KGUN9 has learned more TUSD top administrators are leaving the district. This just days after the superintendent resigned.
The district severed ties with H.T. Sanchez on Tuesday after years of conflict and controversy on the budget, discipline, and teachers pay. And now KGUN9 has learned the chief financial officer is retiring and the chief human resources officer is resigning.
Karla Soto is the CFO -- a Sanchez hire. She's responsible for preparing the district's half-billion dollar budget. The district tells us she turned in her notice to retire on Tuesday, but won't be effective until April 3rd. She requested to return as a leased employee with ESI through the end of June. She would take a 25 percent salary cut.
ESI is the third-party company that TUSD now uses to contract substitute teachers and retired educators.
The district says it's common practice to stay on the job as leased employees, but Hicks believes rules are being broken. "They could come back for a year and work as an ESI employee and then come back as a district employee because you have to be gone for a year. That's not what's happening."
Case in point, Abel Morado is one of the assistant superintendents. He became an ESI employee for 2015/16 school year. His contract shows he took the mandatory salary cut to about $83,000 a year.
This school year, he remains with ESI. But his salary jumped to back to $111,000.
Cavazos: Did you see Abel Morado contracts for the past two years.Hicks: No.Cavazos: You did not know he got this pay raise?Hicks: I did not know that he got that pay raise.
KGUN9 checked Superintendent Sanchez's contract, and it explicitly states the Governing Board has the exclusive authority to determine employee compensation.
The other cabinet member leaving is Anna Maiden -- another Sanchez hire. On Monday, Maiden submitted her resignation effective at the end of June.
Hicks has been critical of Maiden's presentations on cabinet level salaries. For example, the directors of desegregation and exceptional education were shown as part of the 2013-14 cabinet level positions, but they were not cabinet positions. The next school year, they were dropped from the list. Hicks said it implied there was a reduction in cabinet costs.
Hicks says he'll ask the new internal auditor to examine these issues.
