Rialto Unified school board member Evelyn Dominguez repeatedly butted heads with the former assistant principal at her son’s elementary school, according to a district investigation, but she didn’t violate district policy or state law along the way.
“Ms. Dominguez is an assertive parent and tenacious advocate for her children. She is also a board member,” a June 21, 2024 investigation report, obtained through a California Public Records Act request, reads in part.
First-term board member Dominguez ran unopposed for the Rialto Unified school board in November 2022. She has previously been accused of short-changing a vendor she got to work an event and bullying a teacher at Boyd Elementary, which her son attends. Her school board term runs through December 2026.
Dominguez declined to comment for this story. In an email, she said she planned to appeal the investigation report.
The district’s investigation summary was written by Armando Urteaga, a senior official in Rialto Unified’s personnel department, in response to complaints from former Boyd Elementary assistant principal Karensa Hutchens.
Hutchens declined to comment for this story.
She had sent an extensive list of complaints to Urteaga in January 2024. The district then hired an outside investigative team, the San Diego-based Sobel Group, to look into the allegations.
According to Urteaga, the investigators found that a number of Hutchens’ allegations about Dominguez could be substantiated:
- There is evidence that Dominguez “may use her position as a board member to receive preferential treatment at Boyd Elementary School, including access to administrators and school facilities that other parents may not obtain.”
- During back to school night at Boyd Elementary during the 2023-24 school year, Dominguez complained when finding Hutchens in a classroom.
- Dominguez also referred to Hutchens as “evil” while on the phone in a public space.
- Dominguez also complained that school staff were “sabotaging” the parent center at the school.
- Dominguez told Boyd Elementary administrators that she didn’t want Hutchens to have contact with her children. According to the report, Dominguez told investigators that Hutchens “has a poor rapport in the community. She is very aggressive and she is the way she is.” Dominguez said she would be cordial with Hutchens, “because I have to.”
- In the summer of 2022, before Dominguez was a school board member, she called the district office about an “emergency” at Boyd that turned out to be that the gate was open at 7:58 a.m. for summer school, rather than 7:55 a.m.
Meanwhile, in her Jan. 9, 2024 complaint to Urteaga, but not addressed in the investigation report, Hutchens also wrote that since May 2022, Dominguez had been pressuring school officials to contract with Fontana-based Legends Athletic Performance for after-school programming.
“Her insistence on the use of this vendor is bordering on harassment,” Hutchens wrote.
According to district spokesperson Syeda Jafri, Rialto Unified briefly considered using the company but rejected it.
“Our records indicate that we do not have Legends Athletic Performance as an approved vendor,” Jafri wrote in an email. “In 2022 staff was looking into it for an elementary school afterschool sports program. The district did not pursue using an outside consultant as it was cost-prohibitive. Since that interaction, the district has not had any interaction with Legends Athletic Performance.”
The bottom line, according to Urteaga’s report: “While numerous factual allegations (against Dominguez) were sustained, these findings of fact do not constitute violations or misapplications of district policies, regulations, rules or procedures.”
