This weekend was a lot.

I have written about Howard Hills before. I have also continued to watch Board meetings, read letters-to-the-editor, saved the advertisements, and followed the increasingly strange social-media exchanges. I have really tried not to turn every ugly comment into a larger story.

At some point, enough comments become something you can't ignore.

This weekend, I finally reached my breaking point.

Howard started publicly talking about former Superintendent Jason Glass in a way we had not heard before. Glass was suddenly a “failing superintendent,” someone who was “in over his head,” whose “termination” Howard says was justified.

That is quite a departure from May.

When Howard moved to approve Glass’s separation agreement, the district told the community that the Board and Glass had “reached a mutual agreement to conclude” his service. Two days later, Howard told the Daily Pilot that the Board liked Glass, called him “a great guy” and praised his qualifications as an educator.

The agreement Howard voted to approve went further. Governing Board members agreed not to disparage Glass, and public statements about his tenure or departure were required to remain consistent with the agreed joint statement.

For months, the district has emphasized mutual separation. Howard is now calling it a justified termination and supplying the negative assessment of Glass that the Board never gave the public when it happened.

We do not have to deduce quite as much anymore.

However, Glass is only the newest name in a much longer pattern.

Howard frequently says he supports teachers, and in one recent exchange he distinguished “innocent teachers” from the people he blames for the health-benefits controversy. In the same comment, he asserted that all former and current senior staff and union leaders knew about what he calls an unlawful premium subsidy.

His paid advertisements have gone further, including language suggesting that teachers who allow school board issues to affect students should receive “professional counselling and/or retraining” and potentially face consequences.

His comments about FUEL and the parents who align with their views have included “unhinged extremists,” “lunatic fringe” and “small time political thugs.”

A parent who challenged him after Glass’s departure later wrote to the Board to document the interaction, saying Howard told her to “wait to see what they have in store for us.” She described the exchange as threatening, especially in the context of the investigations then being discussed.

Different people, same structure.

People disagree with Howard, and eventually they seem to become part of the problem Howard believes he is uncovering.

Senior staff knew. Union leaders misled people. Teachers were politicizing students. Parents were organizing chaos. FUEL became an extremist political operation. Glass became a failing superintendent who deserved to be terminated.

Howard has spent considerable time asking the public to look closely at FUEL, who is involved and what relationships sit behind it. Well, FUEL’s leadership is public.

But then there is FUTURE.

Howard’s paid advertisements have appeared under that banner, yet I have been unable to identify a meaningful public existence for a local organization called FUTURE beyond the advertisements themselves.

Maybe FUTURE is simply the name Howard chose for his own one-man advocacy. If so, that means the advertisements are Howard’s arguments, paid for by Howard.

The same transparency standard he applies to parent organizations can be applied to his own advocacy.

Bullying and civility have also become campaign themes during this year’s school board trustee election.

Howard Hills is an elected official. So are Sheri Morgan and Dee Perry. Public officials should expect criticism of their decisions, records and use of public power.

Teachers, classified employees, and District staff did not run for office. Parents who speak at Board meetings did not run for office.

To be clear, no one is immune from criticism, but the power relationship changes when an elected trustee repeatedly uses advertisements, letters, interviews, and social media to characterize the employees and parents of the district he governs.

Dee Perry’s current campaign says the same rules of civility expected from students should apply to “trustees, staff, parents, community members, and candidates,” with disagreement welcome and contempt out.

Does this standard apply to Howard?

I am aware that neither Dee nor Sheri is responsible for every word Howard writes. A shared vote does not make one trustee responsible for another trustee’s social media account.

However, Howard, Sheri, and Dee have governed together on consequential decisions. They formed the 3-2 majority that approved Glass’s separation, and the same three supplied the decisive votes on Don Austin’s superintendent contract.

When civility is invoked against parents, protesters or political opponents, the same expectation can be examined when a colleague calls community members political thugs, levels sweeping accusations at district employees, or publicly attacks the superintendent whose separation agreement he helped approve.

Following or interacting with social media accounts that attack parents or staff does not establish endorsement of every post, but it does raise a fair question about how consistently a public standard of civility is being applied among governing allies.

Howard has every right to speak. He can criticize FUEL, challenge unions, question staff decisions, and defend every vote and advertisement he has purchased.

The accumulating record shows how often disagreement with Howard becomes something larger in Howard’s telling: misinformation, complicity, political coordination, extremism, corruption, intimidation, failure.

And the list keeps growing.

Parents. Teachers. Union leaders. Senior staff. Former administrators. FUEL. And now Jason Glass.

Howard calls much of what he is doing accountability.

The useful thing about any record is that nobody has to rely on someone else’s characterization of him. We can read his words.

And this weekend, Howard gave us a particularly revealing one.

The Board told Laguna Beach that Jason Glass left through a mutual separation.

Howard Hills now calls it a justified termination.

Nobody forced him to say that. He chose the words himself.

I started digging into Dee Perry before I knew she would run again.

At first, I was trying to understand something broader: how Laguna Beach Unified ended up with the Board we have now, why the same arguments about transparency, bylaws, trustee authority, retaliation, public participation, and control keep resurfacing, and why people who have lived through the same District history for years tell very different versions with absolute confidence.

School Board meetings are not traditionally known for dramatic plots, but Laguna has done its best.

For this piece, I reviewed Board meetings back to 2016, and Public Records Act requests from nearly the same period. I read contemporary coverage instead of relying on later retellings. I examined Dee’s federal lawsuit, the District’s response, and the courts’ decisions. I also reviewed old communications involving people who were in the audience then and now sit next to Dee on the Board.

I wanted to understand Dee as a trustee without the votes, and then as a trustee with them.

Dee has been connected to Laguna Beach schools for more than fifty years. She began teaching in LBUSD in 1975 and spent roughly 35 years here in special education, speech and language, elementary classrooms, and math and science instruction before retiring. She was elected to the Board in 2014, reelected in 2018, and appointed in 2022 when only three candidates filed for three available seats. She is now running for a fourth term.

Her campaign leans heavily into that history. She and Elizabeth Bates are running together, with Dee’s path “from the classroom to the Board Room” central to their story.

It is a useful standard for looking back at twelve years of governing.

Before joining the Board, Dee sued the District over what she believed were failures to properly include special education teachers in IEP decisions. She eventually dropped the case, saying the expense had become too great.

When she ran in 2014, transparency was central to her argument. She spoke about closed-door decision-making, clearer agendas, student voice, and a Board she thought agreed too often.

She also did not arrive as some permanent opposition party of one. She worked with her colleagues and voted with them plenty, including supporting Jason Viloria’s hiring as superintendent in 2016.

The Dee Perry most people recognize now—the independent trustee, the dissenter, the person fighting an institution around her—developed later, and one of its defining chapters began with an argument over who got to sit in the President’s chair.

Board bylaws are not exactly beach reading, but BB 9100 became a civic identity crisis.

For years, LBUSD had generally rotated trustees from Clerk to President. The old bylaw said that after serving as Clerk, a member “may” serve a year as President and expressed the Board’s intent that members rotate through the sequence.

The custom existed, but automatic succession did not. The Board still formally nominated and elected its officers every year.

Dee was elected Clerk for 2017. Then, on December 12, 2017, she did something often omitted from cleaner versions of this history: she moved to reelect Jan Vickers as Board President. Peggy Wolff seconded. The motion passed 5-0. The Board then unanimously reelected Dee Clerk.

Dee and her supporters later argued the meaningful decision occurred before that meeting. Howard Hills said a November 2017 governance workshop was where other trustees effectively decided Jan would remain President, rather than allowing Dee to advance. Jan disputed that, and the official minutes did not record an officer decision.

By December 2018, Dee was still Clerk and expected the presidency. Instead, Carol Normandin nominated Jan again, Peggy Wolff seconded, and Dee objected that the Board was treating what she saw as a rotation like an ordinary election, but did not nominate herself. Jan won 3–1, with Jim Kelly absent. The meeting recording is unavailable due to technical issues.

By March 2019, the Board removed the rotation language from BB 9100. Dee opposed the change, saying the Board’s failure to follow its own bylaws undermined confidence in the institution. Howard Hills was also publicly involved in the dispute.

Dee’s complaint rested on a legitimate governance norm, where she believed the Board had expressly said it intended to rotate members through Clerk and President.

Yet the language allowed more ambiguity than the later story suggests. It said a Clerk “may” become President, officers were formally elected, and only a year earlier Dee nominated Jan for another term.

You can understand why Dee believed she had been passed over without pretending the presidency was automatically hers.

Had the story ended there, it would have become another piece of Laguna governance trivia remembered by a small group of people who inexplicably still had the PDF.

