DMPS District is Filing Lawsuits

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's go ahead and dig into the latest situation with
the Ian Roberts debacle. Now, we have told you on
a multitude of fronts, and I mean a multitude, about
how this story is affecting so many people for different reasons. Now,

(00:26):
for people who are sick of hearing it, I apologize.
I wish I could tell you that this is not
a story that's that important. But it's an important story
and it has been in the national spotlight since it
happened last Friday, and as the days have gone on,
we have seen all of the different kind of morphings
of everything. So remember when this happened. It happened right

(00:49):
before my show started last Friday. I jumped on here
and I was like, Yo, this is going to be
a major story. What's going to be the reaction? Very quickly,
the Des Moines School Board put Ian Roberts on administrative leave,
paid administrative leave. They had no information that was the
appropriate thing to do in that moment. And I sat

(01:11):
here and I said, Okay, so if this guy is
what we think he is based on the information that
we have, because we were getting the information as we
were sitting here, which was you know, it makes for
a fun show, Right, We sat here reading the information
and it's like, if this is all true and this
is the guy that they think as they're superintendent, they

(01:33):
should be really angry. They should be upset about this,
not just because they were bamboozled by this guy, but
because the consulting firm that gave them all the information
about who this guy was did not properly help vet
this person, and they hire those people to do that.
So I was on the school board side at first.

(01:54):
By Monday morning, the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners revoked
his license based on his immigration status, so he couldn't
be a superintendent anywhere in the state of Iowa at
that point, in which the response from the school board
was to put him on unpaid leave. Again, the right
thing to do procedurally, but that's the moment where you're like, Okay,

(02:16):
we are going in. We're going to sue him. We're
suing our consulting firm, we're suing their background checkers, and
we need to figure out how we were misled here.
That's not what happened. They're still using quotes from doctor
Ian Roberts in their meetings. They're celebrating the energy and

(02:38):
enthusiasm he brought to the school district. They are not
condemning him, all right. When the Iowa Board of Educational
Examiners decided to revoke his license, and he did not
put in any defense, essentially with documentation for what he
believed made him a US citizen, which he put on
his resume. Well, that should have been the moment where

(03:02):
you're saying, Okay, he's not who we said he was
and we have to protect our kids. They did not
do that. Two zero's around. Instead of providing documentation, he
provides a resignation letter through his attorney off Rado Parish.
After the resignation letter, they also have this letter that
he tries to state like this is he thought he

(03:22):
was good. It is absurd. It is absurd. We outlined
why it's absurd. It's even worse when you think about
the fact that he ran away when they tried to
detain him. All the different guns and firearms that we
have that we know now that he has, the one
he was carrying and the three more he had at
his residence. No idea about the knife, no idea about

(03:43):
the cash, whatever, And they accept the resignation while still
calling him doctor Roberts and still talking about the energy
and enthusiasm we brought to the school district, and yet
they have nothing to say about anything else. This was
on Tuesday. By Wednesday, now he's no longer the superintendent.

(04:04):
Now the school board has to figure out what they're
going to do with themselves. Well, Mill Creek Township, the
previous school district he worked out before he came to
Des Moines, had a scathing statement which said, we're suing him.
We're suing our company that led him to us. We
are really mad that we had him in our school
district and nobody told us about any of this stuff.

(04:25):
How did this get mixed up? And in the exact
same moment, the Des Moines school board now has changed
their tunes, saying, well, yes, we kind of knew that
he lied on his resume, and we had an inclination
from our consulting firm that one of his doctorate degrees
isn't really something he had. But then they took his

(04:48):
word on some of the other accolades and awards that
he had, which are not true, so they look like fools,
and then like, well, don't forget, we're a victim too.
It took him five full days to say, hey, by
the way, we're actually a victim here. Today. They had
a special meeting behind closed doors, as they always do
because they're afraid of the public having anything to say

(05:09):
about this. Well, you want to know what they ended
up saying. He they're gonna sue. They're gonna sue, not
just they're not gonna sue him, and I don't even
know how you would be able to sue, but they're
gonna sue the consulting firm. It took him a week

