By Carlos Avalos
Officials and personnel with the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Office withheld communications from the California Fair Political Practices Commission to at least two of the members of the San Bernardino County Board of Education.
In San Bernardino County, as in most of the other 57 counties in California, there are a multiplicity of entities and independently elected individuals who have stewardship over public education processes.
Throughout the county there are 33 school districts, including 20 unified school districts, 11 elementary school districts and two high school districts. Each of those districts, which serve a localized area within the county, is overseen by elected board members, who have the authority to hire a superintendent to, essentially lead the district and administer its educational programs.
In addition, the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, whose authority does not extend to the operation of the various school districts in the county but rather function as an intermediary between the state and the county’s school districts, and provide advocacy for the districts with regard to specialized requests for state and federal assistance, and to facilitate a wide range of services to support students, families, and educators. This includes monitoring educational programs, offering direct support through specialized programs like special education and alternative education, and collaborating with districts, communities, and other agencies to promote educational equity and success.
There is also an overarching San Bernardino County Board of Education, which has no direct say over the operation of the county’s individual districts, but serves in an oversight capacity with regard to educational issues in general throughout the county. In addition, the county board of education approves the county superintendent if school’s budget, adopts policy goals and recommendations for the county’s school districts and serves as an appeal body for student expulsion and transfer cases. The board also works in coordination with the county superintendent of schools to support local school districts through leadership, advocacy, and services, while ensuring the individual districts comply with state and federal regulations.
The county superintendent of schools, the individual members of the county school board and the individual local school board members are ostensibly independently elected, and the function and operations of the individual school districts are independent from each other and not directly subject to the authority of the other entities. Nevertheless, the commonality in the local and county school boards’ educational purposes, the frequency of similarity in the area of policies, the oversight functions of the county superintendent of schools and the county school board with regard to the local school districts in multiple respects creates an atmosphere of collegiality and congeniality among elected educational officials in general.
More pointedly, the arrangement by which the county school board controls the purse strings of the county superintendent of schools creates an incentive for the superintendent to form a positive and accommodating relationship with its members.
While a precept of the American reliance on a democratic system to provide the leadership of governmental agencies across the board and both up and down the hierarchy of jurisdictional authority is that those elected officials overseeing those agencies and jurisdictions should be independent of one another, the cordial relationships that have sprung up among many, indeed a vast majority, of the officeholders in San Bernardino County’s educational system have compromised their autonomy. Rarely, although with enough frequency to be of note, there have been public education officials in San Bernardino County who have had both subtle and sharp differences with their fellow or sister board members or with county superintendent of schools.
With regard to those differences, there have been varying degrees of civility and acrimony as the disagreements these entail have been assimilated into policies, standards or actions. In some cases, discussion and debate has ensued, with varying degrees of impact or effect, sometimes shifting or changing an approach or overall policy, sometimes to negligible effect, sometimes with no change in course whatsoever other than the airing of differing or different views. In other cases, those in the minority have found themselves disregarded and their ideas ignored entirely.
Sometimes the differences were ones relating to educational technique and efficacy and/or the advisability or inadvisability innovative deviation from traditional methods of learning. Sometimes the difference extended to philosophy or social trends, attitudinal considerations and tolerance toward changing societal mores as well as the ideological, philosophical, religious or political preferences and affiliations of the board members.
