Oct. 30, 2006, 2:20PM
Criminal scope of HISD dropout scandal set to unfold
Computer tech accused of record tampering may go on trial this week
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE

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The Houston Independent School District could be forced this week to revisit its embarrassing dropout scandal from 2002, but this time it would be in a criminal courtroom.

While six HISD employees were ultimately reprimanded for pushing for unrealistic dropout numbers to be reported at Sharpstown High School, only one person was charged.

The case of Kenneth Cuadra — the lone HISD employee indicted on charges of tampering with government records — is on the docket today but will likely be pushed back until at least Wednesday because another trial is running long in state District Judge Brock Thomas' court, lawyers involved in the case said.

"It rehashes a very unpleasant period," said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. "I think the DA's office is going to be highly embarrassed when the results come down."

A state audit revealed that part of the "Texas miracle" was accomplished because the state's largest district underreported nearly 3,000 dropouts. At least 30 students disappeared from the rolls four years ago at Sharpstown High School. That's where 33-year-old Cuadra is accused of doctoring a report to show zero dropouts.

If Cuadra is convicted of the second-degree felony, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Fallon said she's disappointed that prosecutors are going after a low-ranking campus worker. Cuadra, who has sold his home to help pay legal fees, could be reimbursed for up to $35,000 of his legal costs by the Houston Federation of Teachers, a group he belonged to at the time.

"This is a case that should never be in trial," Fallon said. "Going after the computer tech is the most absurd piece of prosecution I've ever seen."

Could be settled
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Terese Buess said she hasn't ruled out settling in the case.

"There's always the possibility of that," Buess said. "Negotiations on these cases will continue typically until the jury is out in the hallway."

Cuadra's attorney, Matt Hennessy, would not confirm that a settlement is being negotiated. "Ken will not say he's guilty to anything," Hennessy said. "We are ready for trial and we will proceed to trial if the state insists on it."

Hennessy would not say whether Cuadra will testify.

HISD officials declined to comment Friday on the upcoming trial.

While Buess said she couldn't discuss details of her argument, she said part of her case will involve proving that some of the 30 students removed from Sharpstown's dropout report did indeed drop out.

Those students — most of whom were Hispanic freshmen and sophomores who lived in apartments near Sharpstown at the time — have been subpoenaed to testify.

The teens' names appeared on a dropout roster compiled at Sharpstown High School on Oct. 22, 2002. The report said some of the students withdrew from school to pursue jobs or join the military. Others left for academic or "unknown" reasons, according to the report.

By 4:30 p.m. Oct. 23, 2002, however, all the teens' names had been removed. The updated report showed zero dropouts at Sharpstown High, a campus where roughly 450 of 1,700 students left school before the end of the 2002 school year.

Computer records show that Cuadra, as well as two other Sharpstown employees, logged into the system on those days. Unlike his co-workers, Cuadra logged onto the system a few times after 7 p.m., according to the records.

In a February 2003 statement included in the court file, Cuadra said "some of Sharpstown's administrators approached him about cleaning up the school's student data for a report to the district, and he went along but then changed his mind and put the data back the way he found it."

Missteps on his record
A few months later, Cuadra told a supervisor that "he did not change the dropout data but that he gave his password to someone else who must have done it." At another point, Cuadra stated that he removed 12 to 15 names from the list of dropouts, but replaced the data the next day, according to court records.

During the trial, the state is expected to introduce evidence that Cuadra made a number of missteps during his years as a computer specialist in HISD, including failing to meet deadlines, spending excessive amounts of time visiting with co-workers and operating a personal computer design and repair business from HISD, according to court records.

Statements in the file say Cuadra "was condescending and rude to those who supervised his ... data reporting" and that he "wore a telephone headset that interfered with the attention that should have been paid to HISD job duties since the defendant was taking phone calls concerning the business he ran with his wife."

Hennessy said those accusations are incorrect.

"Ken was and is a hardworking family man with a loving wife and two young children," he said. "It puzzles me that the state takes a position that Kenneth was some sort of an incompetent with a computer, while at the same time being a computer genius such that he could change records without detection. The state says he was lazy and distracted, but at the same time he was cunning and devious."

The simpler explanation, Hennessy said, is that Cuadra didn't change the list of 30 students to zero.

