Texas School for the Deaf board meets Thursday to grade its superintendent

The nine-member board that governs the Texas School for the Deaf meets Thursday afternoon for two items and nothing else: a year-end evaluation of the superintendent and his goals for the year ahead.

The review is a routine of the board’s own making. It runs a two-stage cycle — a mid-year look in February, a summative one in August — and has done so each of the past three years. Board president Shawn Saladin, a University of Texas Rio Grande Valley administrator who grew up hard of hearing, presents both items, as he did at the February meeting. Superintendent Peter L. Bailey is the school’s 28th, hired in April 2023 and in the job since that September, at a salary the state’s budget office sets at $185,000. Nothing published describes how any past evaluation came out.

One thing about the notice does stand out: the date is not on the meeting schedule the school publishes, which shows August 20 and 21. The rest matches past practice. The August agendas of 2024 and 2025 also had no public comment item and no closed session listed, while the February meetings put the mid-year review behind closed doors. This notice reserves the right to close any item without scheduling it.

The school calls itself the oldest continuously operating public school in Texas, founded in 1856, and it is a state agency in its own right. Its most recent annual report puts enrollment at 500. About half its students live outside the Austin area and ride charter buses home at weekends, according to the state’s budget office. State law requires at least five of the nine board members to be deaf, at least three to be parents of a deaf person, at least three to have experience working with deaf people and at least one to be an alumnus, and directs the board to run itself the way an independent school district’s trustees do.

The school is also defending itself. A parent sued in federal court in Austin last October after her child was found ineligible to attend, alleging disability discrimination; the school answered in January and no ruling on the merits has come. In a public statement in February the school said it cannot comment on litigation or discuss individual students, that its admissions language comes from state law and has since 2006, and that its special needs department was restructured before Bailey arrived, to keep students with additional needs out of more restrictive settings than they need. What to watch Thursday is whether the board keeps the evaluation in the open.

Meeting at a glance

Board members

• Shawn P. Saladin, Edinburg — president; accessibility director, UT Rio Grande Valley.
• Heather “Hex” Lightfoot, Austin — vice president; competed in the Deaflympics.
• Christopher Moreland, New Braunfels — secretary; internist, UT Health San Antonio.
• Lisalee D. Egbert, Arlington — sign language professor, UT Arlington.
• Gregorio Mata, Edinburg — school alumnus, class of 2016; works at Activating Change.
• Darlene “DJ” Nobles, Waco — owner, Interpreters 2 Go; certified interpreter.
• Oscar Ocuto, Austin — associate professor of education, Gallaudet University.
• Lauren Ridloff, Austin — actress; mother of two deaf sons.
• Kathy Sellers, Kosse — lead interpreter for the Bryan school district.

Biographies and term dates are on the school’s own board bios page. The nine seats, the six-year terms and the requirements that at least five members be deaf and at least three be parents of a deaf person are set by Education Code §30.052, which also directs the board to organize itself like an independent school district’s board of trustees. Members serve without salary. Roll is called by Kimberly “KV” Smith, the superintendent’s executive assistant and board liaison.