The Rialto Unified School District Board of Trustees has conferred a $356,000 annual contract on Bassett Unified School District Superintendent Alejandro Alvarez in a successful effort to lure him 40 miles eastward and hopefully end a seemingly endless progression of scandals plaguing the Rialto public school system.
The move means Alvarez will net a $114,225.03 raise, making him the 35th highest paid of California’s 1,139 school district superintendents.
Alvarez has been in the role of Bassett Unified’s superintendent since 2020. Prior to that, he was the deputy superintendent with the Compton Unified School District. He previously was an associate superintendent in the Fontana Unified School District, where he began his career in education as a teacher.
He is to officially succeed Judy White, who was brought in as Rialto Unified’s interim superintendent earlier this year after the previous interim, Edward DeSouza was himself implicated by extension and passive neglect in the miasma of corruption and either/or political entanglement or political disfavor that had engulfed previous superintendents in Rialto going back a decade.
White had stabilized, at least partially, a situation in which the district’s administrators found themselves involved in or resisting literal extracurricular activities by which they enriched themselves using money, funding or programs intended to benefit the children, as often as not academically underachieving ones, of the district’s substantial numbers of impoverished families. Those superintendents, variously, were either connected with those doing the exploiting, on the wrong side of a school board member or members with family members involved in the wrongdoing or seeking to extend their tenure by letting those school boar members slide after the situations in some fashion showed themselves for what they were.
Rialto Unified has for decades been well below the average in scholastics and academic achievement of its students, a circumstance brought on, at least partially by certain social challenges, including that 86.6 percent of students are in the district are from socioeconomically disadvantaged families and 25.7 percent are English learners and an even higher percentage are English deficient.
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.
At present, according to the district and the Office of the California Superintendent of Public Instruction, 16.8 percent of its students are chronically absent, at the same time that 91.7 percent of students enrolled in the district’s high schools graduate. Students in Rialto have a reading proficiency score of 32 percent in comparison to the 47 percent statewide average. According to the district and the Office of the California Superintendent of Public Instruction, the district’s students overall are 37.4 points below the state standard in English language arts and 78 points below the state standard in mathematics, such that students in the Rialto Unified School District have an average math proficiency score of 16 percent against the California public school average of 33 percent. 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.
According to the district, it has 4,947 students who are English learners and 46 percent of those are making progress toward English language proficiency. By graduation, according to the district and the Office of the California Superintendent of Public Instruction, 37.5 percent of students from the district are prepared to move into the workforce or to go on to college.
According to the district and the Office of the California Superintendent of Public Instruction, 4.6 percent of the students in the district have been suspended from school at least once.
Eisenhower High School is ranked 810th and Rialto High School ranked 899th among 3,396 public high schools in California.
An issue bedeviling the district is the degree to which those involved with the district, including some school board members or those connected to certain school board members have been willing to exploit their status in the community to benefit themselves financially or in other ways, oftentimes by directing or misdirecting funds intended for school programs, academic or otherwise, to themselves. A general dearth of sophistication among Rialto’s citizenry by which there is little understanding of how the school district’s students are being harmed by this activity and even less will to hold those responsible accountable had contributed to the general malaise regarding the situation and the perpetuation of the circumstance. In addition, in at least some cases, those involved in this malfeasance have spread the proceeds obtained from their various depredations to others, including district employees, to prevent any corrective efforts from being initiated.
Additionally, the police department has historically been unwilling to engage in any enforcement action with regard to matters ongoing at the city’s schools, in large degree because the schools and school districts are considered to be a primary civil institution, and it is best to discourage the youth in the city or any citizens from questioning the legitimacy and of those in positions of authority or members of the establishment generally.
Between 2005 and 2013 Rialto Unified accountant Judith Oakes embezzled at least $1,845,137.81 in proceeds from the sale of federally subsidized breakfast and lunches offered by the district’s schools to students from impoverished families through its food service division. There was data to suggest that Oakes had embezzled roughly $1.314 million beyond that. Circumstances suggest that Oakes, while she was employed in a position that never paid more than $77,000 annually, was able to make off with the $3.16 million by keeping former Superintendent Harold Cebrun distracted from what she doing by engaging in a personal relationship with him. Evidence suggest that she stymied the Rialto Police Department from delving into the matter until such point that she had spent the vast majority of the money, including on a luxurious lifestyle that included two homes, off-road vehicles and expensive trips around the world, by having Cebrun wave auditors and police detectives off.
