Minneapolis school officials have ordered an inquiry into claims that Superintendent Thandiwe Peebles misused her office by assigning school employees to do personal chores and her college work.

School Board Chairman Joseph Erickson said he asked outside attorney Dennis O'Brien to check the allegations in two detailed letters sent anonymously to school board members last month. "We feel like it's important and worth investigating," he said.

The Star Tribune also received copies of the letters. Employees and former employees interviewed by the newspaper corroborated some of the details, plus similar allegations. They described an office in which employees working for Peebles routinely used office computers to pay Peebles' bills.

They said employees helped Peebles prepare work for the school finance course she completed this spring at the University of Minnesota so she could gain her state superintendent's license. They said they also handled other personal chores for her, including making grooming and kennel arrangements for Peebles' Kerry blue terrier, Askari.

Peebles said Wednesday she's confident that once the investigation concludes, the allegations will be found to lack merit. She said the ongoing investigation prohibits her from commenting on specifics of the allegations, made in letters dated July 7 and 21.

"When all of this comes out, you will see," she said.

The state ethics code governing school administrators and the school district's own policy prohibit using public resources for private purposes. Moreover, university policies prohibit students from presenting work by others as their own. It's yet to be determined whether Peebles violated these rules.

Peebles has been a controversial figure since she assumed perhaps the state's toughest school job last summer. She brought a sometimes-abrupt personal style and imposed changes on a district where she was hired to improve academic scores, especially for minority students.

The anonymous letters are signed "One Flew into the Cuckoo's Nest." Erickson said he's troubled by a school district culture of accusatory rumor-mongering toward superintendents that he said predates Peebles. He said whistle-blower protections should allow people to come forward by name. Addressing the letters' claims, he said: "It's still entirely inflammatory and speculative. ... I don't know what's going to come of it."

But one school board member said the specific nature of the allegations gives them some credibility. "Any of these charges, if they're true, is very serious," said the board's Colleen Moriarty, who has been critical of Peebles.

Ex-employee Elaine Kopischke-Trejo and others still on the payroll, who asked not to be named, said staffers were assigned to perform a variety of chores for Peebles' school finance course. Two employees allegedly collaborated on translating Peebles' research into a flip chart for a class presentation, using district materials on district time.

They also said they did time-consuming research for a class assignment that involved making financial comparisons between two school districts. "I personally pulled stuff off the Internet. I did research for her," said Kopischke-Trejo, a longtime district employee who had retired, then came back to work in Peebles' office until her contract wasn't renewed this summer. She said duties also involved downloading large amounts of data that came to Peebles for her class. "We printed off reams. I bet we printed off 20 notebooks of stuff," she said.

Another employee said that some of the information was so lengthy that printing it exceeded the capacity of normal computer printers and tied up a desk computer for most of the day. Budgets have become so tight that schools routinely ask parents to donate reams of copier paper.

Peebles said the information collected benefits the district.

University policy allows for giving a student a failing grade for scholastic dishonesty. But Peebles said of the allegations that others did her work: "A lot of those things don't check out." 

She said her attorneys advised her not to comment on specifics during the investigation. But she said she wrote the research paper. "I don't let anybody write anything for me," she said.

Thomas Wilson, who taught the course, said that when he graded the research paper he found no reason to doubt that it represented Peebles' work.

"There are consequences for not doing your own work," he said. Asked about the employee descriptions, he said, "If the things you're saying are accurate, I would characterize that as not doing your own work."

One letter asserts that a half-dozen employees assisted Peebles with class work. The other alleges that Peebles' former executive assistant, Felecia Cooper, spent the "vast majority" of her time handling Peebles' finances and doing dog errands. Cooper was paid ,500 annually before she was shifted to a lower-paying job. "Right now, I'm not at liberty to give you a comment," she said this week.

But Steven Belton, Peebles' chief of staff until his contract wasn't renewed recently, said Cooper told him that she was handling personal duties for Peebles. Other employees said Cooper gave similar accounts.

Belton said Cooper and he are both negotiating with O'Brien over what they are due for their former duties. O'Brien is also the attorney assigned to look into the letters.

Belton said large private companies sometimes hire personal assistants to handle personal duties for executives, but, "This is a public enterprise and we don't do that."

Kopischke-Trejo said she saw Cooper handle the long list of personal duties for Peebles that were described in one of the letters. Those included paying utility bills and mortgages, doing online transactions and money transfers, making bank deposits and running personal errands for Peebles.

"Felecia's main job was as her personal secretary -- and I mean personal, handling all her stuff. I don't mean her work stuff. I mean her personal stuff. Whenever somebody made a comment about it, we'd deny it. ... We wanted to make her successful. But she was definitely over the top," Kopischke-Trejo said.

She and another employee said several employees had access to Peebles' credit card and other personal financial information so that they could pay her bills online. Kopischke-Trejo previously worked as a school secretary and in the superintendent's office under Peter Hutchinson. Asked if she performed similar duties then, she answered: "Heavens, no."

District employees also were enlisted when Peebles bought a house last fall in Georgia. "We were all e-mailing and faxing and getting statements from the bank," Kopischke-Trejo said. Peebles' signature on a 8,730 mortgage is notarized by Cooper and witnessed by two other employees. Peebles also bought a Minneapolis riverfront townhouse in June.

Peebles said she's collecting material in response to the letters' allegations. When the investigation is over, she said, that information will present a full, step-by-step context for the allegations, she said. Several employees named in the letters have not been contacted yet by O'Brien in the weeks since the matter was sent to him.

Lydia Lee said it would be helpful if she or others on the school board could talk directly to the authors of the letters. But Moriarty said the behavior portrayed continues a pattern "we've heard over and over again, which is abusive behavior toward staff, general lack of direction and chaotic behavior."

Peebles is paid an annual salary of 7,751 to run the state's third-largest district. A one-year job review by the board earlier this summer praised her for academic initiatives but said her management skills need to improve. The board is continuing to evaluate her progress periodically, and state test results due out later this month will provide a critical measure of how district students are faring.

Staff librarian Roberta Hovde contributed to this report.

Steve Brandt is at sbrandt@startribune.com

and 612-673-4438.

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So you mean to tell me she was more interested in getting a mortgage on a house in another state than deciding what summer school the autistic kids should go to????????  Makes you wonder.

Tammy