Area Breaking News

Mission hired Patricia Rigney as its city attorney last week. According to City Manager Mike Perez, council approved a contract with Rigney Tuesday and she was expected to start Thursday. “She has a very good work ethic, very dedicated to what she does,” he said. “She loves local government.” The city’s been without a fulltime…

If McAllen Independent School District trustees wanted a diverse list of applicants to apply for the Place 7 vacancy on their board, they certainly got one last week. A total of 31 individuals applied to serve in that position by last Friday, the deadline. Those applicants want to take the seat of long-serving Trustee Sam…

The Mission Consolidated Independent School District Board of Trustees named Cris Valdez interim superintendent Friday after the board’s decision to move toward parting ways with Superintendent Carol G. Perez. The board voted May 27 to place Perez on administrative leave with pay and directed its attorneys to negotiate a separation agreement with her. Sharon Roberts…

The Mercedes school board voted to terminate Superintendent Maria Chavez for good cause Tuesday evening, although no one at the district will say what that good cause is because they think there might be some litigation related to the dismissal. Chavez joined the district as interim superintendent at the end of 2022 before being named…

At a special board meeting Monday, Mission Consolidated Independent School District trustees placed Superintendent Carol G. Perez on paid administrative leave and directed attorneys to negotiate a separation agreement with her.  The board named Sharon Roberts, a deputy superintendent at the district, Perez’s acting replacement. Trustees are slated to discuss naming an interim superintendent at…

The McAllen Independent School District Board of Trustees is planning on wasting no time in filling Sam Saldivar, Jr.’s board seat after he abruptly resigned without explanation this week. Trustees accepted Saldivar’s resignation Monday and plan to discuss applicants for Place 7 Tuesday. The deadline to submit your name for the spot is Friday at…

At 3:27 p.m. last Friday, McAllen ISD Superintendent René Gutiérrez and then-Board President Debbie Crane Aliseda received a not-so-subtly threatening email with a demand: purge your schools’ libraries of 676 books or else. The threat was delivered by local representatives of Citizens Defending Freedom and the Remnant Alliance, associated conservative advocacy groups founded outside of…

The Mission school board voted Tuesday to hire supplemental legal counsel for special projects, chief among them reviewing Superintendent Carol G. Perez’s legally questionable decade-long contract. That contract, which runs through 2030, seems to blatantly violate a portion of the Texas Education Code that limits superintendents’ contracts to five years. The school district’s attorney, David…

Long-serving McAllen ISD School Board Trustee Sam Saldivar, Jr. plans to step off the board at the beginning of next month.   Saldivar penned a letter Thursday saying he plans to retire from the board on June 1.   The McAllen school board is slated to discuss his resignation Monday.   Saldivar didn’t respond to…

The city of Mission tentatively signed off on a 10-article meet and confer agreement with Mission Fire Fighters Association Local 3609 Thursday. Many of the articles in the agreement relate to the city’s new in-house EMS program, laying out rules for things like staffing, medic hiring and certification, EMS training and pay. The agreement also…