On occasion, the differences pertained to venal motivation on the part of one board member, a set of board members, the county superintendent of schools, staff members employed by the superintendent or the county school board and/or the political supporters of the superintendent and the board members. Substantial amounts of money are spent on educational programs and services, and contracts with vendors or service providers typically involve expenditures of tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars and on occasion of more than a million dollars. More than once or twice, indeed scores of times if not more over the years, local school boards, the county school board or the county superintendent of schools office have utilized their authority to enter into contracts with individuals, entities or companies that have proven to be major donors to the political war chests of those voting to approve those projects. Similarly, some of those companies, entities or individuals which or who have held those contracts have hired the family members or friends or associates of those elected officials who gave approval to those contracts. It has been the case that many elected officials on those boards who were not recipients of political donations or related to or friends or associates of those hired by the contractors, vendors and service providers who profited by those contracts simply supported those contractual arrangements, going along to get along, so as to maintain their collegial and congenial relationships with their colleagues. It has happened, however, that some elected officials, sensing that the contracts the other elected officials were steering them into accepting were not in the best interests of the overall educational mission in their district or for the schools in the county as a whole, resisted entering into those contracts, opposing them with their votes. More often than not, those resisting have found themselves labeled as dissidents or naysayers, and find themselves being marginalized. While they are yet insiders by virtue of being elected officials who have a seat at the table of discussion and policy decision, they are often transformed into outside insiders, ones who are officially allowed into the inner sanctum but are yet on the outside looking in.
A case-in-point consists of complaints that were made to the California Fair Political Practices Commission earlier this year, which referenced the manner in which political donations provided to certain San Bernardino County elected education officials was being transferred from the electioneering war chest of the recipient of that money to another elected education official.
Some county residents, in particular those watching the San Bernardino County School Board and San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Ted Alejandre, believed that the financial entanglements between some of the board members and Alejandre at the least gave off the appearance of impropriety and that possibly the money that was being passed around and the impact this was having on educational policy went beyond being a matter of perception but crossed the threshold to being implicit and explicit conflicts of interest. Those conflicts, some believe, led to policies advocated by Alejandre and the county board of education that were contrary to, or detracted from, providing the best scholastic atmosphere possible for those enrolled in the county’s public schools.
Among those who grew animated about the exchange of money and funding between the county’s top educational officials was Antoinette Jensen, who by profession is an educator. It was she and a small circle of others who brought the matter to the attention of the Fair Political Practices Commission.
Public records, including California Form 460 campaign finance disclosure documents which under state law must be filed twice yearly by elected officials and more often during the election years in which they are vying for election or reelection, reveal the extent to which Superintendent Alejandre is tied in with three of the five county school board members.
County Board of Education Member Ryan McEachron, representing Trustee Area A, donated $1,000 to Alejandre’s campaign in April 2025. Two months later, he voted to approve Alejandre’s raise to nearly $350,000. Alejandre had previously donated $500 to McEachron’s 2022 board campaign.
San Bernardino County Board of Education Member Laura Mancha, representing Trustee Area C, gave Alejandre $1,000 in October 2024 and continues to make decisions regarding his employment. Alejandre donated $1,000 to her 2020 campaign.
San Bernardino County Board of Education Member Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers received $500 from Alejandre in 2022 for her board race.
The campaign money being passed around among Alejandre, McEachron, Mancha and Dowdy-Rodgers is perhaps less significant of a consideration than the voting block/ruling coalition on the county board of education that it is a reflection of.
The board consists of two other members: Rita Fernandez-Loof, representing Trustee Area B, and Andrea De Leon, representing Trustee Area E. Fernandez-Loof and De Leon are not aligned with their three colleagues, nor with Alejandre. They did not provide money from their campaign coffers to Alejandre or lend him money to assist him in his reelection effort and he did not help in bankrolling their election campaigns either. In actuality, Alejandre, together with McEachron, Mancha and Dowdy-Rodgers, actively opposed De Leon in her successful run for election in 2020 and in her bid for reelection in 2024.
The factionalization of the county school board, with McEachron, Mancha and Dowdy-Rodgers identifying themselves as solidly aligned with Alejandre, is warily regarded by many in the county as a development that has compromised the decision-making process with regard to important educational issues. There is concern that each of the three board members will consistently remain unwilling to critically appraise any policies hatched by Alejandre and that any two of the three would similarly be favorably disposed toward an idea one of the three would propose, based not on the inherent merit of the proposal but because of the imperative to maintain their ruling coalition. Conversely, their commitment to preserve their control over the board dictates that they hold the line against any initiatives brought forth by Fernandez-Loof or De Leon as a reflexive move to adhere to Alejandre’s dominance of the scholastic tenor in the county.
