By Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoma Voice
OKLAHOMA CITY — A former bond director at Tulsa Public Schools wrongly profited from millions of dollars meant for student facilities, a state audit alleged Tuesday.
State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd released the final installment of her office’s multi-part audit of Tulsa schools, this time focusing on the district’s former executive director of bonds and energy management, Charles Christopher Hudgins.
Hudgins and construction contractors Thomas McKenna and Gayle Gwinup were charged in Tulsa County District Court on June 4 with defrauding Tulsa schools of $779,317 in bond funds. State auditors now allege Hudgins and various vendors were at the nexus of $3.73 million in improper spending.
Hudgins’ attorney, Rick Cella, said his client “is presumed innocent and maintains his innocence.”
“Press conferences and one-sided audit reports are not evidence,” Cella said. “Chris looks forward to his day in court.”
Gwinup’s attorney, Thomas Reese, declined to comment Tuesday. McKenna’s attorney, Allen Smallwood, did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
All three defendants have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud a school district, embezzlement, and making or receiving a kickback, online court records show.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond said additional charges are possible in light of the audit findings. Drummond filed the original charges with the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office.
“This audit confirms what our June charges already made clear – bond dollars meant to repair and improve Tulsa schools were instead treated as someone’s personal piggy bank,” Drummond said in a statement Tuesday. “I thank Auditor Byrd and her staff for their diligence in building out this record. My office is reviewing the full audit now, and we are not finished. Additional charges are on the table.”
Byrd said the misspent funds are a result of the Tulsa Board of Education “putting too much trust in an individual, allowing them years of unilateral control.” The school board “rubber stamped” Hudgins’ recommendations without reviewing project contracts and amendments, she said.
“There’s a lot of money that’s been misappropriated,” she said. “So, either taxpayers paid too much, or else the children and the students didn’t get what they should have gotten as a result of this bond money.”
Tulsa administrators and school board members were “very cooperative” with state auditors, Byrd said, and “they wanted to take steps to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again.”
She said her office is organizing training sessions for school boards across the state to help them give proper financial oversight.
Tulsa Superintendent Ebony Johnson said the district has added safeguards to ensure it has more transparency in its financial reporting protocols. In a statement Tuesday, she said the district intends to seek full restitution.
“Our students and our school communities deserve every dollar meant for them,” Johnson said. “We intend to fight to ensure the district is made whole and remain fully committed to supporting all relevant agencies pursuing justice in this matter.”
At Hudgins’ direction, the district awarded McKenna and Gwinup’s company, Allied Engineering Group, millions of dollars for roofing, interior renovation and HVAC work not performed, according to the state audit’s findings. Allied Engineering kept a portion of the funds but paid most of it, more than $2.6 million, to Hudgins’ personal business between the 2015 and 2025 fiscal years, auditors stated.
The state audit also reported Allied Engineering overbilled the school district by at least $499,573 for engineering work.
Hudgins authorized another business founded by Gwinup and two Allied Engineering employees to process the district’s $2.2 million in rebates from the Public Service Company of Oklahoma’s Energy Program, according to the audit. He did so without board approval, and his partners’ business kept 30% of the rebates, amounting to $547,782, auditors found.
Byrd said Hudgins gave “favorable treatment” to other vendors when recommending which companies should be awarded bids for bond projects.
Hudgins left the district in February 2025 when Byrd and her office initially identified him as a concern in their first state audit of Tulsa schools. The first audit noted that Hudgins was listed as a subcontractor for Allied Engineering while he was overseeing the district’s bond projects.
The initial audit also reported a widespread lack of transparency, failure to comply with purchasing rules and attempts to circumvent school board oversight by former Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist’s administration.
Gist and most of her leadership team have since left the district. One of her former top administrators, Devin Fletcher, is serving 30 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, stemming from actions in his district role.