(05:31):
to figure this out. Ladies and gentlemen. It is the
morning a week later and they're finally like, oh, well
we can do that, we should do that. We shed
blame them, get some of the blame off of us.
Took them a week to figure it out, Ladies and gentlemen.
They were slow to react to all of this is
the whole time, that's his job. In the BAM three eighteen.
We're having fun and uh yeah, we're If you got

(05:51):
other stuff keeping an eye on with the news, we'll
give you more on this AMAS statement a little bit
later on. We'll also talk to you more about the
government shutdown that is or is it? And then Diddy
is going to be sentenced, we think sometime here this afternoon.
We'll let you know what that looks like if you
care about such things. First, I wanted to play this
audio from Jackie Norris, who continues to be a big

(06:12):
part of our lives. Jackie Norris, the chair of the
des Moines School Board. And here is a statement after
a closed door meeting that the des Moines Public School
Board had once again today as they continue to try
to do damage control on this horrific debacle and calamity
of their superintendent being an illegal alien and his detainment

(06:33):
essentially embarrassing the school district into oblivion. Here is Jackie
Norris after that meeting this morning.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Now we're going to read a statement. This is on
behalf of the des Moines Public Schools Board. In twenty
twenty three, the des Moines School Board hired JG Consulting
to conduct the superintendent search. Hiring a search firm is
common practice across the country in high profile job searches
such as the superintendents. Today, the board chaired directed council

(07:03):
to take legal action against JG Consulting, which led the
twenty twenty three search and the hiring of Ian Roberts.
The firm failed its duty to properly vet candidates. Ian
Roberts should have never been presented as a finalist. And
if we knew now what we if we knew what
we knew now, he would never have been hired. JG

(07:25):
Consulting was responsible for advertising, recruitment, application and resume review,
public domain search, complete reference checks, and presentation of qualified candidates.
It also said it would conduct comprehensive reference calls on
each applicant to include the verification of all related employment experiences.

(07:47):
JG Consulting stated it would work with a third party
to complete a comprehensive criminal credit and background check. The
contract required JG Consulting to bring all known information of
a positive or negative nature to the board. Because that
did not occur, we are pursuing pursuing legal action as

(08:08):
allowed by law. This is about accountability. Taxpayer dollars were
used and we are seeking accountability.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
All right, there's Jackie Norris. Can't wait to see Rachel
McAdams playing her in the movie.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
I thought about it a little bit. Okay, Rachel McAdams
is going to be the going to be the role.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
She can have any type of hairstyle, haircut. She can
be funny, she can be serious. She's really attractive, but
you can make her unattractive. You can't really go the
other way too well, you can't take somebody who's just
naturally kind of ugly and turn them into like somebody
that's super hot. Not to say that Jackie Norris is
like this horrendously looking person, but you're going to have to.

(08:53):
You know, like as the days go on, it feels
like Jackie, you know, like her appearance is becoming more
and more just stressed under the gun. It's difficult. It's
not an easy thing which she's got going on. Oh
and she's running for Senate and that can't be easy
for her either. Wonder how that's going. Wonder wonder how
the campaign's going. Right coming to a theater near you.

(09:16):
Idris Elba as Ian Roberts, Rachel McAdams as Jackie Norris,
and somebody else's Alfredo Parrish. We haven't quite filled out
the you know, uh, maybe Denzel that's the too. He's
it's too small of a role for Denzel. It's got
to be some other buds whatever. Starring in Doctor con Man,

(09:43):
The Story of a Superintendent Gone rogue something like that,
I'd go see it. I'd go see it. Sounds like
a great movie, all right. Anyway, So they waited a week.
Now they're blaming the consulting firm after they see, you know,
to say that they were listening to me. But I
said pretty clearly upfront that you need to blame the

