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BY BRIAN HEWS
Hews Media Group-Los Cerritos Community News has exclusively learned that the Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) is preparing their team to audit the El Rancho Unified School District.
Former Superintendent Karling Aguilera-Fort and Board President Jose Lara have maintained “they have not been contacted by FCMAT for an audit,” yet FCMAT CEO Michael Fine indicated they are putting the audit team together.
Fine told HMG-LCCN, “the lead was just assigned and is pulling together her team.”
The audit comes in the wake of an exclusive exposé by HMG-LCCN that uncovered a wide-ranging scheme involving over $212 million in school bond funds perpetrated by El Rancho Unified School District (ERUSD) Board Members engaging in pay-to-play politics, financial cover-up, blatant conflicts of interests, and willful violations of California’s Education Code.
The long-running plot has involved ERUSD President Jose Lara and Vice-President Gabriel Orosco since 2015, with newly elected Board member Leanne Ibarra joining the two controversial board members immediately after she was elected in November 2018.
The recipient of Lara and Company’s actions was Jaime Ortiz, a good friend of Lara and Orosco’s, and owner of High Performance Learning Environments, Inc., which was incorporated only five years ago as a two-person company.
After the first two parts of the exposé published, the Los Angeles County Office of Education called for a FCMAT audit of the beleaguered district, an audit Aguilera-Fort denied, calling out HMG-LCCN for “mis-information.”
L.A. County Office of Education Calls for ‘Extraordinary Audit’ of El Rancho Unified School District
The downfall of Aguilera-Fort might have begun after another part of the exposé caught ERUSD president Jose Lara and Aguilera-Fort accusing the investigators of corruption, while falsely claiming and posting on social media that they were responsible for initiating the FCMAT audit.
Just days after the audit was announced, Jaime Ortiz left his contract with ERUSD, with Aguilera-Fort, amidst all the exposed corruption, praising Ortiz for the work he had done.
Jaime Ortiz and HPLE Resigns From El Rancho Unified Bond Program Management Contract
Finally Aguilera-Fort “resigned” to take a job at the Oxnard Unified School District.
El Rancho Unified Superintendent Karling Aguilera-Fort Will Resign
