Part 4: What went down at CCSD’s Pink Palace

Legal exposure for CCSD
Because of its clarity, its naming of multiple witnesses, and the massive visual evidence Oliver had eventually recorded, his original November 2 statement — had it been provided to the school district on the public record — most likely would have had seismic effects throughout Nevada and beyond.

Essentially, it would have put CCSD’s superintendent and every other knowledgeable central-office administrator at that January 11 Pink Palace meeting under not only the public spotlight but also on legal notice that felony lawbreaking was proceeding under their noses and on their watch in the nation’s fifth-largest school district. [That CCSD was internally alert to this issue is revealed by the heavily redacted (and downloadable) version of Oliver’s statement that Nevada Journal received back from CCSD in response to public-records requests — which had been made to confirm that the district indeed had the statement in its records. Such redaction is performed by the district’s legal office.]

Given the district’s fiduciary obligations to the public, to parents and their children, the report the district had in its possession would seem to have required, at the very least, a comprehensive district-wide investigation and housecleaning.

Indeed, that was effectively acknowledged by Jara himself during the January 11 meeting, according to the account provided Nevada Journal by Oliver.

Responding to a demand for such an investigation from CCEA Counsel Kim — who’d made clear that Treem’s moves against Oliver were retaliation for his refusal to participate in the illegal grade-changing — Jara had announced in front of everyone there that a district-wide investigation of such grade-changing would, in fact, be conducted, and it would probably take a year.

Later that same evening, Oliver received a further indication that such an investigation was on its way. About two hours after the big meeting, he got a telephone call from attorney Kim, who told him she was with Jara’s then-chief-of-staff, Cupid-McCoy, who wanted to relay:

1) Her request for copies of Oliver’s screenshots showing the second-graders’ original grades from the start of the school year and the subsequent faked grades, as well as,

2) her reminder that “you cannot say a word to anybody at Treem or the next school you go to, about what you’ve reported to us.”That same reminder, says Oliver, was repeated to him by attorney Kim multiple times over the remaining months of the school year.

At the CCSD headquarters meeting earlier in the evening, Kim indeed had — as she’d told him in the elevator — spent most of her time on the intentionally damaging “observations” Treem administrators had concocted to punish Oliver for refusing to participate in their grade-changing fraud.

Thus, when Cupid-McCoy had called on Oliver himself, he had assumed that everyone present was aware of all the particulars in his statement, and he simply turned to the circumstances under which he’d come to record all of the incriminating screenshots.

Those circumstances had been the coincidental occurrence, in October 2018, of Treem’s administrators setting their grade-changing operation in motion, at the same time that the ultimately fatal and inoperable illness of his mother, who was living with him, was also worsening.

Her death had finally occurred on November 11 of 2018.

Partly driven by the expressed wishes of his mother, the longtime criminal investigator, Oliver had then used his accumulated sick and bereavement leave so that he did not have to go back to Treem and could instead, in the presence of CCEA’s Alexander Roche, accumulate graphic evidence of the ongoing grading fraud.

Once Oliver finished his remarks, Kim told those present — Jara over the open telephone and the three district chiefs at the table — that they needed to abort the fraudulent and retaliatory “admonitory hearing” against Oliver which the two Treem administrators, Tippetts and Cyprus, had directed Oliver to show up for on the following Monday.

At that point, Cupid-McCoy announced that she, Okazaki and Long now needed to go into the adjoining room. When they got up and left, Oliver asked Kim why they were doing so. According to Oliver, Kim replied, “Well, that’s where he [Jara] is.”

Left alone in the conference room for about 10 minutes, both of them wondered aloud why Jara preferred to listen, while not showing his face.

When Okazaki, Long and Cupid-McCoy returned, Jara, over the telephone, began speaking.

According to Oliver, Jara said, “We are going to transfer you to another school, and you will not have to meet with the Treem administration.” Instead, said Jara, he personally would call Treem and inform them that Oliver would not be returning to the school, nor be present for the admonitory meeting the Treem brass had set for the coming Monday.

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