A Conflict of Allegations and Accountability
After facing public reprimand and sanctions for speaking to the media, Edgewood Independent School District trustee Michael Valdez is now calling on the board to hold his colleagues accountable for their own conduct—particularly board president James Hernandez. Valdez has accused Hernandez of sexual harassment, an allegation that Hernandez has dismissed as “meritless.”
The Edgewood ISD board censured Valdez during a special meeting on September 8 for criticizing district leadership over the arrest of a community member at a previous meeting. The sanctions included stripping him of all committee assignments, barring him from traveling on official district business, making him ineligible to serve as a board officer, and requiring additional governance training.
In a Sept. 19 email exchange provided to the San Antonio Express-News, Hernandez asked Valdez if he had any questions regarding the sanctions. Valdez responded by calling the measures “inappropriate and retaliatory.” He argued that if the board were truly committed to upholding standards, his colleagues would have faced similar sanctions for misconduct, citing a list of allegations—from posting inappropriate content on social media to threatening violence during board meetings.
The most serious accusation came against Hernandez. In his email, Valdez claimed that the board president should have been sanctioned for “unwanted sexual comments and physical contact.” “The way this board is run is not governance,” Valdez wrote. “It is politics. And it is ugly. If anyone deserves sanctions, it is you.”
According to an Edgewood ISD police report obtained by the Express-News, Valdez contacted district police in July 2023 to report the alleged sexual harassment. At the time, Valdez was 19 years old. He told police that Hernandez, then vice president of the board, “sexually harassed him and attempted to groom him” during a three-day board governance conference in Galveston in March 2023.
On the first day of the conference, Valdez alleged that Hernandez commented on his appearance and questioned his sexuality. Later that evening, Valdez said Hernandez sent him several text messages asking to meet up and come over to his hotel room. According to the police report and a screenshot of the text messages provided to the Express-News, Hernandez also asked, “Do you need someone to tuck you in?”
Valdez also alleged that Hernandez later walked up to him, grabbed his tie, and pulled it down with force, causing Valdez to thrust forward. He told police that when the event ended, Hernandez whispered in his ear that he “looked cute” and continued to text him through the night, asking if he wanted to come over.
In a written statement provided to police, Valdez said this wasn’t the first time that comments by Hernandez made him feel uncomfortable. At a February 2023 board meeting, a few months after Valdez was elected, he said Hernandez “asked me what my sexuality is and made me feel uncomfortable by saying he had many boyfriends when he was my age.”
The Edgewood ISD Police Department did not immediately respond to provide an update on the case.
Legal and Board Responses
In a May 2023 email provided to the Express-News, Valdez asked board members and Edgewood ISD attorney Juan Cruz how the sexual harassment event could be addressed, adding that “it is affecting me both physically and mentally.” In his response to Valdez, Cruz noted that the board had already addressed the matter during a closed session. He also said he advised the board that the situation involving Hernandez “does not fall within the definition of sexual harassment.”
Cruz added that if Valdez wished to bring up the matter at a future board meeting, he would need to find a trustee to co-sponsor the item for it to be added to the agenda, as outlined in board policy. “Any allegations of misconduct on the part of any trustee should be proven up by objective evidence,” Cruz wrote. “Please be advised that the district cannot pay for legal fees associated with any court complaints filed between you and trustee Hernandez on behalf of either trustee. Provided that a lawsuit is filed claiming defamation, you and trustee Valdez will have to secure independent legal counsel to address those matters in court.”
On Wednesday, the district’s attorney declined to elaborate on why the allegations did not constitute sexual harassment, stating that discussions in closed session are confidential under Texas law.
In a statement Wednesday, Hernandez said Valdez was unable to produce any evidence to substantiate the claims because “his story is one of complete lies.” He accused Valdez of trying to divert attention from “his own childish and offensive behavior,” which recently led to his second sanction as a trustee.
Additional Allegations and Community Concerns
When Valdez reported the alleged sexual harassment to district police, he also told officers that trustee Luis Gomez threatened to assault him. According to the police report, Gomez said he had been frustrated with Valdez over two incidents. First, Valdez reportedly failed to apologize after making the trustees wait over an hour for Gomez to drive them home from the Galveston conference. Second, Valdez allegedly mocked Gomez for being deaf in one ear—a result of an injury he sustained while serving in the Vietnam War.
Gomez, who was 72 at the time, told officers that those two incidents “were just eating me alive and I had to say something to him, but I wanted to do it in a setting where there would be other witnesses because at this point it was best I was not in a room by myself,” the report says. Gomez said he decided to address the incidents at a board meeting, but Valdez kept interrupting him. According to the police report, Gomez said he told Valdez “not to interrupt me again because I was going to slap him.”
Edgewood ISD police closed the case after concluding there was no evidence Gomez had committed a crime.
Valdez has recently made a new allegation—against trustee Sergio Delgado Jr. On Sept. 10, a community member emailed the board president and superintendent screenshots of sexually suggestive posts from Delgado’s public Facebook account and called for Delgado to be reprimanded and censured for the “embarrassing and unacceptable behavior.”
Two days later, Delgado posted a message on his Facebook page addressing the complaint. “Look I’m a grown ass man and if you have any issues with what I’m posting you can speak to me personally and if you are chicken sh** to do so send it in an email then,” he wrote.
The infighting comes as a vocal group of community members continues to call on Edgewood ISD leadership to rebuild trust with parents and respond to a community petition calling for a public commitment to improving school safety, student test scores, and communication with families.