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Lindberg v. California Dep't of Education10/31/2005
ing to do the jail reviews and excluded him from staff meetings with the other consultants who were doing reviews.
In September 1999, Lindberg applied for three different posted positions in the Adult Education division--consultant for ESL, consultant for G.E.D. and high school completion, and Adult Education consultant for students with disabilities, focusing on the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) (42 U.S.C. ยง 12101 et seq.). He was not hired for any of them.
Lindberg was exceptionally well qualified for the adults with disabilities position, which required familiarity with the ADA. He had gone to Washington, D.C., where he helped write the regulations for the ADA. Several educational administrators testified that Lindberg's experience, knowledge and qualifications in the area of education for adults with disabilities were second to none. Lindberg's application for the ADA position was also supported by numerous letters of recommendation from education administrators from all over the state.
Nevertheless, Polster, who was in charge of screening candidates for the position, did not even grant Lindberg an interview. In fact, Polster posted the job three times; on the first two occasions, with Lindberg as the only applicant, she decided to repost the position rather than interview Lindberg for the job.
On the third posting, with Lindberg screened out of the process, the hiring panel selected Eileen Calise, a K-12 special education instructor, who had never taken the CDE consultant's exam, and had no experience in the education of adults with disabilities. A specialist in education for adults with disabilities who was familiar with both Lindberg and Calise, testified that Lindberg was by far the superior candidate for the ADA consultant job.
The CDE Feels the Heat; CBO Funding Is Finally Stopped
In July 1999, the State Auditor issued a blistering report, highly critical of CDE's administration of the federal adult education funds. In his cover letter to the Governor and legislative leaders, the State Auditor wrote: "This report concludes that [CDE's] monitoring efforts failed to detect unsubstantiated claims for adult education funds submitted by [the CBO's]." According to the report, the majority of CBO's reviewed by the auditor could not substantiate their claims for funding. Worse still, while " claimed to have conducted site visits of the CBO's in our sample, . . . the reviewers rarely noted the significant problems we observed during our visits."
On numerous occasions, Lindberg had met with federal agents in attempting to track down fraud. Federal investigators suspected several CBO's were committing fraud, including La Hermandad, One-Stop Immigration and Templo Cavalrio (Templo). On December 17, 1999, the United States Attorney wrote Eastin a 10-page letter summarizing his exhaustive investigation, in which he accused CDE of
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