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Evidence Destroyed, Alibi Attempted In
School Chief's Theft, District's Investigative
Report Says

June 23, 2006

ETUSD Board President Steve Newman reads a letter inviting the office of the Kern County Superintendent of Schools to assist in an audit of contracts executed by John Wight for possible conflicts of interest. ------------------------------------------------------------ Watch the video captured by ETUSD's surveillance camera, showing alleged theft of gasoline from the school district's gas pump. ------------------------------------------------------------

By Patric Hedlund

Sometimes, when you think it couldn’t look worse....it does.

A report delivered June 16 by detective Riley Parker, commissioned by Schools Legal Service on behalf of the El Tejon Unified School District, catalogs John Wight’s troubled—and troubling—profile, including a driver’s license designated “Probationary-Negligent Operator” for six moving violations in two years, five of them with his ETUSD vehicle.

Gasoline theft was not considered an allegation, but a fact: “There appears to be incontrovertible evidence that on May 19, 2006 [former ETUSD Superintendent] John Wight committed an act of theft of gasoline from the premises of the school district....” Parker writes: “it is the duty of the district to report this loss of public funds to local law enforcement [emphasis is Parker’s].”

Sergeant Dave Barker of the Kern County Sheriff’s Frazier Park substation confirmed Monday, June 19, that he had received Parker’s summary. “An active investigation is now in process,” Barker said.

The private investigator reports that the original Sony 8mm videotape, which showed six visits by Wight to the ETUSD gas tanks in a four-hour span of time, was destroyed by Steve Newman, the president of the ETUSD Board of Trustees. Newman is a recently retired 33-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Parker writes that the destruction of the tape may hinder the ability of law enforcement to prosecute the theft as a crime: “For evidentiary purposes the video tape evidence has been compromised and cannot be reproduced for evidence purposes pursuant to the ‘best evidence’ rule.”

In an interview Wednesday, June 21 Newman confirmed to The Mountain Enterprise that he had disposed of the original tape. He said “most people have VHS. We made a VHS copy. Our purposes were administrative and I didn’t want copies floating around. We only needed the one copy, so the VHS became the new master. I got rid of the original. I just threw it away in the trash at my house.”

When asked if he agreed with the detective’s concern that loss of the original would be detrimental to a prosecution, Newman said, “No, I do not. I disagree with that. That is an opinion on his part. I think that the D.A. can use it [the VHS submaster].

“At the time, the criminal thing was the furthest from my mind; the administrative thing was my priority and if I need to explain that in court, I can do that.”

No member of the Kern County District Attorney’s Office was available for comment prior to press time on Wednesday, but Kevin Reed, General Counsel for Los Angeles School District said “disposal of evidence is not proper procedure, but this does not necessarily stop prosecution.”

The private inves-tigator’s report summarizes concerns about several aspects of Wight’s ac-tivities, from the gas theft to his driving record, to corporations he had established and business associations which could potentially point to a conflict of interest regarding the construction contracts he initiated this spring on behalf of ETUSD.

One longtime associate of the former superintendent has “a marketing contract” with JTS Modular, builder of the classrooms Wight commissioned without bids.

Voters authorized $7.2 million in school bond issues last November. Those bonds are to be sold this week to finance rebuilding 57% of the district’s classrooms.

Odd calls from Wight to district employees after his departure May 31 appear, the detective said, to be efforts to construct “an alibi” for his behavior. There is also an allegation that Wight may have retained a complete set of keys to the district, under false pretenses, and that he may have entered the premises in secret to plant an envelope in the office of business manager Terri Geivet.

Suspicion on the part of district employees that the former superintendent was improperly accessing gasoline have existed for over a year, according to the report. They had observed him filling gas cans of an undetermined size placed in the back seat of his district vehicle. They said he routinely neglected to fill out district gas logs properly.

Distressed and angry Lockwood Valley parents came to school board meetings to challenge changes in school bus schedules in the fall of 2005. Wight said he ordered route changes and eliminated bus stops “because gas is too expensive” for two runs, causing young El Tejon School children to catch the bus with high school students and then spend 90 minutes on the bus before getting to school each morning.

Wight had recently recommended that more children be told to walk to school in the coming year, to lessen district fuel costs.

During the time of Wight’s employment, nearly 2600 gallons of gasoline are shown to be missing and unaccounted for, according to ETUSD gasoline logs secured in public records requests by The Mountain Enterprise. The losses began to double in the 2005-06 school year, sometimes over 200 gallons a month.

The value of the missing 2600 gallons of gas is estimated at roughly $6,500-$7500.

Wight drove a district sedan, with gasoline use paid for by the district, but he also owned a private motor home.

According to the investigator’s report, on May 19 district employee Rick Peters noticed Wight’s personal RV was parked near the ETUSD office fence.

The detective sum-marizes his interview with Peters: “Because he had been told by others that they believed Wight was stealing gasoline, coupled with Peters’ personal knowledge that each month the district was experiencing significant gasoline shortages, he felt it was quite possible that Wight was planning to steal gasoline for his motor home.

“Other reasons that made Peters suspicious were his knowledge that Wight routinely would get gasoline without writing odometer mileage information or fuel amounts in the gasoline log.” Peters told the investigator that he “set up a Sony 8mm video camera in his office that was positioned to record all activity around the gasoline pump.” You can see segments of that video at www.MountainEnterprise.com.

Wight was confronted with the evidence by Newman on May 31, Parker reports: “According to Newman, he had specifically hoped that Wight would be able to provide some plausible explanation for what had been recorded. When Wight failed to provide an explanation, he then asked Newman what he wanted from him and Newman told him that he believed that Wight’s resignation would be in order.

“Wight did in fact tender an immediate resignation. He then turned in his keys and was picked up from the school district by an unidentified person,” the report states.

On June 16 the ETUSD board asked the Kern County Superintendent of Schools to continue searching for irregularities in the contracts executed by Wight on behalf of the board. The investigator’s preliminary report will be followed by a report from auditors.

The accelerated building schedule which was used as the rationale by Wight to motivate the board to agree to no-bid contracts, “piggy-backing” on another school district’s bid process, has come to a halt. Building will not begin until next year.

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