In what one district employee called a “nonsensical resolution that resolves nothing” the Rialto Unified School District Board of Trustees this week terminated Superintendent Cuauhtémoc Avila, who was put on paid administrative leave more than nine months ago over suspicions of professional misconduct that have never been specified or articulated.
The board cited no cause in the action taken against Avila on Wednesday in its 4-to-0 vote, which involved two of Avila’s supporters turning the page on a chapter that had at its center a mystery which continues to confound virtually everyone who knows anything about it other than the members of the school board, one or two of the district’s top administrators, the district’s legal counsel and a limited set of lawyers with a law firm retained to look into the matter involving Avila.
Simultaneously, some of the district’s teachers, some parents of students in the district and a few students are suggesting that the only explicable reason for the otherwise inexplicable behavior on the part of the involved district officials is that they are seeking to bury a sex scandal that upon exposure would potentially result in tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars in liability that would bankrupt the district.
The circumstance involving Avila, the board, and less than a dozen other district higher-ups entails a handful of facts that are known and some of which are hinted at or can be partially inferred and even more that lapse off into the province of the unknown.
One element that is known is that despite the relatively poor educational standards adhered to or achieved throughout Avila’s tenure, the contretemps that resulted in his departure did not grow out of any academic performance criteria relating to the students in the district during Avila’s tenancy as superintendent. Two other known factors grew out of the hostility that was brewing between Avila and two principal figures in the district – Rialto School District Board Member Edgar Montes and Patricia Chavez, the now suspended assistant superintendent for academic services with the district who was formerly the principal of Carter High School and was previous to that the lead innovation agent in the district’s education services division. A fourth factor is that tension had developed between at least some of the district’s Hispanic leaders and elements of the African American community in Rialto and/or others perceived as their supporters or advocates both in terms of providing African American students with educational opportunities or African American-owned businesses with district contracts. A fifth factor was that, as is the case in some other local districts, there was a tug-of-war going on in the district’s backroom over the prioritization of funding, in particular how much of the district’s budget should be earmarked for special education purposes. A sixth factor was the proliferation of sex scandals, most pointedly those relating to teachers having inappropriate intimate physical relationships with students though in a few isolated cases involving relationships between members of the faculty. A seventh factor was Avila’s efforts or actions to limit the district’s legal liability and legal expenses, which included seeking to closely monitor and control the work being undertaken by the district’s legal counsel and firms providing the district with specialized legal services. Ironically, after he was placed on administrative leave, Avila hired an attorney who lodged on his behalf a claim against the district and is now on the brink of filing suit against the district.
After graduating from UCLA, Avila hired on as a middle school teacher in the Compton Unified School District in 1994. He remained with Compton Unified for 13 years, during which time he moved into administrative assignments, and served as an elementary, middle, and high school principal. In 2007, Avila joined the Glendale Unified School District as the head of alternative education.
In 2008, he obtained his master’s degree in educational administration from California State University, Dominguez Hills. A year later, he moved into the position of director of educational services with Glendale Unified.
In 2012, Avila departed Glendale Unified and went to work for the Los Angeles County Office of Education as the assistant superintendent of educational programs, an assignment in which hee coordinated with the probation department, district attorney’s office and youth authority with regard to ensuring the continuum of education for incarcerated juveniles.
Avila was hired as superintendent of Rialto Unified in 2015 in the aftermath of a nonacademic scandal involving district accountant Judith Oakes and former Superintendent Harold Cebrun, who allowed his personal relationship with her to distract him and compromise is oversight of district operations such that she was able to embezzle $1,845,137.81 in proceeds from the sale of breakfasts lunches offered by the district’s schools through its food service division.
When Avila arrived in Rialto, the district already faced academic performance challenges, as its students’ overall test scores as well as those in math, reading/language and science fell significantly below the state average. Under Avila, the academic performance of Rialto students remained poor initially, declining very slightly from 2015 in 2016 and 2017, but showing a slight improvement in 2018, as the district’s students increased their test scores vis-a-vis the their counterparts in schools throughout the state, though overall the district remained below average scholastically. Academic scores from 2018 to 2019 steeply declined but rebounded sharply during the COVID pandemic, during school shutdowns. When traditional classroom instruction resumed in 2021, the district’s academic performance again went into a steep decline. At present, the district’s average testing ranking against other school districts in California is 3/10, which is in the bottom 50 percent of public schools in the state. Students in the Rialto Unified School District have an average math proficiency score of 16 percent against the California public school average of 33% and a reading proficiency score of 32 percent in comparison to the 47 percent statewide average. Science test scores in Rialto Unified are equally abysmal, with the average proficiency rating of district students at 15 percent compared to 29 percent for California students.
Despite the lackluster scholastic performance of students in the district over the years, the school board was not unduly alarmed, the Sentinel is told, as there was a conformance of opinion among board members that demographic factors were a major cause of the poor state test scores by the district’s students. Among the 23,450 students in Rialto Unified School District, 98 percent of the enrollment is minority, primarily Hispanic, with approaching 20 percent of the households in the city having no adults who speak English.
