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In the course of responding to CTA's questions last week, we realized that we had a few questions of our own.  The media coverage of "Rescission-gate" is growing by the day -- LA Times, AP, Wall Street Journal, Victorville Daily Press, LA Weekly, Channel 11, and others have already chimed in.

Even with such extensive media coverage, however, there are several important questions that nobody has answered.  Every day that these questions go unanswered casts even an even greater cloud on the CTA-led effort to stop the Desert Trails Parents Union by any means necessary.

1. Who forged the documents by checking off the boxes after parents signed and without their knowledge?

We have so far obtained and presented clear cut evidence that three "rescission" documents were forged.  Local teachers union leadership has expressed their formal position that this was somehow a simple, unintentional "mistake."  If we put aside the completely implausible nature of that claim for a moment, we are still left with a simple question - who checked the boxes making various allegations AFTER the parent had signed the document and totally without their knowledge?

According to the LA Times, CTA, the local teachers union, the district, and the parent leader of the effort (Chrissy Alvarado) have all categorically denied that they altered the documents.  Given that documents can't forge themselves, and documents were obviously forged, somebody needs to answer a simple question to parents, the media, and the general public - who forged the documents??

2. Whose handwriting is at the top of the documents?  Who copied each "rescission" petition?  Who was in charge of this entire process?

One of the most intriguing aspects of "Rescission-gate" is that the forgery occurred AFTER a copy was made of the original, un-forged document.  Furthermore, every petition that was submitted to the District has processing notes at the top that are NOT present on the original, un-forged document, and were not part of the District's formal processing work.  From these facts, we can re-construct the following process:

1. "Rescission" petition gatherer gets Parent A to sign "rescission" petition.  As "rescission" petition gatherer walks away with the petition, no boxes are checked, meaning that Parent A has not lodged any actual allegations of wrongdoing whatsoever against Desert Trails Parents Union or Parent Revolution.

2. Original "rescission" petition (with no boxes checked) from Parent A is brought to a location with a copy machine.

3. Original "rescission" petition (still with no boxes checked) from Parent A is copied.  There are now at least two versions of this "rescission" petition - one original, one copy - neither of which has any boxes checked.

4. Check marks are added to boxes on one of the copies of Parent A's "rescission" petition by someone involved in the "rescission" campaign without the knowledge or consent of Parent A's.

5. At some point post-copying, processing notes (such as "good" or the number "2") are added to the top of the now-forged petition.  These notes are never added to the original, un-forged document.

6. In at least two cases, both the copy of the un-checked petition and the fraudulently checked petition were accidentally submitted to the district, allowing us to catch those instances of forgery. 

Once you understand that the forgery did not happen randomly out in the field but as part of a centralized, reasonably sophisticated system for processing these "rescissions" prior to submission to the district, a few questions become extremely intriguing:

a) Whose handwriting is at the top of the documents?

b) Who made the copies of each "rescission" petition?

c) Who was in charge of this centralized, sophisticated system for processing "rescissions"?

3. Where are the original "rescission" documents?

The "rescission" documents submitted to the district were copies, not originals.  To this day and to our knowledge, nobody has produced the original "rescission" documents to the media, the district, or anyone else.  Because of the copying process described above and the mistaken submission of two unchecked documents along with the forged ones, we know for a fact that there are original documents lying around that were later forged.  Given these facts, the original documents are crucial pieces of evidence.

Where are they?  Who has them?  Nobody appears to know.