ENCINITAS — The San Dieguito Union High School District may be primed to release an investigative report regarding a former superintendent’s claims of misconduct against a school board trustee, after denying public records requests for the report for more than two years.
Former Superintendent Cheryl James-Ward filed a complaint with the district in March 2022 alleging harassment and discrimination by Area 4 Trustee Michael Allman based on her gender.
A resulting $49,000 investigation by law firm Best Best & Krieger determined that while Allman had been disrespectful, he had not discriminated against or harassed James-Ward. The district concurred with the investigator’s findings, writing that “There is not sufficient evidence to conclude that Trustee Allman discriminated, harassed, or bullied (James-Ward) because of (her) gender.”
The district has never publicly shared the full report, which features interviews with several witnesses, including current and former district staff, and has only shared a 15-page “notice of outcome” completed by the investigator.
In response to public records requests for the report, the district has argued it is exempt from disclosure because it is protected by the attorney/client privilege and/or attorney work-product doctrine.
Now, Allman claims that the board recently held a closed session meeting to discuss the possibility of releasing the report in response to a public records request, which he said is politically motivated and amounts to “criminal activity.”
Allman claimed that releasing the report right before the election after withholding it for two years would be for the purpose of hurting his re-election campaign. He noted that a majority of the board — trustees Rimga Viskanta, Katrina Young and Jane Lea Smith — have endorsed his opponent, Kevin Sabellico, a political consultant and former Carlsbad Planning Commissioner.
Allman also criticized the district board’s citing of “significant exposure to litigation” as the reason for the closed session, saying there has been no threat of litigation.
“If they decided, for example, to release an attorney-client-privileged confidential report after two years of keeping it that way, but decided to waive it [attorney-client privilege] with no threat of litigation, two weeks before election, that is a substantial risk of being found to use district resources for political purposes,” Allman said.
On the day of the special meeting on Oct. 23, Allman and Trustee Phan Anderson announced, on the advice of their attorneys, that they would not be participating in the planned closed session and left the district office.
Viskanta, who is also board president, said she cannot comment on closed session proceedings but sent the following statement regarding the Oct. 23 meeting:
“The San Dieguito Union High School District board of trustees is committed to ensuring that all official business and decisions are conducted in the best interests of both the district and the public. In close coordination with legal counsel, today’s meeting was held to address a matter of district business in compliance with the Brown Act, relevant legal statutes, and board policies,” Viskanta said.
In addition to claims of harassment and discrimination, James-Ward’s 2022 complaint also claimed that Allman used profanity toward her, undermined her publicly and privately, pressured her to take action against certain employees and attempted to control her role as superintendent.
The investigation notice of outcome stated that while Allman “can be demanding and disrespectful regarding the specific goals that he wants to accomplish and interests that he wants to satisfy,” it did not meet the definition of discrimination against James-Ward.
Shortly after filing her complaint in 2022, James-Ward was placed on administrative leave and then fired from her superintendent position following public outcry over her remarks, which many said negatively stereotyped Chinese families in the district.
Attorney Cory Briggs, who submitted the public records request for the report on behalf of an unnamed client on Oct. 17, said he believes the results of the investigation are in the public interest.
“One of the trustees is accused of saying some pretty outrageous stuff, and if it’s true, the public should know, and if he didn’t do it, then they should know it didn’t happen,” Briggs said.
In an email sent to board members on Oct. 22 and obtained by The Coast News, former district superintendent Lucille Lynch also shared concerns about the report being released for political reasons.
“During my tenure as the interim superintendent and as a parent in the district, I witnessed in person how politics in the Boardroom disrupted the focus on the educational purpose of the district, caused friction among Board members, and often exhausted the district’s limited resources,” Lynch said. “If the Board’s consideration of whether to waive the attorney client privilege is not politically motivated, then the Board should at minimum wait to consider disclosure of any such material until after the election has concluded.”
The San Dieguito Union High School District will hold another special board meeting on Wednesday morning. The agenda includes a closed-door conference with legal counsel regarding significant exposure to litigation.
4 comments
Testimonials for Michael Allman. Parents know he wants what is best for the students
https://www.allmanforschoolboard.com/testimonials
Endorsements for Michael Allman
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The Teacher’s Union and the corrupted Catherine Blakespear clan are doing anything they can to get drifting grifter Kevin Sabellico elected.
A 20 something year old with no kids who was thrown out of the race for Carlsbad City Council for blatant lying. He also ran 2 lying campaigns for Catherine Blakespear.
Then there is this:
From a post on Facebook:
At the time this was written, the Levin campaign had been voted “unacceptable” EIGHT times by Democratic Clubs in response to the bullying actions of his youth wing in local High schools and Junior Colleges. That operation was led by one KEVIN SABELLICO, who now is running for a school board seat, after helping manage the dark campaign of Catherine blakespear last cycle. If you are a Democrat who states that a vote for Trump says something about a person’s character, so does a vote for this character.
I thought Allman wanted “hyper-transparency”? Where’s the hyper-transparency in not releasing these records? Selective transparency, perhaps?
A few interesting things in this article. First you are using a four year old campaign photo of a politician who is crying politics about the disclosure of his bad behavior that an opinion columnist stated could damage his re-election campaign. Isn’t it political to keep it from the public thereby deceiving them so that he can win an election on false pretenses?
The community has been requesting this information for two years. We finally have a law firm that has verified there are disclosable documents following at least three separate new requests – the first two in early October. The denial in early October came after what has now been revealed by our Board President was undue influence and threats by Michael Allman to go to the media with unfounded claims.
And here he is in the media decrying politics with a campaign photo accompanying the story.
I further find it interesting and curious that the only Interim Superintendent we had who had no education or administrative credentials, but who endorsed Michael Allman in his 2020 campaign and was a significant donor to Mo Muir (The Board majority Trustees who hired her) has commented for this story in support of a politician trying to prevent its disclosure against the public interest in transparency in government.
I do appreciate that your story verifies that the findings of the report were focused on gender based harassment and discrimination, not harassment and discrimination generally. That is an important fact and distinction often missed.
There must be some pretty bad stuff in there for Mr. Allman, a politician, to be this worried that it would hurt his re-election campaign. And to work this hard to deceive the public. To me, that’s the ultimate political game.
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