Conservative members of the Grossmont school board blocked an official reprimand of one of their own after public records revealed the trustee leaked confidential information and attempted to secretly influence the superintendent through proxies.
While trustee Jim Kelly avoided censure, his method of doing so did nothing to offset the public perception that the Grossmont Union High School Board is a dysfunctional body willing to flout its own rules— and even state law. Their 3-2 vote Thursday left the crowd at the meeting in an uproar, screaming “cowards!” at the allies who protected Kelly.
The meeting, in a way, summed up years of district strife that many community members fear has distracted from Grossmont’s core mission, educating East County students.
It included a direct clash between former allies, Kelly’s reliance on rules of order to stifle public discussion, allegations of cronyism, improper influence on the superintendent through her husband, and breach of attorney-client privilege, as revealed in emails obtained through a records request. ICE, the controversial federal agency, even found its way into the discussion.
Kelly, despite being the focus of the censure attempt, successfully suppressed much of the discussion of his alleged misdeeds through bylaw manipulation. He flatly denied the accusations — even after board president Rob Shield read excerpts of his emails aloud to the audience — but did not attempt to counter the evidence against him.
Instead, he focused on rules of order, including making motions that barred discussion. Kelly, in fact, made the motion to censure himself in order to end board debate. He and two colleagues, Gary Woods and Scott Eckert, voted against the censure. Shield and Chris Fite were on the losing end of the vote.
Kelly has come under fire in the past, from staff, students and members of the public upset by back room governance that cost the district millions in settlements, as well as the board’s treatment of librarians, teachers, mentally ill students and LGBTQ+ people.
This time, it was a former ally, Shield, who called out Kelly’s disregard of board bylaws and state law, including the Brown Act, California’s law on transparent governance.
A public records request from the San Diego Union-Tribune had revealed that Kelly shared sensitive board information with outsiders months after Shield sent a memo to colleagues about following the rules.
The vote made public a private division between Shield and the three other conservative board members, Kelly, Woods and Eckert. For many years, the bloc voted in lockstep even as public frustration grew over their politicking and alleged attempts to govern out of the public eye.
“This gives me no pleasure. We have a long history, and honestly, I had what I thought was a cooperative relationship with Mr. Kelly for 18 of the last 20 years,” said Shield, who wrote the motion to censure Kelly. “However, I have no choice because I’ve done everything I could do to encourage, challenge, press him into compliance.”
The proposed censure outlined several incidents in which Kelly’s behavior allegedly either violated board bylaws or the Brown Act. Allegations included Kelly sharing a confidential legal memo with outsiders, making baseless accusations on the dais and in closed session, and attempting to control the superintendent.
Despite the email evidence, Eckert and Woods continued to back Kelly. Woods stayed silent on the dais, even as public commenters accused him of being Kelly’s crony. Eckert, meanwhile, first moved to table the motion until after the election, saying the timing of the allegations becoming public felt like an intentional political strategy.
The Union-Tribune’s public records request led to a search which revealed in September that Kelly shared confidential information with non-board members in July.
“I don’t condone releasing closed session information, but my big concern here is the timing,” Eckert said. “This has, in my perception, a political agenda.”
‘A smoking gun’
Shield defended the timing, saying that it was Kelly, through his alleged misdeeds, who planted a bomb that happened to detonate before the election.
“You can accuse me of manipulative timing, but I promise you, it came to my attention, and oh gee whiz, this is a smoking gun,” Shield said. Shield is not seeking reelection after serving on the board for 20 years. Kelly, who has been on the board for 24 years, is.
“I have suspected many of these things. But Kelly handed me the smoking gun, where he clearly is inappropriately releasing confidential information,” Shield said. “I’m sorry, that has crossed the line of tolerability. It has nothing to do with (November).”
In what to Shield was the most egregious example of misconduct, Kelly forwarded emails in July though they were labeled “Attorney-Client Privileged Memo” in the subject line. In the body of the email, district staffer Collin McGlashen restated that it contained information protected by attorney-client privilege and should not be forwarded or shared.
Kelly sent the document to multiple people asking for their thoughts, including district staffers and an outside attorney, John Howard. While that breach of confidentiality was the focus of Shield’s proposed censure, emails that revealed Kelly attempted to control the superintendent through influencing her spouse, a prominent former lawmaker, enraged the only Democrat on the board, Fite.
Influencing the superintendent?
Kelly sent emails to former Assemblymember Steve Baldwin, asking him to convince Superintendent Kirsten Vital Brulte’s spouse to pressure her to sue the state of California over its law protecting student data from ICE.
Vital Brulte’s husband is another former assembly member, Jim Brulte, once one of the most powerful and influential Republicans in California.
Kelly appears to think she owes him her job — and loyalty.
As he wrote in January, “I think she knows that is because of me she has her current position but her actions do not suggest any sort of appreciation or help.”
Baldwin forwarded the entire email exchange to Brulte, including Kelly’s request for discretion since he had shared inside information. Then, the superintendent’s husband emailed Kelly directly to say he was disappointed about the way in which Kelly talked about his wife and would share the exchange with her. However, he believed she would be hurt by it.
Vital Brulte stayed quiet and blank-faced through much of the meeting, as public commenters praised her work in the district and expressed outrage that she had been treated poorly by Kelly.
Loud denial
The same could not be said for the board members.
Kelly shook his head and mouthed denials at public commenters.
But he was more circumspect in his disagreement when Shield read the proposed censure, which included excerpts of his emails. He kept his head down, eyes nearly closed.
Yet when fellow board member Fite attempted to speak, Kelly interrupted and spoke over him until a visibly frustrated Fite reached over and turned off his microphone.
Eventually, able to speak uninterrupted, Fite accused Kelly of not believing in democratic rule. Fite noted that when Kelly fell on the losing side of a 3-2 vote to block the passage of a new immigration policy, rather than respecting the result, Kelly tried to manipulate Vital Brulte.
“This crystallizes the whole problem that we all know, which is there are members on this board that do not believe in democracy,” Fite said. ”
After forcing the vote on the censure, Kelly, who had two surgeries this summer, left the meeting early before non-agenda public comment. Most of those comments focused on a lack of trust between the board and community.
Surprise, or lack thereof
It seemed the only one surprised by Kelly’s disregard of board bylaws appeared to be his longtime ally, Shield. The board president said he “was frankly shocked to get the kind of hard evidence that surfaced.”
To the board’s longtime detractors, including the teachers union, which is aggressively campaigning to overhaul the board in the November election, the allegations and vote confirmed what they already knew.
“I’m not surprised,” said Grossmont Education Association president Stephanie Macceca after the meeting. “These board members received governance training this year because they don’t know how to behave on the dais. They don’t know how to behave in closed session. They break the rules constantly. They break the Brown Act. They broke confidentiality … They think they’re above the law.”
In an interview after the vote, Kelly’s opponent in November, recently retired West Hills math teacher Pete Mergens, criticized Eckert and Woods for protecting Kelly.
“I think that it’s totally egregious that somebody would stand up for somebody else in a school district where cheating is a huge offense, and when the evidence is clear that somebody has cheated to say, ‘Oh, because I like this guy, it’s okay that he cheated,’” Mergens said. “They are trustees. Trust was broken. There should be consequences.”
