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After a four-month search the Sweetwater Union High School Board chose its interim superintendent to be its permanent leader.
On Monday night the board hired Moisés Aguirre, who has been the interim superintendent for the past 10 months, to be the permanent superintendent for a three-year contract through June 30, 2024.
Aguirre will be paid a $260,000 annual salary, which is about $17,000 more than what his predecessor was making.
“My commitment to our community is to work tirelessly on behalf of all of our students and all of our staff to really focus on those important matters, to ensure we’re supporting our students, to ensure we’re addressing the pandemic and to ensure that first and foremost is our support to our entire community,” Aguirre said during Monday night’s board meeting.
By Eduardo Rueda
taken to jail after sentencing in 2014
The Sweetwater Union High School District approved two legal settlements at a special board meeting Thursday that will bring the District $8.5 million and end the last remaining lawsuits stemming from a 2012 corruption scandal that led to 15 indictments.
The settlements resolve a series of lawsuits and cross complaints involving contractors that participated in what prosecutors called a “pay-to-play” scheme that led to the prosecution of several school board members, contractors, and then-Superintendent Jesus Gandara.
The District sued several contractors in 2014 to invalidate their contracts and demanded more than $14 million in refunds, claiming the contracts were illegal because they were awarded through the contractors’ use of campaign contributions and illegal gifts to school board members which violated state law.
Sweetwater School District Discovers $30 Million Hole in Annual Budget
By Sandra G. Leon
South Bay middle and high schools could face budget cuts after the district found it had $30 million less than it expected.
The District made the issue public at a monthly meeting of its Board of Trustees this Monday.
“When our staff was finalizing this [budget] report in late August, we detected some cause for concern of a potential shortfall in closing our financial books for the 17-18 school year,” reads a statement from its Board of Trustees and Superintendent Karen Janney.
The budget miscalculation seems to have been discovered after a new chief financial officer began working at the District last month.