How Not to Fix TYC

A lot of legislative and law enforcement energy went into trying to fix the broken Texas Youth Commission this year. So, after allegations of widespread, seemingly endemic sexual and physical abuse, it seems a little bit of a backward step that TYC has appointed Texas educator Brent Rumbo as the new principal of the scandal-wracked Crockett State School.

Texas Civil Rights Project has described Rumbo's career to date as going "from town to town in East, trailing controversy in his wake." The trail begins in December 2005, when he was principal at Winona High School in Winona, TX. A student blew his own hand off during a physics experiment: Apparently he was packing home-made gun-powder into a metal pipe, which sounds like something Guns and Ammo might call suitable study. According TCRP, Rumbo told the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that the school didn't know what was happening, but his own teachers said that wasn't true. Then Rumbo was picked up by police in Tyler with a prostitute in his car (it's not as bad it sounds: he claimed that he picked her up at a drug house when he was looking for someone else.)

After that, he moved to become principal of Navasota High School in Grimes County, and within a year Navasota ISD had asked for his resignation. Rumbo was on paid administrative leave after staff reported harassment, and there were claims by that he encouraged minority students to drop out. There were also allegations that Rumbo chased students with an ax when they insulted his wife. His initial refusal to quit lead to NISD Superintendent Jennings Teel apologizing to the citizens of Navasota for the negative publicity and behavior ill-suited to administrative staff. By the time he finally quit on August 31 this year (after a $4,000 contract buy-out), the school was classified as "academically unacceptable."

So, just the man to set TYC straight.