Instead, everything escalated.

In 2019, a Public Records Act search uncovered an email Dee forwarded. District counsel and the Board said it conveyed attorney-client legal advice and confidential closed-session information, and that Dee sent it to an unauthorized person. The District quoted Dee’s message attached to the forwarded email: “Here is the letter from the district attorney. What do you think?”

Dee disputed the premise. She said she did not believe the communication was confidential, denied improperly disclosing confidential information, and described the attorney’s message as threatening.

District counsel Mark Bresee recommended an extraordinary response: a temporary Board Subcommittee on Confidential Matters made up of every trustee except Dee. It could handle certain litigation and personnel matters only when a majority of the full Board delegated a matter to it. It was not a blanket removal of Dee from the Board or every closed session, though some people muddy the lines as the story has been retold.

At the June 11 meeting, Dee called the proposal shameful and a disgrace. She argued excluding her also excluded the people who elected her from representation on important matters. The resolution passed 4–1.

Dee was the one.

Her attorney soon notified the District that Dee intended to seek court intervention. The threatened litigation challenged both the confidential-matters committee and the earlier presidency decision. By December, Dee had filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against Superintendent Viloria and fellow trustees Jan Vickers, Peggy Wolff, Carol Normandin, and Jim Kelly.

This is where I kept getting stuck reading it because Dee’s longer history as an advocate may blur her two lawsuits into one story about fighting for students.

They were different kinds of cases.

Her earlier lawsuit concerned special education practices, and the 2019 federal lawsuit concerned Dee Perry’s rights as an elected trustee.

She alleged retaliation, interference with her speech, and unequal participation in Board affairs. She argued that restricting her also limited representation of the voters she served.

It is still different from a lawsuit over an IEP, classroom service, student program, or educational outcome.

The distinction feels especially relevant now that Dee is campaigning explicitly on “Students First.”

The courts also did not produce the clean ending either side sometimes gives this case.

The case was dismissed, Dee appealed, and in October 2021 the Ninth Circuit affirmed on Eleventh Amendment grounds. The appellate court stressed a principle running through nearly every conflict here: under LBUSD’s structure, the Board acts collectively, and individual trustees lack independent authority. It did not decide every factual dispute or reach all defendants’ alternative constitutional arguments, but the dismissal was still affirmed.

By then, Dee had grown into more than a Board member in conflict with her colleagues — she had become a community cause.

What I had not fully appreciated until reviewing the emails was how early Howard Hills and Sheri Morgan had entered that story.

The current majority was new in 2024, but the relationships were not.

Howard was already helping develop and defend arguments around Dee’s governance disputes years before he became her colleague. Public records from 2018 and 2019 show him researching the presidency issue, developing arguments about Board authority and the Brown Act, communicating with Dee and others, and planning public explanations of what he believed the Board was doing to her.

Sheri was there too.

In May 2019, Sheri emailed Dee at length about District programs, Superintendent Viloria, the calendar, bell schedules, and an anonymous letter calling for an investigation of the superintendent. Dee replied describing her internal disagreements with the Board and administration.

As the confidential-matters vote approached, Dee explained to Sheri what was coming. Sheri discussed trying to “flush out” more information before the meeting.

Dee replied, “Anything you can flush out is super helpful.”

Sheri subsequently spoke publicly against the resolution.

None of that is inherently improper. Constituents talk to trustees, and people organize around causes they believe in.

It does change the historical context.

Howard Hills and Sheri Morgan were not people Dee happened to discover she agreed with after they were elected in 2024. They had been part of the political and governance alliance around Dee.

For years, they sat on the public side of the dais.

In December 2024, they sat next to her.

Dee became Board President, and Howard became Clerk. The trustee whose identity had been built largely around not having the votes was now part of a dependable three-person majority.

People who served with her described recurring difficulty converting some of her concerns into collective Board action. They said there were times they agreed with the issue, offered compromises or suggested staff or procedural routes to move it forward, and felt Dee rejected those, only to later describe the impasse publicly as evidence she had been shut out.

Pieces of the written record help explain why they describe it that way. In her 2019 correspondence with Sheri, for example, Dee complained she had tried to bring a program to the Board, but colleagues said programs should generally come through administration. Dee did not agree with where they drew the line between governance and administration.

The Ninth Circuit later encountered a version of that conflict and ruled on collective governance: a trustee is one member of a five-member body; the Board acts as the unit of authority.

For years, Dee experienced that principle mostly as a limitation.

After December 2024, it became a source of power.

Dee and the people around her spent years telling Laguna what good governance was supposed to protect.

Board rules mattered. Minority trustees mattered. Agenda access mattered. Officer rotation mattered. Public participation mattered. Majorities should not use process casually simply because they had the votes.

Then the three of them had the votes.

The old Clerk-to-President fight is almost too good of an example.

Dee and Howard spent years arguing about the importance of the old officer rotation. Howard then served as Clerk throughout 2025.

When the Board reorganized in December, Howard did not become President.

Sheri did.

Joan Malczewski was also put forward for President, and Jim Kelly moved to elect her. Joan and Jim did not vote for Sheri. The final result was Sheri as President and Dee as Clerk.

The old rotation language had been removed years earlier, so Howard had no procedural entitlement to move from Clerk to President.

That is why the comparison is interesting as a question of principle.

When Dee was Clerk and did not advance, rotation became a major fight over fairness, representation, and bylaws.

When Howard finished his year as Clerk, no comparable fight emerged over the principle itself.

A similar tension shows up in agenda authority.

Dee’s earlier conflicts included complaints about an individual trustee’s ability to get issues heard. Her federal appeal addressed agenda access and the limits of an individual trustee’s authority.

In 2026, the Board rewrote BB 9322. Howard proposed language giving the Board President final approval of the agenda. Dee did not support every version, but she ultimately joined Howard and Sheri in adopting the final change 3–2.

The former dissenter was now helping define the gate.

After came the superintendent transition.

In May 2025, Dee served as Board President and announced Jason Glass as LBUSD’s choice after a national search, saying she was proud the Board had pulled together behind one candidate.

Glass began July 1.

Ten months later, the District and Glass reached a mutual separation agreement, with his service ending May 31.

Two days after the May 12 separation action, the Board announced Don Austin as the next permanent superintendent.

LBUSD already had a policy governing superintendent recruitment and selection, BP 2120. The Board’s June 4 agenda eventually included a discussion specifically about the policy’s applicability before Austin’s contract came forward. The majority argued the prior search had been recent, Austin had participated in it, and repeating an expensive search was unnecessary. Jim and Joan disputed whether the old search satisfied the policy for the new vacancy. Sheri, Howard, and Dee then approved Austin’s contract 3-2.

The chronology is difficult to miss.

Glass was separated May 12. Austin was announced May 14. The public discussion over BP 2120 came much later, on June 4.

For a group whose political history includes detailed parsing of Board rules and why majorities must follow them, the superintendent transition showed more flexibility after the majority selected its preferred superintendent.

I am not concluding that BP 2120 was violated, but the consistency question alone is enough.

I have also heard a more sympathetic explanation for Dee’s role in the current majority: Howard and Sheri are stronger personalities, Dee has sometimes been left in the dark, and she may have felt she had no choice but to go along.

A version of that surfaced publicly before the Glass vote. During public comment on May 12, a community member said he had spoken with Dee the day before and that she still considered Glass a “great and honorable man.” He said Dee had left him with the impression that she felt “powerless to stop what was happening.” Later, while discussing how Don Austin emerged as the permanent replacement, Dee herself said she had been “a little bit in the dark.”

I have trouble reconciling powerlessness with Dee’s position on this Board. She is its longest-serving trustee while Howard and Sheri are first-term members. Dee spent years arguing that one elected trustee still had a voice and should not be diminished because others held the majority. She took the case to federal court over restrictions she believed interfered with that role.

If Dee truly felt powerless during the Glass separation or did not fully understand how the permanent superintendent appointment was coming together, that raises another question: why was LBUSD’s longest-serving trustee casting consequential votes she could not influence or did not fully understand? If she comprehended and agreed with those decisions, then they are simply part of her record.

I cannot tell from emails and voting records whether the alignment is loyalty, trust, genuine agreement, or a combination of all three. Howard and Sheri spent years defending Dee when she believed the institution treated her unfairly, long before they joined her on the Board. Do those relationships make it harder for her to step outside this majority when teachers, staff, parents, or students ask to be heard?

Howard and Sheri are generally the more prominent voices in the current majority. Howard often spends a long time explaining his interpretation of governance or law. Sheri has the visibility that comes with being Board President. Dee is quieter, which can make her seem secondary to the conflicts unfolding around her.

A quiet third vote possesses the same value as a loud one.

