Stockton Unified School District leadership has come under fire by local and state agencies in recent years for its fiscal management, including an investigative audit released earlier this month that found evidence of illegal financial activity within the district. Just one week prior to the report’s findings being presented to the school district’s governing board, SUSD Trustee Ray Zulueta was appointed to a Stockton tax measure oversight committee.
The citizen advisory committee oversees whether expenditures from the city’s Measure W funds, a sales and use tax passed in 2004 that supports police and fire protection services, are being spent appropriately.
Zulueta’s appointment, which was put forward by Councilmember Brando Villapudua, was approved in a 6-0 vote by the Stockton City Council Feb. 7 through the council’s consent agenda. Councilmember Kimberly Warmsley was absent from the meeting due to a family emergency.
Villapudua told Stocktonia Tuesday that he hadn’t been aware of the state’s report on Stockton Unified when he made the decision to recommend Zulueta for a spot on the committee. The audit’s findings were released a week later.
The state investigation, which began in February of last year and is known as an “Extraordinary Audit,” was conducted by California’s Financial Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) investigators. Auditors examined district fiscal practices from July 2019 through April 2022.
Investigators found “sufficient evidence to demonstrate that fraud, misappropriation of funds and/or assets, or other illegal fiscal practices may have occurred,” according to the audit report. Other findings include possible violations of California’s open meeting’s law by the district’s Board of Education, apparent conflicts of interest, abuse of power and that trustees and the superintendent on occasions did not follow board policies and the law.
The FCMAT report also comes on the heels of more than two years of controversy for the county’s largest school district, including two scathing San Joaquin County civil grand jury reports, accusations of financial mismanagement, looming deficit, board disfunction and outrage from the public over the district’s handling of various issues.
Trustee Zulueta, whose tenure on the SUSD Board of Education began in 2020, did not serve as a member of the governing board for the entirety of the time period in which state investigators aimed their focus.
However, all three reports — two from the grand jury and one FCMAT — questioned actions made by “trustees.”
Zulueta also voted in favor of awarding a contract worth millions of dollars to a company called IAQ Distribution Inc at a meeting in August 2021 following what was described by state auditors as a flawed if not illegal process. The contract, which was paid for using federal funds, purchased ultraviolet light air purification units for the district to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19, more than half of which are being stored in a warehouse. …
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Cassie Dickman 