HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — The City of Houston says its hands are tied when it comes to a firefighter who showed a nude video of a female firefighter to their colleagues.
John Barrientes was found liable in a civil trial last year and was ordered to pay former firefighter Melinda Abbt $250,000. City Council is considering approving an $850,000 payment to Abbt to settle a separate federal lawsuit related to the matter.
Yet some council members question why Barrientes has been allowed to keep his job.
The city points to an obscure Texas law governing police and fire departments.
“If you’re looking to terminate someone’s employment because of a past act, the statutory scheme in Texas requires that that occurs within six months of the act,” City Attorney Michel Arturo said.
But that’s not how other attorneys see it.
“I’m not aware of any law that says you have to fire someone within 180 days of the misconduct,” employment attorney Michael Lombardino said.
Arturo sent Eyewitness News a copy of the Texas Local Government Code. Under a heading titled ‘Indefinite Suspensions,’ it reads:
“In the original written statement and charges and in any hearing conducted under this chapter, the department head may not complain of an act that did not occur within the six-month period preceding the date on which the department head suspends the firefighter or police officer.”
Lombardino said that should only apply to indefinite suspensions, which he said are different than terminations.
“Sometimes you need to be able to conduct an investigation, so putting a time limit on when you would be able to terminate an employee doesn’t really make sense,” he said.
Arturo told council members that firing Barrientes could give him grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Some worry about the lawsuits the city could face by keeping him.
“If we have another incident that comes up, aren’t we in more legal jeopardy because we are aware of this behavior?” Councilman Fred Flickinger asked.
Council won’t vote on whether to approve the settlement with Abbt for at least another week.
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The Texas Tribune redesigned its Public Schools Explorer to add more timely data and features to help families and teachers navigate the state’s sprawling public school system.
In all, Texas has 1,202 school districts and 9,113 public schools, including hundreds of charter schools and alternative campuses. About 5.5 million students attend public schools in Texas, and our explorer includes information on all of them.
It’s an overwhelming amount of data, which is why our journalists focused on organizing the site in a more intuitive way. We included more context to explain what the numbers mean and why they matter. In addition, each school’s performance is compared against statewide and regional trends, which will help families better understand how their child’s school is performing.
We feel this is the perfect time to launch a new site. Parents and families need to be able to see the options available for their children’s education, especially as school choice expands in Texas. We’re showing readers their local campus and nearby campuses, including traditional school districts and charter schools. We show how their school demographics, funding and other characteristics have changed over time to help illustrate broader trends.
We also hope this tool will be useful to teachers, school staff, policymakers and anyone curious about Texas education — including those who need accurate and reliable data to understand how policy impacts students.
Each school district and campus has its own page on the site. Within those pages, data is now organized into a handful categories, including student demographics, classroom experience, opportunities and outcomes, and more. Each category has its own URL, making it easier to share information that matters the most.
We’ve added new data from the Texas Education Agency, including funding information for school districts to help readers better understand where and how schools get money. We also redesigned the districts page to make it easier to find districts using different filters.
In addition to these new features, our site will be more up to date than ever before. Previously, the explorer was updated once a year. Now we can integrate new data as soon as the state releases it, with finance numbers expected in the spring and state accountability ratings in August.
This new explorer builds on the Data Visuals team’s ongoing work covering public education issues affecting students and teachers across the state. In a recent story, we showed how low-income students are being left behind in higher education outcomes and included a lookup tool to help readers explore the data in their own communities.
If you have feedback, email us at schools-feedback@texastribune.org. Also, stay tuned for more updates — we plan to release new features soon. After exploring the new tool, be sure to check out the Tribune’s extensive public education coverage for more on how these issues are playing out across the state.
This project is supported in part by Greater Texas Foundation and Houston Endowment.
Tuesday was the deadline for Texas families to apply for the state’s first school vouchers. In this week’s episode of the TribCast, hosts Matthew and Eleanor speak with Jaden Edison, the Tribune’s education reporter, about who signed up, the future of the program and why Muslim schools were initially shut out from participating.
Watch the video above or subscribe to the TribCast on iTunes, Spotify, or RSS. New episodes every Tuesday.
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