Looking across the District voting records I reviewed from January 2025 through July 2026, and counting only motions where both trustees cast an actual yes-or-no vote, Dee Perry disagreed with Sheri Morgan once in 245 comparable votes—0.4% of the time. She disagreed with Howard Hills twice in 232 comparable votes—0.9%. I could not find a single recorded motion where Perry voted one way, and both Morgan and Hills voted the other.

However, percentages can flatten important differences. A routine consent item is not the same as ending a superintendent’s contract or changing who controls the Board agenda, so the divided votes are more useful.

On the Glass separation, Perry was with Morgan and Hills.

On Don Austin’s contract, Perry was with Morgan and Hills.

On the final agenda-authority change, Perry was with Morgan and Hills.

And across the recurring fights over public-comment placement and meeting procedure, that same three-person alignment appears again and again.

One part of those votes deserves more attention because it reaches back to something Dee emphasized when she first ran for the Board: student voice.

Students are not an abstract constituency in LBUSD right now. They are showing up. In the years of Board meetings I reviewed, I saw nothing comparable to the sustained student participation this spring. Teachers, staff, and parents have also repeatedly come to meetings asking the Board to hear them.

During that period, Dee repeatedly voted against moving general non-agenda public comment from the end of long meetings to the beginning. On February 12, she and Sheri opposed the change. On February 26, Dee joined Sheri and Howard in defeating another attempt. On March 12, Dee supported a one-night exception allowing students to speak at the beginning but opposed the wider proposal to move non-agenda comment forward in future meetings for students, faculty, parents, and the public. Two weeks later, on March 26, she again joined Howard and Sheri in defeating a proposal to move all public comment to the beginning.

Listening does not mean agreeing, and students should not get a veto over Board decisions because they come to a meeting. But Dee ran talking about student voice and is now campaigning on “Students First.” When students are unusually engaged by attending meetings and speaking directly to the adults governing their schools, their voices belong in this record too.

Dee knows what it feels like to believe a Board majority is not listening. Much of her political identity grew from that experience. The question now is how she responds when the people asking to be heard are on the other side of her vote.

The old description of Dee as the “lone dissenter” may still be the version people remember from 2019. It is harder to reconcile with how she has governed since Howard and Sheri joined the Board.

It no longer describes the Board she serves on.

After the Glass separation and Austin announcement, parents, teachers, students, and community members gathered outside the May 14 meeting. The protest was loud and angry. Dee stumbled while approaching the building and was visibly shaken.

The Board later authorized an outside investigation. According to the released findings, investigators reviewed surveillance and other video, messages, policies, and interviews and concluded that the demonstration was First Amendment activity, remained nonviolent, and showed no evidence of criminal activity or intent to physically harm Board members, staff, parents, or children.

I kept thinking about 2019. Back then, the political story around Dee was that an institution took dissent and turned it into misconduct.

Seven years later, Dee was part of the institution while another group of dissenters watched the Board investigate what happened at their protest.

History does not repeat itself perfectly, but it does occasionally have a dark sense of humor.

Another group’s current view of Dee belongs in this profile precisely because her campaign places so much weight on her teaching career.

The teachers.

Dee taught here for 35 years. Her interests in special education, arts, transportation, college and career pathways, and students who do not fit neatly into a system show up throughout her record.

Teachers in LBUSD now made a very different choice in their 2026 endorsement process.

LaBUFA reported 87% of teachers participated in an endorsement vote (the highest turnout in its history), and the results showed teachers unanimously endorsed Joan Malczewski, Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal, and Kimberly Smith for the three available Board seats.

For a candidate whose case for another term leans heavily on 35 years in LBUSD classrooms, the judgment of the educators currently working in our classrooms is telling.

And Dee is asking voters for another four years. A fourth term would take her to roughly sixteen consecutive years on the Board.

After all this, I do not think Dee Perry is difficult to understand. She spent decades teaching children in this community and has genuine advocacy work that predates her Board service. She also built much of her political identity during years when she frequently lacked the votes, while Howard Hills and Sheri Morgan were already helping defend the governance arguments surrounding her.

Then they got elected.

Dee stopped being the one vote looking across the table at a majority. She became part of one.

For years, Dee Perry asked Laguna to pay attention to how power treated the person without it.

Now there is a record of what she did once she had it. That record belongs to her too.

In July, I wrote that the Laguna Beach Unified School District Board majority (Sheri Morgan, Howard Hills, and Dee Perry) appeared to be taking a loud but peaceful parent protest and recasting it as something more troubling.

I wrote that the First Amendment protects signs, chants, criticism, and public pressure, even when elected officials find them deeply unpleasant. I wrote that the available videos did not show protesters pushing Dee Perry. I questioned why the May 14 rally had migrated from public criticism of the Board into closed session under language involving a “threat to public services or facilities,” followed by lawyers and an outside investigation.

I also laid out what the record already showed: what happened outside Thurston, what happened to Dee, how police responded, what LBUSD did afterward, and why the evidence pointed much more clearly to a crowd-management problem than some larger threat.

LBUSD has now released the outside investigative report it commissioned into May 14.

The central facts held up.

Investigators reviewed surveillance footage and other videos, emails, text messages, policies, and records, and interviewed all five trustees, District administrators, employees, union representatives, and community members. They concluded that the May 14 demonstration was an exercise of First Amendment rights and found no evidence of criminal activity or intent to physically harm Board members, staff, parents, children, or anyone else.

The event remained nonviolent.

That conclusion carries additional weight because this was never presented as merely an after-action review of parking, entrances, and crowd control.

During the May 14 meeting, Board President Sheri Morgan told the audience, “This is a business meeting. This is not a rally. It is illegal to rally on campus.”

Parents gathered outside a public school board meeting to protest elected officials’ actions, and the Board president publicly characterized a rally on campus as illegal.

Then came the June 8 closed session. According to the ACLU’s letter, Sheri said afterward that safety concerns arising from May 14 had led the Board to ask legal counsel or a designee to examine what happened, whether safety protocols had been followed, and whether Board policy or law had been violated. My July article focused heavily on that point.

So yes, the legality of what parents did was among the questions being examined, but now we have the answer.

The rally was protected First Amendment activity. No evidence of criminal conduct. No evidence of an intent to physically harm anyone.

The report also resolves one of the most repeated pieces of the May 14 story: what happened to Dee.

Dee, of course, was visibly shaken and felt intimidated by the crowd. The report takes that seriously, and any fair account should too. Investigators nevertheless found something quite different from what some people made it out to be: protesters did not physically surround, block, or push her.

Their review found that Dee at one point had approximately five feet of space around her and that “no protesters physically approached her.” They found no evidence that people repositioned themselves to create an intentional barrier. Dee turned toward the crowd, lost her balance and stumbled into a parent.

Dee herself told investigators: “It was me; I lost my balance.” Again, she did not fall to the ground.

That is the same sequence I described months ago, based on the publicly available evidence. Dee struggled while entering; Ketta Brown helped her inside; the videos did not show anyone pushing her; and Dee had separately said she was not pushed.

The investigators had more footage, more witnesses, internal District records, and substantially greater access than I did. They arrived at the same factual conclusion.

There is nuance in the report. The Board meeting became loud and, at times, disruptive. People interrupted. Children yelled toward the library. Signs appeared behind the dais. Investigators described portions of the meeting as angry, disrespectful, and difficult to control.

My earlier description of a “loud but peaceful protest” is most precise when applied to the demonstration outside. Inside, some participants crossed into disruption, but no one engaged in violence or criminal conduct.

The more revealing part of the report may be what LBUSD had already accomplished before anyone assigned an external investigator.

On May 19, five days after the rally, District administrators met with Laguna Beach’s city manager, city attorney and the Police Chief. According to the report, law enforcement’s role was clarified: officers would address legitimate public-safety concerns and increase staffing when larger crowds were expected. Still, they would not interfere with First Amendment participation or serve as an enforcement arm of the Board without a legitimate safety concern.

On May 21, Assistant Superintendent Manoj Roychowdhury communicated new security protocols.

By June 3, LBUSD had already implemented or begun implementing changes involving reserved Board parking, directional signage, separate Board access, controlled restroom access, crowd management, and ingress and egress.

May 19. May 21. June 3.

The outside investigation was assigned July 1.

By then, LBUSD had already identified the useful lessons from May 14 and was acting on them. Administrators had met with police and city officials. Security procedures had changed. Access issues were being addressed. The District understood that an unusually large and angry crowd required better planning.

Sheri, Howard, and Dee still commissioned an outside investigation.

The eventual recommendations largely extended work already underway: clearer crowd-management procedures, defined staff responsibilities, improved Board access, consideration of another venue for unusually large meetings, and better coordination with law enforcement.

