San Diego City Councilwoman Monica Montgomery Steppe’s questions about the district’s stewardship of Lincoln High is still causing a commotion, more than a week later.
She called out problems at the school, as discussed on last week’s podcast. This week, she got some responses.
San Diego Unified School Board members Sharon Whitehurst-Payne and Richard Barrera clapped back, calling Montgomery Steppe disingenuous, and said she should do a little more helping and a little less question-asking. Hosts Scott Lewis, Andrew Keatts and Sara Libby dove into the discussion and the years-long debate over the troubled, high-profile high school.
Also on the show this week, we’ve got three major investigations to unspool.
There’s been some major fallout from Will Huntsberry’s investigation into Volunteers of America Southwest. After Huntsberry laid out the evidence of fraud, double billing and conflicts of interest at the powerful local charity, Veterans Affairs pulled funding. And now, the org’s CEO and board are gone.
Keatts’ big pull was on the San Diego Housing Commission, which has had quite a dramatic stretch in recent weeks.
A broker the agency hired seems to have had a potentially criminal conflict of interest in the purchase of hotels for homeless residents he helped coordinate. Then the Housing Commission’s response to the story caused a new round of drama.
At the end of the show is VOSD’s Kayla Jimenez, who describes her story of one professor who very nearly got fired for misconduct.
Chetan Kumar of CSU San Marcos was found to have sexually harassed his former teacher’s aide and acted unprofessionally with students. The university made moves to fire him, but ultimately relented after his union filed an appeal.