Sacramento school withheld records on coach allegations. How The Bee got them
READ MORE
St. Hope series
Read our past coverage below:
Expand All
In August 2024, I received a 34-page audit report investigating St. Hope Public Schools. It detailed alleged violations, densely packed with unfamiliar, confusing acronyms, legalese and minute detail about labor contracts between nonprofits.
Among all the technical language was one passage that caught my attention — it referenced an investigation into reports that a school staff member was providing alcohol to students.
The investigation was also mentioned in two formal complaints about St. Hope submitted to the district in May 2024 — one from a group of teachers and another from a group of parents.
While reporting on St. Hope’s charter renewal process, poor learning conditions at the school and other operational issues, concerns about how the investigation was handled came up in interviews with teachers and parents. I decided to take a closer look at the allegations that staff members partied with students.
I started by reviewing the documents St. Hope leaders provided to the district, which consisted of two redacted emails, a termination letter for an employee who reported the allegations and a redacted portion of the investigation summary.
In their explanation of the records they turned over, St. Hope administrators mentioned only one teacher who they said was eventually terminated in part for “not making the allegations in good faith.”
Something wasn’t adding up. In interviews, other staff members indicated more than just one teacher reported these concerns. One teacher provided two emails that did not show up in the records provided to the district.
I requested the following public records from St. Hope on Aug. 15, 2024:
All written reports to administrators about student and/or staff involvement in parties where there may have been drugs or alcohol present January 2022 to current date
All written communication among staff regarding these reports from January 2022 to current date
Reports of investigations resulting from these reports from January 2022 to current date
The dates and times that (lead investigator) Kevin Hiestand was scheduled to perform interviews at the school related to investigations between Aug. 23 and current date
I received a response on Aug. 25 saying they determined my request sought disclosable records and that they expected the documents I requested would be made available by Sept. 6.
They sent a similar message Sept. 9, saying that the records would be returned Sept. 20. Public entities often need, or claim to need, more time during the public records request process.
The Sacramento City Unified board on Sept. 19 voted 6-0 to approve the charter renewal with certain conditions.
The following day, St. Hope Director of Operations Elisha Ferguson Parsons formally responded to The Bee’s request for records. She argued that all the records I requested were exempt from disclosure — a blanket denial.
How The Sacramento Bee pushed back
In December, The Sacramento Bee sought the help of Karl Olson, one of the state’s leading Public Records Act litigators, to push back against the school’s records denial.
Olson said that the school’s denial did not comply with the law.
“That kind of thing sends a message — that they’re trying to hide stuff, and to me it sends a message that they’re not acting in good faith,” Olson said in a May 6 interview.
He sent the school a letter Dec. 20 saying that the exemptions they cited to our public records request do not justify a blanket denial. He demanded that St. Hope turn over the responsive records by Jan. 3.
St. Hope then involved attorney Lee J. Rosenberg, partner with the law firm Young, Minney and Corr. The firm specializes in representing charter and private schools.
The school returned 37 pages of records in the new year. This production contained several complaints from teachers whose names were redacted, including a couple that were not shared with the district during the audit process. It also contained conversations among administrators regarding these reports and transcripts of early interviews with some of the involved staff members.
“I hope that the Bee will see this production as meaningful and substantial for visibility into St. HOPE’s approach to investigating the past rumors around ‘parties,’” Rosenberg wrote in the email.
The production of records did not include several email reports that I had been made aware of through various interviews with sources who requested to remain anonymous. The Bee has a rigorous policy relating to requests for anonymity. Fear of retribution or harm is the main consideration in editors approving such requests.
The Bee’s policy also requires journalists to ensure that the information provided is true, which is why St. Hope’s disclosure of documents was so important to this story.
Rosenberg argued that certain records The Bee sought were exempt from disclosure based on privacy and privilege protections for staff members.
