San Jacinto Unified staff suspected school board member Jasmin Rubio didn’t live where she claimed to — and was required to, under state law and school district policy — in order to serve as a board member.
When the evidence suggested that she no longer lived in San Jacinto, a staff member reported her to the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.
If Rubio had moved out of the school district, as a staff member alleged in a complaint to the DA, she may have received more than $42,000 in pay and benefits from the district that she was not legally entitled to.
Neither prosecutors nor school officials would discuss the allegations, which Rubio has denied. But documents released by the district show red flags being raised for staff.
Rubio was reelected to a third four-year term on the school board, running unopposed in the November 2022 election after an unsuccessful run for the 60th Assembly District earlier in the year.
But about a year after she was reelected, district employees began to suspect she lived outside the area she represented, according to copies of emails obtained by the Southern California News Group through a California Public Records Act request.
San Jacinto Unified school board members get paid $336 a month, along with mileage paid for traveling to conferences. It has been more than 19 months since staff first became suspicious that Rubio had moved outside the district. If she hasn’t lived in the area of San Jacinto she was elected to represent in that time, she has been paid at least $6,384 for participating in meetings where she was not legally able to serve as a school board member, under a 1943 California law.
She also received benefits worth more than $18,000 a year, according to the Transparent California website, which tracks the pay and benefits for public employees in the state, which in San Jacinto Unified, includes school board members.
According to Rubio, staff has drummed up the accusations against her to retaliate for her votes against what she says has been wasteful spending by the district. She said she believes staff has followed her home from school board meetings.
“I go to a lot of events, and nobody asks me any questions,” Rubio said, about where she lives. “The only questions are from inside of the district.”
Rubio said she has never lived outside San Jacinto since joining the school board.
“No, never,” Rubio said.
What the law says
According to California Government Code section 1170(e), an elected office automatically becomes vacant if the elected official ceases to be an inhabitant “of the district, county, or city for which the officer was chosen or appointed.”
San Jacinto Unified Board Bylaw 9223 also declares that a vacancy occurs on the board when a board member “ceases to inhabit the trustee area represented on the board.”
The normal process to remove someone from office in California is to ask the state’s attorney general for permission to file a “quo warranto” lawsuit, which legally disputes whether a person is legally entitled to hold the office to which they have been elected.
Moving outside a district one is elected to represent can also lead to more serious legal trouble.
In March, former Stanton City Councilmember Hong Alyce Van pleaded not guilty to four felony charges connected to allegedly living outside the district she represented. Van faces charges of perjury, offering a false or forged document to be filed or registered, filing false nomination papers, and not being entitled to vote at an election.
In Rubio’s case, the Riverside County DA’s Office “can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigative matters” regarding the allegations against the school board member, spokesperson John Hall wrote in an email.
Rubio has not been contacted by the DA’s office, she said.
District staff investigates
Rubio was first appointed to the board in 2014. Her current term runs through the end of 2026.
Trustee Area 4, which Rubio was elected to represent, is bounded by North State Street to the west; North Ramona Boulevard, Tiger Lane and Idyllwild Drive to the north; Oakwood Street and East Commonwealth Avenue to the south; and South Hewitt Street and North Ramona Expressway to the east.
In November 2023, district staff began seeing evidence suggesting Rubio no longer lived in San Jacinto at all. Checks the district sent to her on Tiger Lane began to be returned, flagged by the U.S. Postal Service as having an incorrect address.
“We also have a check for you that was returned due to the address being incorrect,” a Nov. 13, 2023 email from Ambar Harr, an administrative secretary in Superintendent David Pyle’s office, reads in part. “Your mail will be in our office for you to pick up at your earliest convenience.”
Harr declined to comment for this story. But the mailing issue continued through August 2024, according to district documents. At that point, Rubio apparently provided district staff with a Post Office Box in San Jacinto for her mail.
Earlier this year, checks to the San Jacinto P.O. Box were being returned again.
“We will have to look at that (address) again and make sure we have the correct information,” a Jan. 7 email from Harr to Rubio reads in part. “I’m not sure what the problem is. Payroll also mentioned we can set up direct deposit if you’d like as well.”
The problem continued through at least April 22, according to district emails between Harr and Rubio.
Others in the district also spotted problems.
On May 12, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Seth Heeren contacted the Special Prosecutions Section of the Riverside County DA’s Office. According to its website, the section investigates financial crimes, consumer fraud, environmental crimes, real estate fraud and public integrity issues.
Heeren declined to comment for this story. But in his email to the DA’s office, he wrote that about two years ago, payments and paystubs sent to Rubio’s stated address on Tiger Lane in San Jacinto began to be returned.
“When we asked about the concerns, Ms. Rubio stated she was having mailbox theft and provided a PO Box,” the email to the DA’s office reads in part.
Heeren wrote that he was told of a potential new home address for Rubio on Vista De Loma in Hemet, outside San Jacinto Unified borders.
In addition, Heeren wrote that he “acquired a receipt with Ms. Rubio’s name on it” from the Vista De Loma address. He attached the receipt, from a taco cart supply company based in Hemet, in his email to the DA’s office.
In a separate email, Heeren notified the school district superintendent, Pyle, that he had reached out to the DA and the Riverside County Registrar of Voters with his concerns. On May 23, Pyle contacted the district attorney and registrar, offering to answer any questions they might have about Heeren’s allegations.
Pyle declined to comment for this story.
Heeren also notified California’s Civil Rights Department. San Jacinto Unified’s trustee areas were created in 2011 after the U.S. Department of Justice had notified the district it was being investigated for possible violations of the Federal Voting Rights Act. The act seeks to ensure minority voters have a voice in elections. Rubio, who was born in Mexico, was the district’s first Latino board member, fellow board members noted at the time. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that, as of 2024, 64.4% of San Jacinto identifies as Hispanic or Latino.
In an email to the Southern California News Group, a representative of the Civil Rights Department wrote that it does not investigate allegations like the one Heeren had made.
Changing addresses
Rubio’s official residence — where she told the Riverside County Registrar of Voters she lived ahead of her 2022 reelection — is a tan townhouse condominium on Tiger Lane, across from San Jacinto High School. The street is named after the school’s mascot.
According to online property records, Rubio’s Tiger Lane residence was sold by her landlord in December 2021.
The current tenant has lived there since March 2023, the woman said when contacted by a reporter. According to her, Rubio moved out by February 2023 at the latest, eight months before San Jacinto Unified staff put their suspicions into writing.
Heeren told the DA’s office that he had been told Rubio lived on Vista Del Loma. It’s a cul-de-sac of single family homes in Hemet, 5 miles away from where Rubio said she was living, and outside the borders of the San Jacinto district.
On the evening of June 30, a man at the house where Heeren told the DA’s office Rubio lives said that she wasn’t there, and was at work. Rubio works for the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services, according to county spokesperson Brooke Federico.
According to Rubio, the house on Vista Del Loma belongs to one of her adult children, several of whom live in Hemet.
“I go to their house and spend time with them and cook,” Rubio said, but added that she doesn’t live there.
After moving out of the Tiger Lane house, she said, Rubio said she moved to a house on Ramona Boulevard, within the boundaries of Trustee Area 4. She shared a letter sent to her by the California Department of Motor Vehicles at the Ramona Boulevard address.
“I don’t live in Hemet; I live in San Jacinto,” Rubio said.
San Jacinto Unified teaches almost 12,000 students, according to the California Department of Education.
The next scheduled meeting of the San Jacinto Unified school board is 6 p.m. Aug. 14 at the district offices, 2045 S. San Jacinto Ave. in San Jacinto.
