decades would prefer to see such back-and-forth on the Internet — where cases of racist and personal slurs, cease and desist. That is how I feel though. I just think the smug, if not totally ignorant comments, gives what passes for humanity in these parts a bad name.

But I’m not here to rag on the local newspaper’s comment section. I will either do that here at another time or perhaps go beyond my little blog and call for or join in some kind of action for or with those who feel like me.

Instead, I’m here to talk about our latest local controversy involving one of our most controversial figure. That would be one Dr. Carroll A. “Butch” Thomas, superintendent of the Beaumont Independent School District. Thomas, a veteran educator and administrator, is or if he isn’t is probably next to the highest paid school official in Texas. The Beaumont Enterprise database of local school employees says Thomas makes a whopping $338,493.69 per year.

With the glut of information on schools out there on the Internet both nationally and about Texas I couldn’t find a ranking of school district enrollments in Texas. But I did find some information from the Texas Education Agency indicating at least 46 Texas school districts had a larger enrollment than did  Beaumont ISD.  So one has to think that Thomas either lives in an exceptionally wealthy school district, did an incredible job in leading the district to top performance ratings, or else well, fill in the blanks. The latter is what many folks do. Unfortunately, there is some racial polarization among those who attempt to answer these questions. For you see, Thomas is black. The area has been hard hit over the years by “white flight.” Beaumont itself is 52 percent black  with the whites coming in at 49 percent. All of this kind of plays with difficulty in a town more Old South than Old West.

Stewing in the minds of some of the anti-Thomas (or perhaps anti-other) most recently has been a multimillion-dollar bond issue to replace some badly needed classrooms.  But that has also led to demolishing a cherished, mainly white, former high school plus the building of a ginormous stadium and athletic complex on the outskirts of Beaumont alongside Interstate 10 West. Attention: Travelers this fall driving from Houston east on I-10 through Beaum0nt on Friday and Saturday evenings from about 9-11 p.m., I think it would be wise to take U.S. 90 because there might be one mell of a hess after football games on I-10 just west of Beaumont.

Some “Greenies” were red with rage on Good Friday this year when the school district began tearing down the old South Park High School to make way for a new middle school. The old building was a historic one in what was once a separate, mainly white, school district. The South Park area of Beaumont was mostly white until just after the  30 years ago when I rented my very first apartment there on my own after leaving the Navy. My place was an old garage apartment behind a nice old lady’s home on Euclid Street. I only lived there for a month or so, before I moved to Nacogdoches, but I loved it there.

I remember that even in the heat of July afternoon I used to go jogging down the oak-lined streets in what was a quaint neighborhood. I was on unemployment after leaving the Navy. I’d get up in late morning, go out to a local refinery and put in an application, then jog after lunch. At night, I’d go out partying, just down the street at a bar called “Fat Dawg’s” or at the real nightclubs on that side of town, Rocks,  The Keg or Lady Long Legs.  That was then and this is now, however.

A great many who now live in South Park didn’t back when there was still a South Park High School. Today, some of the mainly black parents and even teachers say a more modern and safer middle school is needed. The Greenies, from the mascot of the South Park Greenies, are like me reminiscing about the old days. The Greenies sued the school over using bond money to destroy the school but in the end the district was able to legally tear down the old school, built in 1923, on a school holiday. (Note: I didn’t go to school there or anywhere in Beaumont. I don’t have much of a dog in this hunt.)

Perhaps a coupe de grace came  last night when the Beaumont school board voted with one dissenting vote to name the new athletic complex after Dr. Carroll A. “Butch” Thomas. Yes, using the whole name.

I rent so I don’t directly pay taxes to the school district. But I do have work around the district. I have to encounter some of the fine young students and graduates it has produced as well as some of its knuckleheads. I don’t care one way or another what happens in the war between the Thomas fans and the anti-Thomases. Let them fight it out amongst themselves and as long as they keep launching childish platitudes back and forth on the TV and in the newspaper, I will just sit back and be entertained. If they revert back to the old Beaumont ways of drive-by rock and gunfire attacks — this before the word “drive-by” was used –and rioting then I will get concerned.

I’m sorry to be that way but I have too many real worries with which to deal. Plus, I’m on vacation. Can’t you see?