As the Santa Clara County Office of Education board faces backlash for firing Superintendent Mary Ann Dewan, it’s responding with an “extraordinary” request for third-party audits into misuse of school district funds during Dewan’s tenure.
The audits will focus on unspecified contract awards and expenditures of public funds, as well as allegations of email surveillance over school district personnel, according to a Friday announcement from Interim Superintendent Charles Hinman. The investigations will also seek third-party examinations on “expenditure of public funds for personal legal fees” — an apparent reference to Dewan’s legal fight to reverse the board majority’s Oct. 2 vote to fire her without cause.
“I support Interim Superintendent Dr. Hinman’s call for complete independent reviews of (the office of education’s) finances and operations,” County Board of Education President Maimona Afzal Berta said in the statement. “Any potential misuse of public funds needs to be investigated immediately.”
The announcement is expected to come up during the next board meeting on Wednesday.
Dewan didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Officials say they’ve also contacted local law enforcement and will “fully cooperate” with any federal investigation into the county’s Head Start program. Federal investigators visited the office of education earlier this summer in an ongoing review to determine if federal funds were used to pay salaries and other expenses for non-Head Start employees.
Sources told San José Spotlight on condition of anonymity to speak freely the investigations are not focused solely on Dewan, but will focus on the entire office of education financially and operationally. The investigation will also seek to answer whether public funds were misappropriated in the superintendent’s office. Sources said the timeline for the investigation isn’t immediately clear, but that more concrete answers could come at upcoming board meetings — and that there is “great urgency.”
Dewan’s firing has met fierce pushback from state lawmakers and even prompted calls for a civil grand jury investigation. But members of the special education community — namely disabled teachers and students and their parents — have welcomed Dewan’s ousting amid issues providing American Sign Language interpreters for deaf students and instructors, which impacted student learning and the ability to hold parent conferences.
Faviola Bataz, mother of a special education student in the Gilroy Unified School District, said it’s time to move the office of education in a new direction. For more than a year she’s spoken critically of Dewan’s administration after the Gateway School in Gilroy — specifically designed for disabled children — started sharing the campus with non-special education students. Bataz said there’s also been a lack of school nurses devoted specifically to the special education department.
“My son had a seizure back in December and there was no such nurse on site,” Bataz told San José Spotlight.
It all comes after an apparent power struggle between Dewan and a majority of the office of education’s elected trustees. Dewan has argued the board majority had no authority to fire her and she was not technically employed by them. A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge denied her lawsuit.
Before her firing, Dewan requested an investigation — outside of her office’s complaint policies and procedures — into board members for allegedly violating policies and public meeting laws, retaliating against employees and harassing her.
The investigation was made public in October and chipped away at the political support of one trustee who voted to fire Dewan, Grace Mah, who the investigation dinged for flippantly disregarding the Brown Act public meeting law. Former San Jose Mayor and congressional candidate Sam Liccardo later dropped his endorsement of Mah in her reelection bid against Jessica Speiser, a Los Altos School District board member.
One of Dewan’s supporters on the board, trustee Tara Sreekrishnan, is raising concerns from the other side. Sreekrishnan criticized the board majority’s hiring of four outside attorneys over the past year to represent them as they deliberated Dewan’s employment behind closed doors.
“The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough lawyers — it’s that we don’t have enough public accountability,” Sreekrishnan told San José Spotlight. “Constantly switching legal counsel without clear justification wastes resources that should be focused on our students, not an endless legal merry-go-round.”
Board President Maimona Afzal Berta said the board was forced to hire outside counsel because their traditional lawyer, County Counsel Tony LoPresti, represented both the board of education and superintendent — presenting a conflict of interest.
Berta further criticized Dewan for entering into an agreement for legal services with LoPresti in June and “unilaterally” signing a “broad waiver of any conflicts of interest.”
“At no time did Dr. Dewan provide the board of education with any opportunity to review the terms of this waiver or to express the board’s potential objections,” Berta told San José Spotlight. “The agreement signed by Dr. Dewan with the county counsel’s office does not bear any signature by any member of the board of education.”
LoPresti’s office in October terminated its agreement providing legal services to the office of education. That same month, the county Board of Supervisors — also represented by LoPresti — voted to pursue changes to the board of education’s leadership structure. The options, which will return for discussion in January, could include making the superintendent position an elected one — and making trustees appointed by supervisors, rather than elected.
Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.