A newly disclosed record reveals what ultimately led to former Poway Unified Superintendent Marian Kim Phelps’ firing at the end of April: The school district found she had inappropriately interfered with a school investigation into a student accused of bullying her daughter.
Phelps had requested the investigation and demanded information from district employees about the probe as it was ongoing, Poway Unified school board President Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff wrote in an April letter to Phelps explaining why she was going to be fired. Phelps also lied that she had not requested an investigation, not made threats toward students and not interfered in the investigation, O’Connor-Ratcliff said.
The exact reasons why Phelps was fired have been obscured for months. The school district has declined to disclose the findings of an investigation it commissioned into a yearlong controversy surrounding the Del Norte High softball program, on which Phelps’ daughter, Jessica, was a player. Coaches and parents had alleged Phelps had harassed softball players because they did not clap loudly enough for Jessica at a banquet last year. Phelps has denied those claims.
The reasons for her firing and details of the misconduct she has been accused of have now been released in a tort claim Phelps’ attorneys filed with the school district on June 12. She plans to sue for damages totaling more than $1 million, alleging breach of contract, painting her in a false light and other claims.
“These statements were enormously destructive to (Phelps’) reputation and future employment prospects, as an untarnished record of service was blemished beyond recognition with commentary inconsistent with the evidence,” the claim says of public statements the board has made since her firing.
This is Phelps’ second legal filing against the district in two weeks. She asked a judge on May 30 to rescind her firing and to block the release to The San Diego Union-Tribune of the statement of cause for termination that her new tort claim disclosed.
On April 23, seven days before the Poway Unified school board fired Phelps for cause, O’Connor-Ratcliff had outlined all the reasons it planned to do so in a seven-page letter. Phelps’ tort claim included the letter as an exhibit.
The letter included a summary of Phelps’ alleged conduct based on an investigation the school board had commissioned of the Del Norte softball controversy from an outside law firm, Dannis Woliver Kelley.
Phelps’ filings deny the claims made in that letter.
“The (letter) not only failed to allege conduct substantiating any cause for termination, but also relies upon insufficient factual bases to prove wrongful conduct,” Phelps’ attorney Gregory Rolen wrote in an April legal brief in response.
At the heart of the controversy was a conflict between Phelps’ daughter, Jessica Phelps, and a fellow Del Norte High softball teammate, whom the school district refers to by her initials, L.R., in documents.
Phelps’ claim alleges that for many months, L.R. and her mother had bullied and harassed Jessica and suggests they were motivated by privileges they thought she enjoyed as the daughter of the superintendent.
Phelps alleged that L.R. had gotten other members of the softball team not to applaud Jessica when she received the most valuable player award at the banquet last May, causing Jessica to break down in tears afterward. Another teammate later told Phelps they had not applauded “to show solidarity” for L.R., according to Phelps’ claim.
Phelps called that teammate later that night. According to the district’s investigation, on that call — which happened past 11 p.m. and lasted for at least half an hour — Phelps threatened that those senior players would not walk in graduation.
Days later, Del Norte High launched an investigation led by the school’s athletic director, Amanda Waters-Nelson, and an assistant principal, according to Phelps’ claim. According to her claim, the investigation by the school found that L.R. had engaged in bullying and harassing behavior, and administrators gave her a discipline contract she ultimately signed.
Phelps alleges that L.R.’s parents orchestrated a retaliatory social media campaign that culminated in public comments against her at board meetings.
She argues that in firing her, the school board kowtowed to an “angry mob,” citing the attention of conservative political groups that already opposed her efforts to advance diversity, equity and inclusion work in the district.
But according to O’Connor-Ratcliff’s letter, Phelps’ firing had nothing to do with outside pressure. Rather, Phelps used her status to influence the school’s investigation from the very beginning, O’Connor-Ratcliff wrote.
“You leveraged your position as superintendent to interfere with (Del Norte High’s) investigation from inception and until the conclusion,” O’Connor-Ratcliff wrote in the letter explaining why she would be fired.
Phelps had asked the school’s athletic director, Waters-Nelson, to launch the investigation in the first place, according to the letter. Phelps told her in a text message: “You need to please do an investigation on (L.R.). I keep hearing daily stuff that she continues to talk crap about my kid … I have list of kids names that you can interview.”
The district’s letter says that Phelps ordered Waters-Nelson not to tell anyone that she had requested the investigation and made Waters-Nelson tell her details of the investigation as it was in progress, including what interviewed witnesses had said. Phelps also asked Waters-Nelson to read the draft investigation report to her before it was completed and requested changes to some of the findings and recommendations, the district said.
Later, as the district was pursuing its owns investigation, Phelps asked Waters-Nelson if she had kept their text messages, Phelps said in her court filing last month. Waters-Nelson told Phelps that she did, and she had given them to the district investigator.
O’Connor-Ratcliff said that Phelps had also told district administrators how she wanted L.R. disciplined, including with suspension or administrative transfer to another school, and that administrators told Phelps that wouldn’t be appropriate.
Phelps told a district administrator that the situation with L.R. could lead to litigation and ordered the administrator to give her copies of all related documents, saying as superintendent she needed to see them, according to O’Connor-Ratcliff. Administrators reported that they complied with Phelps’ demands for fear of retaliation.
O’Connor-Ratcliff told Phelps she had violated multiple board policies, including ones governing conflict of interest, appropriate adult-student interaction and professional behavior.
“Your above conduct is unacceptable, unprofessional, intolerable, immoral and warrants your termination for cause,” O’Connor-Ratcliff wrote. “To avoid any conflict of interest … you must maintain the line between your superintendent role and your parent role, and you are prohibited from crossing that line and abusing your role and authority as the superintendent in matters related only to your role as a parent.”
“Even worse,” O’Connor-Ratcliff said, Phelps for months repeatedly lied about her involvement in the matter. The letter said that Phelps’ actions, revealed by the investigation, contradicted her repeated public statements that she never made threats toward any student, never asked the school to initiate an investigation and never leveraged her position to interfere with the school’s investigation.
“The Board’s independent investigation recently revealed that your statements and denials were all false,” O’Connor-Ratcliff wrote.
O’Connor-Ratcliff said Phelps had also violated an order by the board on Nov. 15 not to use any district resources to explain, defend or otherwise discuss the softball controversy.
Later that same night, Phelps sent a district staff-wide email defending herself and accusing public commenters of slander. “In my 32 years in education, I have always worked passionately to protect the safety and wellbeing of the children we serve. My leadership, actions, and decisions are guided by a high level of ethics and integrity,” Phelps wrote.
In a legal brief she sent the district on April 29 in response to O’Connor-Ratcliff’s letter of intent to fire her, Phelps denied the allegations and suggested she was misled by district employees and board trustees during the investigation.
She said O’Connor-Ratcliff had told her she could speak to the media and that the district’s spokesperson had insisted she send the staff email to “rebuild confidence.” She said another trustee had told her the district’s investigation would not be about her.
Phelps said Waters-Nelson had “represented” herself as a friend and that she therefore vented to her. Phelps insists in her legal brief to the district that she did not request an investigation or order Waters-Nelson to not disclose anything, and that the district misrepresented Phelps’ texts to Waters-Nelson.
The brief denies that Phelps threatened to revoke players’ graduation ceremony privileges, ordered Waters-Nelson to read aloud the draft investigation report or influenced the issuance of a discipline contract for L.R.
Phelps said that when she was interviewed as part of the district’s investigation, she wasn’t given a chance to address the allegations that got her fired.
And her lawyers argue that her conduct did not meet the legal standards of the causes for termination listed.
If the district denies Phelps’ new tort claim, she plans to sue.
