Once upon a time, Joseph Palazzolo was an assistant principal and campus diversity representative at Arlington Heights High School in FWISD.

In 2010, Palazzolo noticed that FWISD was inflating school attendance records and achievement so that the district would get more state funding. He reported FWISD’s false reports, along with inappropriate sexual conduct by teachers, misuse of booster club funds, and discrimination against minority students – where white students were not being disciplined for engaging in conduct for which minority students were disciplined.

In response to Palazzolo's report of false attendance records, theTEA and feds investigated, and FWISD had to return $39 million dollars to the Department of Education in 2014.

In return for his zealous attempt to root out discrimination, FWISD put Palazzolo on administrative leave, and then fired him in 2012, claiming bullying and discriminatory misconduct that its management had never noticed before his reports. The Board justified their termination based on evidence never produced to the Board, and pretty clearly just made up to support Palazzolo’s termination in the usual ‘circle the wagons’ archetypical defense every large institution employs when mortals offer any criticism.

In 2012, Palazzolo filed a whistleblower lawsuit against FWISD for his retaliatory termination. A jury awarded him $2.4M+ in his first 2014 trial. The case went through multiple appeals, the last of which concluding that a new trial should be granted because the first jury was not asked whether Palazzolo would have been fired if he had not reported FWISD’s behavior.

During this suit, FWISD demonstrated its complete lack of respect for the law and any semblance of moral behavior at least twice, where every rational person would see that FWISD’s management was acting to protect themselves, and no price or action was too much.

First, during Palazzolo’s termination hearing, the district had secretly paid the hearing examiner three times the amount allowed by law. Not surprisingly, the examiner ruled in the district's favor regarding Palazzolo's termination. When the Texas Commissioner of Education Commissioner found out about it, he characterized as bribery. Within days of that ruling, the superintendent resigned, citing, at least in part, the mishandling of Palazzolo’s case.

Second, FWISD lied about communications with the Department of Education, refusing to produce the documents as required during the lawsuit, and then lied to the press, or in the case of the Star-Telegram, engaged the media to cover up the district's moral, ethical, and legal failures. The Star-Telegram parroted the district’s lie and cooperated to mislead the public with an explanation that a computer glitch caused an overpayment of $39 million that had to be resolved. (Once again, the Star-Telegram showed itself to be a mechanism for unaccountability.)

No one associated with FWISD has ever admitted liability for these failures, even now, more than a decade later, when the facts are so obvious.

Norred Law picked up the case after it was returned to the trial court for a new trial in 2023. And after another two years, on the eve of trial. Recently, on the eve of trial, FWISD filed another plea to jurisdiction. When the trial court denied the arguably frivolous plea, the district appealed again. The case is now before the Second Court of Appeals, again.

Every court that has touched this case has found it has jurisdiction, including the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth and the Texas Supreme Court. But hey, umpteenth time’s a charm, right?

None of this has occurred in a vacuum. While FWISD has attempted to dodge liability for more than a decade for its retaliation against an employee who wanted the district’s discriminatory behavior to end, the district has also simply failed to provide an education generally to the children of Fort Worth, Late last year, the TEA concluded that the district’s performance so poor that the state needs to take over. It turns out that the FWISD's board has not been serious about educating the city's children so consistently for many years that even other educrats must admit something must be done to change direction.

Ignoring for a moment the big picture, this case is just about one guy, Joseph Palazzolo, who just wants his missing pay and attorney fees. He's even offered settlements that would stop this madness. But it is not clear if the FWISD Board even knows of these settlement opportunities, or if anyone is managing its legal team at all.

The Board had no opportunity to meet and give direction to its attorney since losing the plea to jurisdiction, or even responding to a settlement offer. At this point, there’s no way to know if the board’s attorney is even informing his client, the beleaguered Board of Trustees of FWISD. The case has not been on the FWISD’s meeting agendas, so any communication is little more than based on an illegal walking quorum, but that’s standard practice with school boards (irrespective of their legality).

All we really know at this point is that the FWISD Board would rather pay attorneys an absurdly huge legal bill than to pay a principal for doing his job.