Judge Orders Pasadena Unified to Produce Documents in Ruelas, Madison Teacher case

 

A Superior Court judge has ordered the Pasadena Unified School District to disclose 24 complete, unredacted documents in a case involving Madison Elementary School Principal Juan Ruelas and second grade teacher Patricia Guzman.

In a one-day trial of a Public Records Act lawsuit brought by Pasadena resident Pablo Alvarado, the Executive Director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, and the Citizens Committee for Equality and Justice at Madison (CCEJAM), Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant ordered the Pasadena Unified to produce complete documents for 24 of the 30 documents that Alvarado and CCEJAM sought.

The decision by Chalfant also orders release of the complete investigation report into an August 19, 2015 incident involving Guzman, who was also the teacher’s union representative at Madison.

In that incident, which occurred soon after Ruelas’ arrival at Madison as the new principal following his appointment by Pasadena Unified Superintendent Brian McDonald, Ruelas reportedly witnessed Guzman grabbing a student by his arm and shaking him. The student’s mother filed a complaint with the District.

The next day, according to court documents, Ruelas ordered Guzman to leave her classroom and report to Human Resources. She refused to leave the Madison school campus. Ruelas called police, who escorted her off the grounds.

Guzman’s attorney, Dale Gronemeier, contends that Ruelas’ allegation about the student abuse was made only after Guzman had complained to the teachers union and Superintendent McDonald about unrelated issues with Ruelas.

Ruelas added an insubordination charge as ground for the suspension, when Guzman objected to her suspension the next day, Gronemeier claimed in the court filing.

An outside investigator, hired by Pasadena Unified, found that the inappropriate touching allegation against Guzman could not be substantiated, but supported the charge of insubordination.

Following six months of suspension, Pasadena Unified returned Guzman to the classroom with a letter of reprimand for insubordination.

When Alvarado and CCEJAM subsequently made Public Records Act requests for the Guzman investigation report, Pasadena Unified produced the only portions of the report which sustaining the charge of insubordination – but with the names of witnesses redacted.

According to Gronemeier, Pasadena Unified refused to produce the portion of the investigation report that favored Guzman — the portion of the report that exonerated her from the charge of child abuse.

The District, however, said that Guzman herself has refused to sign a waiver of her privacy rights and thus the District was barred by law from publicly releasing information about the dismissed allegation.

As the court said, “(Alvarado) contends that the request for waiver was conditioned on ‘appropriate redaction.’ But the letter in context makes plain that if Guzman provides a waiver, then the report will be produced with redactions for other persons. To the extent that there was ambiguity, (Gronemeier) was obligated to respond and failed to do so. (Alvarado) also contends that Guzman did not want the insubordination portion of the Report released, and only waives now that the District has also done so.”

In an unrelated matter to the Guzman case, Judge Chalfant also ordered the release of an un-redacted June 4, 2011, letter by Ruelas that identifies the teacher whose cheating caused Roosevelt Elementary School (where Ruelas was principal at the time) to lose its Blue Ribbon School Award nomination.

Gronemeier and his co-counsel in the Public Records Act lawsuit, Skip Hickambottom, have contended, in a 41-page report to Pasadena Unified, that cheating had occurred at Roosevelt Elementary School over the 6-year period during which Ruelas was Roosevelt’s Principal. District officials have long contended that an internal investigation revealed no such cheating.

Responding to the accusations back in November, 2016 Associate Superintendent Mercy Santoro said, “Concerning the matter of the 2011 Standardized Testing Irregularities reported at Roosevelt Elementary School, the issue was investigated by the District’s Human Resources and Technology staff, and was reported to the California Department of Education (CDE).”

“These incidents are taken very seriously,” Santoro added, saying, “The CDE’s analysis showed that 1.6 percent of students had been involved in the incident, therefore, the school’s academic performance was not impacted.

“However,” Santoro continued, “because an adult teacher irregularity was found to occur, the school was made ineligible for programs in 2011-12 such as the California Distinguished School Award and the Blue Ribbon Schools Program. This unfortunate incident has been investigated, and the necessary precautions have been put in place.”