Two top Nutrition Services administrators in the Rialto Unified School District have been placed on leave while district officials investigate whistleblower allegations that student meal count numbers were inflated for years to extract more reimbursement — possibly millions of extra dollars — from state and federal programs.
The Southern California News Group has learned the allegations first surfaced in the summer of 2023, and were under investigation by a forensics auditor hired by former Superintendent Cuauhtemoc Avila when the schools chief was abruptly placed on leave by the Board of Education and the probe was “paused,” district officials said.
Ten months later, Avila was terminated without cause amid sexual harassment allegations against him that he claims were trumped up.
He was replaced on Feb. 27 when the board appointed Judy White as interim superintendent. The following week, White reopened the internal probe and placed Nutrition Services Lead Agent Fausat Rahman-Davies and Assistant Agent Maria Rangel on paid administrative leave.
“Transparency and restoring trust are important in order to move forward,” Rialto Unified spokesperson Syeda Jafri said. “The district has no further comments referencing personnel matters.”
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Top supervisors named
The shakeup comes amid a five-month investigation by the Southern California News Group into allegations of corruption by school board members and top-level managers and administrators in Rialto Unified.
At the outset of the district’s reopened investigation, Nutrition Services supervisor Sarah Dunbar-Riley submitted a four-page statement to White and the Personnel Services department on March 19 summarizing the data falsification allegations she had first reported in mid-2023.
She also outlined misconduct allegations against Rahman-Davies, Rangel and Kristina Kraushaar, the district’s former program innovator for Nutrition Services who at the time was Dunbar-Riley’s supervisor. Kraushaar left the district in February to take a job as food service director for Chaffey Joint Union High School District in Ontario.
“During this investigation, multiple employees and I reported the falsification of student meal reimbursements, where meal counts were intentionally inflated to receive additional federal funds,” Dunbar-Riley said in her statement, a copy of which was obtained by the Southern California News Group.
She named six district employees who brought the matter to her attention during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as several school cafeteria managers and other employees who worked at food distribution sites.
During the pandemic, school cafeteria workers prepared student meals daily that were provided to parents at designated drive-thru locations via the district’s “Grab and Go” program, Jafri said. Dunbar-Riley and more than a half-dozen current and former Nutrition Services employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said numbers also were inflated for meals served during the district’s Summer Meals Program and BBQ events.
How number inflation worked
Based on interviews with Dunbar-Riley and other current and former Nutrition Services employees, this is how the meal records allegedly were manipulated:
Cafeteria managers at each school, referred to as site leads, would log the number of meals served each day on daily forms and enter the data into the district’s eTrition software program. The forms containing the previous week’s meal counts from each school were placed in envelopes, and, every Tuesday morning, a courier would pick them up, deposit them into a burgundy courier bag and deliver the records to the central kitchen office.
There, Dunbar-Riley and other supervisors would input the data from each school into a spreadsheet and, at the end of each month, submit them up the chain to top department managers. It was there where Dunbar-Riley and other nutrition workers believe the numbers were inflated before they were sent off to the state for reimbursement.
As a matter of due diligence, cafeteria managers often would log into eTrition to reconcile their meal count numbers from previous weeks, which is when they started noticing the number alterations, Dunbar-Riley said.
“When one high school cafeteria manager questioned Rangel about why the eTrition numbers did not match the numbers she initially submitted, Rangel dismissed her concerns, ‘laughing it off’ and saying that site leads were not responsible for entering meal counts,” Dunbar-Riley said in her statement.
And when Dunbar-Riley broached the subject with Rangel, she said Rangel told her it was none of her concern.
One former employee of 25 years, who worked as a site lead at two schools, said she began noticing the inflated meal count numbers either in late 2020 or early 2021.
After filling out her paperwork every Sunday at home, she said, one of her first orders of business Monday morning was logging into eTrition to reconcile her meal count numbers from the previous week to ensure they matched. They didn’t.
“It was like triple the numbers. My numbers never matched,” she said. “I would call Maria Rangel and say my paperwork doesn’t match with the numbers you have, and she said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ ”
Another Nutrition Services worker of 23 years said she first noticed the number changing in December 2020.
On Dec. 10, 2020, for example, she said she logged 782 total meals served, but the eTrition system showed 999 meals, an increase of more than 200. “I said, ‘Wow, this doesn’t look right. These aren’t the numbers I put in,’ ” she said.
