Grand Jury Finds No Evidence of Crime in Sweetwater District

Allegations that computer and car-theft rings were operated out of the Sweetwater Union High School District, as well as an allegation of bribery by a teacher--all highly publicized in local media during the past year--are completely unfounded, a lengthy investigation by the San Diego County Grand Jury has concluded.

In a report issued Tuesday, the jury said there was no evidence of criminal misconduct, and exonerated the South Bay secondary school district from the cloud of suspicion under which it has operated since October, 1989, when charges were first raised by a former teacher.

The grand jury did find problems of sloppy record-keeping, as well as instances of low morale among some employees. It blamed the latter on the five-member Board of Trustees, citing what it called the board’s lack of dignity and maturity in some dealings with employees. It called for trustees to work with seminar consultants to improve employee relations.

“I kept trying to remind folks that there was no evidence that any crime had been committed but were just these allegations,” 20-year board member Judith Bauer said Tuesday. “As a board, we had insisted that the matter be turned over to the district attorney as soon as the allegations were made, and they could never find any crime.

“We had a long-running version of ‘Chicken Little, the sky is falling.’ ”

Bauer acknowledged, however, that the issues of board decorum and policy-making procedures are valid for the grand jury to raise.

“There are occasions when board meetings are not good examples of democracy in action and where public policy is not being done in a way that the public interest is served,” Bauer said.

“All of us should take the comments to heart and explore ways to improve our conduct of business,” she said, adding that teachers and administrators are sometimes reluctant to appear before the board because of harsh personal criticism directed at them.

The board has been split 3 to 2 on numerous issues for the past several years, even in its original vote to hire Sweetwater Supt. Anthony Trujillo in 1985. The district runs 18 junior- and senior-high facilities for 27,000 seventh- through 12th-grade students. It is the county’s second-largest district behind San Diego Unified.

Among the grand jury findings:

* There was no basis to an allegation of bribery by a teacher.

* There was no basis to an allegation of a car-theft ring operating out of the district.

* There was no basis to reports that some district employees had been taking district omputers to schools and organizations in Mexico.

* The district properly instituted centralized controls and record-keeping recently to solve problems of lack of travel records, use of district vehicles and personnel accounting.

“The Grand Jury observes that remedial efforts for control and oversight of records are now being made, even as state auditors are examining the district’s records,” the report says.

The jury concluded, “Jurors have listened to testimony involving innuendoes and rumors, and to information that is misleading or based on half-truths. . . . With difficulty, the Grand Jury has sorted out the facts in this report and has arrived at its conclusions and recommendations.”

It added that the split among trustees “appears to have caused some of the electorate and some district employees to perceive that the district’s business may not be conducted in a reasonable and impartial manner.”

Trujillo said Tuesday that “all of this shows that the district is fairly well-managed.” He said there has been “some looseness” in auditing procedures, but argued that the cost of putting additional controls into effect cut into funding of classroom-related programs.

“Our first priority is to deal with dropout rates and expectations for kids,” Trujillo said, referring to efforts in the heavily minority district to boost the number of college-qualified graduates and reduce its high number of dropouts.

Trujillo said he does not believe that disputes among trustees have affected “the daily operation of the school district.”