Los Angeles Group School District Chancellor Francisco Rodriguez, who has led the nation’s largest two-year increased schooling system for the final decade, will step down within the fall, in response to an e-mail despatched to high directors, a transfer that comes amid college tensions, authorized allegations of gender discrimination and different challenges.
Rodriguez informed his cupboard on Monday he would resign Nov. 2 to assist his getting old father along with his “well being challenges” and spend extra time along with his household. The announcement shocked many district members as a result of the Board of Trustees had granted him a four-year contract final November.
“It has been my excessive honor and privilege to work with you, and I’ll ceaselessly be pleased about your confidence and your collegiality,” Rodriguez stated in an e-mail to his cupboard, obtained by The Occasions. “I’m very happy with the work that we have now carried out collectively on behalf of the very proficient and galvanizing college students we serve.”
Rodriguez didn’t instantly reply to questions from The Occasions. The district will ship a proper announcement to the LACCD group after trustees meet Wednesday to finalize plans, a spokeswoman stated.
He’s credited by supporters with bringing in additional state funding to the district, hiring greater than 900 full-time, tenure-track college members, selling initiatives for educational success for college students of coloration, particularly Black and Latino males, and bolstering racial and gender range amongst college and workers. He additionally has targeted on workforce coaching for college students.
However Rodriguez, 61, has additionally confronted fierce opposition to his management of the district’s 9 schools and greater than 170,000 college students.
The LACCD Tutorial Senate, representing greater than 4,000 college members, accredited a vote of no confidence towards Rodriguez and the Board of Trustees in Might for what it stated was a failure to adequately tackle a number of allegations of sexual harassment and examine considerations about the usage of public funds in contracting and procurement practices. The vote was accredited 29 to 0 with one abstention.
In a single high-profile case, a Los Angeles jury ordered the district in fall 2022 to pay $10 million in damages to a Southwest School professor who accused a high-ranking administrator of sexual misconduct. The jury discovered the district was negligent in hiring Howard Irvin, a former vice chairman of pupil providers at Los Angeles Southwest School, and had retaliated towards the plaintiff, Sabrena Turner-Odom, for making the grievance.
The district appealed the decision. Nevertheless it faces a minimum of three different ongoing lawsuits involving Irvin, who was fired from the district throughout a closed session board assembly in December 2022.
Different girls have additionally filed lawsuits towards the district, alleging gender discrimination, whistleblower retaliation and different offenses. They embody Maribel Medina, who was fired as common counsel after complaining she was topic to pay disparities and different bias by a chancellor who informed her that “Mexican girls serve me and prefer it,” in response to her lawsuit filed in January.
The district on Monday didn’t reply to questions on Medina’s swimsuit and firing. In its March courtroom submitting, the district denied Medina’s allegations.
In an announcement after the no-confidence vote, Angela C. Echeverri, president of the LACCD Tutorial Senate, stated: “For months, the Board of Trustees and Chancellor Rodriguez have circumvented requires transparency, sidestepped significant reforms, and did not adequately tackle considerations about sexual harassment, retaliation, and the usage of public funds, notably within the case of enormous public contracts. … We will not afford to tolerate a tradition of silence, indifference, and inaction.”
Final winter, the Tutorial Senate referred to as on the Board of Trustees to enhance efforts to forestall sexual harassment and discrimination by conducting well timed and neutral investigations, and taking disciplinary actions if violations are discovered. The decision additionally referred to as on the board to “commonly evaluate its insurance policies and procedures relating to sexual harassment and discrimination to make sure their effectiveness and compliance.”
The district stated on the time that it had carried out enhancements in the way it processes sexual harassment complaints based mostly on suggestions from a 2018 job drive. “LACCD stays unequivocally dedicated to a zero-tolerance coverage for sexual harassment of any variety in our lecture rooms and office, and to fostering a campus local weather that promotes respect and civility,” the assertion stated.
School leaders and different reformers are additionally urging the district to usher in unbiased auditors or a blue-ribbon exterior committee to look at the district’s dealing with of its procurement practices and $15-billion development bond program.
The district has lengthy been enmeshed in controversy over its dealing with of its bond program. In 2018, the district’s chief services director started elevating pink flags about what he stated had been price overruns, sloppy administration, fierce backroom politics and entrenched relationships between board trustees and development pursuits in its voter-approved development bond program. He was fired the following 12 months.
The faculty district stated in a 2018 assertion that it’s a “staunch custodian of taxpayer cash” and that “all complaints are handled with the utmost seriousness and are totally reviewed. Any claims which can be substantiated shall be pursued accordingly.”
School leaders and different district officers additionally cited considerations with the district’s dealing with of one other 2022 case involving allegations {that a} faculty worker tried to steer a contract for items and providers to his sons. The district’s inner audit division dismissed the grievance towards the official, whom it recognized solely as “Worker A,” after discovering a “substantial lack of proof” to assist, in response to the evaluate.
However Medina, then common counsel, requested an exterior regulation agency to analyze the case once more. The agency, in response to its report, discovered that the “overwhelming weight of proof” supported the allegations — and named the official in query as Irvin, then at Los Angeles Commerce-Technical School.
“Anytime anybody information a whistleblower grievance, it goes nowhere,” Echeverri stated in an interview.
Echeverri stated Rodriguez’s personable method and connections helped the district receive extra funding, and he allotted $2 million to advertise racial fairness in instructional outcomes. However she stated he had a “horrible monitor file” in gender fairness.
Rodriguez, a San Francisco native, graduated from UC Davis with a bachelor’s diploma in Chicano research and a grasp’s diploma in group growth. He acquired his doctorate in schooling from Oregon State College. Earlier than becoming a member of LACCD, he headed the MiraCosta Group School District in Oceanside and Cosumnes River School in Sacramento.