So, out of curiosity, she checked her meal count numbers for another day: Dec. 8, 2020. Her paperwork indicated she submitted a count of 696 total meals served that day, but the number in eTrition showed 1,016, an increase of nearly 46%.
“That’s a lot of meals I didn’t serve,” she said. When she called Rangel about the discrepancy, “She just laughed. I just said, ‘OK, got it!’ I figured we just shouldn’t question them. I interpreted it as, ‘don’t ask!’ so I didn’t ask.”
In her statement to the school district, Dunbar-Riley’s said, “This fraudulent activity continued through the summer of 2023, and possibly beyond, with student meal counts at various school sites inflated — often by hundreds of meals per site.”
Rahman-Davies, who has worked for the district’s Nutrition Services department for 30 years and earns a base salary of $208,000 as its lead agent, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. Rangel, who has worked at the district for more than 35 years, declined to comment when reached by telephone. Kraushaar declined repeated requests for comment.
Millions of dollars?
During the pandemic, the state reimbursed school districts an average of $1.89 for every breakfast and $3.64 for every lunch served to students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals. After-school snacks were reimbursed at an average rate of 76 cents each, according to state Department of Education data.
Dunbar-Riley said that in June 2023, the combined daily breakfast and lunch counts at one high school were inflated by more than 12,000, making the school eligible for about $48,000 in additional reimbursement from the state and federal governments for that month alone.
And that was at just one of the district’s four high schools. There also were five middle schools and 19 elementary schools where meal count numbers were suspected of being inflated during the pandemic and possibly beyond, Dunbar-Riley said.
“It equated to possibly millions of dollars in additional reimbursement due to the inflated numbers,” Dunbar-Riley said.
Both the state and the U.S. Department of Agriculture provide the funding to reimburse school districts through their respective child nutrition programs, said Carrie Bogdanovich, former president of the California School Nutrition Association.
No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the allegations and there is no indication yet that federal or state authorities plan to investigate them.
Employee mistreatment
Initially, Dunbar-Riley complained to the district in June 2023 solely about employee mistreatment in the Nutrition Services department. It was not until Rialto Unified opened an investigation into those complaints a month later did she bring up the alleged data falsification.
Dunbar-Riley and other current and former employees said Rahman-Davies — supported by Kraushaar and Rangel — frequently subjected Nutrition Services workers to harassment, belittlement and threats of being written up or fired. One 15-year district employee said the open hostility exhibited by Rahman-Davies and Kraushaar had a chilling effect on the workforce.
“Everyone was afraid of Fausat and Kristina, because of the way they would belittle everyone. A lot of people got moved to other places. They’d force you to quit,” the employee said.
Dunbar-Riley said she had enjoyed a relationship with Rahman-Davies that was “like mother and daughter,” until she started questioning things — from employee mistreatment and discipline to the meal count inconsistencies. That’s when things became frosty, not only with Rahman-Davies, but with Kraushaar and Rangel as well.
“I started standing up for people who were being mistreated, as well as myself. I started fighting back,” Dunbar-Riley said. “I went against them and what they wanted. And I started getting written up and disciplined.”
Dunbar-Riley said she was called a “traitor” by Rahman-Davies in front of other supervisors and administrators.
On one occasion, according to her statement, Dunbar-Riley was sitting at her desk outside Rahman-Davies’ office when she overheard her tell Kraushaar and Rangel that she could not work with her and called her a traitor. And during a business meeting in July 2024, Rahman-Davies told risk manager Derek Harris, in front of two other supervisors, she “does not sit next to traitors” when Harris offered her a seat next to Dunbar-Riley, according to the statement.
Asked what took her so long to report what was going on and to go public, Dunbar-Riley said she felt stuck. Rahman-Davies was insulated, she believed, and she would only be causing herself, and other Nutrition Services employees, more harm.
“I was terrified. You don’t know how much you can get caught up in it, because we all knew about it,” she said. “I had to get to the point where I wasn’t scared.”
Dunbar-Riley said she doesn’t have a lawyer and has no plans to sue the district or her supervisors. Like many of her colleagues in Nutrition Services, Dunbar-Riley said she wants only one thing.
“I want it to stop — the harassment, the retaliation, the fraud,” she said. “I needed to take a stand.”
Reassigned from her job
When the district began investigating Dunbar-Riley’s harassment complaints against Rahman-Davies, Kraushaar and Rangel, she said she provided its investigator, attorney Beverly Ozowara, a list of more than 60 employees who could corroborate her complaints and/or had grievances of their own. Early on in the probe, she also brought up the meal count inflation.
