It couldn’t have been easy, but the Toppenish school board made the right call this week by dismissing John M. Cerna as superintendent.
Cerna’s 13 years in office ended with a unanimous vote to fire him following a closed executive session during Monday night’s board meeting.
Cerna and his attorney are of course issuing threats of legal action, but they’ll have a hard time proving the school board took the decision lightly or rushed to judgment. Far from it — in fact, the board has moved judiciously, placing him on administrative leave in February 2023 and spending more than a year evaluating a range of allegations against him.
As board Vice President Elese Washines noted in a prepared statement, the board even brought in an outside investigator to check troubling claims against Cerna that arose after a 2022 state audit. Among other things, the audit found that Cerna had received illegitimate stipends and retroactive pay, along with unearned vacation buy-backs, for at least the two years preceding the report.
Meantime, district employees had complained about Cerna’s punitive treatment of staffers who challenged or questioned him, saying he’d created a stifling working atmosphere that didn’t allow dissent.
He’d also enjoyed fat paychecks (about $310,000 in annual pay and benefits) and unexplained raises for years, making him one of Washington’s highest-paid superintendents. That’s tough to explain — much less justify — in a district with just 4,500 students and a poverty rate of 16.6%.
As it turned out, Cerna had been working with a rudimentary one-page contract that outlined few details about compensation and lacked the basic components that most administrative agreements usually include. Holding him accountable to such a flimsy document was a hard climb.
Still, the school board ordered Cerna to pay back a little over $20,000 last year. It was a modest request.
Cerna, who started with the district as a middle-school teacher in 1979, has given Toppenish a lot of years. From where we sit, though, it seems sadly obvious that he’s received even more from Toppenish — much more than he deserved.
Sure, the school board could’ve taken an easier approach to removing him. They might’ve tried negotiating an amicable departure that perhaps could’ve preserved Cerna’s reputation and kept much of this ugliness out of the public eye.
Instead, they’ve taken the high road, and in so doing they’re setting a commendable example for the students who’ve been watching this saga unfold.
As career and technical education teacher Neal Pendlebury noted, the message students were getting as Cerna’s reign continued was that powerful people could get away with poor behavior.
“Hopefully,” Pendlebury said after Cerna’s dismissal, “this teaches students that eventually, justice happens.”
School board members have shown courage and integrity in conveying that lesson. We hope it resonates throughout the Toppenish School District.
