A Fresno County judge set a hearing to decide on a proposed order compelling Fresno Unified to produce public records wanted by the family of a student who died in March.

On Aug. 5, attorneys will appear before Judge Robert Whalen to decide on a plan for the district to send over documents to the family of Daniel Padilla, Jr., a 14-year-old boy who died after losing consciousness during a physical education class at Fresno High School.

In a peremptory writ of mandate filed June 25, plaintiffs attorney Germain Labat of the statewide Drake Law Firm says the district has been slow to produce documents and reveal the circumstances surrounding Padilla’s death to the family.

Labat told GV Wire that the district’s production of records has been “slow and incomplete.” They remain in early stages of the investigation and are unable to comment further, he said.

The hearing comes as the Board of Registered Nursing alleges incompetence and unprofessional conduct by district employees in a 2022 student death at Homan Elementary School.

Labat told the court that the district has not completed an adequate response to the requests filed on March 18 and March 24.

“FUSD acknowledged the requests, invoked an extension, acknowledged that responsive records exist, produced limited rolling batches, asserted broad exemptions and privacy concerns, and represented that it is searching multiple departments, sites, and systems,” Labat stated.

For its part, Fresno Unified said its initial email search identified 300,000 potential emails, according to court records.

“Our responsibility as a district is to comply fully with the California Public Records Act and to follow federal and state privacy laws,” Chief Information Officer Adela Garcia Duncan told GV Wire. “The district will continue to fully comply to both.”

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Fresno Unified Stopped Producing Records in May

Padilla’s death made national news after the freshman student died March 9. The boy collapsed while playing basketball in a physical education class, and 911 dispatchers acknowledged sending an ambulance to the school.

Fresno Unified soon after confirmed the death, saying Padilla passed away at a hospital.

Padilla’s mother told CBS 47 in March that he was fine the day before. And the family has unanswered questions about his death.

In the March public records requests, the family asked about defibrillator use, medical staff response, emergency response policies and training, and communications about the fatal incident.

On April 13 and April 15, the district provided some records.

A month later, Labat filed a memorandum about the district’s failure to produce timely results. After that memo, the records stopped coming.

“The (California Public Records Act) does not permit an agency to convert a statutory right of prompt access into an indefinite rolling review controlled entirely by the agency,” Labat wrote in his May 13 memo. “The Act requires prompt disclosure of non-exempt public records, narrow construction of exemptions, reasonable assistance to the requester, and judicial enforcement when an agency withholds, delays, or fails to justify nondisclosure.”

What Labat wants now is a timeline for the district to produce the records. The order, if approved by the judge as proposed by Labat, would require the district to provide that timeline within 20 calendar days.

2022 Student Death

In 2024, the district sent a letter of reprimand to then-school nurse Lawrence White-Zarate, who accessed the records of the Homan Elementary student who died in 2022. In his whistle-blower suit against the district, White-Zarate said he needed the records to serve the deceased student’s brother, a student in Fresno Unified.

In court documents, White-Zarate maintained that he didn’t violate privacy laws.

In the death at Homan, another school nurse called the family of an asthmatic student who was unable to breathe or walk instead of ordering an ambulance, which is standard procedure. After being picked up by a grandparent, the student went into cardiac arrest and died of an anoxic brain injury.

Fresno Unified ordered that nurse’s immediate supervisor and reported friend — according to White-Zarate’s lawsuit — to do an investigation into the incident. No records of discipline or training came from that investigation, according to the Board of Registered Nursing.

In July, the board in its own investigation found “incompetence” and “unprofessional conduct” on the part of the nurse who responded to the asthmatic student and the nursing supervisor who conducted the district’s investigation.