St. Joseph High School principal Erinn Dougherty has been placed on administrative leave after a recording began circulating online that appears to capture her reprimanding students after an altercation at the Orcutt, Calif., campus. The leave was announced at the end of last week, and Santa Barbara region superintendent Michael Ronan told parents in a Friday, May 15 letter that it was pending a review of her verbal comments made in a meeting of students.
The recording, which has not been independently verified, appears to show the voice students identify as Dougherty criticizing students for recording the fight instead of helping to de-escalate it. In the audio, that voice says, “some of the most white trash public school behavior I have ever seen,” and adds, “people do not pay $15,000 a year for that.” The recording also includes the line, “That is for the people who are not going to own businesses. That's for the little workers. That's for the people who are never going to own a home, they're going to rent a home.”
The comments have pushed a private Catholic school already familiar with scrutiny into a new round of attention. According to the Santa Maria Sun, Dougherty had managed the Orcutt school for eight years, and the paper reported that a lawsuit filed in 2024 against Dougherty, the archdiocese and athletic director Tom Mott alleged pressure to falsify student athletes’ grades and whistleblower retaliation. That background is now part of the public discussion as parents and students try to sort out what was said, what was recorded and what it means for the school.
Some students and parents have defended Dougherty’s intent even as they questioned the language. Jose Corona said she was only disciplining the students, while Monte Nash said a teacher was in the middle of the conflict and declined to intervene before it became an issue. Nash also said he did not think Dougherty personally labeled the students a certain way, but that she was addressing behavior she believed reflected a demographic of people. The recording itself, however, has made the dispute more damaging because it appears to connect a disciplinary moment to language many families are likely to hear as degrading rather than corrective.
Athletic director Tom Mott has assumed interim administration duties while the Archdiocese of Los Angeles says it is working closely with the school to address the matter. The archdiocese said St. Joseph High School remains committed to an environment grounded in faith, compassion, respect and accountability, and the school said end-of-year processes, graduation requirements and festivities will stay on schedule. That means the immediate next step is not a shutdown or cancellation, but a review whose findings will determine whether Dougherty returns or whether the controversy becomes a larger reckoning for one of the school’s most visible leaders.
