According to a lawsuit filed by two former St. Paul Public Schools employees, Marie Schrul, former district chief financial officer, and Curtis Mahanay, former business systems support manager, the district misused federal COVID-relief funds.

The lawsuit claims that the whistleblowers, Schrul and Mahanay, were fired for, well, the noise they made trying to point this out.

Federal COVID-relief money has turned out in many cases to be more trouble than it was worth. The Walz administration still hasn’t held any state employees responsible for the $250 million food fraud, and now two whistleblowers from the school district have thrown their cards onto the table saying, “Yes, and, oh by the way, take a look at this.”

This being what Schrul and Mahanay allege was the pilfering of government COVID funding then spent on employee bonuses, perks and a budget shortfall of $43 million. Drawing attention to the claims ultimately leads to the former superintendent, Joe Gothard, who the whistleblowers allege invited 300 district leaders to an invite-only party where the food trucks alone cost the taxpayers $10,000.

As with most COVID-fund malfeasance, food is involved. The lawsuit claims that gifts purchased for employees were concealed by submitting invoices falsely characterizing the gifts as disinfectant. That’s a lot of Lysol. We also learn from the suit that employees continued to use funds from the COVID lockdown for school lunch deliveries even as in-person learning had resumed.

When Schrul, who had been with the district from 1998 until 2022, took her concerns to Gothard, the lawsuit claims, he responded by suggesting “that Schrul get creative with her accounting,” in order to “continue the questionable purchases while shifting them to the general fund.”

Gothard lasted seven years in St. Paul, about the norm. Supers move around more often than NFL coaches. Gothard split for Madison, Wis., earlier this year and another super gig, having just recently been named as the American Association of School Administrators’ 2024 Superintendent of the Year. What were the criteria, pray tell? A student, Devin Scott, was stabbed to death at Harding High School in 2023 and Harding teachers so feared retaliation that they had to be granted anonymity before speaking out about what a farcical and dangerous learning shambles Harding had become.

Who really knew Gothard save for a cadre of iPad-clutching loyalists who followed him from meeting to meeting? In the absence of any notable achievements in the local learning curve, maybe Gothard is best remembered for a mustache and beard that appeared to have the daily attention of a coiffeur.

In their lawsuit, Schrul and Mahanay said they were fired for their vigilance “in an alleged pattern of retaliation.”

That certainly sounds familiar from the Harding troubles. Gothard didn’t return any calls at the time of the student’s death and his people in Madison are shielding him from commenting on the lawsuit.

Supers have a great club. Stay for a bit, read from the script and take off for a $50,000 or so salary bump, read from the script, move again.

If the lawsuit proves to be untrue and grossly exaggerated, I will be the first to canonize Gothard for his accomplishments. Wait, that’s already been done. He’s Super of the Year 2024.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic’’ podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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