While the students seem to have been learning their lessons despite the turmoil, the adults seem to have learned some lessons as well. Jack Grimes, the TEA consultant who led the troubled review, is using built-up vacation and sick time and will take early retirement in June. Moses has decreed that all visiting review teams will submit their reports to the TEA in Austin before handing them over to the school districts. All of the Lamar teachers are taking classes in racial sensitivity, as directed by the school's principal and superintendent's office, not without some resentment. Lupe Nieto, a representative of the Fort Bend Interfaith Council who has been troubled for years that the district's high schools don't encourage minority students, has been appointed to a "tri-ethnic" committee for Lamar. He says if the principal expects the committee to be a rubber stamp, he will raise his voice in protest.
Phyllis Landes has never been able to confront Vicki Sargent, the Denton school principal who accused her of spouting racist remarks in the doorway of her classroom. But her lawyer has filed a subpoena for Sargent's deposition, and plans for a lawsuit are under way. The teachers at Lamar have raised several thousand dollars to help Landes with her legal bills if her professional organization does not come through. And there is talk that if Landes doesn't need the money, maybe they'd better save it in case one of them faces similar accusations in the future.
Landes says she wonders if the district administration has any second thoughts about its procedures, since she has never had an apology from Slocumb or Zolkoski, who suspended her before investigating the charges thoroughly.
"When I read that Levinski and Zolkoski are saying that the TEA lied about showing them the review," Landes says, "my question is, 'Why would an entire peer team lie?' Every member of that team said that Zolkoski and Levinski had seen those quotes. They were given the chance to tone down that report, and that's why we think it was a setup."
Phyllis Landes isn't one to wear her feelings on her sleeve. After she was first informed of the TEA accusation, simple survival was foremost on her mind. "I just thought there was a mistake made," she says, "and they were going to say they made a mistake and correct it."
They didn't, and lately Landes has been feeling more anger. Slowly but surely, she's come to the realization that something very precious that she'd built over 27 years of teaching was taken from her during those three weeks in March.
"I still want to know, 'Why me?' It's going to be a long time before it gets back to normal, if there is ever a normal again.
