An escalating fight between state lawmakers and Tolleson Union High School District Superintendent Jeremy Calles led to an audit of the district’s finances and a defamation lawsuit against a lawmaker this week.
Calles helped broker a land deal between the Tolleson district and the Isaac Elementary School District in Phoenix earlier this year.
Isaac had gone into a deep financial receivership and needed immediate funding to stay above water.
Tolleson purchased Isaac buildings for $25 million, which Isaac will gradually pay back with interest.
But Rep. Matt Gress (R-Phoenix) has questioned the legality of the deal and described it as a “predatory loan.”
Calles said Gress’ comments about him have damaged his career as the owner of a consulting company, which he does in conjunction with his superintendent role. He’s asking for $150,000 in damages.
“You should not call somebody a criminal unless they are in fact charged and convicted of a crime, right. You can't just say someone's committing criminal activity because you disagree with their business decisions,” Calles said.
Calles’ attorney served Gress with a defamation lawsuit at the Capitol on Tuesday.
Calles said process servers had been struggling to find Gress, and he knew Gress would be chairing a meeting of the legislature’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee.
At that hearing, Gress led the charge to demand a forensic audit of Tolleson’s finances by the Arizona auditor general’s office.
“The list goes on and on about people who have raised alarms about disturbing activity potentially happening at Tolleson,” Gress said.
A few months ago, Gress requested financial records from the Tolleson district, but he was hit with a $26,000 bill for them, which he’s said he won’t pay.
Lawmakers on the panel unanimously approved the audit.
Gress did not respond to a request for comment.
An $80 million domed football stadium
Lawmakers also questioned Calles’ decisions to build an $80 million domed football stadium, scheduled to open in 2028.
Calles said the stadium — which is still in the design stage — is necessary because students need a covered stadium to protect them from the heat.
“When it's 115° outside, it's probably pushing closer to 140°, 150° on that turf,” Calles said. “We need to figure out, especially here in Maricopa County, how do we get more indoor, you know, environments for our students who are playing sports and doing physical activities.”
Calles claimed that former Tolleson superintendent and current school board member Kino Flores is part of a group targeted Calles because he wouldn’t go along with contracts Flores pushed him to enter into.
Another person Calles said belongs to that group is former Tolleson Union High School Principal Felipe Mandurraga.
Mandurraga spoke to lawmakers about Calles on Tuesday, and made some damning claims, including improperly reallocating funds and not providing schools with enough staff.
He said a toxic work environment and “continuous harassment” from Calles is what made him resign as principal.
Mandurraga also said Calles tried to inflate Tolleson’s enrollment numbers to get more funding to pay for the stadium and wanted to purchase a charter school in the area.
Calles said there’s nothing illegal about purchasing a charter school, although he isn’t pursuing that path further. He said he considered it because the charter school in question is near a Tolleson public school which is at lower capacity due to a high number of charters in the area.
Gress said he finds it wild that a public school superintendent wanted to buy out a charter to boost enrollment numbers to get more resources.
Money for the stadium comes from voter-approved bonds, which don’t specify that’s how the money will be spent.
Lawmakers questioned whether the bond language is too vague and misleading to voters who may not want to pay for expensive football stadiums.
Calles said the vagueness is key because prices of things like construction costs change, and money can’t be repurposed once it’s approved by voters even if the need for certain projects changes.
“The level of specificity that they're asking for, that's not seen anywhere,” he said.
Gun incident
Another important issue in contention is a student who allegedly brought a gun to Tolleson Union High School.
Mandurraga said one student reported that another student had a gun on campus and brandished it. The student accused of having a gun was sent home, but none of the staff actually saw the gun.
Mandurraga said Calles let the student come back to school days later despite his protests and safety concerns. Two months later, the student was involved in a shootout at his home and shot two other people.
Calles said in a press conference following the JLAC hearing that he couldn’t expel the student based on an accusation, and when confronted, the student denied ever having a gun. If there was a confession, or the student was caught with a gun — Calles said he would have been expelled.
Capacity issues
Some of the six high schools in the Tolleson Union High School District have too many students, while others are too far below capacity.
Mandurraga accused Calles of letting too many students into the district and asked him to turn some students away to stop overcrowding
Calles said in response that Mandurraga doesn’t understand how open enrollment works.
Open enrollment is a state law which states students can apply to enroll in any public school, regardless of their area and be accepted based on the school’s classroom capacity.
Calles said because of that rule, he’s not allowed to refuse students until the school hits capacity. He said that capacity is also higher than it should be because of a new building that was supposed to be for the University High School, but it was granted to Tolleson Union High School instead and capacity was adjusted to account for the new square footage.
Low test scores
Tolleson’s management also came under fire from lawmakers for low test scores.
In 2024, Tolleson students tested at an average of 26% proficiency in English and 22% in math. Both numbers are below the state average.
Gress said that makes graduation rates somewhat meaningless. He said even if a high number of students graduate, if they aren’t proficient in English and math, then it’s a failure of the system.
Calles speculated that Gress — a proponent of private school vouchers — is using Tolleson as a way to push a school privatization agenda which invariably harms public schools.
He also suggested that Gress is upset because he had an alternative proposal for bailing out the Isaac district, and was stymied when Calles stepped in and helped see the Tolleson deal through.
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