While Cebrun adamantly denied having engaged in an affair with Oakes and insisted that he had been as much of a victim of her criminal enterprise as the district and its students, he was dismissed as superintendent, and succeeded, in 2015, by Cuauhtémoc Avila, who was then the assistant superintendent of educational programs with the Los Angeles County Office of Education, prior to which he had been the head of alternative education with the Glendale Unified School District.
When Avila arrived in Rialto, the scandal with the school lunch program was in the district’s rearview mirror, or so it seemed. Avila’s initial attention was drawn to the academic performance challenges the district faced, as Rialto Unified’s 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 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.
It was nevertheless hoped that with classroom instruction once again under way, inroads on improving student test scores might be made.
What was lingering below the surface, however, was that the scandal relating to the misuse of federal money for subsidized breakfasts and lunches had not fully gone away.
Indeed, it now appears, when classroom instruction resumed after the COVID closure of 2020-21, the misdirection of federal food funds zoomed to a level of intensity equaling or exceeding that perpetrated by Oakes. It appears that Avila, who was not involved, did not immediately recognize what was happening. When he caught of it, he found himself in a vicious political crosscurrent, as a family member of one of his political masters on the school board was involved, and that board member was backed by another board member.
According to a recently completed forensic audit, the district’s nutrition services division took in over $3,015,000 in federal funding beyond what it was due from over a three-year period beginning with the 2021-22 school year running through the 2023-24 school year.
According to the CliftonLarsenAllen accounting firm, the district’s eTrition accounting system, which consists of accounting software approved by the United States Department of Agriculture to monitor school nutrition programs, consistently showed the system’s operator registered a steady stream of inflated number of meal counts at the district beginning in July 2021.
The National School Lunch Program, offered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, provides free or reduced-cost meals to qualifying schools. State governments, through their respective offices of public instruction, administer the program, following through with financial monitoring, relying, in part, on the eTrition system. In this way, Rialto Unified, on a monthly basis, lodged a reimbursement request to the California Department of Education tocover the cost of all such meals provided to needy students. The California Department of Education would then pay the districts making such requests by check, passing the cost along to the federal government through the Department of Agriculture, which reimburses the state commensurate with the data conveyed through eTrition.
The National School Lunch Program, offered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, provides free or reduced-cost meals to qualifying schools. State governments, through their respective offices of public instruction, administer the program, following through with financial monitoring, relying, in part, on the eTrition system. In this way, Rialto Unified, on a monthly basis, lodged a reimbursement request to the California Department of Education to cover the cost of all such meals provided to needy students. The California Department of Education would then pay the districts making such requests by check, passing the cost along to the federal government through the Department of Agriculture, which reimburses the state commensurate with the data conveyed eTriton.
In Rialto at that time, the individual ultimately responsible for the eTrition entries was Kristina Kraushaar, the chief assistant to then-Nutrition Services Department Director Fausat Rahman-Davies.
In the summer of 2023, word reached Avila of irregularities in the breakfast-lunch program, whereupon he made a confidential report of what few details he had to the school board during a closed session discussion during a regular board meeting on August 9 of that year. The board took no official action at that time.
There followed an extended period of time while Board Member Nancy O’Kelley, who had first been elected to the school board in 2012, had an extended string of absences from the school board meetings because of health challenges she was facing that were accompanied by a diminishment in her mental acuity. After attending the August 9, 2023 meeting, O’Kelley was absent from the next meeting on August 23, 2023 and thereafter from the meetings on 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.
When Avila subsequently raised the issue with regard to the potential overbillings in breakfast-lunch programs, it is his contention that he was met with a rebuke from Board Member Edgar Montes. Avila thereafter learned that in 2022, Montes’ mother, Maria Montes Torres, a friend of Rahman-Davies, had been hired as a worker in the nutrition services division.