The production redacted a significant portion of St. Hope legal counsel Hiestand’s investigation summary which detailed some of the claims of harassment between staff members following the reports. The original language of my request sought the report resulting from the investigation, not portions of it. Rosenberg would later argue that this portion of the investigation summary was redacted for privacy concerns.
“The matter did not involve a complaint, claim, or allegation by any student, parent, or employee who claims to have witnessed or have knowledge of the use of alcohol or drugs at parties attended by students and employees. The only information on the subject is that several employees overheard students say in conversation that they had heard of such parties from others, e.g., triple hearsay,” Rosenberg wrote.
But records that The Bee successfully procured later detailed a conversation where students told a teacher directly about the existence of these parties. Another email reports conversations among students who claimed to be inebriated at one of the coach’s parties.
The Sept. 22 email report begins, “Today in my 3rd period I had several students tell me that (redacted) has thrown parties for the students and implied that he supplies them with alcohol and is cool with them drinking at his house.”
Rosenberg reasoned that the investigation was inspired by “hearsay,” justifying St. Hope’s contention that certain information is exempt from disclosure because the intrusion into staff members’ personal privacy would outweigh the public interest. To rise to the level of public disclosure would require that the claims against the employee are substantial and “well-founded.”
He argued that the investigation they performed shows that the claims were unsubstantiated and therefore not well-founded.
We disagreed.
Olson argued on behalf of The Bee that St. Hope’s judgment that these charges were not well-founded does not justify non-disclosure.
“Courts are not bound by an agency’s determination of whether a public employee committed misconduct,” he wrote in a Feb. 28 letter citing case law previously cited by Rosenberg.
On March 31, the school turned over another small batch of records, including two more complaints from teachers and the transcripts of interviews with two athletics staff members regarding the allegations that a coach hosted a party for students with alcohol present. One of the complaints contained an overheard conversation of students saying they themselves were drinking at a party thrown by the coach.
Why this complaint, made by a third teacher in November 2023, was not returned earlier is unclear. Rosenberg said that it was found after expanding their search terms, but a St. Hope Human Resources Manager Sabrina Jaquez later said that the student names this teacher submitted were considered in the proceedings of the investigation, indicating that they were aware of the existence of this report prior to the district’s and The Bee’s records requests.
St. Hope and their counsel continued to justify the redaction of the coach’s name despite Olson’s argument that it is in the public interest to be made known.
In a Zoom meeting with Rosenberg and his clients, Olson pushed for additional disclosure.
“There is reasonable cause to believe the charges are well-founded, and that’s why it’s important that The Bee’s requests be honored,” Olson said. “In our view what we’ve gotten is too little too late.”
“This is a situation where we’ve had an investigator who has interviewed all relevant staff members and students and what everyone had said is that there are no eye witnesses — all we have is hearsay upon hearsay,” Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg has not returned a request for comment.
St. Hope produced one additional supplemental return after the meeting. But the school has still not released the redacted portions of the investigation summary nor the name of the coach involved.
The Bee was able to identify him independently of the records provided by St. Hope.
Our lawyer’s reflection
Olson, who has spent his career fighting institutions to disclose information, found the process frustrating and lengthy.
“The burden is not on The Bee to show that somebody was guilty of something without access to records,” he said. “The test is really whether there was reasonable cause to believe that charges of inappropriate conduct and the like were well founded. And I think all along there was reasonable cause to believe that something inappropriate happened.”
St. Hope, like other government agencies Olson has dealt with, started with a blanket non-disclosure, but eventually responded under legal pressure. Even then, he said, they were too narrow in what they turned over.
“It was like pulling teeth,” he said.
Despite California having the Public Records Act and existing case law that bolsters the public’s right to know, Olson said that bureaucrats in many public institutions ignore the case law.
“If you’re in the public sector, the public has a right to know what you’re doing,” he said. “The public is paying the salaries of these public employees and officials, and they should be thinking about their obligation to the public.”
Olson and The Bee will continue to mount pressure on St. Hope to disclose what we believe that we, and the public, are legally entitled to.
This story was originally published May 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