It was apprehension that the political/monetary linkage between elected officials on the same board who together with the superintendent were overseeing the crucial arena of public education might compromise the integrity of the decision-making processes relating to the expenditure of $370 million per year in educational funding which led to the inquiry with the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
By August the Fair Political Practices Commission staff had begun a review of the reports/complaints made to the commission with regard to the cross pollination between Alejandre’s, Mancha’s, McEachcron’s and Rodgers’ political funds and the compromising of the independence between the county school board members and the county superinententdent of schools, whose function they were supposed to monitor without bias. While the FPPC staff was evaluating the applicable sections of the government code, education code and the Political Reform Act, three emails from the Fair Political Practices Commission or its staff were sent to the the San Bernardino County Office of Education on August 26, Sept 8 and September 11, alerting officials that a complaint relating to Mancha, McEachron, Rodgers) and Alejandre had been filed, and the FPPC staff was reviewing the information. The email was sent to the SBCBOE@SBCBOE.org email address to alert all board members and the superintendent that the San Bernardino County Office of Education was under review.
The emails, however, were not passed along to Fernandez-Loof or De Leon.
At the board’s September 8 meeting, McEachron, without making either the August 26 or September 8 emails which had come into his possession available to the public, asserted he had been cleared of any wrongdoin relating to political donations that had passed between his and Alejandre’s political war ches.
“Basically, the gist of the letter says that there was no validation to the complaint brought against me,” McEachron said.
McEachron, according to those who had filed the complaints, mischaracterized their substance. They maintain that the review of the complaint at that point had not progressed beyond the preliminary stage in which a determination as to whether a full-blown investigation should proceed. Since Fernandez-Loof and De Leon at that point had not been provided with the emails neither was in a position to dispute what McEachron was asserting.
Alejandre has since acknowledged that the emails were withheld from Fernandez-Loof and De Leon at his direction, but said the decision was justified, claiming he consulted Deputy County Counsel Richard Luczak with regard to the matter. According to Alejandre, “We did nothing wrong.” In short order, Alejandre was able to get staff within the San Bernardino County Office of Education to rally to his defense.
The San Bernardino county Board of Education is the elected governing board that has the responsibility to set policies and oversee the San Bernardino County Office of Education. The San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools is the chief executive officer of the San Bernardino County Office of Education. In San Bernardino County, the county suerintenent of schools has subsumed what in most other California counties is commonly referred to as the county office of education
The mechanism for controlling information flow at the San Bernardino County Office of Education consists of the Diligent platform, which went online in December 2023. Under the Diligent system, the sbcboe@sbcboe.org email address was created and positioned as a “contact us” button for the public.
San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Chief Technology Officer David Thurston, who is provided with a $390,000 per year in total compensation, including salary and benefits, said that emails to the sbcboe@sbcboe.org address were never automatically forwarded to all board members. Instead, he said, those communication went to a “team of San Bernardino county Superintendent of Schools staff members” who determined which trustees should receive which messages.
According to Thurston, emails to sbcboe@sbcboe.org were “not meant for everybody on the board of education” but rather for staff, who would then decide what to forward to trustees.
Subsequently, Thurston would contradict these assertions, stating emails sent to the SBCBOE@SBCBOE.org email address were meant for all board members.
Other staff members rushed to emphasize that Alejandre was acting within his authority to withhold the emails from Fernandez-Loof and De Leon. They emphasized that there was confusion over the Fair Political Practices Commission’s emails, which included the phrase “Board of Education” in addition to three individual board members – Gwen Dowdy-Rodgers, Laura Mancha, and Ryan McEachron – in the subject line.
This is because Fair Political Practices Commission staff was sending notice that each of the three individual board members specified – McEachron, Mancha and Dowdy Rodgers – were under review, as was the entire agency – the Board of Education.
