West Valley school superintendent responds to misconduct allegations

PHOENIX — Days after he and his district came under increased scrutiny due to allegations of misusing taxpayer funds and other misconduct, a West Valley school superintendent gave his side of the story.

Tolleson Union High School District (TUHSD) Superintendent Jeremy Calles was accused by a former district principal of pushing school enrollments past capacity in order to get funding to build a new school.

The district was also accused of allowing a teacher who allegedly was involved in a predatory relationship with a student to resign with full benefits.

During an appearance on KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Mike Broomhead Show Thursday, Calles responded to the allegations.

Tolleson superintendent responds to allegation of pushing school enrollments past capacity

During a hearing of the Arizona Joint Legislative Audit Committee (JLAC) on Tuesday, former Tolleson Union High School principal Felipe Mandurraga said Calles pushed for him to enroll 600-700 more students than the high school’s capacity.

“It was directed that we had to enroll them,” Mandurraga said.

On Thursday, Calles said confusion was to blame for this accusation.

“When it comes to new school construction, it isn’t about whether or not one or two of your schools are overcrowded,” Calles said. “It’s the district as a whole has to demonstrate that they need new capacity.”

The superintendent added that both Tolleson Union and Westview high schools did take on extra students to show that need.

“We’re qualified for a new high school now and we brought down student counts in both of those schools,” Calles said.

Tolleson superintendent on allegation of alleged predatory teacher’s improper resignation

During Tuesday’s hearing, Mandurraga also spoke about a fall 2024 incident where a teacher who had sent a student a topless photo was allowed to resign with full benefits.

He added that the case was reported to the district’s Human Resources department, but was not reported to the State Board of Education or the police, and that the teacher was almost hired by a neighboring district.

“It came to me as, look, we have a serious personnel matter … and we’re going to go ahead and take a resignation in lieu of termination,” Calles said. “I never saw the image.”

 

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Calles added that the matter was brought to his attention by Juan Ceja, TUHSD’s former administrator of human resources, and that Ceja made the call to allow the teacher to resign.

After the hearing, the district reported the incident to the State Board of Education, according to Calles, who added that this is a move that should have been done by either Mandurraga or Ceja, who were both considered mandatory reporters under state law.

“You can’t simply say, ‘I told somebody else and now therefore I wash my hands of it,'” Calles said. “That’s not how mandatory reporting works.”

Tolleson superintendent explains $25 million loan to Isaac School District

These allegations were made during a hearing where JLAC, a bipartisan committee, ultimately voted to open an audit into TUHSD.

The committee began looking into the district after it agreed to loan Phoenix’s Isaac School District $25 million as part of a lease-purchase deal. The loan, which Calles said Isaac has to pay back within five years, helped pull the district out of a financial crisis.

That deal led to questions being raised about how TUHSD had $25 million to hand out, which Calles said was due to the district preparing for funding cuts.

“No different than during the pandemic, if you would have stopped by my closet, you would have seen a bunch of toilet paper stacked up because yes, when you are constantly in concern of this shortage, you’re going to go ahead and prepare for that,” Calles said.

Calles added that the terms of the loan included a 6% interest rate, which would mean the district would make $7 million if Isaac takes the full term to repay TUHSD.

Did Tolleson school district ask lawmaker to pay $26,000 for documents?

In August, Republican state Rep. Matt Gress requested records from THUSD to follow up after a July committee hearing.

The district allegedly refused and demanded more than $26,000 in fees to produce the documents, according to Gress.

Calles said this is partially inaccurate.

“First, Rep. Gress changed what he wanted about three or four times … which clearly articulated he didn’t know what he was asking for,” Calles said.

Gress’ final request was for TUHSD to provide every purchase order and invoice from the past two years.

Calles said that the district responds to records requests with physical copies of documents and that anyone who requests records is charged $1 per page.

“What he was asking for, we had estimated at over 26,000 pages of documents that our team was going to have to run copies for,” the superintendent said.

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