A Round Rock ISD school board meeting was abruptly adjourned last Thursday after a trustee made a motion requesting the resignation of one of her colleagues.
During the August 17 meeting, Trustee Mary Bone presented a motion that called for the resignation of Trustee Amy Weir, the former board president. The motion cited allegations of “multiple violations of the law” from a lawsuit filed against district officials, the Texas Scorecard reported.
Two district parents brought the lawsuit after they were arrested for allegedly disrupting board meetings in 2021, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
The lawsuit alleges the district worked with the sheriff’s office to orchestrate the arrests, according to Texas Scorecard. Last week, Judge David A. Ezra, a senior U.S. district judge for the Western District of Texas, rejected a motion to dismiss and allowed the lawsuit to go forward.
Weir promptly left the meeting once the motion was brought forward.
Bone’s motion stated that the lawsuit “implicates Amy Weir as an individual, not in her official capacity and who at the time was a Texas BAR licensed attorney, including first and fourth amendment [violations] plus violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act,” per the Texas Scorecard.
“Also due to her utilization of public funds to pay for individual representation without board approval. And due to these actions the board believes Amy Weir cannot place the best interests of the district and students above her individual issues, that the board formally add an agenda item to formally request that Amy Weir resign from her place on the Round Rock ISD board of trustees and pay back all public funds expended on the federal case for her individual benefit,” Bone said in her motion.
The motion failed in a 4-2 vote by the remaining trustees.
Bone had planned to present another motion to the board, but Board President Amber Feller Landrum adjourned the meeting.
Trustee Danielle Weston told the Texas Scorecard that she believes Landrum “abused her power by intentionally and improperly adjourning [the] board meeting in a rushed fashion for the purpose of preventing Trustee Mary Bone from putting forward motions as she is entitled to do as an elected trustee.”
Following the meeting, Bone told the Texas Scorecard that the actions taken by Landrum would not keep her “from doing what is right by God and law to ensure the district’s focus is educating children and not covering up adult malfeasance.”
Despite the lawsuit and recent incident at the board meeting, Round Rock ISD is one of the higher-performing districts in Texas. The district is located in Travis County, which was ranked second out of the top six big-city counties in the state based on student achievement outcomes from the 2021-2022 school year. For its part, Dallas County ranked last, in large part due to Dallas ISD.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, out of the 129 campuses in Dallas County that received a D letter grade in student achievement from the Texas Education Agency, 57 were in Dallas ISD, just over 44% of the total. Additionally, 38% of the schools in the county that received an F grade were in Dallas ISD.