Bullying accusations put Katy in spotlight

School board President Ashely Vann said Lance Hindt was her pick from the start when Katy Independent School District started interviewing for a superintendent two years ago.

“He stood out as the leader that this district was very hungry for,” said Vann, a Taylor High graduate and now amother of three. “He knew the Katy community. He loved the Katy community. He brought so many great ideas and suggestions of where he saw the district going.”

But Katy ISD’s star superintendent has become a polarizing figure in recent weeks in the suburban community west of Houston. In a speech of less than two minutes at a school board meeting, a local businessman publicly accused Hindt of bullying him in a boys bathroom when they both attended West Memorial Junior High 40 years ago.

“Lance, you were the one that shoved my head in the urinal,” Greg Barrett told a stunned Hindt and board last month at a sparsely attended meeting. “I had teachers that bullied me. I had kids that bullied me. I had nobody to turn to.”

Since then, Hindt’s tenure as superintendent has come under nationwide scrutiny amid questions about his leadership and how long someone should be held responsible for something they might have done as a teenager.

Hindt denied the incident, but the controversy continued to snowball as allegations surfaced that an 18-year-old Hindt had beaten a man into a five-day coma and had thrown weights at his teammates. Hindt canceled a scheduled interview last week with a Houston Chronicle reporter but answered questions by email.

“I was disappointed by the accusation because it simply was not me who was involved in the incident described,” Hindt wrote. “I by no means suggest that the gentleman was not bullied, only that I was not part of it. Bullying is wrong. Period.”

The allegations have left the community of over 300,000 divided, with a petition to terminate and another in support of the superintendent circulating on the internet. The two sides are squaring off on Facebook, and a few are lobbing hate email to board members and threats of violence against the superintendent and his family.

Some are stunned that Hindt initially seemed to chuckle when the allegations were made and didn’t offer an apology. Hindt, who previously led the Allen and Stafford school districts, told staff in an email last week that he was not a perfect teenager and has since found God.

“I’m not seeing kindness. I’m not seeing openness, and that concerns me,” said Erica Barbee, parent of two daughters in Katy ISD. “When you’re confronted in a public forum, by a man (who) said that he was bullied … you can tell it still hurts him, and then it’s just brushed off and dismissed. It wasn’t just the superintendent. It seemed like everybody up there on the school board was just like, ‘Well, whatever.’”

Others say Hindt seemed to take the matter to heart.

“I was absolutely floored. I can tell you (Hindt) was absolutely devastated,” Katy ISD Board Secretary Charles Griffin said about Barrett’s initial allegations. “That was a hammer blow to him. There was no laughter from him. There was absolute shock.”

A confident leader

Board members and parents have praised Hindt for his leadership, describing him as a compassionate, intelligent and humble person who has led the 77,000-student district through a hurricane, a successful bond election and construction of a controversial, top-dollar football stadium in less than two years at the helm.

Jeannie Griffith, whose son attends McMeans Junior High, was touched by Hindt’s resolve during Hurricane Harvey as he opened shelters at Katy schools and worked tirelessly to make sure the community was safe. She said Hindt has an open door, taking meetings at all hours with concerned parents, even meeting at 5a.m. with a group of older ladies for coffee at Denny’s.

“There’s just nothing cruel or unkind in the man that I know now,” Griffith said.

Katy ISD board members recall being impressed with Hindt’s extensive career as superintendent of two school districts and his experience as a teacher, starting as a geography, health and physical education teacher at Dulles High School in Fort Bend ISD. His Katy roots as a 1983 graduate of Katy ISD’s James E. Taylor High School also made him stand out. He began attending West Memorial Junior High in eighth grade after moving from San Antonio. Hindt, 53, has two adult children with his wife, Kathryn, an instructional coach in the district.

The superintendent said he always had intentions to come back to Katy.

“I was once just another kid who walked those halls,” he wrote in his email to the Chronicle. “Katy is where my roots were first grounded and being a part of this community again and being able to give back to the community that helped raise me has been one of the best life decisions I have made. To this day, my dad and brother reside here. So being here in Katy, serving this district, is not just a job, it’s really personal for me.”

Griffin and Vann stressed that superintendents go through a vetting process and criminal background check. Representatives from Houston law firm Thompson & Horton were hired to conduct the search when Superintendent Alton Frailey announced he was retiring in January 2016.

Griffin, who was board president at the time, said applicants with professional blemishes are disqualified and don’t make it to the final round.

“If Dr. Hindt had things in elementary, junior high or high school that this community didn’t like, I guarantee you, we as a board would’ve heard about it,” he said.

Griffin remembers Hindt being confident during interviews about the direction he wanted to take the district. His strong communication skills during the interview process have carried into his tenure as superintendent, as he provides weekly updates to board members and posts updates about the school year to You-Tube.

“Dr. Hindt knew the community. He knew how we were performing,” Griffin said. “His vision inside those discussions and inside those interviews demonstrated to us that he had the ability to take us from being a good, solid district to that next level.”

