Three Years of Breaches, Public Record Debates, and the Accountability System at SUSD

TL;DR :

• The Safety Breach: The Lincoln White investigation confirmed that an uncleared felon coached middle school students for three years. Students were left completely unmonitored during the first year, and a cleared volunteer was added for the final two years.
• Zero Accountability: The former athletic director who bypassed these safety protocols stepped down from that role on November 30th, 2025, but remains employed by the district as a teacher today.
• Weaponized Deflection: Rather than addressing these failures, a coordinated effort is leveraging heavily redacted CPRA records requests to target advocates, leak family data, and manufacture distractions.
• Our Stance: We are asking whether public funds were illegally directed to a felon and when this deflection will stop. We will continue to act as the community's oversight to protect student safety and ensure parents are never intimidated into silence.

Dear Saratoga Community,

The details surrounding the Lincoln White investigation findings reveal an egregious failure in basic safety oversight. What was initially framed as a minor administrative gap was actually a multi-year breach of protocol that allowed an uncleared individual with violent criminal convictions to coach middle school students for three consecutive years.

The Accountability Crisis: Bypassing Protocols Without Consequence
A central concern remains completely unaddressed by the district: the former athletic director responsible for this massive oversight remains employed as a PE teacher in our schools. The findings indicate that the former athletic director felt empowered to make these critical safety decisions entirely unchecked, allowing this uncleared individual access to our students.

The first district communication in November, 2025, initially claimed that this coach was under the supervision of a cleared afterschool staff member at all times. However, the community quickly learned the truth: during the first year of this three-year breach, middle school students were left completely unmonitored with this uncleared individual. Furthermore, as confirmed by the public record, it was only during the final two years that a cleared adult volunteer had to be present just to ensure there was actual adult supervision and safety for the students.

What happened during that first year when administrative oversight was absent? What triggered the need to have a cleared volunteer join the coach/felon? Was the coach/felon, at any time during his 3 year season, still actively on parole during the time they were permitted access to our students?

More importantly, our community must stand firm on a foundational boundary: an individual with a history of violent felony convictions should never, under any circumstances, be permitted around students—regardless of the level of supervision promised. While we believe in the principles of restorative justice and rehabilitation, those opportunities belong in adult environments. A school district should never compromise the safety of minors to provide an unchecked athletic platform to a violent offender.
The former athletic director's tenure in that leadership role officially ended when she stepped down on November 30th, 2025—a reality later communicated directly in the December 2025 board meeting,. Yet, despite orchestrating a multi-year breach of duty that left students unmonitored in its first year and forced a cleared volunteer to step in as a safety monitor for the remaining two, this former athletic director remains employed as a teacher within our district today.

By failing to impose meaningful personnel consequences for such a profound breakdown, the district’s actions leave a clear impression that institutional protection is being prioritized over the physical and emotional safety of our students. Furthermore, the community still does not know if other administrators or staff members were aware of or involved in allowing this three-year protocol breach to continue.

Finally, it raises an unavoidable question for every taxpayer in Saratoga: Were any public district funds or stipends directed to this uncleared individual during this multi-year period? If this turns out to be true, were any California education or fiscal laws broken? The community has an absolute right to a clear accounting of how public funds were and are spent and whether legal boundaries were crossed.

Addressing the Weaponization of Records Requests to Deflect Accountability
This failure goes hand-in-hand with a systemic chilling effect that silences anyone who tries to speak out. Retaliation is a real and now clearly proven fear for parents and staff in this district. As highlighted in the June 3rd board meeting, we are now seeing a disturbing pattern where the California Public Records Act (CPRA) is being leveraged in a manner that targets and intimidates "upstanders" in our community.
To many in the community, it appears that a coordinated effort has been made to use heavily redacted, leaked documents obtained via CPRA requests to manufacture controversies out of completely benign, personal conversations. This engineered gossip has targeted local advocates who have been visible in demanding safety accountability.
In our opinion, dragging personal, supportive check-ins between community members regarding their young students into the public forum looks like a direct effort to create a false narrative and deflect from the district's genuine safety failures. Furthermore, allowing these documents to be circulated publicly raised significant community concerns regarding student privacy laws (FERPA) by leaving identifying markers exposed. When outside motives are allowed to disrupt classroom environments with manufactured friction, the system is broken from the top down.

A Call for Clarity: When Does the Deflection Stop?
It is entirely clear that the individuals pushing these narratives have not ended the school year focused on resolving the core systemic issues. Instead, they appear to be doubling down on distraction. Because of this, our community can only expect more calculated friction moving forward. 

We must ask directly: When does this deflection stop?

The activism we are doing is entirely focused on keeping our students safe. Yet, these counter-narratives actively hinder the path of well-meaning parents who simply want to come forward with legitimate safety warnings. This unyielding defense of the administration, no matter the cost, results in a climate where student safety risks are minimized just to protect a status quo. The community sees this for exactly what it is: an attempt to shift the focus away from the people who failed our students rather than addressing the structural lapses.

Our Continued Demands
We will work to ensure parents are not intimidated into silence, and we will always be the oversight when the trustees themselves have ignored this duty. We continue to demand full transparency and genuine accountability from the Board of Trustees. We call on them to:

• Demonstrate meaningful, visible accountability for the profound negligence documented in the Lincoln White investigation, leaving it to the district to show us what true safety compliance looks like.
• Disclose the full details of who else enabled or ignored this multi-year protocol breach.
• Establish and strictly enforce ironclad protections against retaliation so that parents, staff, and community advocates can speak safely without facing weaponized records leaks or harassment from organized proxy groups.

Please share this petition update with your neighbors. The community deserves full honesty, complete transparency, and a leadership body that puts student safety and family privacy above administrative comfort.

Sincerely,

 Concerned Parents and Community Members

For Further Reading
These articles document public reporting on the issues described herein and are provided for transparency and context:

Petition Update #6: In Case You Missed It: The June 11th Investigation Release & What’s Next

Petition Update #5: Respect the Process. Protect the Students. End Bullying Now!

Petition Update #4: Failing Student Safety is not a ‘gap.’

Petition Update #3: Press Helps Shed Light on Student Safety and Transparency at SUSD

Petition Update #2: Student Safety First: Transparency Is Needed After a Confirmed Breach

Petition Update #1: Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors: Facts, Accountability, and Student Safety

The Issue is presented: Petition to SUSD Trustees: Enforce Student Safety, Oversight & Accountability