Kansas City district accused of discrimination in second attendance fraud lawsuit
A second former Kansas City Public Schools employee accused of tampering with district attendance data is suing the district, claiming retaliation, wrongful termination and race and age discrimination.
Albert Collins says in the lawsuit, filed April 14 in Jackson County Circuit Court, that KCPS administrators retaliated against him and eventually fired him after he told investigators that the practice of faking student attendance records was district-wide.
Collins, who is black, claims in the suit that while he and another employee accused of inflating attendance were fired in 2019, another employee, who is white and was also linked to the fraud, was allowed to retain her job. And, the suit says, “KCPS subjected Collins to harassment and discrimination because of Collins’ race.”
Because Collins “suffered economic loss, emotional distress and other damages,” and because the district “acted in reckless disregard” of his rights and “with evil motive,” Collins seeks lost pay and other monetary compensation, including attorney’s fees. The suit also demands a jury trial.
KCPS, on Thursday, declined to discuss details of the lawsuit.
“While we would like to provide more clarity, as with other lawsuits in this case, it is not our practice to comment on pending litigation,” said Kelly Wachel, district spokeswoman. “We look forward to addressing this through the legal process.”
A whistleblower, former district employee Sam Johnson, had told the state education department that KCPS administrators instructed workers to inflate attendance data in an attempt to help the district regain accreditation.
The suit claims that Collins supported Johnson, his boss, who named him as an employee who could back up his allegations.
Earlier this month, Johnson also sued the district. In his lawsuit, filed in federal court, Johnson said he was retaliated against and forced out of his job because he refused to falsify the data and then told Superintendent Mark Bedell about the scheme.
After Johnson reported the fraud to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the district announced the misconduct and paid the state nearly $200,000 in funding it had wrongly collected. State funding to districts is based on per pupil daily attendance.
Both suits name several current and former KCPS administrators, including Vicky Murillo, the former chief academic officer who left for a superintendent post in Iowa; Luis Cordoba, now retired executive director of the office of student intervention; and Mike Reynolds, former director of accountability, who is no longer with KCPS.
Collins’ suit refers to former Superintendent Steve Green, who led the district during the time the data was falsified, 2013-2015, but the suit does not name him. Green left Kansas City for a superintendent job in the Atlanta area, but left that job amid a controversy over hiring practices. Bedell replaced Green in 2016.
Collins started working in the district in 2007 as a high school basketball coach and long-term substitute teacher. In 2014 he was promoted to attendance ambassador in the Office of Student Intervention, working with families with students who had attendance issues.
Collins believes the administrators named in the suit “were pressuring him and others to clean up attendance.”
For years, KCPS has struggled to meet state standards requiring 90% of students to be in school 90% of the time. Failure to meet that standard has been key in keeping the district from gaining state accreditation.
The suit says that in April 2015, “Collins was directed by his superiors to change attendance numbers” for students whose attendance was at 88% or 89%.
When The Star first reported on the faked attendance data in November, the district said internal and external investigations found that seven employees had changed attendance records. Three no longer worked for the district. The other four were initially put on administrative leave. In the end, two were fired.
In February, The Star reported that a former middle school secretary, LaQuyn Collier, said she and co-workers were ordered by district leaders to falsify the data. She said she and Collins were fired to cover up a problem that went system wide. She has retained an attorney to try to regain her job.