All reasonable, but also remarkably unsurprising.

Before the investigation was assigned, I had already reviewed the available videos, public statements, Board Majority actions, and applicable First Amendment issues and published a remarkably similar analysis.

I did not have access to every internal record, nor did I interview every trustee. My reporting was not a substitute for a formal independent investigation, and I would never claim otherwise. But the fundamental questions were hardly difficult to answer.

Was the rally illegal? No.

Had protesters pushed Dee down? No.

Was this a violent protest? No.

Were there legitimate crowd-management problems? Yes.

Could LBUSD address them without treating the protest itself as unlawful? Yes.

Was LBUSD already doing exactly that? Its own report now tells us it was.

I assembled the timeline from public records, shared videos, and basic legal research — all of it was free.

LBUSD’s outside investigators arrived later with greater access and public resources behind them and produced a report that substantially confirmed it.

We still do not know what taxpayers paid for that confirmation.

An independent investigation is entirely appropriate in some circumstances, even when journalists, residents, or attorneys have already examined the available facts. But independence does not eliminate the obligation to show what additional public value was produced, particularly when the practical deficiencies had already been identified, and corrective work was underway weeks before the investigation began.

The comparison becomes considerably more uncomfortable when set against the real May 14 story.

Parents were at Thurston Middle School because of decisions the Board majority had made.

On May 12, Sheri, Dee and Howard voted 3-2 to approve Dr. Jason Glass’s separation 10 months into his four-year contract. Joan Malczewski and Jim Kelly voted no. Two days later, Sheri announced Dr. Don Austin as LBUSD’s next permanent superintendent, with no publicly announced superintendent search, recruitment timeline, or identified candidate pool.

Joan later said she had not known Don was a candidate before she was presented with the motion to appoint him.

Those circumstances are why I have spent months asking a fairly basic question: how did a permanent successor emerge 48 hours after the Board approved Glass’s separation?

That part of the May 12 and May 14 record remains unfinished.

On August 13, Senior Deputy District Attorney Avery Harrison of the Orange County District Attorney’s Special Prosecutions Unit submitted a California Public Records Act request seeking records surrounding both Glass’s separation and Austin’s hiring.

The DA requested communications concerning Glass’s separation agreement and departure date, along with records concerning Austin’s availability, possible start dates, salary and benefits discussions, proposed employment contracts, and authorization or discussion of Don as a candidate. The request also seeks records of interviews or conversations with Austin through May 14 and communications and drafts surrounding the May 14 press release announcing his hiring.

A records request from the District Attorney’s Office is not a finding that anyone violated the Brown Act or committed wrongdoing, but it matters because of the timeline the DA wants documented.

When did discussions with Don begin? Who participated? When was he being discussed as a candidate? When did compensation and contract discussions occur? When was the May 14 announcement prepared?

I look forward to seeing the records, because something about the order of events here is troubling.

Parents objected to decisions made by their elected School Board. They showed up, made signs, brought their children, chanted, and shamed the people who held those offices. Sheri publicly questioned the rally’s legality. The Board subsequently took the protest into a closed-session discussion involving threats to public services or facilities and authorized legal counsel or a designee to examine whether those parents had violated policy or law.

LBUSD then used taxpayer money to investigate them.

Parents should be able to criticize their government without wondering whether their government will respond by putting their conduct under legal investigation.

Sheri and Howard are not on the ballot this November, but Dee is. She is seeking another term on the Laguna Beach Unified School District Board.

The report is finished. The record is public. Now voters must judge the results.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

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I recently wrote about what I think voters should look for in a School Board member: someone who understands governance, does the homework, asks useful questions, can disagree without shifting every disagreement into a blood sport, and remembers that being elected to a Board does not suddenly make you the superintendent, chief business officer, facilities director, and principal of every school at once.

Another question is worth answering first because School Board races occupy an odd place on our ballots. We give these officials enormous authority over a key public institution but provide voters with little information about the candidates. You may get a candidate statement, a ballot designation, a few mailers, some endorsements, and see a few yard signs. For a position involving budgets, labor agreements, facilities, curriculum, litigation, and superintendent oversight, this hiring packet feels thin.

California research suggests voters have been filling in the gaps for years. In 2022, a PACE/USC Rossier survey of California voters found that 64% said they had voted in their most recent local School Board election. Yet when asked how much they knew about the roles and responsibilities of local School Boards, 43% knew at least some, while 53% said they knew only a little or nothing at all.

Political scientists call races like these low-information elections. California School Board research has found that voters use readily available cues to decide who seems qualified, including a candidate’s occupation and connection to education. When the ballot gives you only a few words about someone, those words suddenly have to perform the duties of a résumé, reference check, and governance philosophy.

The trouble comes when shorthand becomes the entire résumé. Being a parent can provide useful perspective, as can being a teacher, business owner, attorney, retiree, or longtime resident, but none of those labels show whether someone understands the actual job. A yard sign does not explain how its owner views reserves. An endorsement does not tell you if the candidate understands one-time versus ongoing spending. “Parent” does not explain how someone would evaluate a superintendent, and “educator” does not automatically show how that person would oversee an organization-wide budget. Convenient cues are useful to begin with, but considerably less useful when they are where the inquiry ends.

The actual job is much larger than many people realize. The California School Boards Association says governing boards set District direction, employ and evaluate the superintendent, adopt policies and curriculum, establish budget priorities, approve the budget and Local Control and Accountability Plan, oversee facilities, approve collective bargaining agreements, and provide accountability to the public. Individual trustees cannot wield those powers independently; the Board acts collectively.

Understanding the line between governance and administration is one of the most useful things a voter can grasp before evaluating candidates. Board members establish direction, approve policy, authorize spending, and hold the superintendent accountable, while the superintendent and staff manage daily operations. California governance standards caution trustees against performing management functions assigned to staff. This sounds obvious until you watch local government and see how tempting it can become to cross from asking whether a program is working into deciding how it should be run.

Laguna received a fairly dramatic reminder this spring of how much organizational direction an elected majority can move through its actions. On May 12, the Board and Superintendent Jason Glass reached a mutual agreement ending his service effective May 31; two days later, the Board announced Don Austin as the incoming superintendent, and approved his employment agreement in June. Whatever anyone thought of the transition, five elected Board members held the authority to make it happen.

Money provides another reason to read beyond the ballot designation. A California School Board adopts the District budget, monitors fiscal health, approves collective bargaining agreements, and makes decisions that create multiyear obligations. Those votes reach classrooms, programs, staffing, compensation, facilities, and the District’s ability to absorb future costs, which is why “fiscal responsibility” is a lovely phrase on a campaign page but far more useful when paired with some understanding of school finance.

LBUSD is community-funded, with local property taxes providing the large majority of District revenue. Property owners are deeply connected to the school system whether or not anyone in their household currently uses it, which suggests that residents without children should leave school issues to parents hard to square with how the institution is financed.

Economic research gives people without children reasons to look beyond the property-tax bill. Economists Christian Hilber and Christopher Mayer found that school spending reflected in home prices helps explain why homeowners without children support public schools. California research went further: Stephanie Cellini, Fernando Ferreira, and Jesse Rothstein compared districts where school bonds narrowly passed with those where they narrowly failed and found sizable increases in home prices after passage.

More recent national research across 29 states reached a less tidy conclusion: school capital spending increased test scores and home prices on average, although different projects produced different effects. Basic infrastructure such as HVAC boosted academic outcomes without inevitably increasing home values, while athletic facilities increased home values without corresponding test-score gains. Anyone hoping for a bumper-sticker equation in which every school dollar becomes a predictable number on Zillow will have to keep looking. Public facilities are more complicated than that, which gives homeowners reason to care about who ranks those investments.

This November puts it all into one election. Three of LBUSD’s five Board seats are up at once, with three members to be elected on November 3. One election can change the governing majority.

For teachers and other represented staff, that majority will shape collective bargaining, compensation, budgets, District policy, and superintendent oversight. Parents will live with priorities affecting programs, curriculum, student services, facilities, and the direction of their children’s schools. Community members and property owners will help fund the institution while living with the consequences of its contracts, leadership, facilities, and long-term spending. Those interests will not always line up neatly, which is another reason choosing three of five members deserves more consideration than recognizing a name and filling in a bubble.

Voters will also consider Measure A, the LBUSD bond measure that would authorize up to $83 million in general-obligation bonds for school facilities. The measure would replace the existing school bond tax as it expires at an expected rate of approximately $8.85 per $100k of assessed value, with proposed work including aging roofs, plumbing, electrical systems, safety improvements, classrooms, science labs, career-technical facilities, and other campus needs. The measure includes independent audits and citizen oversight.

