Killeen ISD Controversy With Investigator

Ethan Housewright, KDH News' education reporter, talks about the work he did on covering Killeen ISD's most recent scandal involving a Killeen ISD investigator who resigned over alleged time theft.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This episode is sponsored by Big Sacks Tire Shack. New and quality used tires. Two locations in Kleen and one in Temple. Nearly 30 years in business. Got a flat? They'll get you back rolling.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Inside Clean podcast brought to you by KDH News. My name is Kevin Limity. I'm the city government reporter and one of the hosts here, joined by Himita Botchwe, who is doing the technical producing today. Dalen Che is not here right now, but we are joined by a very special guest, Evan Hasright, our education reporter, who has been doing a lot of really nice articles for the newspaper. How are you doing, sir?

SPEAKER_04 0:52

I'm doing well. Thanks, Kevin. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 0:55

You know, I mean, recovering from like a nine-hour council meeting the other day, but other than that, doing pretty well. Wow. Yeah, that was wild. But in any case, that's not exactly what we're here to talk about. We're actually talking about a very big story that broke in the education world recently for KISD. Man by the name of Charles Chuck Kelly, who is the Clean ISD Executive Director of Investigations and School Safety. Can you describe a little bit about what happened there, Ethan?

SPEAKER_04 1:26

Sure. Yeah. So kind of to give you guys some background. So Chuck Kelly, like you mentioned, he was the executive director of investigations and school safety at KISD. He was a former DEA agent before this role. And um in his role as the executive director at KISD, he, you know, investigated perhaps hundreds of cases, hundreds of cases, you know, related to employee wrongdoing, thing, things like that. And he oversaw safety across all of all of the campuses. But he actually resigned. I guess this was last Friday. We we learned that he resigned or had put in his papers to resign last Thursday after audios came out, apparently depicting him violating school policy when it came to timekeeping practices. And, you know, I guess it doesn't sound like a huge deal in and of itself, but I think the concern that many people may have is, you know, this is the guy that had a lot of responsibility overseeing, you know, very sensitive investigations. And I guess to some people it could be, you know, seen as um his integrity being compromised if he was perhaps you know cutting corners there. I guess what what else what else could be could be going on, you know, so yeah, it could be a cause of concern for people.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

Yeah, and um I think you kind of hit the nail the nail on the head there, because like he was in a position of responsibility, and even though people can debate about whether or not what he did was a big deal or not, I think just being in that position was probably for a lot of people a betrayal of trust. I mean, or at least I mean, at least if you take it from like from what from his resignation and and stuff like that. But you talked to him for a pretty long time after that. He he didn't really see it the same way, is that correct?

SPEAKER_04 3:26

What what do you mean the the same way?

SPEAKER_03 3:28

He didn't see it as like necessarily like a fireable offense or anything like that.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

Aaron Ross Powell Right. He he maintained I mean I guess he kind of admitted to making a mistake, but I asked him, you know, I asked him from his perspective if he was investigating the case from an objective perspective, if he thought he did anything wrong, and he said he didn't think so. You know, mainly the thing the thing is that KSD policy says that, you know, clocking clocking someone else in, you know, being clocking somebody else in is grounds for termination. It sounds like based on the audio files, he might have directed, I don't know, other employees to clock someone in that wasn't there. So from my from my understanding, he had someone work over the weekend, and instead of you know having the having them put in the paperwork for comp time or submitting submitting the paperwork for comp time, he just had someone else clock them in and you know let the clock run that way, which I guess it's a common you know practice in some some places, but you know, it's a it's a violation of KISD's KSD's policy.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

And you were able to obtain recordings of this incident with or like some of the what he was talking about, is that correct?

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Yes, so it was actually interesting. I've never really had this happen before this this directly, but it was Monday evening, I guess this would have been two weeks ago, after the school board elections, I had the day off. And that evening, someone, an anonymous number, they texted me recordings that they said depicted Kelly. And this they they called it time theft. I don't know if you can necessarily classify that as time theft, because not like he was really stealing stealing time, but yeah, anyways, they said the recordings depicted Kelly. And I listened to them, I let Jacob, our editor, know about it to see what he thought. And he directed me to reach out to KISD. So I did that and asked if they were aware of the recordings because they were also uploaded to a private Facebook group and kind of circulating around the internet, you could say, and they said they're aware of them. And I followed up and asked, and they said that Kelly was on administrative leave, which that in and of itself seemed like a pretty big deal to me at the time. You know, we report on, you know, I guess you could say principals or teachers or other KISD employees being placed on leave, but it kind of seemed like, you know, a big deal to me that somebody with with that level of responsibility was on was on leave at the time. Uh it was kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_03 6:02

And it was Charles Kelly speaking with an unnamed employee of KISD?

