Give Braddock Mayor John Fetterman and other community leaders credit. They don’t like what they see going on in the Woodland Hills School District, and they’re working to change it. At their request, state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said he will perform an earlier-than-planned comprehensive performance audit of the district to determine what’s happening there educationally and otherwise. Mr. DePasquale’s insights are urgently needed.

For months, the district has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons — repeated accusations of students being physically abused by administrators, security guards and police officers assigned to work in the high school.

Last fall came the release of an audio recording in which then-principal Kevin Murray is heard threatening to knock out a student’s teeth after the boy argued with a teacher. Then came video of two altercations, one between a student and Churchill police Officer Steve Shaulis and the other involving a student, Mr. Murray and Officer Shaulis. The  FBI and Allegheny County district attorney’s office are investigating the former incident, in which the student said the officer hit him so hard he lost a tooth.

Officials in the 12 municipalities making up the district sent Woodland Hills officials a letter in June saying they had no confidence in them — and that was two  months before five students claiming mistreatment, including the three involved in the cases with audio and video recordings, filed a federal lawsuit claiming a culture of abuse at the high school. While some officials participated in it, they said, others looked the other way.

On behalf of several community leaders, Mr. Fetterman reached out to see what help Mr. DePasquale might give. The auditor general’s office was scheduled to do a comprehensive performance audit next year, but in light of the community’s concerns, Mr. DePasquale agreed to start the process Oct. 2. While the community leaders asked him to address concerns about student safety, purchasing, financial matters and service cuts, he’ll also look at various other areas, from academic performance to hiring practices, over the past four years. 

Federal and local authorities should review all of the publicized allegations of abuse, and any that haven’t been publicized, and file any charges that may be warranted. But Mr. DePasquale brings his own expertise to these audits, and he may have recommendations for improving the district on a variety of fronts. There is already a corps of community leaders poised to act on his advice.

First Published: September 25, 2017, 4:00 a.m.