(10:05):
people who background checked your guy. And honestly, like we
learned through background checks that finding out visa status isn't
necessarily something that's always going to pop up. So I
could forgive I could forgive you if you just had
no idea of his immigration status and he was outright
lying on it, we can go back and say it's
too easy to lie. He lied. He lied to so

(10:27):
many people in the last twenty plus years since he's
been working in the United States that nobody thought that
he was here illegally, nobody thought that his visa status
was a problem, nobody thought that he wasn't a US citizen.
He kept saying he was, and it wasn't popping up
on background checks that he wasn't. If he got detained
based on a order from removal from last year, I

(10:51):
could forgive you for that. His order removal was almost
a year after you hired him, so that wasn't a
thing you had to worry about when you hired him.
You wouldn't have known. But the fact that you've admitted
that you knew he lied about things, the fact that
nobody crosschecked some of this stuff, the fact that you
took him out his word about the stuff that he
had or that he had won. He didn't bother to

(11:13):
look this stuff up. You were so enamored with his
personality and his charm that you didn't even bother to
like put research into Washington DC Principle of the year.
That'd be sweet. Can we grab a link for that?
Quick Google search would have showed you that thing doesn't exist.
They didn't. They decided not to do that because they
wanted to celebrate this immigrant. A man of color with

(11:37):
an accent who dresses very nicely. He is a very
rare breed of individual that you don't get a chance
to meet too often, not necessarily with his nationality or
his ethnicity, but the fact that he has such an
interesting past and background. He was an Olympic athlete, and

(11:58):
he'd worked in a lot of major metropolston areas like Baltimore, Washington, DC,
New York, Saint Louis in his run up to becoming
the superintendent at the des Moye Public Schools. That is
a very rare story that you could tell. And he
is an eclectic person. The way that he presents himself.
People liked him. I could have forgiven you if you

(12:18):
would have just said we didn't know about his immigration status.
That is plausible because we don't have a good enough
system to background check that easily. You can blame Baker
U Banks, who performed the background check for JG Consulting.
Ask them why that's not something that they looked further into.
That'd be a decent enough question to ask again the

(12:41):
De Mooyite Public School District, For whatever it's worth, we're
not the only people fooled. Mill Creek Townships hired this
got to be a superintendent. He had worked in school districts,
as I mentioned, in at least four different major metropolitan areas.
He had been to college seven different places on his resume. Now,
a few of those places we don't know if it's legit.
One he was there for like four and a half years,

(13:01):
didn't get the doctorate degree that he said he got.
And this guy was at his thirties by that point.
Who the heck knows that what he was thinking about
his future? And he was making three hundred thousand dollars
a year in tax payer money. I I don't know
how deep we need to get into the weeds of
somebody's personal status, but if you're going to be the
superintendent of a public school district, I think this is

(13:22):
a great job for you to have to get every
rock and like turned over every single rock. Now, all
of a sudden, it's much like the Bud Crawford thing
I'm gonna. I'm going we should ask at the start
of the traffic stop. It should just be part of protocols.
Do you have firearms in the car? If we ask
that upfront, then we know and either they lied to
us or we are prepared for those firearms and we

(13:46):
can handle it appropriately. Now, all of a sudden, if
you're hiring somebody who's going to be a superintendent and
you have any questions about their you know, status as
a person in this country, or they have any immigration
status whatsoever, you know what you should do. You should
look into their visa status. You should look into their
immigration status, because even though he hadn't in order to

(14:06):
be removed when they hired him. He certainly didn't have
a visa that allowed him to work in this country,
and they would have known that if they would have
dug deeper. Now you know this lawsuit against JG Consulting,
are they going to win?

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Well?

Speaker 1 (14:19):
JG Consulting allegedly told them that he didn't get the
doctor a from were Gogan State University. They looked at
that and to decline to act on it. They said,
it's not that big a deal. It's fine. He still
qualifies for our job based on our parameters. Not a
red flag that he lied to us. Well, I think
it should have been a red flag that he lied
to you then, because everything else about this guy seems

(14:43):
to be a lie. And it's insane to me that
we still have people out there that are going out
of their way to try to defend this man. For
whatever it's worth. He's got two lawyers that showed up
to that town hall we talked about yesterday, For whatever
it's worth, they didn't have tomatoes thrown at them, and
the people that showed up actually seemed to be caring
about the well being of Ian Roberts more than anything.