The Board election and Measure A overlap in practice. Bond authorization establishes the financing framework, while the Board serving afterward would decide project scope, timing, priorities, contracts, and implementation. Oversight committees and audits provide guardrails; they do not choose which projects come first.

California voters themselves have said they want this relationship to continue beyond Election Day. PACE/USC polling found that about 70% agreed that local School Boards are important because they keep education decisions close to the people affected by them, 63% called locally elected Boards an effective way to oversee schools, and 56% said they would like to be involved in education decisions in their community. Just over half said their local Board was responsive to community needs. A fairly obvious tension exists between wanting local control and knowing little about the people exercising it, which is probably worth resolving sometime before Election Day.

For me, the useful questions go beyond recognizing a name or agreeing with a candidate on the issue generating the most Nextdoor comments. Does this person understand the difference between governing a District and managing it? Have they shown they can absorb information, ask useful questions, and follow a complicated issue beyond a talking point? Do they understand contracts, compensation, facilities, and long-term obligations? How do they view the Board’s relationship with the superintendent? Can they listen to disagreement without assuming ignorance, bad faith, or a community conspiracy? When better information arrives, can they adjust without treating it as a humiliating defeat?

I also want to know whether a candidate has made the effort to understand the District they want to govern. LBUSD publishes budgets, agendas, contracts, policies, facilities plans, and many hours of Board meetings. Nobody needs to become an amateur school-finance accountant, and I would strongly recommend against making “watch every Board meeting” anyone’s new hobby, but there is plenty of territory between obsessive familiarity and strong opinions about an institution you have barely studied.

Those questions feel more urgent this year because three seats are being decided at once. Teachers and represented staff will work under the next majority’s decisions. Parents will live with its priorities in their children’s schools. Community members will fund the institution and watch decisions about facilities, contracts, leadership, and long-term spending unfold. Three new members could shift the Board’s direction in one election, with four-year terms that let those decisions accumulate.

Soon, I’ll look more closely at the candidates and slates/not-slates asking for those three seats, what they say they bring to the job, and what their public records tell us about how they understand it. For now, the job description deserves to be clear, because School Board elections may occupy a quieter stretch of the ballot, but the people selected there will make decisions affecting employees, families, students, facilities, and taxpayers long after the yard signs come down.

California research tells us voters often enter these races with limited information and rely on shortcuts. Laguna voters have enough at stake this year to read past the three words under a candidate’s name.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help voters make district decisions and to make public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

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The 2024 School Board election did more than change two names on the dais. It also changed the people and organizations surrounding Laguna Beach Unified and, in some ways, the terms of the conversation itself.

Sensible Laguna became a key voice around the District’s facilities plans and pushed for a different approach to LBUSD governance. Sheri Morgan and Howard Hills won in 2024 and joined Dee Perry to form a new Board majority. Families United for Education in Laguna (FUEL) formed afterward when a group of current LBUSD parents, concerned about that majority’s direction, decided they needed an organized voice.

Two years later, both groups stay deeply involved. People who wanted change in 2024 now defend much of what it produced, while parents who organized afterward support candidates in 2026 seeking to change direction again. Around them are websites, letters to the editor, civic organizations, campaign supporters, and anonymous publications building a wider discussion of Laguna’s schools.

I started looking at these groups because many questions surround them, and the same words keep appearing in almost every LBUSD debate: students, transparency, accountability, and civility. I wanted to understand who is behind these organizations, what brought them into the District conversation, what they support, and how closely their public records match the standards they demand.

I also want to be clear about my perspective. As a current parent, I have often found FUEL’s approach to governance more closely aligned with the concerns I see and experience in the schools. I am not a member of FUEL. I have never tried to hide that, and it is why I think the records themselves should do most of the work here.

These are public schools supported by the community: retirees, grandparents, former parents, and residents without children all have reason to care. Where people come from helps explain the perspective they bring when they speak for students or make broad claims about what our schools need.

Sensible Laguna’s origin is fairly easy to trace. Its three founders are Gary Kasik, Steve Brown, and Steve McIntosh. Gary and Brown aired concerns about LBUSD’s Facilities Master Plan by spring 2023. That June, Village Laguna hosted all three founders for a presentation about the proposed expansion around Laguna Beach High School and the District Office. By fall, they appeared in City discussions and pushed for greater review and City involvement.

All three live in the area affected by the high school and pool proposals, making their initial interest understandable. A large construction project near a home naturally invites questions about traffic, noise, parking, scale, and neighborhood impacts.

Some of that advocacy was effective. The parking garage disappeared, the pool was reduced, and the plans changed. The underlying facilities needs remained, however, and the District is still replacing the pool. The current Board’s 2026 facilities work has also produced a substantial list of capital and maintenance needs throughout LBUSD.

The argument soon expanded well beyond facilities.

Sensible’s founders organized around a development proposal affecting their neighborhood, and over time their advocacy moved into District spending, administrators, academic performance, teachers, governance, and who should sit on the School Board. Much of Sensible Laguna’s material from before December 2024 is no longer on its current website, so I have been reconstructing that period through screenshots, saved copies, and republished material.

Those older posts make the progression clear. Gary wrote about an “entrenched” School Board and said new members were needed so the Board would listen. Sensible circulated urgent notices encouraging people to attend facilities meetings and warning about traffic, noise, neighborhood impacts, and spending. By the 2024 election, changing the Board was already part of its message.

Village Laguna gave Sensible’s founders an early platform and later hosted a School Board candidate forum. It did not formally endorse candidates in that race, although it later acknowledged that the facilities controversy had spilled into the election.

Sheri and Howard ultimately joined Dee to form the new Board majority, and Sensible remained deeply involved after the change it had been supporting.

Sensible’s role also changed after the Board did.

Today, Sensible Laguna describes itself as a broad coalition of residents and taxpayers focused on transparency, fiscal responsibility, and careful analysis of District spending and statistics. It says its information reaches more than 2,000 residents and taxpayers. Its publicly identified leadership is still Gary Kasik, Steve Brown, and Steve McIntosh, three retired men with backgrounds in finance, technology, operations, and business.

Brown and Kasik have no children in LBUSD. McIntosh is the only founder with a documented LBUSD parent connection, and none of the three currently has a child enrolled in the District. Their backgrounds do not diminish their stake in public schools but help explain an approach anchored heavily in taxpayer value, facilities, management, employee costs, and Board authority.

Students appear frequently in Sensible Laguna’s writing, although there is a noticeable pattern in how they appear.

Often, students are part of an argument that someone else is failing them. Administrators are mismanaging the District, teachers or curriculum are not producing strong results, or the former Board lacked oversight. In other cases, students appear in spending arguments, with money proposed for the pool or another facilities expense presented as funds that could instead go to STEM, arts, academics, or other student priorities.

The pool funding worked differently from that framing. LBUSD had accumulated capital reserves over years for major facilities needs, and the project was planned from those reserves rather than cuts to ongoing classroom staffing or student-program budgets. There was still a legitimate debate over the project’s size, how much of those reserves to commit, and what other capital projects should compete for the same money. But every dollar saved on the pool was not automatically a dollar that would have gone to teachers, classroom programs, or ongoing student services.

Gary has repeatedly framed pool savings as money that could benefit students elsewhere. What I found harder to find was advocacy that began with a student need and stayed focused on addressing it without becoming an argument against another District expenditure, employee, administrator, or prior Board member.

Sensible uses “students” frequently to describe what it believes the District should do. I cannot tell what its founders privately care about, but I can look at the issues they raise and how they use students in those arguments.

Steve McIntosh’s writing makes Sensible Laguna’s approach especially clear. Before the 2024 election, he was already using academic data to argue that Laguna’s schools were underperforming and that District leadership needed to change. In one article about special education, he began with a student’s experience and quickly widened it into an attack on then-Superintendent Jason Viloria, whom he called a “Mafia boss,” before closing with a call to “can Viloria” and change the Board.

A parent also wrote to District leadership at the time, expressing concern about Steve discussing a student whose family was uncomfortable with how the child had been brought into the debate. I do not want to revisit that family’s circumstances here, but concerns about how students were being used in this advocacy were being raised before FUEL existed.

Steve has also repeatedly cited high-school math results as evidence of wider District failure. Those scores deserve scrutiny, but California’s “met” and “exceeded” standards are not pass/fail grades, and students below “met standard” are not automatically failing math. Using those categories as pass/fail overstates what the assessment actually reports, especially from an organization that places considerable emphasis on careful use of data.

