Demoted Former Principal Gets Summer School Job

Leonard Matthews, the former Inglewood principal who was demoted this year after a police investigator accused him of embezzling school funds, was given one of the district’s summer school teaching contracts this week.

Matthews, who is assigned to teach English at the Inglewood Adult School, will receive top-scale salary and a 4% bonus for his 15 years with the district, said school board President Larry Aubry. Matthew, formerly principal at Hillcrest Continuation School, was transferred last year to a position in the central office and then demoted to a classroom teaching position in the adult school earlier this year. His pay dropped from $55,000 a year in the administrative post to $42,000 as a teacher.

Matthews will be the highest-paid summer school teacher because of contract requirements and his long tenure with the Inglewood Unified School District, Aubry said, adding that Matthews has received no preferential treatment.

Aubry called the board’s decision to name Matthews to the summer post “a routine personnel matter” and said the allegations against Matthews are being addressed by an ongoing investigation by the district attorney’s office.

Aubry said Matthews is “entitled to an assumption of innocence.”

In an affidavit filed in Inglewood Municipal Court last December, a police investigator accused Matthews of setting up an unauthorized bank account to launder about $4,000 in student and employee funds to pay for personal expenses such as clothes, groceries and Christmas decorations for his front yard.

The school board had voted to initiate dismissal proceedings against Matthews last October after the allegations surfaced but later decided to demote him instead and to require $10,000 in restitution. Matthews paid the district $5,000 early this year and is making $400-a-month payments on the balance, school officials said.

The district attorney’s investigation of Matthews could come to some preliminary resolution by the end of the summer, said Tom Gray of the Office of Special Investigations.