(15:05):
Alfredo Parish and Brandon Brown, who also works in Alfredo's
parish Krudener law firm, which is in the Des Moines area,
and they said he's been treated very well. They both
said that the marshalls have total respect for him, have
respect for the situation. He hasn't been sent and flown
to Guyana yet. They can't promise that they won't deport

(15:27):
him at any point, but that he has been treated
with the utmost respect when he was detained, initially when
he was sent to Woodbury County Jail and now he's
in the custody in Polk County Jail. So that was
the big news coming out of there, is that he's
been treated very well, and that's good to hear. You

(15:48):
don't want somebody in this situation to just be abused.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
You know.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
This isn't a guy that, for whatever it's worth, is
has killed a bunch of people or anything. Now it's
just a con man. This is white collar stuff for
the most part. And now the federal charges against guns
that he owned, we saw its figure out. Does he
have a wife, Letitia? Is that a real person? We
don't really know. We know Leticia Roberts bought a gun
in North Little Rock, Arkansas and gave it to him.

(16:13):
We have no evidence that she was living in Des Moines.
We have no evidence that she's an American citizen or not,
which again would lead you to believe that could be
a problem about how they got the gun. And we
don't know how he got the other three guns that
were brought into Iowa that were on his property and
in his residences. So a lot of questions are still
out there that they're going to continue to investigate. We

(16:35):
will give you all of that information as time goes on.
But what a crazy story. And yeah, I actually have
his cover letter that he used and his resume that
he used, and I will tell you all about what
is on here, And what does it look like when
a guy who's faking his way through trying to be

(16:55):
a superintendent and make three hundred thousand dollars a year
at a public school district in central Iowa, what does
he put on his resume and a his cover letter.
I'll tell you what it looked like. I have the
cover letter and the resume of Ian Roberts that he
would have given to the des Moines Public schools, and
they have filed a lawsuit against JG Consulting, blaming them

(17:20):
for not having all of the right information, which is
kind of funny. After all this time, they finally decided, Hey,
let's blame somebody else. I think it's a little late
for that, and I over under like what happens first
the government gets reopened or Jackie Norris suspends her campaign
for the United States Senate. I mean, she's still probably
in shock of all this, what has happened in the

(17:41):
last week, but she's a school board president. She has
been kind of in the forefront of this, and it's
just pretty awful, to be honest with you, how they
have mishandled this and also admitting and she wasn't not
the chair when they hired him, but she was on
the school board when they hired him, So for whatever
that's worth, she was there and would have taken part

(18:02):
in the process. Now, I'm not going to read the
entire cover letter. It's two pages long. But if I
read this and I didn't know who it was from,
I would say this is a pretty exceptional cover letter.
And I don't think this was made with artificial intelligence
or anything. I think this guy wrote this, I really do.
Is he a fraud in his credentials? Is he a
fraud with his immigration status? All that is true? Is

(18:25):
he an irresponsible individual with his own personal life? That
is certainly true. But based on the way that he
talked in person. You can go find Ian Roberts audio
and it has that kind of accent and he's but
he had all these different one liners, these quotes. I
think he was passionate about education. I do think that

(18:46):
he was passionate about schools. The cover letter itself is
impressive and you can tell that he puts some thought
into it. It's well worded. This is not just kind
of like jumbled stuff to get and then they just
like look past a lot of stuff. He talks about
recognizing having culturally responsible leadership for the Moines schools, considering

(19:10):
its diversity in a generally a predominantly white state. You
have passion for special education students and other marginalized populations.
He talks about wanting to have a high level of
comfort with ambiguity and a genuine appreciation for the diversity
of the population. This job requires an excellent communicator with

