DALLAS — A former internal auditor and investigator at Dallas Independent School District is suing the district, claiming she was fired for blowing the whistle on corruption. The majority of Andrea Whelan’s allegations center on alleged grade changing and attendance fraud at one DISD high school.

Now, a new allegation included in her whistleblower lawsuit she filed one week ago alleges a student with a history of violence assaulted a teacher who died just days later. Following the incident in January 2021, the district allegedly transfered the student to another DISD school, where he attended classes at least until this past May.

Andrea Whelan was fired after a brief hearing one month ago.

The district says it terminated her for poor performance and for violating privacy rules. But she claims her performance reviews were all good until she authored two investigative reports about widespread grade and attendance fraud at Samuel High School.

According to the lawsuit filed in Civil District Court in Dallas County, her bosses rewrote her reports, “omitting all the information and evidence of the falsification of student grades and attendance.”

Also omitted, according to the suit, was Whelan’s claim she uncovered “the transfer of a Grady Spruce High School special education student," following his January 2021 assault against a teaching assistant who “passed away at the hospital several days following the incident.”

According to the lawsuit, this “was one of a series of assaults this student committed against staff members.”

“According to her information a student in this classroom lunged at a teaching assistant, there was no certified teacher in the classroom,” said David Scher, Whelan’s attorney. “The teaching assistant was relatively helpless, was ultimately sent to the hospital."

According to Scher, the teaching assistant then had surgery and essentially never recovered. “The details are unknown to us… but the most important point is, all of that information was never disclosed or reported to anyone,” said Scher.

Whelan says her investigation discovered the student was quickly transferred from Spruce High School, where the alleged assault occurred, to Samuell High School, not far away.

Whelan also claims in her lawsuit the student was placed into a classroom,  “led by a 19-year-old assistant teacher because there were no certified special education teachers available, which federal law requires.”

Whelan’s attorney says he’s concerned by what appears to be a lack of transparency in the district’s handling of the incident.

“That same student was transferred from one high school to another one,” said Scher.

“That has the potential to endanger who knows how many people,” Scher added. “As a whistleblower, instead of being protected she was fired, and the school district is more interested in power and protecting things and covering things up than in dealing with the truth or reality which could actually make a difference.”

Whelan’s lawsuit and her personnel grievance, obtained by Spectrum News via a Public Information Act request, are filled with allegations and examples of grade changing and attendance fraud. Our repeated requests for a response from DISD have been denied.