Months before a high-level embezzlement scheme at Tulsa Public Schools was uncovered, former superintendent Deborah Gist and her deputies were quietly arranging an exit plan for the official behind it — and using secret payments to a private consultant to manage the transition, according to internal district records obtained by The Frontier.
Tulsa Public Schools told The Frontier the official, former chief talent and equity officer Devin Fletcher, had applied to be the superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools around the same time. But still months before his eventual departure, Fletcher was not among three finalists for the job, according to news reports from the time.
An investigator for the Oklahoma State Auditor and Inspector’s office wrote in an internal memo that the records raise questions about whether school leaders knew about Fletcher’s scheme to defraud the district of at least $800,000 long before it was reported to law enforcement.
“If Fletcher’s plans to leave the District were not prompted by the discovery of his questionable vendor practices,” the investigator wrote, “then why did TPS act in secrecy about the transition?”
The records also show Gist acted against district policies by accepting vendor-paid travel and retaining contractors without board approval.
Gist, who is currently an advisor to the president of the University of Tulsa, has not been charged with a crime. She declined to comment for the story when reached by phone and did not respond to detailed written questions.
A forensic audit of Tulsa Public Schools released in March by State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd found widespread financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, wasted funds, and policy violations from 2015 to 2023. These problems enabled Fletcher to steal money from the school through doctored invoices, the audit concluded. Last year, Fletcher pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud and was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
But the audit’s public release offered only a partial picture. District leaders’ handling of Fletcher’s misconduct remained largely unexplored. The state auditor’s office did not respond to questions for the story.
The newly obtained documents — including auditors’ notes and memos, internal district emails, and procurement records — shed new light on these gaps. They show that Gist and her deputies began planning Fletcher’s departure as early as December 2021, more than six months before the district reported his scheme to the police. That month, Gist and former assistant superintendent Paula Shannon hired a New York-based human resources consultant, Talia Shaull, to manage Fletcher’s exit, paying her $175 per hour through the Foundation for Tulsa Schools, emails and contracts show. According to the documents, the arrangement to pay her directly through the foundation was designed “to avoid Board approval, keeping the project confidential” and violated district procurement policy.
Shannon and Shaull did not respond to requests for comment.
Fletcher was listed in a news report as one of 11 candidates being considered for Cincinnati superintendent in December 2021. But he was not among three finalists selected in January 2022.
Fletcher’s responsibilities were taken over by another administrator as Shaull implemented the transition plan. Shaull provided services billed through the foundation through June 2022, invoices show. The district continued to pay Fletcher until the end of June 2022. The public and the school board were not immediately informed of Fletcher’s plans to leave.
Auditors documented gaps in district records during the period Fletcher’s exit was being planned. Emails sent or received by Gist, Shannon, and other top administrators from summer 2021 to early 2022 appear missing, according to the documents. So do records from a staffer who received illicit bonuses, and months of Slack messages from the talent management team, which auditors noted used Slack “almost exclusively” to conduct business, according to the documents.
Auditors found the discrepancies by cross-referencing emails from senders that were never found in recipients’ inboxes along with the absence of emails for specific individuals during similar timeframes. The auditors wrote that the pattern “could be an intentional omission” and was potentially in violation of the Oklahoma Open Records Act. They made repeated requests to Tulsa schools lawyers, who sometimes provided more emails, but most of the gaps remained, according to documents.
Tulsa Public Schools said it has fully cooperated with the state auditor’s two-year investigation.
“The lines of communication and collaboration remained open throughout the process,” the district said. “Tulsa Public Schools has been billed in excess of $250,000 for the state’s investigation. This figure represents what has been invoiced to Tulsa Public Schools, but does not include the thousands of hours of staff time required to be responsive to the extensive requests from the auditor’s office.”
The auditors found fraudulent payments made by Fletcher declined sharply beginning in late 2021. Fraudulent payments to his half-sister and his shell company, Snickelbox LLC, ceased in summer 2021. Fletcher’s name disappeared from administrative meeting agendas after April 2022, the auditors note.
The district didn’t begin an internal investigation into Fletcher until June 9, 2022. Tulsa schools lawyers told the auditors they opened the investigation after an employee told district legal counsel that she had received a suspicious bonus. The next day, an attorney for the school district said she asked outside legal counsel to begin investigating. The outside lawyer contacted police more than two weeks later, on July 1. No board approval was obtained for the internal investigation and there is no evidence the board was informed, according to the documents.
Auditors flagged the timeline as implausible. The employee who reported the suspicious bonus and a district attorney didn’t document the exact date of the whistleblower disclosure — despite having given auditors the exact dates of numerous related events.
“The failure of both employees to recall or document the significant event dates seems very unlikely and should be noted,” auditors wrote.
Fletcher went on vacation to Israel on June 8, a day before the investigation began, and remained on leave until his final day with the district on June 30, according to the documents. The internal investigation proceeded during that time, out of public view, without notification to law enforcement or the board.
Together, an auditor wrote in a memo that these anomalies raise the possibility that other Tulsa Public Schools employees were aware of Fletcher’s misconduct long before it was reported and took steps to cover it up.
“Why was the transition plan confidential and why was the consultant Shaull hired through the Foundation without transparency?” the auditor wrote.
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In the aftermath of Fletcher’s departure, the district hired an auditing firm without a signed contract, documentation of competitive quotes, or prior approval from the board, records show. Gist directed staff to retain the accounting firm Arledge & Associates to conduct an audit of district finances and Fletcher’s misconduct in August 2022, according to internal records.
“This approach would allow us to contract your service through the purchase order,” the district’s chief financial officer wrote in an email to the vendor. The administration presented the expenditure to the board after the work had already begun, according to the documents.
In September, the independent auditors determined that Fletcher’s behavior violated the district’s conflict of interest and ethics policy. That same month, administrators softened the policy without board approval, according to the auditors.
When questioned, district counsel claimed the changes were merely “regulations,” not official “policy,” and thus didn’t require board authorization. But auditors noted that no such distinction exists in the district’s governing documents and that the board has jurisdiction over district policy under state law.
Documents also show Gist accepted four trips paid for by vendors with contracts with the district, in violation of the policy before it was revised. And they say she helped establish a culture that allowed Fletcher’s fraud to occur.
Gist created a “waiver process” that let administrators bypass competitive bidding for contracts that were to be reimbursed by donors, according to the documents. Employees used what they referred to as Gist’s process to approve payments to Fletcher’s half-sister for $200,000 in services later found to be fraudulent, according to the documents. When one employee questioned the purchase and its compliance with district policy, an administrator dismissed her concerns, documents say.
The waiver mechanism was an end-run around oversight, according to the documents. Invoices were often approved without itemization, review, or board visibility, documents say. Staffers sometimes discussed high-dollar payments in casual emails.
One employee wrote: “I was going to email Jackie and be like ‘so yeah, we have like a million bucks in invoices I need you to submit by next Wednesday or you don’t get paid’ but I wanted to make sure before I did that.”
Another replied: “Giiirl, it’s WILD.”
Gist resigned in August 2023 amid a political dispute with State Superintendent Ryan Walters, who threatened a state takeover of Tulsa Public Schools over low test scores and alleged violations of laws on race and gender instruction. In her resignation letter, Gist said she stepped down to preserve local control and defuse political attacks on the district.
After the release of the state auditor’s report last month, Byrd said her office had referred evidence about “a couple” of employees to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office for further investigation.
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