That's the explanation Cuadra gave during HISD's investigation.

"Mr. Cuadra admitted that he could change the data but denied he did. He stated no one ever told him to do that," according to court documents.

The HISD report states that when Cuadra was shown the two versions of the dropout reports "he terminated the interview and contacted his attorney."

Cuadra was reprimanded for the incident in a Sept. 30, 2003, letter from former chief school administrator Margaret Stroud.

"Documents support the fact that you changed the dropout data," the letter states. Cuadra was suspended 10 days without pay and reassigned to HISD's transportation division, where he continued to draw his $52,534 salary.

Robert Kimball, one of Cuadra's supervisors at Sharpstown High School at the time of the incident, said he hopes the case is settled before the trial.

"Personally, I would like to see this go to court and bring out all the other stuff, but I don't want to see Cuadra serve a day in jail," he said. "I don't want to see him be a scapegoat, and that's what he is now."

jennifer.radcliffe@chron.com

Former HISD Employee Indicted in Dropout Scandal
AP, October 7, 2005

HOUSTON -- A Harris County grand jury indicted a former computer technician Friday for falsifying a government computer record that made it appear as if a Houston high school had no dropouts during the 2001-2002 school year.

Kenneth Cuadra has been charged with a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Cuadra is accused of changing student codes to reduce Sharpstown High School’s potential dropout count from 30 to zero. After the scandal broke, Cuadra was reassigned to work on computers at a district bus barn. He later resigned.

The charges were first brought to light in an exclusive 11 News Defenders investigation.

The Texas Education Agency suspended the district’s “acceptable” accountability rating after an investigation revealed the district’s figures from the 2000-2001 school year had been altered, improving the district’s dropout rate.

Dropout rates are used in state calculations that determine school district ratings.

Texas Education Agency auditors found that 2,999 of the 5,458 students who left school that year had wrong or missing information. Those with wrong or missing information were reclassified as dropouts.

The state agency restored the district’s overall rating a year after it was suspended when TEA was satisfied the Houston district had cleaned up its data reporting. However, “low performing” ratings were given to the 12 high schools and two middle schools where inaccurate dropout numbers were found.

Houston school officials said they now employ 10 specialists who work to keep students in school and have brought 48 students back to the classroom through home visits searching for those who may no longer be enrolled.

An independent investigation by the district found that Sharpstown administrators allowed a climate in which unrealistic data reporting was tolerated and encouraged the altering of student records. The district said 40 percent of its students do not earn diplomas.

The district turned the investigation over to prosecutors in 2003 and on Friday a grand jury heard evidence that led to Cuadra’s indictment.

Cuadra’s attorney, James Fallon, did not immediately return a call Friday from The Associated Press.

The school’s principal, Carol Wichmann, who had retired from the district, also was cited in the district’s investigation. She was fined two weeks pay from her retirement benefits, and assistant principal Robert Kimball received a reprimand and was reassigned to an elementary school.

Kimball filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the district, which was settled for $90,000, and Kimball’s reprimand was withdrawn. He now teaches at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Kimball said Friday that Cuadra isn’t “the only bad guy” and that more people should have been indicted. He said if Cuadra changed data it was only because he was forced to.

“It’s not a crime to do a poor job at supervising, but it is a crime to tell people like Kenneth Cuadra to make sure all the data looks good and it doesn’t look like we have any dropouts,” he said. “This is going on all over the country, and it has to do with No Child Left Behind. Everybody has to make their schools look good, and they will do whatever it takes to make their schools look good."

Nov. 2, 2006, 9:30AM
Ex-HISD worker in dropout scandal cleared before trial
County admits it can't prove case, drops felony count


By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

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Harris County prosecutors dropped their case Wednesday against a former Houston ISD employee accused of falsifying Sharpstown High School's dropout records, saying new details would make proving their case difficult.

Two days before a jury was to be selected in the case against Kenneth Cuadra, Assistant District Attorney Terese Buess asked state District Judge Brock Thomas to dismiss the felony charge of tampering with a government document.

"Our analysis concluded that it would be impossible to rebut Cuadra's defenses," Buess said in a statement.

