Auditor Fitzpatrick finds insufficient vetting led to $229,167 payout to former Francis Howell superintendent

A new report from Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick finds the Francis Howell R-III School District paid out a $229,167 settlement payment to a former superintendent in large part because district officials failed to thoroughly vet Dr. Mike Dominguez before signing a three-year contract with him. The investigative report issued today by Fitzpatrick's office highlights the district's failure to have a sufficient selection process for the superintendent search firm and also documents how the search firm selected did not identify relevant concerns when hiring Dr. Dominquez.

"The enormous amount of money paid out to a man who never worked a day for the district certainly raised a lot of questions for taxpayers and numerous red flags for my office. Given what our investigation has uncovered, I firmly believe the district could have and should have identified the concerns that led to its separation from Dr. Dominguez prior to hiring him in the first place," said Auditor Fitzpatrick, who noted the total amount paid to Dr. Dominguez was $250,000 including the paid month of administrative leave he received.

Fitzpatrick added, "Our goal with this report is to provide the Board best practices to implement to prevent a quarter of a million dollar mistake such as this one from occurring again in the future. So it's disappointing that district officials have been unwilling to accept responsibility for the mistakes made in this process and that their response suggests they did nothing wrong. The school district will remain at risk until the Board accepts responsibility for its failure and follows our recommendations to implement a rigorous evaluation process using a competitively procured and evaluated vendor in the future."

The investigation conducted by Fitzpatrick's office found neither the School Board nor the search firm hired by the district identified potential concerns when hiring Dr. Dominguez. A review by the State Auditor's Office of Dr. Dominguez's application found several typographical errors and noted the application did not include references or letters of recommendation from his most recent employer, Garden City School District (GCSD) in Garden City, Kansas. In addition, despite the information being publicly available and easily searchable online, the Board did not know of or question Dr. Dominguez's resignation from the GCSD a year in advance of his contract expiration. According to the Board's legal counsel, the district would have found this suspicious if they were aware of it prior to hiring.

According to the district's legal counsel, Board members became aware of a social media post detailing concerns with Dr. Dominguez's tenure at his previous place of employment after he was hired. The Board investigated the issues raised in the social media post by speaking with a GCSD Board member and other district stakeholders. In addition, after Dr. Dominguez began his transition to the district, additional concerns were raised to the Board about his competency as the Superintendent and his ability to lead the district. None of the concerns identified were discovered during the initial hiring process.

The report documents how the Board chose to terminate Dr. Dominguez's contract by mutual agreement due to potential litigation and concerns with disruption to the district. However, as the report points out, if the Board had terminated for cause and Dr. Dominguez followed through with legal action against the district, the concerns identified by the Board could have become public information and eliminated some of the secrecy and public questioning of the Board's decisions.

The investigation also found the Francis Howell School Board did not use a formal process to competitively procure the superintendent search firm and did not document how the firm was selected. The selected firm had the second highest cost proposal and the Board's counsel indicated one of the main factors considered was that the selected vendor had recently completed the superintendent search for the local school district that hired away FHSD's previous superintendent.

The full investigative summary is available here.