Tolleson superintendent addresses student safety, financial allegations

Tolleson superintendent addresses allegations of financial mismanagement, student safety issues

Superintendent Jeremy Calles addressed the allegations made by a former principal, including an alleged failure to report a teacher's inappropriate conduct and questionable decisions about student safety. FOX 10's Nicole Krasean reports.

TOLLESON, Ariz. - Tolleson Union High School District Superintendent Jeremy Calles spent over an hour addressing claims made at a joint legislative audit committee on Oct. 7. This comes after that committee ordered an audit of the school district due to allegations of financial mismanagement and conduct that did not prioritize student safety. 

What we know:

A former district principal made those allegations in Tuesday's committee meeting. Superintendent Calles continues to deny any illegal wrongdoings, addressing each allegation one by one during a presser on Oct. 8.

"At the end of the day, all of this stuff is about disagreements over how to run business," said Calles.

Superintendent Calles was adamant that allegations made by former Tolleson Union High School Principal Felipe Mandurraga during a J-LAC meeting were unfounded or misconstrued.

Among those allegations was a failure to report inappropriate behavior from a Tolleson High School teacher who later resigned without discipline, despite a report that he had sent an inappropriate message to a student.

What they're saying:

Mandurraga detailed the situation at the committee meeting: "We involved HR. HR came, escorted the staff member off campus. Did you see the text? I did. OK. The text was him. He was laying on a bed. He didn't have a shirt on."

Mandurraga was then asked if the district filed a complaint with the State Board of Education for an investigation.

"No, they did not. Nor did they file a police report on this matter," Mandurraga said.

Calles said he has not seen the image in question and it is not in the former employee’s file.

"We’ve talked to legal counsel to ask them whether or not this would be an event that requires mandatory reporting and they said it depends on some of the related context, so we would need more information," Calles said. "Information that was not presented to me at the time, but in the event that Felipe felt it was a mandatory reporting event, that is exactly what he should’ve done."

Dig deeper:

Mandurraga also brought up Calles’ desire to purchase a charter school in order to qualify for a new school.

"The charter school was on 67th Avenue in Buckeye. He mentioned this in principal meetings twice, backed by CFO Ken Hicks, joking that, yeah, we went in and tried to buy them when he was trying to get the numbers past the threshold to receive the funding to kick in for the new school," Mandurraga said.

Calles responded that there was nothing inappropriate about the idea: "Our bond authorization allows us to purchase school buildings, land, there’s nothing illegal about that conversation or about moving forward with that direction if that was what we had ended up doing."

School safety was also brought up to the committee, as Mandurraga detailed an incident where a student was accused of bringing a weapon to school and was back in school days later.

"A few months later on Thanksgiving morning, this student had a shootout in front of his house where he shot two other kids and was taken into custody," Mandurraga said.

Representative Matt Gress then clarified, "This is the same student that Superintendent Calles ordered to be let back into class?"

"Chairman Gress, yes it was," Mandurraga replied.

Gress continued: "And he engaged in a shootout and shot two other kids?"

"Yep, on Thanksgiving morning in front of his house," Mandurraga said.

Calles pointed out that there was never proof that the student had a weapon on school campus.

"We have to actually have evidence, actually have an image of the student with a weapon on campus, we have to have actually searched the student and found them to be in possession of a weapon," Calles said. "The moment we start expelling students based on somebody said so, that’s a major issue."

What's next:

The bipartisan committee voted unanimously to order the special audit.

Calles said he has filed a defamation suit against Rep. Gress and has been in contact with the auditor general. He will meet with them later this month.