The Mountain View School District Board of Trustees next week is due to take up a closed session discussion with regard to allegations of repeated alcohol use by the principal of the district’s only junior high school during working hours.
After months of recurrent reports relating to Grace Yokely Junior High School Principal Kelly Reyes leaving the 2947 South Turner Avenue campus prior to the traditional 4 p.m. close of the academic working day to frequent eating establishments featuring bars where she has indulged her fondness for beer and, on occasion it was reported, stronger beverages, a group of parents in conjunction with some district teachers undertook to trail her and make video and photographic documentation of her activities while she was yet on the district clock.
That evidence has been presented to Superintendent Dr. Douglass Moss, Assistant Superintendent Jeremy Currier and the district’s head of human resources, Sydney Kallal.
The Sentinel is reliably informed that Moss, Currier and Kallal are purposed to meet with Board President Ronald Newton and board members Michelle Imperial, Randall Ceniceros Dr. James Willingham and Chris Taylor during the closed session scheduled for the end of the Monday, May 12 board meeting.
It is not clear whether Reyes will be brought into that meeting to offer her version of events or if she has been invited to provide a written statement to the board ahead of the hearing.
One of the two items listed on the closed session agenda for next Monday evening is “Public Employee Discipline/Dismissal/Release Government Code section 54957, Education Code section 44942.” Because of the confidentiality imposed on public agencies with regard to matters pertaining to personnel, the district was not able to disclose the name of the public employee referenced on the closed session agenda nor confirm Reyes as that employee upon a direct inquiry as to whether she was the employee in question.
Several exhibits in the form of time stamped photographs or video stills that have been presented to Moss, Currier and Kallal have also been provided to the Sentinel. That documentation, along with statements from several individuals, the Sentinel has been told, comprise the primary evidence that has been marshaled against Reyes.
One such item is a statement from an investigator who said Reyes drove from the Grace Yokely Junior High campus on May 7 to the El Torito restaurant located at 3680 Inland Empire Blvd. In Ontario. Accompanying that statement was a photo taken of Reyes White Jeep with license plate of #8YSV107 parked in the restaurant’s adjoining parking lot. A member of the investigation team got into the El Torito before Reyes, with one securing a place at the bar “approximately six to seven feet away” from where Reyes, wearing a black “Grace Yokely” shirt and black pants seated herself at a table in the El Torito at 2:44 p.m..
“The surveillance team observed her drinking multiple beers during this time,” according to the investigator. At 4 p.m. when Reyes “contracted time” in her role as a principal with the district ended, the surveillance team ended its assignment.
The Sentinel was provided with two photos of Reyes drinking beer while she was seated inside the El Torito taken by the investigative on May 7.
Reyes remained at the El Torito until 4:44 p.m. that day, according to one individual with information about the matter.
Some of those expressing concern about Reyes’ weekday use of alcohol corresponding to the time she is contracted to be functioning as the principal of Grace Yokely Junior High said some district officials had earlier been dismissive of the complaints regarding Reyes because no one was able to establish that she was drinking on the school grounds nor could offer convincing evidence or even indication that she had consumed any alcohol prior to showing up for work at approximately 7 a.m. every morning. Reyes had carried out her duties as principal without incident on those days, staying in place on the campus until approximately 2:30 p.m. every day. District officials last year expressed the view that Reyes’ activity in the hours after she left work were of no concern to the district, which had no authority with regard to how Reyes comported herself on her own time, the Sentinel was told.
Some parents and educators contended, nonetheless, that Reyes’ consumption of alcoholic beverages between the time she left the Grace Yokely campus and 4 p.m. has been inappropriate not only because she is supposed to remain in place on the Grace Yokely campus until 4 p.m. daily but that she potentially represents a liability to the district if she were to become intoxicated or exceed the legal 0.08 percent blood alcohol content and become involved in a collision or incident in which she injured or killed someone.
Moreover, it was pointed out, on more than one occasion last year and this year, Reyes consumed a significant quantity of beer after leaving the campus on those second Mondays of the month when the district generally holds its board meetings before she returned to the district office at 2585 South Archibald Avenue in Ontario and attended board meetings at the Newton Educational Center co-located there in what was at least a partially impaired state.
On one occasion, Reyes was seen drinking Heineken on the Grace Yokely campus. It was pointed out, however, that the beverage Reyes on that occasion was actually drinking was Heineken’s non-alcoholic beer, Heineken 0.0, which contains only a minute amount of alcohol, gauged at less than 0.03 percent. Nevertheless, Heineken 0.0 bottles, with their distinctive green glass are virtually indistinguishable from Heineken’s genuine beer bottles. This prompted, the Sentinel is told, one of the school board members to remark that Reyes had exhibited poor judgment in that it was improper for her to give students the impression that the school principal was drinking beer while at work.
At present, Reyes, in her capacity as the district’s only junior high school principal, is provided with an annual salary of $148,799.71, roughly $2,444 in perquisites and pay add-ons and $42,524.05 in benefits for a total yearly compensation of $193,767.76.
The Mountain View School District is one of the oldest school districts in San Bernardino County yet remains as one of the smallest, serving, primarily, that section of southeast Ontario in what was the formerly agricultural land where a good portion of the Chino Agricultural Preserve was located. Existing as a small one room school house at Collins Station along the Southern Pacific Railroad until 1942, it moved into larger quarters at that time, but remained a one school district until 1982, though its single school was rebuilt into a larger facility in 1962. It now consists of four elementary schools and one junior high, Grace Yokely, which is overseen by Reyes. The district’s total current student count is 3,390. Those who attend schools in the Mountain View District graduate into Colony High School within the Chaffey Unified High School District.
Efforts by the Sentinel to obtain Reyes’ input for this article were unsuccessful.