In December 2023, despite what he said was the resistance of Montes, Avila pushed, amid persistent indications from district cafeteria workers that there was something in the breakfast-lunch program, for an audit of the district’s nutrition services division.
That triggered, according to Avila, a move by Montes to have him fired. In making that attempt, according to Avila, Montes had the support of Board Member Evelyn Dominguez, he did not have a crucially needed third vote to make the firing, as neither board members Joseph Martinez nor Stephanie Lewis were in favor of getting rid of him, and O’Kelley was a continuing no show at the board meetings.
It was at this point that Patricia Chavez, then the district’s lead agent of innovation who had been hired by Avila in 2016 to serve as Carter High principal and was subsequently promoted to the district’s director of education, came forth with accusations that Avila had sexually harassed her. Chavez, who was promoted from the Carter High principal position to the lead academic agent slot in 2019 and to the lead innovative agent position in 2022, claimed that Avila discontinued
promoting her after she refused his sexual advances.
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’ 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, 2024 meeting, which was attended once more by O’Kelley, for whom special travel accommodations had again been made. As was previously the case, however, O’Kelley did not come across with a vote to cashier Avila.
On May 8, 2024, the board revisited consideration of 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.
At a specially called May 14, 2024 meeting, the school board designated the district’s lead academic agent of math and early college programs/director of education services, Dr. Edward D’Souza, to replace Avila on an interim basis.
With Avila on leave, the focus on the accusations of overbillings relating to the district breakfast-lunch program, which had been going on quietly behind the scenes, ended. D’Souza had aspirations of serving as the acting superintendent for a several month period during which the board might familiarize itself with his approach and emphasis on improving the academic performance of the district’s students, after which time the qualifier “interim” would be removed from his newest title so that he could become superintendent on a permanent basis. His focus was not on the district’s in-school breakfast-lunch program but rather academics. He knew nothing – or very little – about allegations of wrongdoing in the district’s nutrition services divisions and had little interest in pursuing the matter in any event. Moreover, he recognized, either directly or indirectly, that Montes wanted the matter relating to the audit of the breakfast-lunch program dropped. Montes at that point appeared to be the closest thing to a dominant personality on the school board. D’Souza opted to let sleeping dogs lie.
In March 2024, Avila filed a claim against the district, alleging he was unjustly suspended. The claim alluded to but did not go into specific detail with regard to much of what was going on behind the scenes in the district, suggesting that there was no substance to Chavez’s allegations against him and that she had joined forces with Montes and Dominguez in an effort to discredit him because of his unwillingness to comply with the improper demands that had been placed upon him. While the board contemplated its response to the claim, the district retained an attorney, Bonifacio “Bonny” Garcia, to look into Chavez’s allegations against Avila.
Avila on the record refrained from overt public statements. Nevertheless, given the extraordinary nature of the situation, just enough about the circumstance relating to the irregularities in the breakfast-lunch program that district employees who had been knowledgeable of what was going on began to talk.
O’Kelley, due to stand for reelection in November 2024, did not run. She was replaced by Dakira Williams.
The effort by Montes and Dominguez to keep the misdirection of the food intended for impoverished students in the breakfast-lunch program and the consequent overbillings under wraps was falling apart after Williams joined Martinez and Lewis on the board.
Precipitously, in February 2025, Kraushaar departed from Rialto Unified to take a position as the food service director with the Chaffey Joint Union High School District in Ontario.
The same month, the board, having been provided with Garcia’s findings with regard to the Avila/Chavez matter, voted to terminate Avila. D’Souza, whose time as acting superintendent had been a parallel consequence of Avila’s suspension from the post overseeing the district, found himself in an untenable position, as Williams, Martinez and Lewis were acutely conscious of his move to bury the probe of the breakfast-lunch program as a sop to Montes. By a 3-to-2 vote, with Williams, Martinez and Lewis prevailing, D’Souza’s was removed as the district’s interim leader and replace him with former Riverside County Superintendent of Schools Judy White.
With D’Souza’s tenure leading the district over, the examination of the irregularities in the breakfast-lunch program and the audit into the district’s eTrition entries, which had been closed out when Avila was suspended, was resumed.