SPEAKER_04 6:09

Yeah, so it was Kelly speaking with a former employee that worked under his department. I actually spoke directly with the person that took those recordings. We granted her anonymity in the article. But yeah, she took them in around March of 2023 without him knowing on her on her phone. And yeah, she ended up departing from the district. And what she told me is that she shared these with the district in the past, but I guess there wasn't really any follow-up. And she saw another one of my articles and decided to put them put them online, the recordings.

SPEAKER_03 6:48

Interesting. Well, we have one of those recordings that we're going to play for you right now. It's soon going to be released for the Facebook and through the website. Anyways, here it is.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Hey boss. Can I talk to you right quick?

unknown 7:12

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Okay. Hey, so the ladies at the office, they called me. And apparently the time clock is not working. So I was like, okay, let me just make sure because they went to go log in on the computer, like their time clock stuff. I noticed Kara is clocked in right now. Is she supposed to be clocked in?

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Yeah. I owe her well because I let her I had her work on Saturday. Um, what do you call it? Job fair?

SPEAKER_01 7:42

You she didn't take that one off already? I thought she had taken off already for that one. So she's gonna be on the clock the whole day? That's eight hours. And that's what you owe her?

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Mm-hmm. I owe her a lot more than that. I or for hours for the meetings, the what do you call it, meetings, you know? And uh we're about I think about 12 hours, but this is gonna make us even.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Okay. That's a lot to be.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

And that was an unnamed employee speaking with Charles Kelly. Now, is there like a counterpoint to this that people have been making, or are they more or less like when you when you monitor the reaction online, do you see people mainly like speaking out against Mr. Kelly, or is it like some or people like more split?

SPEAKER_04 8:36

Yeah you have to, you know, consider Kelly's role. I mean, his job was to, you know, investigate a lot of employees, and a lot of employees, you know, they probably ended up resigning or being terminated as a result of his investigation. So you have to imagine that he probably has a lot of a lot of enemies, a lot of people that probably probably don't like him due to the nature of his work. So I'd say online, it seemed I don't know, it seemed pretty, pretty split from the comments I saw. You know, people were like, okay, yeah, good. Good he's gone. You know, he did this, this, and that to me. Or you'd see other people come in his defense and say, you know, Kelly was, you know, he was an honest man, he was a good, a good man, and you know, he had a lot of a lot of integrity, and he was a good thing for the school. So people were kind of, I guess. You know, the lamenting lamenting the fact that he had to resign. So yeah, I'd say I would say it's about about 50, 50-50.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

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SPEAKER_03 10:43

Yeah, and uh since education isn't my normal beat, I don't really have much skin in the game. Well, really any story that I work on, I don't, but but I'm coming into this with like pretty like fresh eyes. You know, I read Ethan's stories, obviously. They were very good, very well sourced, I thought, very well written. And I I have to be honest, I feel like feel like there are so many like things that you cover as an education reporter that are arguably like even like more controversial than something like this would be. I mean, it's I mean, especially lately, I feel like you have been like getting scoops on a lot of like really good like education stories. I mean, can you can you talk about some of the other stuff you've been doing?

SPEAKER_04 11:40

Yeah, I mean, I I guess when you look at the grand scheme of really I don't know, the wrongdoing, I guess, that could go on in a large school district, it's not super I don't want to say it's not a it's not a big deal, but I mean compared to other other things that could happen. You know, one thing I talked about with Kelly is he actually conducted an investigation on two employees that resigned in lieu of in lieu of termination. I don't know, it was something like I I reported on this in the in the past, but it's something like they they admitted to sexual misconduct with their own daughter. Um I don't know, there's really really bad things like that. Another thing, you know, that recently happened, there was a TEA ruling that KSD had to take corrective actions after a KSD employee and KSD police officer were involved in a prohibited prohibited aversive restraint under the Texas Education Code, which basically I think it like outlaws KSD employees or any employee in Texas from using like a floor restraint on students. And so yeah, KSD had to has to now retrain or train those employees on the use of um restraints.

SPEAKER_03 12:55

Yeah, and yeah, so stuff like that, like anything involving kids, I feel like, like from elementary to high school age is gonna be like a touchy subject because I I'm sure that a lot of parents read KDH news and read your articles, and um I think that it's very I mean, I like I said, like anything involving kids, you know.

