School board fires Calumet City superintendent after FOX 32 investigation

FOX 32 NEWS - After meeting behind closed doors for more than six hours, the Calumet City School District 155 Board voted Friday morning to fire Troy Paraday, who had been superintendent for more than 13 years.

FOX 32 has obtained a copy of the board resolution that details Paraday's alleged misconduct.

We went to the board a month ago to ask questions about Paraday's $408,000 salary and a clause in his contract allowing him to cash out hundreds of unused vacation and sick days for hundreds of thousands of dollars when he retired at the end of October.

While the board had no answers that night, our questions prompted the board's attorney to start digging.

Here's what she found:

Paraday claimed he had accumulated 885 unused vacation and sick days, which he planned to cash out for $1.7 million.

Paraday claimed he had never taken a sick or vacation day in his entire tenure as superintendent but the report says he was going into the district's computer and turning his vacation days into work days. At least 47 vacation days were modified or deleted in just the past 15 months.

And when he was asked by a board member a month ago if the budget was balanced, he claimed it was.

That's a lie, according to the report, which says the budget is unbalanced because Paraday never included his huge cash payout, telling the comptroller they would take care of it later.

Paraday is also accused of giving himself an undeserved raise, allowing himself 300 days of compensation time that he's not entitled to and destroying emails, computer files and salary documents, including a file titled: ""How to get the last three and a half years of pay without working."

Because the board fired Paraday for cause, he won't get any of that severance, not a nickel of that $1.7 million he was about to be paid. His troubles aren't over. 

The Cook County Sheriff's Office is now conducting a criminal investigation.