Just halfway through his first school year there, former South Bend schools superintendent Todd Cummings is in the process of being fired by a school district in Phoenix.
The Paradise Valley Unified School District board had placed Cummings on paid leave Sept. 30 to investigate matters around his hiring in March and complaints about his job performance already.
After a short meeting Tuesday night, the board voted unanimously to fire Cummings for multiple reasons. That takes effect in 10 days unless he requests a hearing to defend himself.
The Paradise Valley administration says Cummings lied when he applied for the job. When asked if he had ever been bought out of a contract, he said no, he had retired.
But in fact, he had reached an agreement with South Bend schools that paid him $225,000 to leave a year before his contract ended. That came just two weeks after the South Bend board hired investigators to investigate allegations of systematic grade changing to boost district graduation rates.
Paradise Valley spokeswoman Sarah Hackett said there are more allegations against Cummings. They’re detailed in a report she says the district will release sometime in the coming days.
With all of the controversy surrounding Cummings’ final days in South Bend, things that were heavily covered by the media at the same time Paradise Valley was hiring him, I told Hackett that some people here wonder whether they have Google in Arizona.
“I can’t really comment because again I wasn’t part of the hiring process. I do trust our governing board when they go through processes and when they hire a third party to help them with the superintendent search. But no, I can’t really comment on that because I wasn’t a part of the search itself.”
WVPE: But aren’t you speaking for the corporation just generally?
“But I’m not a part of those decisions. A lot of those things are done in executive session.”
