Hacienda La Puente Unified School District is suing former Superintendent Cynthia Parulan-Colfer, alleging she transferred nearly $250,000 from a defunct scholarship fund into the accounts of two nonprofits created following her retirement in 2020.
The original fund, the HLP Educational Foundation, hosted an annual scholarship dinner, “Stairsteps to Success,” to raise money for the district’s students and awarded about $15,000 in scholarships each year, according to the lawsuit.
The state revoked the foundation’s tax-exempt status in 2020 after years of incomplete filings. It shut down that September.
District employees, who managed the foundation’s day-to-day administration, estimated nearly $250,000 remained in its accounts at the time.
Hacienda La Puente’s attorney’s allege “Parulan-Colfer fraudulently transferred funds belonging to the HLP Ed Foundation to two new non-profit organizations with which Parulan-Colfer is associated — defendants SVG Training Foundation, Inc. and San Gabriel Career Foundation, Inc.,” the lawsuit states.
The district further alleges Parulan-Colfer, who served in leadership roles for all 12 years of the foundation’s existence, misappropriated funds before she retired by unilaterally awarding $4,000 in scholarships to her own sons and by using the foundation’s accounts to pay her husband’s law firm $320 and to cover $3,500 in costs for her own retirement party.
A $750 scholarship check awarded to a Los Altos High School student bounced as a result of the foundation’s shuttering. Legal counsel for Parulan-Colfer, in correspondence with the district, called the bounced check “unfortunate and regrettable” and stated it resulted “from the calculus of dissolving the corporation and the distribution of those asserts (sic) to other charitable organizations,” according to the lawsuit.
SVG Training Foundation, which formed the same month that the scholarship fund dissolved, lists Parulan-Colfer as its…
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