BISD Board to consider naming stadium after Carrol “Butch” Thomas

[bullets13]

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[5GallonBucket]

“….educational support center”

😂🤣😂🤣

Stop trying to paint a picture

its a stadium people

worried about the name of the stadium but what about discipline issue

[Mr. Buddy Garrity]

53 minutes ago, bullets13 said:

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Folks might as well get used to this continuing to pop-up until the name of the stadium is changed, regardless of if it's changed back to its original name or someone pays BISD for the naming rights.

[CardinalBacker]

My guess is that even if the naming rights are sold, some future board will vote to put Thomas’s name up there. 
 

My understanding is that an anonymous donor paid to have it renamed “memorial” last time and that the school will have to reimburse that person’s contribution as well as pay to have the thing renamed after Thomas. 
 

It is what it is… the black community throwing up a big middle finger at whitey. “It’s our time now.” 
 

Yeah, and we all like what you’re doing with it, lol. 

[mat]

I’m not a Beaumont tax payer so my opinion means nothing. If the voter base elects board members that would vote to change name back, then so be it.

[tvc184]

Nobody likes the “good ol’ boy” system until he’s a “good ol’ boy”.

[Ty Cobb]

I’m not from this area, who is Carrol “Butch” Thomas and why should the stadium be named after him?

[tvc184]

7 minutes ago, Ty Cobb said:

I’m not from this area, who is Carrol “Butch” Thomas and why should the stadium be named after him?

He was the superintendent for a few years and there was some corruption, mismanagement of the budget and I believe criminal prosecutions (the state came in and took over for several years)  under his watch however he got out before it started going to court.

It kind of reminds me of that hit song from the Steve Miller Band, Take The Money and Run.

It has been pointed out in this and other forums, he was never accused and I have not even heard accusations against him personally.  A lot of it certainly happened during his tenure however.

[baddog]

He was also the highest paid superintendent in the state of Texas, and there are a lot richer districts than BISD. 

[CardinalBacker]

It was just a bad scene... when the allegations of impropriety started rolling in, the board moved to name the stadium after the then superintendent who would best be described as "embattled" at that point.  

It goes back to the Civil Rights era.... when the bond issue was passed, Thomas and others moved to eradicate all traces of the old "white" schools that were folded into BISD.  It's been back and forth ever since.... and I'm sure that the school demolitions weren't the first salvo in an ongoing war.  The initial naming of the stadium after Thomas was a great big middle finger at this critics, then the Board of Managers appointed after Thomas left moved to have the stadium re-named something neutral.... but it is also seen as big middle finger back at the black community.  As soon as the BOM handed power back to the locally elected trustees we have now, they continuously return to the issue of re-naming the stadium after the disgraced former super.

Thomas left about a year before the state had to take over.  So basically the school board wants to re-re-name the stadium after a guy who either (a)rebuilt BISD and got them great new facilities or (b) name it after the guy who was in control when millions of dollars were stolen, testing fraud ran rampant, things got so bad that the state had to come and take over the district and numerous administrators went to prison.... and you'd be talking about the same guy. 

13 hours ago, Ty Cobb said:

I’m not from this area, who is Carrol “Butch” Thomas and why should the stadium be named after him?

 

[KF89]

BISD School Board & Administration continues their Circus Show 

[tvc184]

2 hours ago, baddog said:

He was also the highest paid superintendent in the state of Texas, and there are a lot richer districts than BISD. 

I believe I remember a news article saying that he was the highest paid public official in Texas and not just the highest paid superintendent. 

[CardinalBacker]

35 minutes ago, tvc184 said:

I believe I remember a news article saying that he was the highest paid public official in Texas and not just the highest paid superintendent. 

I don't remember him being the highest paid employee in the state... I'd assume that the head coaches at the college level would win that award.

But I distinctly remember him being the highest paid super in the state and the second highest in the whole United States.  Which I don't hate on the for... but when you're clocking them dollas and then the state has to come take over the district because of mismanagement and criminal activities.... it just seems kinda dumb to be re-re-naming buildings after the guy.   It's not about him, it's about who will be agitated by renaming it after him.  Anybody that says any different is kidding themselves.  

 

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[Separation Scientist]

And people wonder why Beaumont does not grow. Despite the significant infrastructure available, like I-10, the port, pipelines, etc, Beaumont has a HORRIBLE and I mean HORRIBLE corporate reputation. Well deserved. 

[CardinalBacker]

It's so dumb because the people in charge should be able to see that crap like this is the reason that so many people make a decision to relocate to Hardin/Orange/Chambers County... or even out to HJ or HF.  When you make it abundantly clear from the highest levels that you are mostly uninterested in improving any aspects of the educational process, but would prefer to redress the "wrongs" of generations past, folks are going to leave... but then they'll blame "white flight" as the reason that the community/schools are abysmal when that time comes.  Just look at Port Arthur...it'll tell you everything that you need to know about your future.  