The development closes the chapter on the "Texas miracle," where six Houston Independent School District employees were reprimanded for underreporting at least 3,000 dropouts districtwide. Cuadra, the only person criminally charged in connection with the scandal, was accused of removing the names of 30 students — mostly Hispanic freshmen and sophomores — from Sharpstown High School's dropout report.

Prosecutors will not seek any other charges.

"The statute of limitations ran out last October. ... It's over," Buess said.

Cuadra, 33, could have faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted. He sold his home to help pay legal fees that have accumulated since his indictment a year ago.

"We're just so grateful," Cuadra said late Wednesday. "Mission accomplished."

He referred other questions to his wife, Lorett Cuadra.

This lone criminal case may never had gotten so far if Cuadra had testified to the grand jury last year, Buess said.

Conversations with the defense attorneys this week made the prosecution doubt that they could prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, she said. She would not provide details.

"There was new information that they sat down and provided," Buess said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "This is the first time this particular information had become available to us as far as timing on what he claimed he had done."


Cuadra's statement
In a February 2003 statement included in the court file, Cuadra stated that "some of Sharpstown's administrators approached him about cleaning up the school's student data for a report to the district, and he went along but then changed his mind and put the data back the way he found it."

A few months later, Cuadra told a supervisor that "he did not change the dropout data but that he gave his password to someone else who must have done it." He later said he removed about half the names, but then replaced the data the next day, according to court records.

In her written statement, Buess said rebutting Cuadra's defense would be difficult, "particularly because the local database used in 2002 by HISD at Sharpstown High School had no internal audit tracking system that could conclusively document which user ID had altered the local database information or to determine exactly when any such alterations had been made."

Defense lawyer Matt Hennessy and his co-counsel John Parras praised Buess' decision.

"I'm gratified that we had such a conscientious, hard-working prosecutor who was willing to look at all the facets of the case," Hennessy said. "There are times when you should keep all your powder dry for the battle to come. This was not one of those times. The prosecutor saw the evidence and did the right thing."

Lorett Cuadra called Buess' decision to drop the case "bittersweet," adding that the family had been looking forward to their day in court. Jury selection was scheduled for Friday; testimony was to begin Monday.


Name has been cleared
"It's going to be the first night in four years that Kenneth's going to sleep without facing jail. His name has been cleared, and all the glory goes to God," Lorett Cuadra said.

Cuadra rejected several deals that would have allowed him to avoid jail time by pleading either guilty or no contest. Conceding to that — even if it just carried one hour of community service — would be dishonest and set a bad example for the couple's 6-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter, Lorett Cuadra said.

"We could not go through life and have our kids ask us one day, 'Why did you compromise if you were never guilty?' " she said. "It would have been a lot easier for me to say, 'Bow down to this.' Easy is not the way to go. So many people settle. So many people say, 'They're stronger than me.' ... We couldn't do it."

Lorett Cuadra said her husband was never asked to testify against higher-ranking HISD officials.

"They were just trying to get a scapegoat," she said.

Houston Federation of Teachers President Gayle Fallon said her group will pay up to $35,000 of Cuadra's legal bills because the case was dismissed.

It's a shame that the state forced the family to waste so much money fighting the case, she said.

"I think that the DA never had a case and that it's just very sad that Kenny had to go through this," Fallon said.

HISD spokesman Terry Abbott would not comment on the specifics. The school district took action three years ago — suspending Cuadra without pay for 10 days and transferring him to another department.

"We moved forward a long time ago," he said. "We used the awful events of a few years ago at Sharpstown to galvanizing the public around the idea that we all have to do something about the dropout problem."

The district has since launched an aggressive dropout recovery program that has included a conference and annual walks through Houston neighborhoods to find children who are not attending school.

"This certainly focused the public's attention on the dropout issue and rightfully so," Abbott said.

'There's no victory here'
Robert Kimball, a former Sharpstown assistant principal who was expected to testify in the case, said the decision is anything but a victory.

"He suffered for 3 1/2 , four years. There's no victory here," he said. "It's been really hard on his family and his children. He's been suffering, and it's been emotionally draining on him and his family."

He said he admires the family's tenacity.

"If there's any victory, it's the Cuadras exposing the very poor decisions of the school district," he said. "It was smart of Kenneth Cuadra not to settle. ... He stood on principle. I support him 100 percent."

jennifer.radcliffe@chron.com

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