Former Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist, center, during a board meeting in 2023, had more than two dozen members of her administration receive bonuses in increments ranging from $5,000 to $35,000. “I don’t believe any board member had any knowledge of anyone receiving payments from the foundation. People are going to be blindsided,” Tulsa School Board President Stacey Woolley said, when contacted by the Tulsa World.
Public records reveal at least $341,000 in donor funds was paid to top district administrators at Tulsa Public Schools, in addition to their taxpayer-funded salaries as public employees, during Deborah Gist’s last five years as superintendent.
But the elected Tulsa school board, charged with approving the hiring or firing and salaries of all public school employees in TPS, was apparently kept in the dark.
Financial accounting records of the nonprofit Foundation for Tulsa Schools reveal donor funds were paid directly to more than two dozen TPS administrators in increments ranging from $5,000 to $35,000.
The records reportedly came into possession of the school district because of a high-profile embezzlement investigation into former top TPS executive Devin Fletcher that began in summer 2022.
Email records requested by the Tulsa World show awareness about some bonus plans in 2020 and 2021 on the part of one philanthropic donor organization.
But school board leaders say it’s not enough that donors were on board — because all of the employee recipients in question are public employees.
“I don’t believe any board member had any knowledge of anyone receiving payments from the foundation. People are going to be blindsided,” Tulsa School Board President Stacey Woolley said, when contacted by the Tulsa World. “Based on the conversation we are having and the research and information you have gotten back from TPS, I think it’s critically important that the board is updated and knows what happened — as far as any payments that came from outside TPS, because that’s not something we were aware of.
“We are going to have to address this issue through policy changes that would require any payment to school employees having board approval. It would require defined parameters for qualifying for that and that there are equal opportunities for payment based on those parameters.”
Now-Superintendent Ebony Johnson said she only learned that such bonus payments occurred since taking the helm, and she said she has been learning new details as TPS officials responded to the Tulsa World’s public records requests for this report and as state auditors have been working “to reconcile everything that happened involving Devin Fletcher.”
“From what has happened, it has allowed me to learn more about ways to put internal controls in place and processes and standard operating procedures in place so we will not repeat a situation that has happened in the past,” Johnson said. “As far as team members that have received those dollars, I am very aware there was no malicious intent — it was due to their work.
However, in the future, even instances where we want to support our team members, it will be done in a more apparent, more structured way that the foundation, TPS and the board are on the same page. It takes away any opportunity for there to be some mishandling and/or misuse of funds.”
Moises Echeverria, who came on as president and CEO of the Foundation for Tulsa Schools in September 2022 — in the immediate aftermath of the launch of internal and law enforcement investigations into Fletcher’s actions — said no such payments have occurred under his watch.