That's the thing... I can't think of another school district in the area that is as poorly managed as BISD.  There's not another community (excepting Port Arthur) that would not immediately move to run off a board/super that was determined to do something this.... out of the scope of what a board should be focused upon.  

[CardinalBacker]

I'd be curious to see if any of the bigtime Beaumont fans on the site (Soulja, etc) have an opinion on the subject.  I think at this point it's just people like myself without any skin in the game that are here complaining.  

[bullets13]

This infuriates me.  I worked for BISD for 15 years, including when all of this happened.  It's absolutely jaw-dropping how many people were stealing from BISD during the time of the bond, and many of them were under the direct supervision of Thomas.  There were dozens of examples of fraud, theft, cronyism, etc (

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).  Thomas also benefited from a poorly negotiated contract that saw his base salary nearly triple over the course of 10 years, making him the highest paid superintendent in the state, even though he was doing a poor job leading a fairly poor, fairly small district.  The problem is that the people of color in charge weren't concerned about students and the community, only about sticking it to the white man that had held them down for so long.  Calvin Walker bilked BISD for millions of dollars.  The majority African American schoolboard under Butch Thomas actually voted to renew his yearly contract AFTER he'd been charged with stealing millions from the district, and had taken a plea deal where he forfeited millions of dollars that he'd stolen from BISD (

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).  The school board  voted NOT TO SEEK TO HAVE THE MONEY HE STOLE REPAID, even though more than $2M he stole was available to them!!! (

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)  The district and school board chose to let the feds keep the money Walker had stolen from them rather than admitting that he had stolen from them.  Here is a list of thefts and scams that the district knew about Walker committing at the time that they renewed his contract (

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).  My personal favorite is the $600,000 he charged BISD to cover the cost of renting bucket trucks to complete work he'd been hired to do.  He did this even though he already owned bucket trucks, and did not need to rent any

 

Under Thomas the district spent tens of thousands of dollars on copies of (low quality) books full of misinformation written by communication director Jessie Haynes (

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   During Thomas' reign, the BISD Comptroller and Director of Finance were both arrested and convicted for stealing more than $4M (

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).  Patricia Lambert, an assistant superintendent under Thomas was convicted of theft and falsifying test scores.  BISD also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for her son to print items for BISD, even though he did not have a printing business.  He simply paid a real printing business to print these items and then charged BISD a marked up price (

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).  

As everyone knows, his leadership was so poor that the district was eventually taken over by the state (

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).  Thomas took off before anything could stick to him.  He still to this day claims that he didn't know anything about the crimes being committed under him.  In my opinion if he had no idea all of this was going on, it reflects worse on him than if he was actually involved in the corruption.   After all of this, thousands of BISD employees had to go through the stress of seeing if their position ended up on the RIF list, as hundreds of employees were let go in an effort to save money after BISD's finances had been run into the ground.  That was one of the most terrifying times of my life, as there was considerable talk about my entire school being shut down in an effort to reduce costs for the district.  

 

I literally could go on and on, and on and on and on and on with examples of theft and mismanagement under Thomas.  The naming of a stadium after him was entirely racially motivated.  the sad part was that it wasn't named after him because he was African American, but instead because naming it after him made white people mad.  And now here we go again.  There are a dozen plus people of color who could rightfully be honored with BISD's stadium being named after them.  There is also the option of finding a sponsor who'll pay for the name.  Instead the board is once again putting "sticking it to the man" ahead of responsible spending and putting it's students, staff, and community first. 

[bullets13]

24 minutes ago, CardinalBacker said:

I don't remember him being the highest paid employee in the state... I'd assume that the head coaches at the college level would win that award.

But I distinctly remember him being the highest paid super in the state and the second highest in the whole United States.  Which I don't hate on the for... but when you're clocking them dollas and then the state has to come take over the district because of mismanagement and criminal activities.... it just seems kinda dumb to be re-re-naming buildings after the guy.   It's not about him, it's about who will be agitated by renaming it after him.  Anybody that says any different is kidding themselves.  

 

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It is absolutely this, and nothing more.  It's a shame.  

