Ex-principal charged with stealing tens of thousands of dollars

A former principal has been charged with grand theft after authorities said he illegally pocketed tens of thousands of dollars while working at two Los Angeles County schools.

Kyle Douglas, 50, is charged with one count each of misappropriation of public funds, forgery and grand theft.

In 2017, while he was principal at Inglewood High School, Douglas negotiated a contract with a company for it to use the campus parking lot, prosecutors said, noting that he did not have authorization from the school board. He is accused of taking in about $57,000 from the transaction.

Two years later, while he was principal at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Pasadena, Douglas collected about $10,000 for a student trip to China but never paid the company that he’d hired to organize the trip, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

“Betraying students, their parents and school administrators is the ultimate failure for those who are the face and voice of a school,� Dist. Atty. George Gascón said in announcing the charges against Douglas.

Douglas pleaded not guilty Thursday to the charges and was scheduled to return to court for a preliminary hearing April 23.

The district attorney’s bureau of investigation is continuing an inquiry into Douglas, who could not be reached for comment.

When Douglas moved to Wilson Middle School in 2017, the Pasadena Unified School District released a statement touting the “robust partnerships� he’d created while at Inglewood “with Los Angeles Clippers and Vision to Learn, which provides vision screening and eyeglasses for students.�

The Pasadena Unified School District said it could not comment specifically about the charges, but said in a statement: “As soon as the district learned about the allegations against Mr. Douglas, he was immediately placed on a leave of absence. We fully cooperated with law enforcement in this investigation.�

Douglas was placed on leave June 27, 2019, according to the statement, after the China trip fell through. He was released from employment on June 30, 2020. Wilson was closed at the end of the 2019-20 school year amid a restructuring as the district reduced its campuses.

Before moving to Wilson, Douglas took over as Inglewood’s principal in 2015. Previously, he was an assistant principal in the Alhambra Unified School District from 2009 to 2012 and dean of activities in the Temple City Unified School District from 2007 to 2009.

He began his teaching career as a social studies teacher in Pasadena at Marshall Fundamental School and worked at Rose City High School from 1996 to 2007.

Douglas, a Tournament of Roses “white suiter,� also served as director of the Coleman-James Learning Center in Pasadena from 2004 through spring 2017. While there, he managed academic programming for school-age youth in the Community Arms and Kings Villages, large low-income housing developments in Pasadena.