SPEAKER_04 13:22

Right. Yeah, I I think one thing I've maybe not gotten a lot, but one thing I've seen in the comments is that people think kind of like rage baiting. You've probably seen seen that too when you see people get irritated, but I don't know, that's really not the intention. I mean, our intention is to always be objective, but like you said, when it when it comes to kids, you know, especially wrongdoing in the school district, that does seem to get a lot of you know, traction or traffic naturally, a lot of outrage, maybe compared to other other beats like the the city beat, you know.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Yeah, the city beats it can sometimes be like like that, but like but not all the time, like not not for everything. Although there are a very uh opinionated group of people that do follow like like city government politics and that sort of thing. But I but I feel like I feel like it education, the reason why is like is just that like it's so much easier to be be invested in it because of because if you have kids that are in the system, it's just city government doesn't have that. But I think I think both of us can relate to like you said, the rage baden that goes on. And you know, and some people like do accuse like us of like being like kind of stirring stuff up in the community, but that's really not our intention. It's just it's just that in in the course of letting people know things that are happening that affect people in the community, it can sometimes like cause some people not to look so great potentially, or maybe to cause people to be angry and that sort of thing. So so I don't know, but but I I still think that we have to just keep on keeping on. And you know, I mean this is also coming after a I I think you can correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I think this happened like almost immediately after the school board elections.

SPEAKER_04 15:25

It it did, yeah. So the elections, I guess we got the results on Saturday. This would have been May the 3rd. And then I guess I had that falling Monday that off, and we got that I got that message on that Monday, Monday evening. Yeah, before work on before work on Tuesday.

SPEAKER_03 15:43

You do you find it uh sometimes difficult to turn off your uh reporter like instincts when you're off the clock technically?

SPEAKER_04 15:52

Yeah, I don't know. Part part of it is kind of like you know, exciting or interesting, like looking for, looking for, you know, scoops, looking for stories. And I don't know, stories don't come out in like a nine to five window, really. But yeah, I don't know. I get a lot of messages like, you know, outside of outside of working hours, and you know, sometimes I'll you know, follow up with it when I'm not working or do some background research, you know, off the off the clock. But yeah, I guess that is something you have to try to at least balance a little bit, you know.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

Yeah, I mean it it's almost like a trap a little bit because like it's very easy to get like very involved in a story that you care deeply about.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:35

But then at the but then also like it could really like impact like a reporter's mental health to always be sort of like tuned into stuff. I mean even though it's not local, like just watching and listening and reading things that are going on in a normal like news cycle right now, it's almost like it impossible to like constantly feed yourself on a daily basis, even though as journalists we tech we we technically want to be informed about everything, like like whether it's national, local, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 17:13

Right. Yeah, that is that is hard too because you know you do want to report on the positive things that go on. And there's of course there's a lot of positive things in the district. I mean, just recently they distributed a lot of grants to educators to can continue with professional development. I actually just rewrote something about that today. You know, then earlier this week they distributed, I guess it was close to $100,000 of scholarships through the Clean IC Foundation. So there's a lot of positive things that go on, but like you said before, Kevin, I think I've heard you say this, like talked about, I don't know, the notion of you you report on the plane that crashes compared to like you don't you don't report on the plane that doesn't crash, you know what I mean? So sometimes Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

I mean, I've used an analogy of like the train. When the train gets to the stop on time and picks you up, there's nothing really to say. But if all of a sudden the train derails and goes goes off the track and kills someone, like suddenly it's news, but nobody's but it's kind of but I guess a lot of the people are saying is why don't you report about the guy that gets to train on time every day? Well, the reason why we don't report on that is because it's not news.

SPEAKER_04 18:24

Right. I guess in a in a perfect world you'd want to report on half and half, you know what I mean, like 50-50, like positive things an entity is doing then pointing out the negative things as well, but you only have so much time in the day and yeah, and you know it's it's not really like uh I don't think it's really a particularly good idea to necessarily quantify how much good news there is versus bad news.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Because if there's too much good news, you begin to like not pay attention to problems that exist. Right. And if there's too much bad news, then you just have a miserable time. But like, you know, but the reason why it seems like news outlets always only report on bad news is frankly, bad news gets more attention than good news.

SPEAKER_04 19:13

Yeah, I mean you can see that I guess anecdotally, you know, when you put up put up a story on Facebook, like the I guess the more negative things are more likely to stir outrage and people seem more motivated by anger and fear than they do by good things, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

Yeah, no, I think that's true. And one of the new uh council members, Charles Kimball, who he was previously the police chief, but he he he did make a comment about how when you pick up the newspaper all you do hear is bad news. And for context, he was referring to he was speaking during a youth advisory commission presentation. So, I mean, you know, it it's nice to see like young people getting involved in politics, even if it's at a smaller level, but you know, but it's just it's just I think it's just like I think that politicians like to sort of throw shade at news outlets for basically doing what we're supposed to be doing. But but I think that and I think you could probably relate to this too, without with without like news, there's just like what what would people be able to know about the city council or anything else or the KISD or anything like that.

