Board Rehires Ex-Director Implicated in 1989 Thefts : Hiring: Man’s criminal case stemmed from property taken from schools. Rehiring of former maintenance director perplexes, angers some officials.

Calling him the best man for the job, Lynwood Unified school board members have voted to rehire the maintenance director who pleaded no contest three years ago to charges of grand theft and receiving stolen property from the school system.

In a hastily called Friday evening meeting, the board voted 3-2 to reinstate Commodore Reid as director of maintenance, operations and transportation.

Dissenting board members Richard Armstrong and Rachel Chavez said the decision was indefensible and undermined the district’s integrity. But board President Joe Battle said that Reid was just the man who could reverse the deterioration of school buildings and grounds. “I welcome back this person with open arms,” Battle said. “I don’t want to see my fences fall any more.”

Board members Thelma Calvin-Williams and Cynthia Green-Geter said Lynwood Unified needed Reid. “If this action is wrong, it will be proven wrong because God is a just God,” Calvin-Williams said.

“The action taken tonight was done for the young people,” said new board member Green-Geter, a longtime district critic who won election in November on an anti-corruption platform.

Armstrong called the decision “a sad state of affairs. . . . This is the beginning of the toppling of this district.”

Supt. Audrey Clarke said Reid’s supporters on the board initiated the proposal to rehire him. She placed the item on the agenda without a recommendation.

The district’s personnel commission, which normally screens job applicants, unanimously opposed the move.

Reid could not be reached for comment.

He pleaded no contest in March, 1989, to felony charges of grand theft and receiving stolen property from the Lynwood school system. Investigators said they found district property at Reid’s home. He also was accused of having district employees make repairs--on district time and using district materials--on properties he owned. He was given a suspended 180-day jail term, sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay $2,500 in restitution, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. The felony charges were later reduced to misdemeanors.

Reid was suspended with pay during the investigation and trial. He finally resigned from Lynwood unified in April, 1989.

The board voted to rehire him at a special meeting at 6 p.m. last Friday. The board had given preliminary approval, by the same vote, to hire Reid during the previous Tuesday, but had to vote again because the job title was not correctly listed in the Tuesday agenda, board President Battle said.

School system attorney Warren Kinsler, some board members and Supt. Clarke said Friday’s meeting was scheduled to give the public a chance to comment on rehiring Reid.

About a dozen people showed up, but Battle repeatedly ruled speakers out of order when they attempted to criticize Reid or the board. Battle said speakers were not allowed to criticize board members or employees in public session.

At the meeting, the three members of the district personnel commission argued that Reid could only be rehired if he had resigned in good standing.

“Mr. Reid did not resign in good standing,” Commissioner John Baimer said. He said later that the commission was improperly denied a chance to fill the position. Such a job should be open to all applicants, with the commission screening candidates and recommending a list of finalists, he said.

Attorney Kinsler said the board could rehire Reid because there was no documentation showing that he had resigned in disgrace. He said school systems can rehire employees to comparable positions within 39 months of their resignations.

Former personnel director Jack Woodie, contacted after the meeting, insisted that Reid had departed under a cloud and under duress. “He was given the choice, either be dismissed or resign,” said Woodie, who left Lynwood in 1988 to become a personnel administrator with the Westminster School District in Orange County.

Woodie said sheriff’s deputies began an investigation in February, 1988, after an employee alleged that Reid was purchasing “fixer-uppers” and then using district employees, time and materials to restore those properties for resale.

“We couldn’t prove that exactly,” Woodie said. “We could prove that there were district materials, tools, a water heater installed in his home in Whittier.”

Investigators arrested Reid in March, 1988, charging him with one count each of grand theft, receiving stolen property and violating public employee conflict-of-interest laws, and nine counts of theft from a public agency by an agency employee. The conflict-of-interest charge stemmed from a $15,000 loan Reid obtained from a district contractor. All but two counts, grand theft and receiving stolen property, were dismissed when Reid pleaded no contest.

Since Reid’s departure, the district has employed interim directors in the maintenance job, which pays from $41,000 to $49,600 a year. With Reid’s return, the district will dismiss interim maintenance director William Woodward.

Battle said that the interim directors wanted to hire expensive contractors for repairs that Reid used to take care of with his own crew. He said that too many buildings needed painting and that the grounds were not as well-kept as before. Reid joined the district as a gardening foreman in 1979 and became director of maintenance in 1982.

When he left Lynwood, Reid was hired for the same position with the Ravenswood Elementary School District in East Palo Alto. A divided Ravenswood school board hired Reid on the recommendation of Supt. Charlie Mae Knight, a former Lynwood school superintendent.

Knight called Reid a dedicated mechanical and landscaping wizard who got things done quickly and cheaply. She estimated that Reid has saved her district $500,000 a year. He repaired a clock system that would have taken $600,000 to replace, she noted. In addition, he had all the district’s schools painted inside and out without relying on expensive outside contractors.

“You cannot catch him away from the schools,” she said. “He works on weekends.”

Reid wanted to return to Lynwood to be closer to his Whittier home and to clear his name, she added.

“I think he was innocent,” Knight said. She blamed Reid’s troubles on sloppy bookkeeping skills and a tendency to trust people too much. She said the downfall of Reid, who is black, was the result of a racist vendetta by law enforcement and district officials.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Herbert Lapin, who tried the case, said Knight’s allegation “is absolutely untrue. Race had nothing to do with it.”

Lapin said the district’s decision to rehire Reid was perplexing. “I find it difficult to accept that a person can be convicted of criminal wrongdoing with the district and then they rehire him,” he said. “It sends a wrong message.

“On the other hand, if he’s a rehabilitated individual and learned his lesson from what he did in the past, he might become a good employee.”