Once chosen as superintendent, Hindt went on to help win voter approval of a $609 million bond package in November. He also successfully backed teacher pay raises and created Katy ISD’s first-ever five-year strategic plan, which outlines goals for the school district.

The superintendent also sparked controversy in November when district officials temporarily pulled “The Hate U Give,” a popular young adult book about racism and police brutality, from library shelves at several junior high and high schools after a parent complained about its language.

Hindt disputed the author’s account that the book had been banned, stressing that it was removed pending a review because it contained “pervasive vulgarity and racially insensitive language.” The books returned to high school shelves in January.

Other accusations

Rory Robertson, 41, shook hands with Hindt on the first day of school in 2016 at Ursula Stephens Elementary at the start of his tenure as superintendent.

“He looked me in the eye and he paid attention to what I was saying. He wasn’t rushing to get out,” Robertson said. “I knew at that point what a good leader he was.”

Robertson, who has 11-year-old twins at the elementary school, knows about the now-infamous, 1-minute-52-second video of Barrett’s comments at the March 19 board meeting.

Barrett describes the attacks he endured because his last name at the time was Gay.

“I went home and got the .45 out of my father’s drawer and put it in my mouth,” Barrett told the board. “At this point, I had nobody in the school system to help me.”

A civil suit also has surfaced from 1983, in which a Houston-area man said he was assaulted by a then-18-year-old Hindt after an altercation following a party. Hindt, along with his girlfriend at the time, left William Stein “lying on the ground in an unconscious state,” according to court documents.

Stein allegedly suffered multiple injuries, including blunt trauma to his head, rib fractures and laceration of his left upper lip. He reportedly went into a coma and didn’t wake up for five days.

The suit was settled in 1985 in Harris County, and court costs were paid for the plaintiffs by Hindt and another defendant who hosted the party.

A man who is now an Alabama circuit court judge has told reporters he recalls Hindt throwing 25-pound weights at him and other teammates at Taylor High in the early 1980s. He called Hindt a“vicious bully.”

Despite the allegations, Katy parent Robertson created a petition to show support for the superintendent, saying he’s proud of the direction Hindt has taken the district. The petition had garnered more than 2,000 signatures as of Saturday. Robertson said he has respect for Barrett but wishes he had set up a private meeting to address his concerns with the superintendent.

“That kind of pulls me away from the veracity of the argument that Dr. Hindt was involved because he chose to do it so publicly,” Robertson said.

Don Elder, who served on the Katy ISD board when Hindt played football for Taylor High School, said he also wishes Barrett had met with Hindt privately. Elder, a former Katy mayor, said he doesn’t recall Hindt having any incidents while at Taylor and remembers handing the young man his high school diploma at graduation.

“Today, we have a lot of things out there from social media just looking to ruin people’s careers and their personal lives, their family lives,” Elder said. “You have to be real careful because a lot of it can be hearsay.”

A petition calling for the superintendent’s termination had gained more than 4,500 signatures as of Saturday. Nitant Patel, who graduated from Katy ISD’s Tompkins High School in 2017, started the petition last month, echoing the sentiments of parents who want Hindt to take responsibility for his actions and speak openly about past mistakes.

“(If) Dr. Hindt came down off the podium, gave Greg a hug, even if this never happened, even if this is all some big misunderstanding,” said Sean Dolan, a Katy ISD parent who spoke about bullying issues in the district at a school board meeting in February. “If he had just showed some compassion and told Greg that he doesn’t remember this occurring, (that) he’s made mistakes in his life but he’s a different person today … It would’ve been so good that it wouldn’t have even made the news.”

‘A lot of questions’

Since the first allegations came out from Barrett, Hindt said it’s been a difficult time for him.

“I have spent 27 years dedicating my life, my passion and my commitment to my family, students, staff and the communities I have been privileged to serve. But I recognize I am not a perfect person, none of us are,” he wrote in his email to the Chronicle. “While I understand the perception of my initial response, Ihope that my community will understand that my reaction to the accusation that was made was one of shock, not insensitivity or disrespect.”

Hindt wants to move past the allegations. The board also appears supportive of Hindt and has announced no plans to remove or reprimand him.

“I want to focus on moving our district ahead, to keep it not only the best in Texas, but the best in the nation. I’ve been heartened by the support I have received, in person, in texts, emails and in phone calls,” he said. “This is an amazing community and the parents, staff, students and community members have showed me that every day.”

But despite Hindt’s desire to move forward, the spotlight on the community continues to grow. Vann said she’s received hate email, mostly from places outside of Katy, such as Florida, Indiana and Illinois.

“If we all lived our lives judging on past mistakes, how can we ever stand up and be proud of the improvements?” Vann asked. “If we judged every single employee by the mistakes that they made in junior high, we would have no one to employ.”

But some parents are having a hard time moving forward.

“He’s just hiding, and the school board is hiding behind the statement, ‘Well, he was vetted,’ ” Barbee said. “There’s just a lot of questions that I have, I think every parent has, and we’re not getting any answers.” brooke.lewis@chron.com twitter.com/brookelewisa