Information that had remain heretofore hidden was soon being widely talked about. Press revelations followed. Openly discussed was that Rahman-Davies along with Kraushaar and another employee of the nutrition services division who was within Rahman-Davies’ circle, Maria Rangel, would regularly load their vehicles with food from the storage area adjacent to the district’s kitchen facility, extending to meat, fresh produce, baked goods and the like. In some cases, the food went out as donations to the mosque that Rahman-Davies attended. In other cases it went to the home pantries of Rahman-Davies, other district employees and Rahman-Davies’ friends, district employees reported. Avila had endeavored to get to the bottom of what was happening, those employees said, but when he was put on leave, further inquiries ended. District officials found themselves exposed to ridicule and abashed.
On March 19, 2025, Rahman-Davies was placed on administrative leave, though she continued to draw her annual salary of $219,618 and $77,225 in benefits.
The following month, Montes’ mother, Maria Montes Torres, submitted her resignation from her position in the district’s nutrition services division amidst scrutiny of her association with Rahman-Davies and the April 2022 vote by the school board to ratify her hiring, one in which Edgar Montes had participated in. While a vote by an elected official to have the agency or district that person heads to hire a family member is not an explicit violation of California’s Government Code or a technical violation of the state’s conflict of interest law, the action did violate the districts bylaw relating to nepotism and the lack of disclosure/transparency at the time was deemed to be opticly challenging for the district, particularly given the issues relating to the school breakfast-lunch program.
Simultaneously, the accounting firm of CliftonLarsenAllen accounting firm was poring over the entrances into the district’s eTrition going back several years, all the way to the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years when the district, during the COVID shutdown, featured the breakfast and lunch “Grab & Go” program for students during which bags of ready-made meals were handed out Monday through Friday from 8:30 – 10:30 a.m. in the bus lanes at Bemis Elementary School, Simpson Elementary School, Frisbie Middle School, Kolb Middle School, Kucera Middle School, Rialto Middle School, Eisenhower High School and Rialto High School.
On September 24, as CliftonLarsenAllen was collating the findings and putting the final touches on its executive report and summary of the audit into the school breakfast-lunch program, the school board, in the form of the bare-quorum Williams, Martinez and Lewis voting during a closed executive session, to accept Rahman-Davies’s “voluntary retirement” on “favorable terms.” Her leave and continuing pay – $219,618 salary and $77,225 benefits – were to be continued until her official May 1, 2026 separation from the district, at which point she would be eligible to begin drawing her $151,536.42 yearly pension. In addition, the district agreed to provide the 57-year-old Rahman-Davies with health benefits until she reaches the age of 65.
White, who had no previous connection to the Rialto Unified District was able to maintain sufficient independence and personal distance from both the school board and district staff to allow the investigation of the district school breakfast-lunch program to proceed and the CliftonLarsonAllen audit to be completed. With that done, a majority of school board concluded, the time was propitious to bring in Alvarez, and White has departed.
In addition to his base salary of $356,000, Alvarez will receive an annual $5,000 doctoral stipend and a $600 monthly vehicle allowance, a per diem for any travel and annual benefits of $89,966, for a total annual compensation of at least $458,166.
During his watch at Bassett Unified, located in La Puente in Los Angeles County, Alvarez weathered numerous challenges, including lawsuits and both in depth examinations and audits carried out by the California Department of Education, the Los Angeles County Office of Education and the State of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team. The vast majority of the issues entailed in those legal actions and investigations arose from events, circumstances or actions involving district personnel prior to Alvarez’s tenure as superintendent. Alvarez, perhaps because he was not personally vested or entangled in those difficulties, demonstrated a willingness to seek and arrive at early settlements of those matters, obtaining, in most cases, an exit from them that was less expensive for the district monetarily than might otherwise have been the case if litigation or engagement with state authorities had dragged on. It is anticipated that Alvarez may bring this approach to bear in the several matters and inquiries pending against the Rialto Unified School District.
It appears, based on what very little gumshoeing the Sentinel has engaged in during recent months while endeavoring to not step on other ongoing investigative efforts into the matter, that the Rialto Police Department has stood down and is deferring to to federal investigators, i.e., the FBI, to allow that probe to progress to an unobstructed conclusion.