Fired school official sues former boss
Ex-business officer claims superintendent retaliated against her
“I am very confident the lawsuit will be found without merit.” — Superintendent Jon Gundry
A former top business officer at the Santa Clara County Office of Education is suing Superintendent Jon Gundry, accusing him of firing her after she questioned his expenses and insisted on releasing public records.
Micaela Ochoa, 45, was dismissed in July after three years as chief business officer. She has filed an employment and civil rights complaint in the Northern District of California federal court against Gundry and the county office of education.
In her complaint, Ochoa contends that Gundry attempted to bully her into changing his wage statement to avoid paying taxes on reimbursement for his moving expenses and retaliated against her for criticizing the office’s incomplete release of documents requested by a San Jose journalist.
“I am very confident the lawsuit will be found without merit,” Gundry said Wednesday. The allegations, he said, are not factually accurate.
Ochoa, who is now deputy superintendent of the Pleasanton Unified School District, did not respond by press time to requests for comment.
She is seeking to regain her job with the county office of education and unspecified monetary damages.
As chief business officer, Ochoa was enmeshed in several controversies at the office of education. In 2013 during the administration of then-Superintendent Xavier De La Torre, she carried out the downsizing of the payroll department, resulting in the office issuing hundreds of error-filled paychecks. The legal and accounting costs of untangling the mess have exceeded $1 million.
Ochoa also oversaw the office of education’s response to the Internal Revenue Service after submitting late payroll taxes, which triggered millions of dollars in penalties. Although her own office was responsible for the mistakes, she initially blamed the Santa Clara County Treasurer for the errors and also inaccurately claimed the late payment was a one-time error.
The payments covered payroll taxes for employees of the education office and 27 of the county’s 31 school districts. On appeal, the IRS forgave the penalties.
In her lawsuit, Ochoa contends that Gundry yelled at her in February 2015 after she told him that some of his moving expenses would be taxable. The suit maintains that he also yelled at a former business manager, Ted O, about the issue and threatened to fire both of them if he could not trust them, then cut Ochoa out of key business-related decisions.
O filed a complaint against Gundry with the board of education.
The lawsuit also lists thousands of dollars’ worth of contracts that it alleges Gundry funneled to various firms and to “close personal friend” Mark Skvarna, who was hired first as a business consultant and last year replaced Ochoa as chief business officer.
The suit points out that various contracts were priced just under the $100,000 threshold that requires approval from the board of education.
Most of the consultants that the lawsuit singles out for criticism were investigators sorting out and repairing the disarray in the payroll department.
Ochoa maintains that Gundry and his office failed to disclose all information sought in a Public Records Act requests by Josh Koehn of the online blog San Jose Inside. Koehn received some of the contracts he sought from an unnamed source.
Gundry terminated both Ochoa and Medina without cause, effective Aug. 1, but placed them on leave July 2. The county office bought out the remainder of their contracts. Both of them filed claims, which were turned down, against the office of education.