His interactions with the school community are also relevant because Steve now writes frequently about toxicity, intimidation, and what adults model for students. At one School Board meeting, he used profanity toward students, after which the District restored the recording with the language bleeped. An LBUSD educator described an interaction with Steve after a Main Beach rally as aggressive and filed a complaint. I also received a separate firsthand account from a community member who said Steve swore at him inside the Thurston library, followed him outside, and described the subsequent parking lot encounter as threatening.

These accounts involve different people and settings. Steve is one of Sensible Laguna’s three founders and one of its most visible writers, so his own conduct belongs in the same record when the organization criticizes others over civility and behavior.

After the election, Sensible increasingly defended the majority Sheri and Howard formed with Dee and described critics applying phrases such as “disinformation,” “manufactured outrage,” and “political theater.”

It has also become an outside platform for messaging favorable to that majority. This year, Sensible published District-related material the District did not release publicly, including a press release Sheri wanted published. Sensible began as an outside organization pressuring the Board and now regularly defends the majority that replaced it.

Sensible’s own organizational structure appears fairly informal. It publicly identifies Gary, Steve Brown, and Steve McIntosh as its founders, but it does not present a formal membership, governance, or financial structure explaining who funds the advocacy or how decisions are made.

Three residents may be running a website and advocacy effort. Because transparency is central to Sensible’s criticism of LBUSD and other organizations, I wanted to know what readers can see about its operation. Who pays for the website and advocacy? Are there members beyond the founders? Who decides what gets published under the Sensible Laguna name?

I also wish its older material were still available. Sensible was active throughout 2023 and 2024, yet much content from when it pushed for Board change is no longer on the current site. I don’t know why it was removed, but those earlier statements show how the organization’s role changed before and after the election.

FUEL’s story begins after that election.

I know part of its beginning firsthand because I was in an early parent group chat where people asked what they would do about the new Board’s direction. FUEL eventually formed with nine parents on its founding Board. Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal became its first president and stepped away in 2026 to run for School Board, while Emily Rolfing is now president.

FUEL’s leadership includes current LBUSD parent households whose involvement began well before the organization existed. Their backgrounds include PTA, LCAP, WASC, SchoolPower, special education, athletics, youth programs, and other volunteer work. Some are Laguna graduates, most have careers, and their children are still in these schools.

Their long-standing involvement gives them a particular perspective on LBUSD, but it doesn’t make every position FUEL takes correct. These parents were already deeply involved in school committees, volunteer organizations, and student programs well before the 2024 election gave them a reason to organize around governance.

FUEL’s work focuses heavily on Board process, transparency, superintendent independence, staff morale, school quality, and institutional stability. Its IRS determination letter confirms its 501(c)(4) status; it publicly names its Board, and its community has grown to more than 800 people.

A 501(c)(4) does not provide the same public donor disclosure as a campaign committee, which is part of why critics frequently use the phrase “dark money” when describing FUEL. At the same time, the people running the organization have put a great deal of information about themselves into the public record. Their names, careers, school involvement, and positions are public.

The overlap between FUEL families and current or former SchoolPower trustees comes up frequently too. In a four-school District, I am not surprised that many parents willing to spend their evenings organizing around the School Board are the same people who previously spent those evenings on PTA, SchoolPower, LCAP, or other school work. The overlap mostly shows that these families were already highly involved.

Their level of exposure changed considerably when they formed FUEL.

These parents put their names on an advocacy organization with a community of more than 800 people. Their children still attend LBUSD; they have careers and businesses and continue to encounter teachers, administrators, and other families at school events and around town. Once they became publicly involved in the governance fight, their jobs, spouses, volunteer histories, donations, friendships, and motives all became part of the censure focused on them.

Some of that criticism has come anonymously, and at least one parent has been targeted in a way that moved beyond disagreement with her position and into personal disparagement. The anonymous source itself is not particularly important here. The more revealing part is the imbalance between parents attaching their real names, family histories, and reputations to their advocacy and people who can attack those same parents without assuming comparable exposure themselves.

That exposure looks different in a small town because speaking at a Board meeting or putting your name on an advocacy organization does not end when the meeting is over or the article is published. These parents still have children in the schools, still live in the same community, and still encounter the people they disagree with afterward.

There is plenty of room to scrutinize FUEL without treating every fact about the people running it as evidence that their motives are suspect. Its claims can be fact-checked, its organizational structure examined, and its advocacy evaluated against the same public record as everyone else’s. The parents running it chose to participate publicly, and they did so under their own names.

The same words keep getting thrown around in LBUSD debates: students, transparency, accountability, and civility. The records make the differences between these organizations much clearer.

Sensible Laguna grew out of a neighborhood facilities fight, expanded into a wider argument for changing District governance, and became a consistent supporter of the majority that resulted. FUEL grew out of current parents’ reaction to what that new majority began doing, drawing heavily on families already involved throughout the schools.

Those histories do not tell anyone whom to agree with. They do show who is speaking, what brought them into the conversation, and what they tend to advocate for.

When an organization asks the public to trust it on students, transparency, data, or civility, the public record is a fair place to test those claims.

With the school year starting, families are thinking about teachers, schedules, classrooms, sports, homework, new routines, and all the typical chaos of getting children back to school.

I have been thinking about something else too: how different that return can look depending on the child.

I am a parent but not a special education parent. My kids, while young, have yet to need an IEP. I have never sat in meetings trying to figure out whether services were enough, accommodations were actually being followed, or the program everyone agreed to was working in real life.

That makes special education easy for me to overlook, and I suspect it is the same for many Laguna parents.

We know it exists. We hear IEP and 504 mentioned. We know there are aides, speech therapists, and specialized programs. We may even know a child attending a program outside Laguna schools.

But unless your child needs that system, there is little reason to learn how complicated it actually is. There should be.

Part of why I care about this is personal. I had an undiagnosed learning disability throughout my childhood, into college. I love my life and do not imagine it going any other way, but school would have looked different if someone had understood earlier how my brain worked.

Things seen as me not trying hard enough might have been understood differently. Things I struggled with might have come with tools instead of frustration. I probably would have understood myself earlier.

So when people talk about more children being diagnosed or needing accommodations today, I do not see it as evidence something has gone wrong. In many cases, we are better at noticing kids who used to be expected to muddle through.

Some of the most common learning disabilities are also among the easiest to miss. Specific learning disabilities, including dyslexia, are the largest category of students receiving services under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), accounting for nearly one-third of students served nationally.

Dyslexia itself is far from rare — the International Dyslexia Association estimates that 15–20% of people have symptoms associated with dyslexia, including difficulty with accurate or fluent reading, spelling, writing, or language processing. Not every one of those students will qualify for special education, which is another important distinction. These are children sitting in classrooms every day, and many of their struggles may not be obvious to the people around them.

That is a good reason for the rest of us to understand the system before a family we know suddenly needs it.

Public schools have a considerable legal responsibility to educate students with disabilities. Under federal and state special education law, eligible students are entitled to a free, appropriate public education, or FAPE, in the least restrictive environment appropriate to their needs.

Before looking into this, I did not understand how broad that responsibility can be.

It does not start with a particular classroom or end at the edge of an LBUSD campus. It begins with the child.

That responsibility can even go beyond children enrolled in LBUSD schools. The District has obligations to identify and evaluate children with suspected disabilities who live within its boundaries, including some children attending private school, although their available services are not necessarily the same as those available to an LBUSD student.

For eligible children with disabilities, generally beginning at age three, education can range from a general education classroom with additional support to speech therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral services, counseling, or specialized academic instruction.

Sometimes a student needs a specialized classroom or program, and sometimes that program does not exist in Laguna Beach. That does not mean the child stops being Laguna’s responsibility; it just means the system must get bigger.

Laguna Beach Unified and Saddleback Valley Unified together make up the South Orange County Special Education Local Plan Area, or SELPA. That regional structure allows districts to provide a more extensive continuum of specialized programs than a small district like Laguna could reasonably operate on its own.

Laguna provides a lot locally, but if a student needs a highly specialized classroom serving only a few children, it can make more sense to offer that program regionally. Other students may need programs through the county, a state school, or, in rare cases, a nonpublic school.

The idea is a continuum: keep students with their nondisabled peers when appropriate, add support as needed, and use more specialized settings when the individual child requires them.

Listening has to work both ways.

Sometimes a family is fighting to keep their child in a Laguna classroom with appropriate support. Other times, the family is trying to explain that the local setting is no longer working.

“Least restrictive” should not become shorthand for keeping a child in Laguna at all costs. The right setting is where that child can safely learn, participate, and make progress.

Even when another placement is right, there can be real grief in leaving classmates, teachers, routines, and a community a family imagined their child would grow up with through graduation. None of that means Laguna is simply handing a student off. It is how a small district accesses a larger system of support.

Once I understood that bigger structure, IEPs and 504 plans made more sense too, as they narrow that broad responsibility down to one child.

