Within three days Sweetwater Union High School District has been accused of potential financial fraud, laid off 223 employees and placed its superintendent on leave.
They were three more blows to a district that has been rocked by budget cuts and, in past years, a pay-to-play corruption scandal in which employees of construction companies were charged for wining and dining district leaders in exchange for school building contracts.
“In some ways, you kinda wanna sit back and say, ‘I told you so; why didn’t you guys listen?’” said Maty Adato, a Sweetwater resident who has watchdogged the district’s actions for years. “On the other hand, we say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it, you don’t want this for the kids of the district because it’s not an easy time for them.”
On Wednesday the school board voted 4-1 in a closed meeting to place Superintendent Karen Janney on paid leave after a state audit released Monday accused Janney and the district’s former finance staff of violating their fiduciary duty.
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The audit said Sweetwater staff had published inaccurate financial information on several occasions and misrepresented the district’s financial situation when asking the school board to approve employee raises and when presenting to a bond rating agency.
On Wednesday the board also voted to lay off 223 employees to help close an ongoing budget deficit that district staff had downplayed on several occasions, according to the audit.
“It’s just kind of a weird set of situations,” said Julie Walker, president of the Sweetwater teachers union. “We shouldn’t be surprised. This is Sweetwater. It’s rarely easy in Sweetwater.”
Amid all the turmoil in the district, it’s the students who are the real victims, Adato said. There are roughly 39,000 students in the Sweetwater district, and most of them are low-income.
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Board member Frank Tarantino was the only one to vote against placing Janney on leave. He stepped down from his position as president of the board because he said he believes the board should be led by somebody who agrees with the board’s majority decision.
“I just couldn’t support the decision to put Dr. Janney on administrative leave,” Tarantino said in an interview Thursday. “I didn’t think it was appropriate at this time... That’s coming from my heart.”
Tarantino said the ball is now in the San Diego County District Attorney’s court.
“They are really the only ones that can assess whether the allegations have merit and what the consequences are going to be,” Tarantino said.
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The board did not decide how long Janney’s leave will last, Tarantino said.
Janney was being paid a $243,308 annual salary as of the beginning of this school year. She has been Sweetwater’s superintendent since 2015.
The board appointed Moises Aguirre, who started in Sweetwater in 2015 as the district’s assistant superintendent of business services, as the acting superintendent while Janney is on leave. Aguirre does not have a teaching or administrative credential, according to the California Teaching Commission.
Before joining Sweetwater, Aguirre was the director of district relations at San Diego Unified.
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Aguirre said that while he doesn’t have any credentials, he has a doctorate in education and a breadth of experience working in different areas such as charter school oversight and parent engagement.
He said his focus is on continuing the district’s education and operations, responding to inquiries, making sure the district’s budget is sound and getting schools ready for reopening.
Walker said that, based on the audit, she doesn’t think the board did anything corrupt, unlike some former board trustees who were caught in the pay-to-play scandal. Instead, she thinks current board members made decisions based on misinformation they were given.
“The big question for me is, who gave them that information, and when it started coming to light, why didn’t they question the superintendent earlier,” Walker said.
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Walker said Janney did a good job improving the culture of the district but not managing the money.
“Ultimately she did not have a good handle on the money part of it,” Walker said. “When it was found out, the extent of it, she said she took responsibility for it, but in reality she just blamed it on outside factors.”
Meanwhile Adato said she thinks Janney, while not free of blame, is being made a scapegoat. She said the board members are just as responsible, because they should have known earlier that something was wrong. One board member is a school budget analyst, she said.
Adato said she has tried to warn the board about its frequent borrowing from the district’s Mello-Roos special tax fund, for instance.
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“We would say, ‘Stop borrowing from Mello; you shouldn’t have to borrow from Mello to make payroll,’” Adato said. “But they didn’t want to listen.”
A former Sweetwater internal auditor also discovered problems with the district’s financial books months before the district’s financial problems were highlighted in 2018, but there’s no indication the school board or district leadership acted on or learned of the auditor’s findings at the time.
Board members have not commented on the audit’s details. On Tuesday a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office said that office is reviewing the audit report.
The Sweetwater board will hold a closed session meeting at 6 p.m. on Friday.
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June 26, 2020 at 07:14PM
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'It's rarely easy in Sweetwater': Observers lament more turmoil for south county school district - The San Diego Union-Tribune
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