Thus, over the years, Avila was being given a pass for the lack of academic progress within the district. In recent years, however, there were problematic issues unrelated to scholastic achievement that had manifested at the district’s 19 elementary, 5 middle schools and four high schools. In many cases, behavioral issues were involved. The lion’s share of these pertained to misbehavior by students that had gone unaddressed, which extended to student-on-student violence and occasional instances of students assaulting teachers or district employees. There were in addition, during Avila’s tenure, approaching two dozen allegations, the Sentinel has learned, of instances of acts perpetrated by the district’s teachers, some of which involved students and some of which involved other members of the faculty. In a number of cases, inquiries into those accusations vindicated the accuser and the accusation make against the teacher or teachers was sustained. In others, the accusations were not verified.
There were a number of anomalies involving district teachers and students entailing sexualized misconduct. Among them were:
– A high school teacher who was impregnated by one of her students and carried the child to term. The relationship began before the student turned 18. The teacher and student later married.
– Two high school teachers who cornered a female high school junior at one of the teacher’s homes and attempted to have sexual intercourse with her.
– The introduction of pinball machines featuring “soft porn” themes and imagery into the safety center of one of the district’s middle schools.
– A high school principal who was informed of a teacher at his school making inappropriate sexual overtures to a student “sat” on that report until determining that neither the student nor her single parent would lodge an official complaint about the matter.
– Students at one of the district’s high schools talked openly about the visual indicators and “body language” they had witnessed which they openly interpreted as evidence of a sexual relationship between a faculty member and district administrator, each of whom were married to others.
The district’s administrators and the school board appeared to be unwilling to address any of these matters either officially or confidentially, students, faculty members and parents say. Nevertheless, when sexually-charged issues were raised with regard to Avila and another high-ranking district official who made allegations of her own against Avila, a bare majority of the sharply divided school board last year took action against both of them.
Indeed, the suspension of Avila that occurred in May 2024 was effectuated under what to multiple observers came across as an extremely extenuated scenario.
The vote to place Avila on leave was made at the May 8, 2024 board meeting. The circumstances surrounding that vote were curious at best and what, at both the time and in hindsight, comes across as rather extraordinary.
Beginning with the 2023-2024 school year, the attendance of long-time Board Member Nancy O’Kelley, who had first been elected to the school board in 2012, at the school board’s meetings became very sporadic and then ceased altogether for six months. At the first meeting of the school year, on July 12, she was absent. She attended the next meeting on August 9, 2023, but was absent from the next meeting on August 23, 2023; September 13, 2023; September 27, 2023; October 11, 2023; October 25, 2023; November 4, 2023; November 15, 2023; December 13, 2023; January 17, 2024; February 7, 2024; February 21, 2024 and March 6, 2024. Under the California Government Code, following her sixth straight absence on November 4, 2023, her board colleagues had grounds to remove her from office. Based largely on what was then and has since been represented as their respect for her personally and for her status as a dedicated citizen and board member as well as her professional work for the district, including serving as principal of Eisenhower High School, prior to her election to the board, the board elected against doing so.
The Sentinel is informed that O’Kelley’s health and mental acumen had sharply declined beginning in 2022, leading to her being placed into a convalescent care facility, which accounted for her absences from board meetings in 2023 and 2024.
By March 2024, a movement was afoot to depose Avila as superintendent, the Sentinel is informed. A prime mover in that regard was Board Member Edgar Montes, sources say. While Montes had at that point the support of Board Member Evelyn Dominguez, who had been elected to the board without any opposition in her maiden political venture in 2022, board members Joseph Martinez and Stephanie Lewis were opposed to jettisoning Avila.
A special effort was made to retrieve O’Kelley from the specialized care facility she was then residing in to get her to the April 10, 2024 meeting. A closed session discussion of whether or not the district should “discipline, dismiss, release or reassign” Avila had been scheduled at Montes’s request. Montes was unable to convince O’Kelly to terminate or suspend Avila, however, and his vote combined with Dominguez’s was insufficient to pull the trigger on the superintendent.
A repeat of that effort was made at the April 24 meeting, which was attended once more by O’Kelley, for whom special travel accommodations had once more been made. As was previously the case, however, O’Kelley did not come across with a vote to cashier Avila.
On May 8, the board once more was scheduled to consider the termination or status of Avila in a closed session and O’Kelley’s presence at the meeting was arranged. On that occasion, O’Kelly joined with Montes and Dominguez in a vote to place Avila on paid administrative leave. While there were other items on the closed session agenda for that evening, the board did not work its way through those items during the closed session at the outset of the meeting during which they effectuated Avila’s suspension.
At one point during the meeting, O’Kelley appeared to not know that Avila had been suspended.
The board returned to open session thereafter and O’Kelley participated in those proceedings, but later, when the board again adjourned into a closed session at 9:49 p.m. to discuss and perhaps take action with regard to the remainder of the items scheduled for the closed session, a fatigued and overtaxed O’Kelly took leave and did not participate.
