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TASBO President Profile
David Garcia is a numbers guy, which should come as no surprise. He’s the chief financial officer for Midland ISD — a $42 million-a-year outfit that is the city’s largest employer, biggest food-service provider and biggest transportation contractor. He also stepped up this month to serve as president of the Texas Association of School Business Officials.
Garcia is surrounded by numbers. He’s up to his assets in them: contracts, salaries, state mandates, federal grants and so forth. But two numbers are particularly meaningful to Garcia: 200 and 20,000 (or thereabouts). They explain who he is and how he got this way. Let’s begin with 200. “I played sports, particularly football and baseball,” Garcia says of his childhood in Hobbs, N.M. “I actually thought I might play pro baseball.” He was good enough to walk on to the Texas Tech University baseball team as a pitcher and outfielder, but then reality whizzed by like a fastball, high and inside. “I figured out pretty soon there were at least 200 players better than I was,” he says, and so he embarked on Plan B. A business management major, he took a couple accounting courses, enjoyed them and pursued a career as a CPA. After graduating from college, he worked in public accounting for seven years, auditing all kinds of business, industry and government entities, including an education service center. He found public school finance particularly interesting, so when a position as an accounting supervisor with Midland ISD opened, he went for it. “The education service centers correlate very well to schools in terms of expenditures,” Garcia says. “So, I had a little background and insight into what a school district does when I went to work here.” Except for one year working for Katy ISD, he has been with Midland ISD ever since — through the best of times, in terms of public school finance, and recently, through the worst. “Back in college, my teachers stressed the need to forecast where you want to be in five or 10 years,” he says. “Well, that’s virtually impossible in school finance. Everything is measured on a two-year basis, and the revenue streams change every time the Legislature meets. That really makes it challenging.” Of course, every session at the Texas Capitol brings an influx of new laws, rules and mandates. There’s also the spate of federal programs, regulations and deadlines — especially deadlines. Hundreds of them. Garcia estimates that his staff this year has hustled to meet at least 800 deadlines to satisfy American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) guidelines. “I’ve figured it out,” he says. “I have to live through three more legislative sessions before I am eligible to retire. If I can just make it that long, I will have earned my retirement.” He kids, but Garcia loves his job — especially performing old-school accounting when the opportunity presents itself, such as when a staff member gets stuck in the numbers.
“I really enjoy digging down and trying to solve a problem or account for something,” he says. After all, he is a numbers guy — which bring us to the number 20,000 and how it also shaped his career path. Here’s the story: Garcia’s father was a self-made man who worked as a cowboy on the famous King Ranch in Kingsville as a youngster. He then moved to New Mexico, where he took whatever work he could find. He landed a job pumping gas and eventually bought a Shell station and then a Texaco station, which he operated for more than 30 years. The senior Garcia believed in hard work, particularly from his four sons and daughter, whom he considered built-in employees. “It was about the time the automated carwashes were being installed, back in the 1970s,” says Garcia, the youngest of the five. “The cars would go through the carwash, and my brothers and sister and I would be sitting out front, waiting to dry them off. I bet I dried off at least 20,000 cars. “I knew pretty early on that working at a gas station wasn’t for me,” he muses.
BOBBY HAWTHORNE is the author of “Longhorn Football” and “Home Field,” both published by The University of Texas Press. In 2005, he retired as director of academics for the University Interscholastic League.
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“As school business professionals, we need to adhere to the philosophy that only when we take responsibility to develop the organization will we have an organization that can be relied upon as the most-trusted resource for school business officials,” he says. “I am privileged and honored to be part of the team that will lead TASBO into the future.”