Beeville school trustees met Tuesday and tried to get at the bottom of how and why the proposed tax rate hike failed last week.

They specifically wanted to know what, if anything, BISD Superintendent John Hardwick Jr. did to address the Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to the tax rate hike.

The 6-cent tax rate hike would have paid for a 3 percent across-the-board pay raise for employees.

Hardwick, reading from prepared notes, recalled all the meetings and conversations he had with the Chamber, specifically its president, Pam Priour Stuart, Board Chairman Karl Arnst and Jessy T. Garza, who chairs the chamber’s Public Affairs Committee, which drafted the position statement opposing the tax rate increase.

Hardwick said he and Chamber members met shortly after the Chamber’s position statement was published in the Bee-Picayune.

He said he and the Chamber members came to an agreement that the Chamber would issue a new position statement that called for the Chamber to admit it should have met with school officials first before issuing their first position statement.

Hardwick said the Chamber’s second position statement also was to have included an admission that the Chamber might have not opposed the tax rate hike had it known more about the school district’s financial struggles and how campuses are graded by the federal government.

However, Hardwick said, that second position statement was never published in the paper.

“It was pulled at the last moment,” he said.

He said he met with Chamber members a second time and discussed issuing a new statement that included his comments on the matter.

However, that new position statement also made front-page headlines even though he had been promised it would not, he told trustees.

Hardwick said the second front-page story on the issue included a statement that the Chamber promised to work with the school district to improve education but did not retract the Chamber’s opposition to the tax rate hike.

Board President Nick Cardenas said he thought the Chamber should apologize to the school district “in black and white,” apparently meaning in the newspaper.

The board agreed to appoint three trustees to a subcommittee that will work with administrators to find some $350,000 in budget cuts brought about by the tax rate hike failure. The board will hear their report later this fall.