An effort at window dressing followed, as arrangements were made to have O’Kelley present at the specially called May 14, 2024 meeting at which it designated the district’s lead academic agent of math and early college programs and director of education services, Dr. Edward D’Souza, to replace Avila on an interim basis, as well as the May 22, 2024 meetings. She missed the June 12, 2024 meeting, but was present for the June 26, 2024 and July 10, 2024 meetings. She did not file papers with the county registrar of voters in July 2024 seek reelection in the November 2024 election and she was absent from the board’s special meeting on August 14, 2024, its regular meeting on August 14, 2024; and its September 25, 2024; October 16, 2024; and November 13, 2024 meetings.
The board did not terminate Avila with its May 8 action, but suspended him without citing cause, which was its prerogative given that he was an at-will employee. Nevertheless, the district continued to provide him with his $369,319.89 yearly salary, paid in biweekly increments, and his $92,664.98 in annual benefits.
A name that surfaced at the time of his suspension was that of Patricia Chavez, who has been designated by Avila as the district’s lead innovation agent for education services after she had served as the principal at Carter High. In 2016, Avila had plucked her from the administrative ranks in the Val Verde Unified School District.
The district, however, remained tight-lipped with regard to what relationship to or role in Avila’s suspension Chavez played.
It was thought that the district would look into whatever issue it was that had contributed to the decision to suspend Avila and make a decision in short order about whether to return him to his post as superintendent or terminate him. Quietly, the district retained the services of the Glendale-based law firm of Garcia Hernández Sawhney to verify or discredit accusations that had been leveled at Avila. During the course of that investigation, however, the lead attorney/investigator in that probe, Bonifacio Bonny Garcia, encountered details with regard to events that were not implicative of Avila but only tangentially related to him in his function as superintendent that were so explosive and potentially damaging to the district that members of the board immediately recognized that it would be expedient to simply leave the matter at rest. Consequently, the district for more than nine months has been in a state of paralysis and a holding pattern in which it was thought by all to be preferable to continue to pay Avila to stay at home and collect his pay for not showing up to work than to tear the scab off and have the district put into the position of hemorrhaging money that will in time break its bank.
In November, Avila complicated things by filing a claim against the district in which he explicitly stated that he had been placed on leave for spurious reasons that stemmed from his refusal to accede to pressure placed on him by Board Member Edgar Montes. He said that Montes wanted him to suspend the district’s normally applicable personnel requirements and qualification standards and hire Montes’ friends, associates and family members. Avila said Montes was insistent that Avila arrange to have the district retain the law firm of Leal-Trejo Attorneys at Law, which represents several other school districts in Southern California. Avila said that Montes pressured him to prioritize spending on special education programs in a way he felt was inappropriate and unjustified given other demands on limited educational funding. Avila said that Montes believed, and so expressed, that limitations and regulations imposed on board members and the parameters those board members had to function within were not applicable to him. According to Avila, Montes was for some time attempting to horn in on his purview as superintendent such that he wanted to have input on a wide range of district operations. Montes also wanted Avila to short-circuit, Avila said, investigations into district personnel in those cases where those being investigated were Montes friends, supporters and contacts. In cases where vendors or contractors Montes favored were attempting to get district business or contracts, Avila said Montes wanted the district to dispense with an open bidding process and simply award the contracts to those of his choosing.
In his claim, Avila also revealed that at least part of the basis for his suspension was a claim of sexual harassment made against him by Chavez. Chavez falsely maintained, according to Avila, he had sexually harassed her after he had refused to promote her.
The district has also placed Chavez on leave. She has filed a claim against the district that puts in plain writing her contention that Avila discriminated against her because she had refused his advances.
D’Souza, knowing full well that there is blood in the water and that the sharks are circling, the district’s listing ship, has given the district’s public spokeswoman, Syeda Jafri orders that she is to stonewall any public records request pertaining to the issues relating to what were the suspensions of Avila and Chavez and which now extends to the firing of Avila.
After the November election, Dakira Williams replaced O’Kelley on the school board. Previously, board members Stephanie Lewis and Joseph Martinez had stuck by Avila thick and thin. Bonifacio Bonny Garcia’s report with regard to the matters pertaining to Avila has now been completed. It has been distributed to only eight individuals. The members of the board and D’Souza are resolved that the report will never see the light of day. They came to the February 19 board meeting, prepared to finalize the separation with Avila. Fully recognizing that they had a contract with him that ran through July of 2027, they were ready to bite the bullet and terminate him, knowing ahead of time that his attorney, Robert Stanford Brown, will pursue a wrongful termination lawsuit against the district. They were, and remain, prepared to pay Avila the remaining four months of the $380,399.49 yearly salary he has not yet been paid and is due in scholastic year 2025-25, the full $391,811.47 salary he is due to be paid in scholastic year 2025-26 and the full $403,565.82 he is due to be paid in 2026-27.
That $922,177.12 is the cost the district is willing to pay to keep Bonifacio Garcia’s report under wraps.