An IEP, or Individualized Education Program, is for a student who qualifies for special education and requires specially designed instruction because of a disability.

A 504 plan comes from federal disability civil rights law and generally assures that a student with a disability has equal access to education through accommodations, even when that student does not require special education instruction.

They are not interchangeable, and an IEP is not just a more serious 504 plan.

A student with ADHD might receive extra time on tests, breaks, or other accommodations through a 504 plan. Another student with ADHD could qualify for an IEP with specialized instruction or additional services.

Same diagnosis. Different child. That is the point.

Support should be based on what that student needs, not just the label attached to them.

LBUSD provides or coordinates services including speech and language therapy, occupational and physical therapy, psychological services, counseling, behavioral support, nursing and health services, transportation, orientation and mobility services, and specialized instructional support. The District also maintains transition services to help eligible students prepare for employment, independent living, and life after high school.

The District also provides support infrastructure for parents.

LBUSD’s Parent Mentor Program has existed since 2008 and helps families navigate communication, questions, and disagreements in the special education process. Alongside the more official support of PMP, the Exceptional Education Committee of Laguna Beach (EEC) is a parent advocacy group that connects families of neurodivergent and twice-exceptional children, shares resources, and advocates for better early screening, teacher training, IEP communication, evidence-based practices, and more inclusive opportunities.

I especially like that its work goes beyond systems and paperwork.

One recent All Abilities Softball Game brought students of different abilities together to play. Inclusion looked like joy, teamwork, and buddies helping buddies. That may sound like the easy part of special education compared to assessments, services, and legal requirements.

The goal is not purely a legally compliant document. It is to give that child a real place in their school and community.

The South Orange County SELPA also has a Community Advisory Committee, or CAC, that brings together parents, educators, and community members to share information, provide parent education, and weigh in on programs for students with exceptional needs.

You do not have to be a special education parent to join, and more of us probably should.

And because the world is not perfect, parents and school districts do not always agree. They can disagree about eligibility, evaluations, services, whether an IEP is being followed, placement, or whether a child is receiving the education the law requires. California has an entire dispute-resolution system for this, including state complaints, mediation, and due-process hearings. Some families ultimately hire advocates or attorneys.

Imagine raising a child who may need therapy, medical appointments, behavioral support, medication, specialized instruction, or help with basic daily life tasks.

Then imagine having to understand assessments, procedural safeguards, education law, timelines, documentation, and what your school district must provide.

Parents can become the resident expert on a disability that even caring educators may have little experience with. They send articles, explain symptoms, share research, and try to help those working with their child understand what they see without seeming to tell professionals how to do their jobs.

There is an emotional load beneath all of that: did I push hard enough? Did I ask for the meeting soon enough? Should I send another email? Am I doing enough for my child?

And, at the same time: Am I becoming that parent? Am I emailing too much? Am I asking for too much? Am I making life harder for teachers, principals, and specialists who genuinely care about my child?

That seems exhausting: needing the people across the table, often respecting and trusting them, yet still having to keep asking whether your child is getting what they need.

Sometimes a parent ultimately has to challenge the school system formally. Not every special education family ends up in a dispute, and not every disagreement means a district has done something wrong, but some parents have to push extraordinarily hard.

The system can turn an ordinary parent into a tireless advocate—they have no choice.

That raises another uncomfortable question for all of us: what happens to the child whose parent lacks the time, money, knowledge, language skills, or confidence to push that hard?

A system should not work best for the child whose parent is best at fighting it.

This can be confusing if your main exposure to special education is a School Board meeting. A parent may come to the podium and describe something genuinely awful involving their child, and the Board may say almost nothing.

From the audience, it can feel dismissive.

But trustees face real limitations on what they can publicly discuss about an individual student. Student information is confidential, individual special education disputes have their own legal processes, and open-meeting law limits discussion or action on issues raised during public comment.

An individual child’s education, placement, or IEP is not something the Board can decide from the dais, but confidentiality cannot become an excuse for ignoring patterns.

The Board governs the District. It approves budgets, staffing, and policy, and it oversees the system as a whole. If family after family describes the same barrier, trustees may not be able to discuss individual students, but they can ask whether there is a larger problem, which extends well beyond an IEP meeting.

A student’s ability does not disappear on a field trip, in PE, at an assembly, on a Chromebook, in athletics, or in an after-school activity.

Technology is one example.

Screens can be remarkable accessibility tools. A device may help a child communicate, write, organize work, or access material in a way they otherwise could not. For another student, lengthy screen use may worsen attention, regulation, headaches, visual issues, or other challenges. The answer is not that screens are always good or bad, but that each child is different.

That is the premise of individualized support, yet it can disappear when we make school-wide decisions.

The same thinking applies everywhere.

A field trip may require significant planning for one child. A loud assembly may be a completely different experience for a child with sensory needs. A PE activity may require modification. Transportation, a new schedule, a new classroom, or a change in routine can create issues many families never have to consider.

For most, these are small details.

For another child, they can determine whether they can participate at all.

The more I learn about special education, the more I understand how much some families carry.

They coordinate teachers, aides, therapists, doctors, psychologists, medications, evaluations, transportation, and outside providers. They check accommodations, document problems, email, attend meetings, and sometimes fight through a legal process.

Then something changes, and again they have to ask, “What about my child?”

That responsibility should not fall so heavily on them alone. Parents should be central to decisions about their children, but accessibility should not belong exclusively to special education families.

As this school year begins, the rest of us can pay closer attention to experiences not our own: when something new is introduced, who might have trouble participating? When we change a routine, program, or policy, is the path to an accommodation clear? When we say something is for all students, is it actually? When several families raise similar concerns, are we listening for the pattern even when details of their children’s must remain private?

I do not need my own child to have an IEP before I care whether another child can fully participate in school, or need occupational therapy before I care whether those services are supported. I also do not need to understand every piece of special education law to notice when a system was designed around only one kind of student.

Special education can feel like a separate world because, for most of us, it is one we never have to enter. For the families who do, nothing about it is separate.

It is school. It is childhood. It is their child’s life.

As we send everyone back to school, I hope we can remember that there is no single Laguna school experience.

And the families who have to fight the hardest for their children should not be the only ones paying attention.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

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Over the past several years, nearly every major school district debate has eventually become a debate about money. Legal expenses, employee compensation, declining enrollment, reserve levels, a pool, facilities needs, and a possible bond have all raised versions of the same question: How is a school district actually doing financially?

The answer for Laguna Beach Unified is less obvious than the size of the numbers might suggest. LBUSD spends substantially more than it did in FY19, while some reserves are now being used for construction, settlements, facilities, and other major obligations. The District also continues to meet its financial obligations, maintain reserves above the state minimum, receive positive fiscal certifications, and operate without the recurring deficits, emergency borrowing, widespread layoffs, or major program reductions seen in districts under serious financial pressure.

Overall, we remain financially stable, although the District has less flexibility than it did several years ago and we will need to weigh future commitments carefully. Understanding how both conditions developed requires looking beyond the total budget and learning how school district funds are organized.

The most confusing part of a school budget is the collection of fund names, account numbers, restricted resources, assigned balances, and transfers. Fund 01, Fund 17, Capital Improvement, restricted General Fund money, transfers in, transfers out. The documents are public, but they are not written for a normal person to read over breakfast.

California school districts use a standardized accounting system that separates money by revenue source, restriction, program, and expense type. Some accounts are for general operations or restricted to a designated purpose; others are for facilities, repay debt, or held in reserve.

The useful question is where the money lives and what that particular account is allowed or intended to pay for.

The General Fund supports most daily operations, including employee salaries, instruction, counseling, special education, transportation, technology, maintenance, utilities, insurance, and student services. Some General Fund revenue remains restricted, so funds received for arts education, special education, meals, or other categorical programs cannot necessarily be redirected when a different expense becomes more urgent.

Fund 17, formally called the “Special Reserve Fund for Other Than Capital Outlay”, holds an additional operating reserve separate from the legally required General Fund reserve and the capital accounts used for major facilities work. Capital accounts hold money designated for buildings and infrastructure. Bond proceeds must remain separate and may only be used to pay for voter-approved capital projects, while debt-service funds repay the borrowing.

The easiest way to understand the budget is to think of it as a cabinet of labeled envelopes. Some offer considerable flexibility, while others come with legal restrictions, grant conditions, voter requirements, or a specific purpose written across the front. Adding up every envelope shows how much money exists across the District, but it does not show how much is available for a particular expense.

Transfers are especially easy to misread. When money moves from one District fund to another, the first balance drops even though the money may still belong to the District and may not yet have been spent — it has simply been assigned to another purpose.