[KF89]

47 minutes ago, bullets13 said:

This infuriates me.  I worked for BISD for 15 years, including when all of this happened.  It's absolutely jaw-dropping how many people were stealing from BISD during the time of the bond, and many of them were under the direct supervision of Thomas.  There were dozens of examples of fraud, theft, cronyism, etc (

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).  Thomas also benefited from a poorly negotiated contract that saw his base salary nearly triple over the course of 10 years, making him the highest paid superintendent in the state, even though he was doing a poor job leading a fairly poor, fairly small district.  The problem is that the people of color in charge cared nothing about other people of color in Beaumont, only about sticking it to the white man that had held them down for so long.  Calvin Walker bilked BISD for millions of dollars.  The majority African American schoolboard under Butch Thomas actually voted to renew his yearly contract AFTER he'd been charged with stealing millions from the district, and had taken a plea deal where he forfeited millions of dollars that he'd stolen from BISD (

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).  The school board actually voted NOT TO SEEK TO HAVE THE MONEY HE STOLE REPAID, even though more than $2M he stole was available to them!!! (

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)  The district and school board chose to let the feds keep the money Walker had stolen from them rather than admitting that he had stolen from them.  Here is a list of thefts and scams that the district knew about Walker committing at the time that they renewed his contract (

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).  My personal favorite is the $600,000 he charged BISD to cover the cost of renting bucket trucks to complete work he'd been hired to do.  He did this even though he already owned bucket trucks, and did not need to rent any

 

Under Thomas the district spent tens of thousands of dollars on copies of books written communication director Jessie Haynes (

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   During Thomas' reign, the BISD Comptroller and Director of Finance were both arrested and convicted for stealing more than $4M (

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).  Patricia Lambert, an assistant superintendent under Thomas was convicted of theft and falsifying test scores.  BISD also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for her son to print items for BISD, even though he did not have a printing business.  He simply paid a real printing business to print these items and then charged BISD a marked up price (

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).  

As everyone knows, his leadership was so poor that the district was eventually taken over by the state (

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).  Thomas took off before anything could stick to him.  He still to this day claims that he didn't know anything about the crimes being committed under him.  In my opinion if he had no idea all of this was going on, it reflects worse on him than if he was actually involved in the corruption.   After all of this, thousands of BISD employees had to go through the stress of seeing if their position ended up on the RIF list, as hundreds of employees were let go in an effort to save money after BISD's finances had been run into the ground.  That was one of the most terrifying times of my life, as there was considerable talk about my entire school being shut down in an effort to reduce costs for the district.  

 

I literally could go on and on, and on and on and on and on with examples of theft and mismanagement under Thomas.  The naming of a stadium after him was entirely racially motivated.  the sad part was that it wasn't named after him because he was African American, but instead because naming it after him made white people mad.  And now here we go again.  There are a dozen plus people of color who could rightfully be honored with BISD's stadium being named after them.  There is also the option of finding a sponsor who'll pay for the name.  Instead the board is once again putting "sticking it to the man" ahead of responsible spending and putting it's students, staff, and community first. 

Great post backed up with facts👍👍👍 

[tvc184]

2 hours ago, CardinalBacker said:

I'd be curious to see if any of the bigtime Beaumont fans on the site (Soulja, etc) have an opinion on the subject.  I think at this point it's just people like myself without any skin in the game that are here complaining.  

Is it complaining or pointing out absurdity?

I see a place like San Francisco and see where homeless are living in front of some of the most famous stores and crapping on the sidewalk and turning what should be a showplace city for the world, into a dump. I have never been there and never plan on going there for any reason, not even to catch a connecting flight. I do make comments from time to time about places such as San Francisco but not to complain because I honestly could not care less. It is simply an observation of the stupidity of the situation.

BISD can vote to call it  the “We Have It- You Don’t Stadium”. I would not complain, I would simply laugh at the continued absurdity.

With the ability to name a stadium almost anything, can the BISD board of trustees come up with something other than a person with a questionable reputation?

City leader, football legend, national leader, historic event??

[SmashMouth]

5 hours ago, bullets13 said:

The naming of a stadium after him was entirely racially motivated.  the sad part was that it wasn't named after him because he was African American, but instead because naming it after him made white people mad.

I’m not doubting, just asking… what is the proof of this?

[CardinalBacker]

1 hour ago, SmashMouth said:

I’m not doubting, just asking… what is the proof of this?

Well, you could start with the fact that they haven’t had single white board member vote to name (or rename) the stadium after Dr. Thomas. 
 

The thing is this. I can’t recall a single time that a district anywhere has named ANYTHING after a sitting super. Ever. 
 

Then you add in the fact that he was the highest paid super in the state… think about places like Dallas, Houston, etc…. This guy from Beaumont was out-earning all of them. 
 

Then you add in the indisputable fact that the district was hopelessly corrupt and required the state to take over operations. 
 

The fact that his administration was a corrupt disgrace where numerous fellow administrators were imprisoned for corruption that occurred on Dr Thomas’s watch and ultimately led to state intervention says the guy probably doesn’t deserve the honor. 
 

And if he cared about the children of Beaumont at all, he would drop a letter to the Enterprise saying “it’s an honor, but no thanks.”