SPEAKER_04 20:37

So Right. I mean, yeah, I guess PR, I mean, it's pretty I mean it's less subjective when you're just report when you're just reporting or spinning stories on the positives of a government entity, you know?

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Yeah, it creates a it creates an enormous hole in communities, but uh we appear to have done a massive detour right now, but but I wanted to ask you what are some things that you're working on right now, if you don't mind me asking. Are there is there anything interesting you're following?

SPEAKER_04 21:10

You know, one thing that's really cool and it's interesting. I I kind of forgot about this throughout the course of the podcast. We were talking about positive news. One thing I'm pretty excited about right now is finishing up this feature story about this early college high school student. She just graduated from Central Texas College through the early college high school program with her associate's degree. And, you know, leading up to her graduation on May 22nd or May 27th, she's working towards her pilot's license. And she's planning her first cross-country solo flight. So I think that's pretty, pretty, you know, pretty interesting. She's quite an accomplished 17 year old student. She plans to go, plans to ship out to the Navy in July, actually. Oh wow. Yeah, to be a, I guess, an aviation machinist. She eventually wants to become a pilot. In the Navy. So I thought that was pretty cool and I enjoyed writing it. It was kind of a cool story, story arc, you could say, as far as overcoming obstacles to work towards her pilot's license and you know graduating from school and everything. So that's that's a cool uh feature story that I'm glad to put out, you know, because it is it is a nice break from the hard hard news and the I guess the negative side of things, things that go on. So I've enjoyed enjoyed writing it, and it's kind of refreshing, you know, to see the school system really work for people and really be an improvement to people's people's lives. And there's probably more stories, stories like that, you know.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

Yeah, and the other thing is statewide they're trying to sort of shape public education to be there's like there's like a an attempt to shift things more towards like charter schools, and and I'm just curious about what your opinion on that is because I mean I mean you cover KISD, which is a public school system. Like do you do you see like the problems that come out of KISD as being like sort of this making it necessary for something different to replace it, or do you think that maybe it should just people should just put more time and money and energy into fixing it?

SPEAKER_04 23:34

Yeah, that's that's a really a really good question. I don't know the answer to it. Yeah, from my opinion there, I mean there's probably a lot of people that would disagree with me on this, you know, there's a lot of controversy, I guess, tied to charter schools in Texas. But I mean, yeah, Manor Middle School in particular had a pretty long history of unacceptable grades, and you know, the district was kind of between a rock and a hard, hard place when it comes to what to do with that campus. And they ended up they're shutting down two other failing campuses at the end of this year. They're closing down Eastern Hills Middle School, closing down Palo Alto Middle School, which they're gonna transform into the new, the new gateway alternative school. But yeah, I don't know. I think uh we just have to wait and see how it's gonna turn out with Manor, Manor Middle School under third future schools, you know. Of course, people don't like change. It's kind of scary to see a new entity coming in and taking over a campus, but uh I think that they do have a lot of great things to offer, and only only time will tell. You know, I guess it's better than the other the alternative, which is just to see how it plays out over the next few years as far as accountability scores and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

But yeah, I think hindsight is always 2020, and I think that it still applies in this case as well.

SPEAKER_04 24:57

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

Well, I think that's about all I got for today. However, I would like to leave our listeners before we end with the remainder of the audio clip that we played earlier. So here it is.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

It's a lot to be on the clock and not actually be here because when when we would do that for Eva Lee's, we would do it like an hour, 30 minutes, but not a whole day.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

That's well, what I would have had to do is what I would have had to do is have her put in for time and a half, you know, for count time. And so this is just easier to do it this way and just sort it out. But I don't want to get myself in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

I think you will. I think you will. This is only because it's all day. I'm just my my I want to say my loyalty will always be here. I will always make sure that you're okay. But the way I see it is she wasn't in the office all day. All day. That's a different story than being here and taking off early and us clocking them out. So maybe, maybe, I don't know, maybe change it to a half day.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

See, I don't want to hear someone else's clocking someone out. That's what happened. I know, but I don't want to hear about that. You know what I mean? Like I know.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

But that's exactly what happened. It would have been, I don't know. I just feel like if you owed her that time, do what like what you do with me. Just let me take off early.

SPEAKER_03 26:39

Thank you very much for listening. This has been Kevin Limity with Inside Clean Podcast. It's produced by Mita Botchua, who's doing technical producing. And um, Kevin again. Have a nice day.