An April 24, 2024, findings report on the investigation, obtained by the Southern California News Group, revealed Ozowara viewed those allegations as outside the scope of the harassment investigation and referred them to the Personnel Services department.
While the report noted that Rahman-Davies and Kraushaar did engage in unprofessional behavior toward employees and, at times, “critiqued” Dunbar-Riley in front of her colleagues, it did not find that Rahman-Davies, Kraushaar or Rangel harassed, demeaned or retaliated against her.
However, Rialto Unified has confirmed it is reexamining the harassment allegations as part of its ongoing investigation.
The report also noted Dunbar-Riley’s record of discipline for performance deficiencies, including untimely completion of performance evaluations for other employees, untimely and incorrect submissions of food menus for school sites, and failure to properly oversee the budget and food order for a special event at Eisenhower High School.
Before the investigation was completed, Dunbar-Riley said she was removed from Nutrition Services and reassigned in January 2024 to work in risk management and transportation services, where she has remained since. In her new role, she said, she has been restricted from communicating with any nutrition staff member and from entering the central kitchen facilities without an escort or prior approval.
“This effectively isolated me from my department and prohibited me from speaking to Nutrition Services staff,” she said.
First hints of turmoil
While the allegations about Nutrition Services have been percolating mostly behind closed doors at Rialto Unified district headquarters for the past two years, hints of the turmoil have occasionally bubbled up publicly — at school board meetings and in various legal claims — but often without context.
The first sign came in May 2024, when a split school board placed Superintendent Avila on administrative leave without explanation. A week later, an interim superintendent — lead academic agent Ed D’Souza — was appointed to replace him on a 3-0 vote, again without explanation, to a confused audience.
“We know that many of you will have many questions,” board member Edgar Montes said from the dais. “This action, however, is a confidential personnel matter.”
Six months later, with Avila still on paid leave, he filed a damage claim that revealed, for the first time, the district was investigating sexual harassment allegations against him involving a Rialto Unified employee. Avila claimed Montes was behind the accusation by the district’s lead agent of innovation, Patricia Chavez, and asserted that the allegation was fabricated.
In his claim, Avila also alleged that Montes had directed him to intervene in an open investigation of district personnel who were supportive of the school board member. Avila declined at the time to elaborate, but months later he would confirm that it was the Nutrition Services investigation.
Avila, Dunbar-Riley and other district and Nutrition Services employees said it was common knowledge that Montes and Rahman-Davies were friends, and that Montes has long championed and lauded the Nutrition Services department.
Among Avila’s complaints in his claim was that Montes wanted him to hire family and/or friends of his, even if they were unqualified and did not meet hiring requirements.
In April, the Southern California News Group revealed that Montes had voted in 2023 to hire his mother as a part-time cafeteria worker in violation of board bylaws. He claimed the vote was “inadvertent” — he didn’t notice her name on agenda materials listing new hires. After Maria Montes Torres resigned her position, SCNG revealed that Montes also had voted in 2022 to hire his mother as a substitute cafeteria worker.
Avila speaks out
Speaking out publicly for the first time in nearly a year, Avila confirmed to the Southern California News Group that Montes repeatedly pressured him to shut down the Nutrition Services investigation, from around the fall of 2023 until Avila was placed on leave in May 2024.
As the harassment investigation was wrapping up in the spring of 2024, Montes insisted that no discipline be meted out to Rahman-Davies, Rangel or Kraushaar, Avila claimed.
As to the data falsification investigation, Montes was even more adamant that it be shut down, Avila said.
Things became heated between the two immediately following a school board meeting in April 2024, when Montes and a board ally, Evelyn Dominguez, met with the superintendent in his office for about an hour, Avila said.
“Edgar walked around the office slamming his hand on the conference room table saying, ‘This is a witch hunt and b.s. investigation.’ Then Dominguez chimed in and said, ‘Yeah, this is a b.s. investigation,’ ” Avila said. “I kept my composure, as I was used to his explosive confrontations, and I did not agree to shut down the investigation.”
Avila said Montes then asked him if he “would like to be investigated”? In response, Avila said he chuckled and said, “Go ahead.”
Dominguez declined to comment. Montes did not respond to requests for comment.
Less than a month later, on May 8, 2024, Avila’s nine-year tenure at the helm of Rialto Unified began to unravel when he was placed on leave for reasons not revealed to the public.
