A former public-school auditor turned whistleblower sued Dallas Independent School District (DISD) last week, claiming the district fired her in retaliation for uncovering alleged illegal conduct by administrators at an East Dallas high school.
The lawsuit, filed in district court by former DISD auditor Andrea Whelan, accuses DISD officials and at least one school board trustee of unlawfully orchestrating Whelan’s termination after she repeatedly submitted reports to her superiors at the DISD Office of Internal Audit documenting alleged evidence of grade and attendance manipulation at W. W. Samuell High School.
Whelan stated in the suit that the school’s principal during the 2020-2021 academic year was under pressure from DISD to “boost student achievement and attendance numbers,” claiming that the principal falsified numerous students’ grade and attendance records and directed individual teachers to do the same.
Instances of falsification included awarding passing grades to students who deserved failing marks and altering attendance records to show that students were present when they actually were not.
Whelan further asserted that when she reported her discovery to DISD Chief Internal Audit Officer Robert Rubel, he and another official at the Office of Internal Audit substantially altered her reports to “eliminate or minimize all [her] findings.”
She ended up filing a report to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in March regarding alleged grade and attendance manipulation at a different school, Young Men’s Leadership Academy.
One day after she informed Rubel that she had reported the allegations to TEA, he moved to terminate her employment at DISD over “performance issues,” including missing deadlines allegedly assigned by Rubel.
The former auditor opted to appeal her termination through the district’s grievance protocols. During the second stage of the process, according to the lawsuit, DISD switched the hearing officer from an uninvolved person to Rubel himself.
Whelan alleged that the district violated its own policies by appointing Rubel to hear her grievance case, stating in the suit that grievance proceedings should be conducted “in a fair and impartial manner” and that “[a] hearing officer who has a conflict of interest [must] disqualify himself or herself and be excused.”
She claimed this was done so that Rubel would not have to testify about the supposed deadlines she missed, which she contended he never assigned her.
Rubel found in favor of himself, prompting Whelan to appeal.
The final stage in the grievance protocols had Whelan appealing to a subcommittee of Dallas school board trustees, one of whom was Trustee Edwin Flores.
Whelan claimed that Flores failed to act impartially in the proceedings by supplying additional impertinent justifications for her termination and openly urging the Board of Trustees to uphold her firing.
During the hearing, a lawyer representing the district claimed that Whelan’s “reports failed to adhere to proper investigative and auditing standards” and that her investigation into Samuell High “had holes you could drive a Mack Truck through,” per The Dallas Morning News.
During the hearing, the district lawyer also claimed that what Whelan perceived as illegal conduct was just a principal helping students with “credit recovery” in the context of COVID-19-related disruptions to public education.
The subcommittee voted unanimously to reject Whelan’s grievance petition, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
According to the lawsuit, Whelan believes that DISD “was concealing the misrepresentation and misreporting of attendance and grade data in order to unlawfully obtain federal and state funding beyond what it was entitled to.”
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for November 17.
The Dallas Express reached out to DISD to discuss the case, but a spokesperson stated that the district does not comment on pending litigation.
A request for comment was also made to Trustee Flores; however, The Dallas Express had not heard back at the time of publication.