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At a Thursday morning, Oct. 10, special meeting of the Las Lomitas Elementary School District Board of Trustees, the superintendent and board profusely apologized for a resolution attached to the agenda of the meeting.
The original resolution stated that the superintendent would prepare a disciplinary report for any staff that striked and submit it to the board. The board would then consider whether to discipline the employee or seek termination. Some 98% of Las Lomitas Education Association members — which is made up of teachers and librarians — voted to authorize a strike unless district management agrees to a new contract, including a 10% salary bump.
After the resolution was made public, according to an email obtained by this news organization, Superintendent Beth Polito and board President Heather Hopkins issued an apology to all staff members, stating, “We wanted to apologize for a communication sent this morning as part of our standard board-meeting agenda distribution. The resolution attached has not yet been vetted by the whole board and includes boilerplate text. … We understand some of the language is not reflective of how our district operates and the board will discuss the entirety of the document at the meeting.”
After that email, an updated resolution was added to the board agenda that removed language about the disciplinary report. According to the document’s metadata, it was last updated at 9 p.m. on Wednesday.
“As an employee and a parent of a former student, I am really disappointed in seeing this kind of behavior,” said Las Lomitas teacher Jill Ohline, one of two public commenters during the Oct. 10 meeting, which took place at 9 a.m.
“I conveniently don’t work on Thursdays but the scheduling of this meeting felt like it would obviously interrupt the employment of all of the school board and it also shut out participation of LLEA members,” she added.
As the board moved to discuss the resolution, board President Heather Hopkins issued an apology, “I wanted to apologize to the community as your school board president. Everyone on this board and at the district office is scrambling and working as hard as we can and we’ve never done this before.”
Hopkins said that district staff thought the resolution was required to keep schools open in event of a strike and that the resolution was a boilerplate document from the Association of California School Administrators.
“I am sorry that this meeting and the original attachment was alarming to so many in our community and I take responsibility for that,” Hopkins added.
“The district team received advice by ACSA that the resolution was standard practice going into a possible strike,” Polito told this news organization.
ACSA did not respond to requests for comment. According to publicly available agendas, an almost identical version of the resolution has appeared on the agenda of at least one other school board, New Haven Unified School District in Alameda County.
A publicly available article by ACSA stated, “Districts typically cannot discipline teachers who lawfully engage in a legal strike.”
Polito told the board that the document was reviewed by district legal counsel before being published. However she also said legal counsel told her Thursday morning that the board did not need to adopt any resolution.
Every board member expressed their disappointment in how the resolution was handled. Trustee Laura Moon called it a “profound error” and said she was “very upset.” Trustee Gautam Nadella echoed Moon’s sentiment. Trustee Jason Morimoto said the resolution was an “inappropriate” template from ACSA. Trustee Paige Winikoff said she was “shocked and horrified” when she read the resolution and added that she asked ahead of time if anything in the resolution was actually necessary.
Trustees Moon and Morimoto both emphasized that teachers have a right to strike without fear of retribution.
“Striking is a protected activity and the board unanimously voted against the Superintendent’s Proposed Board Resolution. This is a victory for LLEA and shows the power as a union. We continue to try to reach an agreement,” said Las Lomitas Education Association co-Presidents Jennifer Montalvo and Daniella Lefer in a statement.
Petition circulates
At 8 p.m. on Wednesday, district parent Christine Arnould created a Change.org petition asking community members to vote no confidence in Polito. The petition racked up over 600 signatures as of Friday morning.
The petition states, “We are parents, community members and teachers who have experienced firsthand the damaging effects of our Superintendent’s actions on our students’ lives and learning, our teachers and our community.”
It resolves that the signers of the petition “have NO confidence, and NO trust in the Superintendent to effectively lead the Las Lomitas Elementary School District, and call for her immediate removal without her contractual retirement package.”
Polito declined to comment on the petition. Hopkins said the board “has not yet received this petition” and did not respond to questions on Polito’s performance.
“We started the petition when we saw the resolution and it was confirmed by LLEA as a threat to teachers,” Arnould told this news organization.
After the district confirmed it was a mistake, Arnould said it only confirmed the petiton is “absolutely necessary.”
Arnould said she is doubtful that teachers can reconcile with Polito. “I think at this point teachers are lacking trust and some are fearful of retaliation. There has been increasingly difficult interactions between her and parents. She canceled parent volunteers, she doesn’t appreciate when parents provide feedback, she is not transparent, she thinks she knows better than everyone else,” Arnold said.
“We are going to officially send the petition to the board no later than Monday morning so it can appear on the next board meeting’s agenda, ” Arnold added.
The school board is next scheduled to meet on Thursday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. at Las Lomitas in Cano Hall at 299 Alameda de las Pulgas, Atherton. Community members can also join via Zoom and connection details are shared when the agenda is released.
Such a clumsy and heavy handed move by the Superintendent and school board. Good that they’re trying to walk it back but it’s a bad look.
It appears that something peculiar is going on at the District, and I suspect it’s primarily happening at the level of the Superintendent, not the Board. I notice that literally all of the Board members expressed dismay at being blindsided by the inappropriate draft resolution text popping up attached to the prepared agenda, and see zero reason to think the whole Board is dissembling.
So, logically, it’s Supervisor Polito. Is she perhaps attempting to engineer the end of her own employment at the District? It’s worth pondering.
I’m sure Ms. Hopkins is correct that the Board are scrambling, and they have my sympathies. Nonetheless, I suspect closer and more intensive oversight of the Superintendent and the District Staff is called for, urgently. For example, how about the Board, in its role as the boss’s boss, having a detailed conversation with the District legal counsel, instead of just relying on Ms. Polito to do so? (The estimable Mr. Marguilis’s coverage suggests far too much delegation to Ms. Polito is occurring, there.)
— Rick Moen
(Web-search my name, if anyone needs my e-mail address or tel. #)