The former Beverly Hills School District official who, according to prosecutors, received racy emails and secret bonuses from future Newport-Mesa Unified School District Superintendent Jeffrey Hubbard has been convicted of conflict of interest charges.
Karen Anne Christiansen, who was the Los Angeles County school system's facilities director, steered a building contract exceeding $1.3 million her own way, according to authorities.
]
In essence, the 53-year-old convinced school officials to borrow money for a building
campaign that she herself managed under a contract with the district, reads a Los Angeles County District Attorney's office statement.
Hubbard already pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of misappropriation
of public funds related to his relationship with Christiansen and a third count surrounding a supposedly secret raise given to Nora Roque
when she worked with him in Beverly Hills. Roque later followed Hubbard to Newport-Mesa, where the school board has so far stood behind its superintendent.
Evidence not only shows Christiansen received about $20,000 and a $350
monthly car allowance approved by Hubbard and without the Beverly Hills school board's approval, but that the administrative pair sent one another love pledges and oral-sex references, prosecutors say. Photos like the one that opened this post were sent by Christiansen to another district employee.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.