(19:31):
the ability to inspire and lead teammates. To accomplish an
organization's mission and vision through a strategic and collaborative approach.
The cover letter itself is really really impressive, and if
you believed everything that he lists here and everything that
is on because he talks about during his tenure as
principal in certain school districts, talks about his you know,

(19:54):
presence of superintendent mill Creek Township and how this improved,
you know, to Saint Louis Public schools as he was
kind of like a network superintendent in the public school district.
He said he was trying to transform low performing schools,
and he mentions here, during his tenure, five of their

(20:15):
high schools were ranked in the top fifty in the
state of Missouri, including number one, number nine, and number
twenty five ranked schools for academic performance. When you're the
one public school district in your academic performance is very low,
not just for the state of Viowa, but for any
school district your size. That's something that you'd perk up
and say, oh, that's really awesome. How long does it
take for us to kind of get there? It would

(20:35):
take years. It's not just like a switch that you
can flip and all of a sudden your kids are
better in school. But I would read this, and if
I didn't know who this was objectively, I would be
pretty impressed. I would say, this is exactly the kind
of person that I would like to have, if I
believe everything that he has written there and I don't
cross check it, and if I believe everything that he

(20:57):
has on his resume, because his resume, everybody does it differently,
so I don't like how he does the resume. But
like when you make a resume, there's a few different
options that you can do. I am a one pager guy,
like I want my resume to include everything pertinent to

(21:20):
a job on one page.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Now.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
I haven't had a resume in a while that i've updated,
but every time that I have pertinent work experience that
I can add to it, generally because it's full enough,
I will take something that's from long ago off, assuming
I'm in a positive trajectory in my career. That's not
always the case. Sometimes you know you're kind of rebuilding,

(21:42):
sometimes you're going into a new career. Sometimes stuff that
would have been pertinent for a job somewhere else may
not be as pertinent for something that you're also applying
yourself to all of that stuff, right that matters. Ian
Roberts's resume here is five full pages.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
That feels way too long.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Five pages, five full pages, and it's not organized in
any particular way, like you know how I do panels, right,
So like I will have kind of an education or
my skills at the top, but then I'll also kind
of just like partion out the bottom of like work
references education, and then kind of like make it look

(22:24):
cool while also getting it to fit His is basically
just like and maybe this is normal for people who
are trying to go to like really high qualification jobs. Yeah,
I don't know, Like it's just one of those situations
that maybe this is more of a situation that I

(22:45):
just don't see resumes for people that are doing stuff
like that that often anyway. So as part of his education,
he lists a Bachelor of Science and Criminal Justice at
Coppon State, a Master of Science and Education at Saint
John's those we believe he has the Doctor of Education
Urban Educational Leadership at Morgan State University, and he lists
his dissertation as is Inclusion a Panacea or a Problem?

(23:10):
A Study of the efficacy of inclusion on the academic,
behavioral and social achievement of special education students in an
urban school district. But we found out that he didn't
complete the dissertation, so he had apparently a topic for
his dissertation, just didn't complete the work. He also a
doctorate of Education Educational Leadership from Trident American University, which

(23:34):
is not a real thing. It's Trident University International, and
his dissertation allegedly was teachers in school Leaders' perspectives on
the efficacy of culturally responsive inclusion and self contained settings
if you are in a diverse school district. This is
exactly the kind of person with his resume and what
he cared about, and the fact that he is an

(23:54):
immigrant of color. This is a guy that you thought
could have been a good leader. I could have believed that.
The way they've handled it has made me feel like
they're just fools. More coming up on news radio eleven
teen kfab Hi.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
I'm Mike Lester, host of The GUARDI Your Nest Egg
radio show. We work with individuals in or near retirement
across the country. One thing many people would like to
know is do they need a will or trust and
how much is it going to cost?

Speaker 2 (24:16):
Them.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Well.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Good news is, if you're age fifty five or older
and have at least two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
set aside for retirement, give me a call to find
out how to get that will and trust for free.
Mike and the Talent Team are not attorneys, but they
work with a group of the