Six trustees of the Harris County Department of Education’s board have voted to accept an investigation alleging fellow Trustee Michael Wolfe sexually harassed a female job candidate and spread rumors about her sex life after she twice refused to go on a date with him.
The report, compiled by Dallas-based labor lawyer Harry Jones at the behest of HCDE Superintendent James Colbert Jr., also says Wolfe and Trustee Eric Dick skewed the interview process for a board secretary in 2018 to favor friends and people who were “friendly” to their political ideologies.
Trustees, who accepted the report Wednesday, will vote on whether to censure Wolfe at a special meeting that has yet to be scheduled. Jared Woodfill, an attorney representing Wolfe, said his client may sue if the board votes to censure. He said Wolfe denies any wrongdoing.
“It’s a politically manufactured hit job by a person upset with the way Mr. Wolfe voted,” Woodfill said.
See here and here for the background. The story quotes extensively from the report, which is a fascinating read and only 13 pages long, so by all means go through it. I’m just going to pick out a couple of bits:
Mr. Dick heard from a woman I will call “Jane Doe” about Mr. Wolfe asking her out during a job application process, being affected in his decisions based on whether she would go out with him, and being vindictive when she declined to go out with him, even including trying to prevent her working elsewhere.
As I learned from my conversations with Mr. Dick, and looking at his marketing materials, while Mr. Dick is pleasant and chatty, he is prone to irony and drama.
[…]
Mr. Wolfe (who met me at his lawyer’s office, voluntarily) freely admitted:
“We wanted to bring people in who were more friendly – politically and otherwise – to our philosophy; people we could trust. We all had people we wanted to apply for the position. I had two, Eric had two, Louis had one, one was an existing employee, a black lady in her 50s or 60s, and one was from the outside who just had a resume that looked good. She was the no-show.”Mr. Evans denied having a “personal pick,” but Mr. Wolfe said Mr. Evans’ invitee was a “blonde, young woman from HEB,” who made the top three. Mr. Wolfe said he met the eventual hire, Ms. Smith, a year earlier at the Harris County Republican Primary office.
My impression was that Mr. Wolfe did not even know that what he had just told me was a boon to any decent plaintiff’s attorney who might want to accuse HCDE of deviating from their objective criteria to disfavor and discriminate, and that he was oblivious to the law.
Mr. Evans essentially confirmed my impression:
“Mike is a bit less formal than he should be. I did have to tell him not to ask certain questions. Illegal questions. I don’t think he’s ever held a management position.”Mr. Flynn flat out told me:
“Michael is a child. He doesn’t even know what he is saying. He may be autistic.”In any event, the verbally undisciplined Mr. Wolfe sat on the interview committee.
I haven’t even included some of the best parts, so yeah, you need to read this. You may also like reporter Shelby Webb’s Twitter thread about the meeting where this all came out. I don’t know what happens next, but I do know four things: 1) Michael Wolfe is even skeezier and sleazier than I had imagined; 2) Eric Dick may have forced me to say some complimentary things about him in the wake of the recent shenanigans, but he’s still Eric Dick; 3) Jared Woodfill has to make a buck somehow now that he can’t leech off of Republican judges; and 4) assuming that the Lege doesn’t kill off the HCDE, we will have another chance to boot Michael Wolfe off of the Board in 2020, along with Don Sumners. Hold onto that while we wallow in the current chaos.
Wolfe and friends have made it their life’s work to harass and eliminate the county school department. These guys do not give a damn about public education…..and I could say the same for several HISD trustees. When will our community take a serious look at the candidates for school board? Whether extreme- right bottom feeders or wacky local reality stars…..we really need to give our educational institutions a break!
Thank you for keeping us updated on this troubling investigation. The Trustees must operate with full transparency to strengthen the public’s trust in their leadership. Our children and educators deserve clear moral leadership. I pray they do the right thing at their next Soecial Board meeting to begin to right these wrongs. – HCDE Trustee Erica Lee Carter 2013-2018