Alejandre was himself the subject of the FPPC complaint. He and Dowdy-Rodgers, Mancha and McEachron maintain that what was contained in the Fair Political Practices Commission complaint was of no concern to Fernandez-Loof or De Leon.
If Alejandre’s intent was to keep Fernandez-Loof and De Leon in the dark about the substance of the complaint, he miscalculated.
Fernandez-Loof did not receive the initial August 26 email alerting the entire board and the three individual board members about the FPPC review. On September 8, Fair Political Practices staff sent another email stating that more time was needed to determine if a comprehensive investigation was to be opened. Loof eventually received that email, and was miffed that she didn’t know about and had not received the initial August 26 notice.
Referencing her direct communications with the FPPC, Fernandez-Loof at the October 13 board meeting told her colleagues, “They told me it [the information contained in the August 26, September 8, and September 11 emails sent from the Fair Political Practices staff] was meant for the entire board, because the board as a whole is also under review.”
Alejandre and his staff were directly responsible for not forwarding the August 26temail and the September 8 email to Loof and De Leon.
At the October 13 board meeting, De Leon stated, “It is illegal for anybody to take… and not distribute… to board members… any mail that is being sent to the San Bernardino County Board of Education, sbcboe@sbcboe.org, or has the intent of reaching all five board members.”
According to Fernandez-Loof, Fair Political Practices Commission staff informed her that by sending the email to sbcboe@sbcboe.org it was believed the agency was communicating with the entire board and that the emails sent on August 26, September 8, and September 11 were intended to reach all five trustees.
In a lengthy discussion about communication protocols at the October 13 meeting, board members struggled to understand the technical mechanisms controlling their email—and to establish clear rules going forward. It was observed that any system requiring staff to decide which communications reach which elected officials creates the opportunity for the kind of selective withholding that has already occurred.
Fernandez-Loof argued for automatic forwarding of all emails sent to the board address. “Right now, when you put a generic email address for one body, the implication is that it is going to go to every member of that body,” she said. Empowering the board’s staff, which is essentially Alejandre’s staff, to determine what communications the board members as a whole or individually are to see, she said would be “viewpoint discrimination.”
De Leon proposed creating written protocols for the board secretary to follow when determining which emails to forward, but acknowledged this still required a staff member to make judgment calls. “I don’t want her breaking any laws,” De Leon said of Alejandre’s executive secretary who would be assigned to screen the board’s emails and communications.
Public records obtained by this Sentinel show Fernandez-Loof did not receive multiple other emails from concerned citizens, including messages titled “Potential Misuse of Public Funds” and “Forensic Audit Requested,” despite these being sent to her direct board email address, which Thurston had assured the public was “not monitored” and had “no interception happening.”
In June 2025, County Auditor-Controller Ensen Mason issued a report on the San Bernardino County Superintendent of School’s District Financial Services (DFS) division, which processes financial transactions for 33 K-12 school districts, five community colleges, three Regional Occupational Programs, two Joint Powers Authorities, numerous charter schools, and the superintendent and his office. .
The audit identified “several procedures and practices that could be improved,” warning of potential “unauthorized commitments and payments” due to weak internal controls over signature verification, invoice review, and vendor management. The report was distributed to the Board of Supervisors, the County CEO, the “San Bernardino County Audit Committee,” and the Grand Jury.
The County Board of Education, the elected body with statutory fiscal oversight authority under Education Code § 1042, and the body that approves the budget, paying all District Financial Services staff salaries did not receive a copy of the audit.
Trustee Rita Fernandez-Loof discovered the audit independently and brought it to the August 11, 2025 board meeting, urging that Mason be invited to explain the findings publicly. To date, no such invitation had been extended. The San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools website includes a page on District Financial Services. The audit report is not posted there.
Fernandez-Loof argued during the October 13 meeting for automatic forwarding without staff intervention. The meeting ended without resolution. Board President Dowdy-Rodgers suggested the communication protocols be addressed at a future board workshop, meaning the current system, in which the superintendent’s staff control information flow to their elected overseers, and which was never voted on by the board, remains in place.