In spite of all the staff time and taxpayer money that went into SJ2020, Santa Clara County students have benefited not one whit.

Erstwhile SCCOE Superintendent Xavier De La Torre has been making headlines down in Texas for less-than-upstanding behavior.

None of county Superintendent of Schools Jon Gundry’s secret contracts and subsequent under-sight reaches the level of the latest bad deal.

A child porn and abuse scandal—as well as public scrutiny on how the county schools chief spends taxpayer dollars behind closed doors—has sent the Santa Clara County Office of Education into lockdown mode. The stonewalling includes violations of the Public Records Act.

Internal emails for top Santa Clara County Office of Education administrators provide a rare glimpse into an insulated power structure that attempts to control the message at all times, delays the delivery of information when possible and spins uncomfortable facts into purple public relations prose.

San Jose Inside has learned that the Santa Clara County Office of Education cut tutoring services for foster youth and filed questionable federal grant reports while wasting more than a half-million dollars that could have helped the county's most needy children.

A month after Superintendent Xavier De La Torre announced his resignation on less-than-ideal terms, the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE) has named his successor.

After a rocky year-and-a-half on the job, it appears Santa Clara County Office of Education Superintendent Xavier De La Torre will be heading back to Texas for a job as superintendent of a smaller school district. San Jose Inside reported more than three months ago that De La Torre was on the brink of being fired or resigning after a series of dustups with staff, a dissatisfactory performance review and concerns about a cheating scandal.

The Santa Clara County Office of Education and its Board of Education have been working to address education inequality through a myriad of measures, including the authorization of high quality charter schools. For this reason, I am troubled and angry about what happened at a seven-hour meeting last week.

School administrators in El Paso, Texas—and by extension Santa Clara County Superintendent Xavier De La Torre—were cleared of any wrongdoing in falsifying test scores as well as changing students’ grade levels to sidestep accountability measures, according to an El Paso Times report.

Dr. Xavier De La Torre provides guidance and oversees the work of 31 school districts, 17,000 teachers and 280,000 students under the umbrella of the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE). In his role as county superintendent of education, he also leads an office of about 1,800 employees. But in just a little more than a year and a half on the job, De La Torre is facing the very real prospect of being fired or asked to resign.

The Santa Clara County Office of Education hosted a special meeting Saturday for a charter school study workshop. Approximately, 50 community leaders, elected school board members and parents participated in a discussion on the role of charters and traditional public schools in meeting student academic needs. Even though all those who spoke appeared to have the right intentions, eliminating the achievement gap is a divisive issue.

There are several critical “gaps” in the education of our children. One is the gap of how our high school students compare to high school students in cities like Helsinki and Shanghai on PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Let’s call this gap the “Global Achievement Gap.” It is related to how students perform on comparable international assessments to real world problems in reading, math and science.

Tonight a third petition to build a second Discovery Charter School in San Jose goes back before county education officials. Other items on the county Board of Education agenda include a report on the $2 million cuts from the federal sequestration, a study on foster youth in schools and an update on Superintendent Xavier De La Torre paying back his home loan from the county.

Xavier De La Torre, superintendent for the Santa Clara County Office of Education, has agreed to give back nearly $100,000 of his salary over the rest of his contract to help pay down the interest and principal of a housing relocation loan he received last year. The manner in which he announced the giveback, however, was a little curious.

My professional life has been filled with many ups and many downs. One big down moment came in a Jan. 9 email from District Attorney Jeff Rosen to Superintendent De La Torre, with a “cc” to the SCCOE Board of Education. In this email, Rosen said he had received a complaint that Darcie Green’s recent Board appointment was unlawful.