Fired schools official alleges pension, pay abuse

Leveling allegations of pension abuse and pay for work that wasn’t performed, a fired Newport-Mesa personnel chief on Tuesday avowed the basis for his much publicized dispute with the superintendent and his dogged pursuit of district records.

John Caldecott, former director of human resources for the district, described a series of allegations against Supt. Fred Navarro and the trustees during the school board meeting. Caldecott said, among other things, that he suspects that salary reports to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or STRS, are incorrect and “could inflate pensions.”

“I want the superintendent and the board to be held accountable,” said Caldecott, who had alluded to such claims several weeks ago after more than a month of declining to go into the specifics of a complaint he had filed against Navarro last year.

The school board fired Caldecott on Jan. 27, shortly after he asked an Orange County Superior Court judge to force the Newport-Mesa Unified School District to release internal documents related to his complaint. A hearing concerning the release of the documents is set for April 13.

The district declined to comment on this “personnel issue and current legal matter” under the advice of counsel, district spokeswoman Laura Boss wrote in an email Tuesday night.

The misreporting, Caldecott alleged, concerned the salaries of principals and administrators whose jobs require an administrative credential — a category known as certificated management. He said he suspects the district was considering forms of compensation like merit pay in pension calculations, which would ultimately inflate pensions.

Caldecott alleges the misreporting pertained to how the district coded the compensation in its reports to STRS.

A district employee for a decade, Caldecott said he grew suspicious around May when the superintendent pushed to change the salary schedule for certificated management employees. “What problem are we fixing?” Caldecott said he asked various administrators.

He said a top administrator responded with this remark in writing in late May: “So [John] unless you’d like to personally collect a set of whistles, the blowing of which will hurt your colleagues, I’d suggest that what we’re [top administrator and superintendent] proposing to do fixes the problem prospectively, and that such a fix is wholly acceptable to STRS.”

Caldecott declined to name the administrator.

He said the salary schedule change and the subsequent response alerted him that there may have been a problem that the district was not publicly addressing but instead trying to resolve behind the scenes.

About four months later, Caldecott said, he began calling for a forensic audit of all STRS records of certificated management employees, requests that he said the superintendent and school board did not act on.

The state retirement system, however, began an audit of district records this month. District officials were given notice of the impending audit in late December.

Caldecott contacted the retirement system, but he said he is unsure whether his contact prompted the audit

Separately, Caldecott alleges that one administrative employee is being paid extra in a way that is “highly suspicious and irregular.”

The employee has been paid for 20 days of extra work for about the last three years — work that wasn’t performed, according to a report made to the personnel office, Caldecott said.

Caldecott wouldn’t comment on whether this employee was still on the district’s payroll, but said the person’s annual salary was in the range of $140,000 to $150,000. Twenty days of pay would come out to $12,420 for that employee, Caldecott said.

In a statement given to the Daily Pilot that he also delivered to the school board Tuesday night, Caldecott further alleges a “pattern of overspending” by the superintendent and board at a time when he said he was asked to create a seniority list of teachers — a possible precursor to layoffs.

“This will ultimately impact programs and the quality of education at NMUSD, not to mention the devastating effects on morale,” Caldecott said in the statement.

He said the superintendent directed him to begin drawing up a seniority list Jan. 21 — a day before Caldecott was placed on paid administrative leave.

Caldecott was fired less than a week later. He said the internal documents he requested just before he was fired are public under the law.

Caldecott had asked an Orange County Superior Court judge for a copy of a written response to an internal complaint he filed against Navarro. A school district attorney had denied his request in December on grounds that “the privacy rights of the employee outweighed public interest in the case,” according to Caldecott’s court filing.