CCSD technology director alleges retaliation and budget mismanagement in lawsuit

Las Vegas (KSNV) — A Clark County School District employee is suing the district for retaliation and mismanagement of funds.

Rick Allen still works for the district and says he wants to use his lawsuit to ensure that the nearly 300,000 students in CCSD are a priority.

This ongoing litigation comes at a time when the district is facing a possible budget deficit, with one of the reasons cited by CCSD leaders being the cost of cybersecurity.

“These are the concerns: Are we prioritizing our students?” Allen said in an interview Monday.

Allen, who serves as Director III of User Support at CCSD, a director of technology position, filed the lawsuit in April against the district, Chief Information Officer Marilyn Delmont and Enterprise Technology Officer David Rosario.

The lawsuit alleges several issues, including mismanagement of millions of dollars and retaliation when Allen spoke out about the budget problems and other incidents that he said were improper by management.

“A lot of things happened as part of the complaint, and they always seemed to happen after I raised concerns,” Allen said.

For example, the complaint says that in August 2022, Allen Delmont reported “gross mismanagement and waste” involving a team manager who Allen said falsified records and failed to track millions in technology purchases and inventory.

Allen says that after he raised his concerns, his supervision of that employee and his entire team was removed, which Allen says happened multiple times.

“Then there are other things where either responsibilities have been removed, employees have been moved, employees have been transferred, or employees have been refused to be hired in order to be able to work,” he said.

Documents show that in August 2023, Rosario, who was hired and assigned as Allen's supervisor, canceled a $30 million order of Chromebooks funded by ESSER grants for delivery to schools and instead had them delivered to a central warehouse .

“But there was no distribution plan and then they were never distributed,” Allen said. “And I believe most of them are still in storage.”

In October 2023, CCSD suffered a data breach after Allen said, “Delmont was warned multiple times that this could happen but did not remediate.”

Then in November, Allen said that while he was supposed to oversee spending on ESSER III funding in his department, which is federal COVID relief money, he had not been involved since Rosario signed up for the district began to work.

Because of this, the lawsuit alleges that ESSER's $60.6 million budget was $2.4 million over budget.

Allen says that shouldn't have been the case.

“30 million should actually be allocated to Chromebooks,” Allen said. “But Google changed one of its policies for updating Chromebooks, and that meant school districts were able to save a lot of money by not having to replace Chromebooks as quickly.”

He says there is also $2.4 million earmarked for an anti-virus program, which does not need to be renewed, and $15.3 million in the budget for on-site technicians, which are not needed because they are provided by the schools themselves would be paid.

The lawsuit says Rosario stated that 26 employees were overemployed due to budget issues.

Allen says this isn't necessary because money can be saved in these other areas.

“There were 26 positions that were excluded from user support,” he said. “There were additional positions eliminated from the web team. So I don’t think individuals can work on cybersecurity issues to protect students.”

News 3 reached out to the district for comment from CCSD and the other defendants.

CCSD officials said the district does not comment on pending litigation.

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