Judge denies request from fired HR chief

An Orange County Superior Court judge will not force Newport-Mesa Unified School District to publicly release documents related to a fired personnel chief’s complaint against the superintendent.

Judge Geoffrey Glass decided Tuesday to deny former director of human resources John Caldecott’s request under the state’s public records law that the district hand over internal emails and other documents related to Caldecott’s complaint against Supt. Fred Navarro.

Because Caldecott is already in possession of the documents he requested, the California Public Records Act request is “moot,” Glass wrote in his decision.

“Further, the two documents and attachments are directly and inextricably linked to Mr. Caldecott’s claim of a hostile and abusive work environment, which is an internal personnel matter exempt from disclosure under CPRA,” he wrote.

The school board fired Caldecott on Jan. 27, shortly after he filed his request with Orange County Superior Court.

After months of declining to discuss the specifics behind his battle with Newport-Mesa, Caldecott said in March that among other things, he suspects that salary reports to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or STRS, are incorrect and could inflate pensions.

The misreporting, Caldecott alleged, concerned the salaries of principals and administrators whose jobs require an administrative credential — a category known as certificated management. He said he suspects the district was considering forms of compensation like merit pay in pension calculations, a move that may ultimately drive up pensions.

A spokeswoman for Newport-Mesa Unified could not be reached for comment.

Caldecott called for a forensic audit of all STRS records of certificated management employees, requests that he said district officials and the school board did not act on.

However, the state retirement system began an audit of district records in March. The status of the audit was not available on Thursday.

Caldecott said in an interview Thursday that despite the court’s ruling, his battle for district transparency is not over.

“The issue [that] remains for me is the public deserves to know about whistle blowing and the issues raised in those documents,” he said. “I’m still on a mission to allow public access to even more records that weren’t covered by the first public records request.”