So having said all of that to say, since there’s obviously nothing to honor about Dr Thomas’s time at the helm of BISD, why do black trustees keep trying to rename the stadium if not because of animus which is likely racial in nature?

[AggiesAreWe]

The folks just need to move the name at West Brook's on campus stadium to the newer stadium. Alex Durley is very deserving of having his name on that stadium for all to see.

Or name it Jerry Levias Stadium. He is more deserving than Dr. Thomas.

Another would be to combine the name, call it Durley-Levias Stadium.

[SmashMouth]

25 minutes ago, CardinalBacker said:

Well, you could start with the fact that they haven’t had single white board member vote to name (or rename) the stadium after Dr. Thomas. 
 

The thing is this. I can’t recall a single time that a district anywhere has named ANYTHING after a sitting super. Ever. 
 

Then you add in the fact that he was the highest paid super in the state… think about places like Dallas, Houston, etc…. This guy from Beaumont was out-earning all of them. 
 

Then you add in the indisputable fact that the district was hopelessly corrupt and required the state to take over operations. 
 

The fact that his administration was a corrupt disgrace where numerous fellow administrators were imprisoned for corruption that occurred on Dr Thomas’s watch and ultimately led to state intervention says the guy probably doesn’t deserve the honor. 
 

And if he cared about the children of Beaumont at all, he would drop a letter to the Enterprise saying “it’s an honor, but no thanks.”

So having said all of that to say, since there’s obviously nothing to honor about Dr Thomas’s time at the helm of BISD, why do black trustees keep trying to rename the stadium if not because of animus which is likely racial in nature?

Understood. But that didn’t answer question. 

[5GallonBucket]

6 hours ago, bullets13 said:

This infuriates me.  I worked for BISD for 15 years, including when all of this happened.  It's absolutely jaw-dropping how many people were stealing from BISD during the time of the bond, and many of them were under the direct supervision of Thomas.  There were dozens of examples of fraud, theft, cronyism, etc (

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).  Thomas also benefited from a poorly negotiated contract that saw his base salary nearly triple over the course of 10 years, making him the highest paid superintendent in the state, even though he was doing a poor job leading a fairly poor, fairly small district.  The problem is that the people of color in charge weren't concerned about students and the community, only about sticking it to the white man that had held them down for so long.  Calvin Walker bilked BISD for millions of dollars.  The majority African American schoolboard under Butch Thomas actually voted to renew his yearly contract AFTER he'd been charged with stealing millions from the district, and had taken a plea deal where he forfeited millions of dollars that he'd stolen from BISD (

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).  The school board  voted NOT TO SEEK TO HAVE THE MONEY HE STOLE REPAID, even though more than $2M he stole was available to them!!! (

This is the hidden content, please

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)  The district and school board chose to let the feds keep the money Walker had stolen from them rather than admitting that he had stolen from them.  Here is a list of thefts and scams that the district knew about Walker committing at the time that they renewed his contract (

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).  My personal favorite is the $600,000 he charged BISD to cover the cost of renting bucket trucks to complete work he'd been hired to do.  He did this even though he already owned bucket trucks, and did not need to rent any

 

Under Thomas the district spent tens of thousands of dollars on copies of (low quality) books full of misinformation written by communication director Jessie Haynes (

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   During Thomas' reign, the BISD Comptroller and Director of Finance were both arrested and convicted for stealing more than $4M (

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).  Patricia Lambert, an assistant superintendent under Thomas was convicted of theft and falsifying test scores.  BISD also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for her son to print items for BISD, even though he did not have a printing business.  He simply paid a real printing business to print these items and then charged BISD a marked up price (

This is the hidden content, please

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).  

As everyone knows, his leadership was so poor that the district was eventually taken over by the state (

This is the hidden content, please

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).  Thomas took off before anything could stick to him.  He still to this day claims that he didn't know anything about the crimes being committed under him.  In my opinion if he had no idea all of this was going on, it reflects worse on him than if he was actually involved in the corruption.   After all of this, thousands of BISD employees had to go through the stress of seeing if their position ended up on the RIF list, as hundreds of employees were let go in an effort to save money after BISD's finances had been run into the ground.  That was one of the most terrifying times of my life, as there was considerable talk about my entire school being shut down in an effort to reduce costs for the district.  

 

I literally could go on and on, and on and on and on and on with examples of theft and mismanagement under Thomas.  The naming of a stadium after him was entirely racially motivated.  the sad part was that it wasn't named after him because he was African American, but instead because naming it after him made white people mad.  And now here we go again.  There are a dozen plus people of color who could rightfully be honored with BISD's stadium being named after them.  There is also the option of finding a sponsor who'll pay for the name.  Instead the board is once again putting "sticking it to the man" ahead of responsible spending and putting it's students, staff, and community first. 

You forgot about the walker electric contract

Found guilty of felony fraud