Grand jury suggests superintendent used district money for meals, tech, travel
Investigations by independent parties
confirmed that the Fresno county grand jury report released was largely
accurate.
This was confirmed during a special board
meeting held on Oct. 13 and Oct. 15, where the investigators presented their
findings to the board and public. The reports from the investigators were made
available to the public.
The district is required to respond to the
grand jury report’s recommendations by Monday, Oct. 19. There are 15
recommendations including setting up a system of fiscal checks and balances and
creating new policies regarding contracts and nepotism.
“Overall the grand jury had it pretty right,”
said John Gray, president of School Services of America who was hired by the
district for the investigation.
“Most everything in this is true,” said
another investigator who worked on the case.
The Oct. 13 meeting was attended by residents,
school administrators and staff, parents and other members of the public. The
atmosphere was mostly somber with few comments from the public, and the
occasional gasps and shake of heads as investigators went down the list
of transgressions.
The grand jury report blasted the Parlier
Unified School District superintendent, administrators and board of trustees
for a variety of transgressions including excessive spending habits including
meals, travels and contracts with vendors.
Investigators found that many of the meals and
the travel were either not documented with receipts, or labeled as “team
building” or “supplies,” with little evidence of deliverable.
The report also criticized the district for
lack of transparency with board meetings, and overstaffing administrators for a
district where student population actually declined.
As a result of the report, PUSD Superintendent
Gerardo Alvarez was placed on leave of absence by the board.
After the report was released, the district
hired Gray and his team, and separately private investigator Chris Reynolds
investigate the report. The Fresno County Office of Education tapped the Fiscal
Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) to conduct a separate
investigation. The results of that investigation have yet to be released.
Gray said he was confident that FCMAT would do
a comprehensive job. He had initially suggested that FCMAT conduct the entire
investigation as he said he already had a full plate of projects, but the
district wanted a thorough investigation.
“My impression is they (the district) really
wanted to do it right,” he said.
Gray and Matt Phillips, also of School
Services of California, Inc., specifically investigated the financial aspects
of the report while Chris Reynolds focused on the personnel side.
Here are some of their key findings from
School Services of California:
• There is no evidence that the two trips to
Harvard University in 2014 — costing the district nearly $100,000 and involving
the Superintendent, trustees and key administrators, benefitted student
performance. According to the report, Edward Lucero, the acting superintendent,
Lou Saephan, assistant superintendent, and current board members, Jackie
Garcia-Escoto, Edgar Pelayo and Parlier high principal Alan Macedo attended the
second trip. After the Oct. 13 meeting Saephan, assistant superintendent, said
during the meeting that the trip was very helpful including gaining knowledge
from districts around the country. The program included observing actual
classroom instruction in “instructional round” style.
• The district, especially the superintendent,
spent district money to hold meetings at restaurants when they could have been
held at the district building at no cost. Examples included a $204.44 dinner at
Fleming’s Steak House in San Diego.
•Administrative regulations, including for
that regarding travel claims are vague; twenty-two out of 64 transactions
investigators reviewed had no itemized receipt or no receipt.
• The Superintendent’s credit limit is $5,000,
and but in January 2015 the Superintendent — without notifying the Business
Department or receiving board approval — opened another credit card with a
$50,000 limit. Card activity saw a sharp rise from over $10,000 in purchases
from Apple, the Harvard trip and other meeting expenses. Numerous expenses did
not have receipts.
• The Sunshine Club fund, launched in July
2013 with $2,850 in employee contributions, was meant to pay for gifts or birthday
cards for district employees. The Superintendent used the fund to reimburse
himself for $1,109 in “meeting supplies.” This included $464.88 for a one-night
stay at the Meritage Resort and Spa in Napa Valley. The Napa trip included
Alvarez and his wife, and former board member Mary Helen Villanueva and her
husband. Alvarez told investigator Chris Reynolds that the trip was for “team
building” with Villanueva. There wasn’t evidence that Villaneuva knew that her
expenses were paid for by the Sunshine Club fund.
• Despite a decline in student enrollment
since a peak of 4,321 students in the 2006-07 academic year the district has
grown the number of administrators. Some positions duplicated each other.
• Legal costs skyrocketed 300 percent from
2013-2014 to 2014-2015, in great part due to the costs related to the
disciplinary actions in the aftermath of the grand jury report.
• The district spent an estimated $60,000 in
2013-2014 and 2014-2015 for parents to send their children to schools outside
of the district.
• Parlier Unified underperforms compared to
surrounding districts. According to the data provided, 22.2 percent qualify for
University of California entrance compared to a statewide average of 41.9
percent.
The data according to Rafael Iniguez, PUSD’s
Career Technical Education Director, is not accurate since it is limited to UC.
In 2015, 42 percent of Parlier high seniors were eligible for university
admission. Iniguez added that the data bases used by the grand jury report and
Parlier High School are different.
“There are issues in the way data is being
tagged, so there could be a big margin for error,” Iniguez said. Gray concurred
with Iniguez and said that indeed there could be margin for error by using
different data bases.
Parlier Unified’s seven schools serve 3,400
students in seven schools with 416 employees. About 99 percent of the 3,400
students in the Parlier Unified School District are eligible for free or
reduced-price lunches.
After the meeting, Lucero said the
presentations had, “no surprises.”
“I thought both presentations were very well
presented, I thought Chris Reynolds was very thorough and very informative,”
said Lucero.
October 20, 2015
The
Reedley Exponent
By Amy Wu
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