Government accounting has an impressive ability to make money look missing while documenting exactly where it went.

The pool provides a recent example. LBUSD transferred accumulated one-time resources into capital use for the project. The money was allocated toward a planned facility expense, with local funding coming mainly from separate capital resources and General Fund transfers designated for facilities, rather than directly from Fund 17.

Another example of a documented transfer from Fund 17 occurred just last month, for $4.5 million, for an AB 218 settlement.

Directing available money toward construction can leave less room to increase other reserves, but that indirect relationship does not mean the pool depleted Fund 17. The District funded the pool during years when it was not making new Fund 17 contributions, and those remain separate decisions involving separate accounts.

Another source of confusion comes from comparing financial documents that report different stages of the budget process. The adopted budget is a forecast based on assumptions about property-tax growth, grants, staffing, vacancies, benefits, insurance, construction schedules, and state funding.

The First Interim Report updates the budget using activity through Q1, and the Second Interim Report updates it through Q2. At each stage, the Board certifies whether the District expects to meet its obligations during the current year and the following two years. A positive certification means the District expects to do so, while qualified and negative certifications signal varying degrees of financial difficulty.

After the fiscal year ends (June 30th), the District prepares unaudited actuals, followed by an independent audit. California also requires county-office review of adopted budgets and interim reports.

An adopted estimate should not be casually compared with an audited result from another year. One reflects expectations, another provides the initial year-end result, and the audit examines whether the completed financial statements were fairly presented. These documents cannot determine whether every expenditure was the best policy choice, but they show whether the District met its obligations, maintained required reserves, and remained within California’s fiscal standards.

Districts under severe financial pressure tend to show recognizable warning signs, including recurring operating deficits, depleted minimum reserves, qualified or negative certifications, emergency borrowing, layoffs, program cuts, cash shortages, and difficulty meeting future obligations.

A year in which spending exceeds revenue does not necessarily indicate those conditions, particularly when a district uses accumulated savings for a planned need. A family that saves for years to replace a roof has not become financially irresponsible because expenses exceeded income during the month the work was completed. District reserves similarly allow major one-time expenses to be paid without suddenly disrupting operations.

LBUSD has continued receiving positive fiscal certifications, maintained reserves above the state minimum, and avoided the broad layoffs or program reductions used by districts in distress. California’s fiscal criteria also examine cash, enrollment assumptions, staffing, multiyear obligations, deficit patterns, and reserve levels. The state standard for a district of LBUSD’s size is generally 3% of expenditures and other financing uses.

Laguna’s financial history from FY19 through the proposed FY27 budget becomes fairly straightforward when divided into eras.

Typically when reviewing anydata, FY19 provides a clean pre-pandemic baseline. FY20 and FY21 brought school closures, emergency technology needs, health and safety costs, temporary federal funding, and new demands for academic and mental-health support. From FY22 through FY25, local property tax revenue grew substantially, while the District absorbed higher costs for compensation, benefits, pension contributions, special education, technology, insurance, transportation, student services, and facilities.

Throughout the audited years, the District did not repeatedly close its books in the red or drain its accumulated resources. Total governmental fund balance increased from approximately $43.7 million in FY20 to approximately $61.6 million in FY25.

FY26 and FY27 look different because the District has entered a period of a planned infrastructure project. Pool construction, facilities transfers, and the AB 218 settlement reduce reserves and overall flexibility. Even with those obligations, the FY27 budget showed a General Fund reserve for economic uncertainties of approximately $4.89 million, equal to 5.01% of total expenditures and uses and above the state’s 3% standard.

The overall trend shows rising revenue and spending, strong accumulated balances through the audited period, and a recent decision to use some of that capacity for major obligations. LBUSD has less room than it did several years ago, which makes the quality of future decisions increasingly important, though its financial history does not resemble a district steadily losing control of its finances.

Fund 17 warrants explanation because Board President Sheri Morgan has repeatedly noted that LBUSD stopped contributing to it. The concern is grounded in a real policy question, although the larger context changes how the statement should be understood.

Fund 17 is an additional special reserve, separate from the General Fund reserve required under state standards. An older Board policy contemplated maintaining a “basic-aid differential reserve” based on the difference between LBUSD’s property-tax revenue and the amount it would receive under the ordinary state funding formula. The last contribution appears to have occurred in FY20.

As property-tax revenue increased, the theoretical target grew as well. By 2026, the policy calculation suggested a target approaching $49 million, roughly half a year of District expenditures, while Fund 17 held closer to $24 million before the later AB 218 transfer.

A community-funded district has good reason to maintain strong reserves because property-tax revenue can fluctuate and state law can change. Adding another $25 million to a special reserve, however, would withhold that money from current students, employees, programs, facilities, and other obligations. The policy raises a reasonable question about how much additional protection LBUSD should maintain and whether a formula created under different financial conditions still reflects the District’s risk.

The Board should follow the policy, clearly explain why contributions are being deferred, or revise the formula through a public process. Leaving an old policy in place while repeatedly choosing another course makes the budget harder to understand and creates suspicion.

The gap between the Fund 17 balance and an aspirational policy target should not be confused with failure to meet the legally required reserve. The first reflects a local decision about additional protection, while the second establishes the minimum financial standard for District operations.

Legal spending also warrants scrutiny. LBUSD’s legal expenses rose from roughly $250k in FY23 to approximately $1 million projected in FY26, with another $1 million budgeted for FY27.

Those costs include special education disputes, employment matters, facilities and contracts, historical abuse claims, public-records requests, governance advice, investigations, litigation, and settlements. The First Interim Report in FY26 identified legal and consulting services as one component of the increase in services and operating expenses, but I could not find public documents that provide enough detail to determine how much growth belongs to each cause.

Some pressures affect districts across California, including special education disputes and exposure created by changes to the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims. Other expenses could have arisen from LBUSD’s governance disputes, personnel matters, investigations, Brown Act complaints, and public-records conflicts.

The community needs categorized reporting to assess the increase. Maybe there could be a quarterly report that divides legal spending into broad areas such as special education, employment, facilities, governance, public records, investigations, litigation, and settlements while protecting privileged legal advice. A million-dollar legal budget naturally attracts attention, but without an explanation of what produced it, the number generates more suspicion than understanding.

California already requires a substantial budget process. Laguna Beach’s School Board must hold a public hearing and adopt an annual budget, the Orange County Department of Education reviews the budget and interim reports, the District issues multiyear fiscal certifications, year-end results are published, and an independent audit is completed each year.

The Board’s role includes establishing policy, approving spending, monitoring results, and requiring corrective action when systems fail. Fiscal seriousness comes from understanding the numbers, explaining the choices, and following through on adopted policy rather than relying on the size of a number to supply the argument.

School budgets invite confusion because transfers can resemble losses, reserve goals can resemble shortages, and planned capital expenses can resemble ordinary operating waste when every fund is treated as one enormous pile of taxpayer money. Laguna is fortunate to have strong local revenue, healthy reserves, excellent programs, and the ability to invest in long-term needs, although preserving that position will require thoughtful choices about what should be funded, what should be saved, and which financial tool is appropriate for each obligation.

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LBUSD bus passes for the 2026–27 school year go on sale tomorrow, August 1, and my first advice to new and returning families is to spend some time on the District’s transportation webpage.

The District has done a great job putting a lot of key information in one place. Families can find prices, routes, designated stops, pre-kindergarten (TK) and high school options, BusZone app instructions, safety rules, FAQs, public transit alternatives, repair logs, and CHP inspection reports. Transportation information is often scattered across the school district, its contractor, and multiple public agencies, so having a single page that parents can use is a great asset from the District.

Passes will be available to purchase for about two weeks, from August 1 through August 16. Sales will then close for one week while the District finalizes routes and prints passes, and reopen August 24 for the rest of the school year. Passes generally take two business days to process and are given to students at their schools (on the first day if you order it early enough).

The price has increased to $260 each way, or $520 for annual round-trip service. The District offers installment payments for annual passes purchased before school begins, and prices are prorated as the year goes on. A Friday-only morning pass for Thurston is $87.50, and temporary one-week passes cost $30.

Families who cannot afford the cost should know that no-cost round-trip passes are available based on state income guidelines. Applications can be submitted throughout the year, though applying before school begins gives the District more time to understand demand while routes are still being adjusted. Qualifying families can receive District-paid transportation for the full school year and may also request passes for next summer’s programs.

One reason transportation matters so much in LBUSD is the sheer percentage of students it serves.

In the 2025-26 school year, 964 students used the bus service, including 933 general-education students and 31 special-education students. In a district of roughly 2.2k students, approximately 42% rely on District transportation.

That is an unusually large share compared with nearby districts. Irvine Unified transports about 4% of their students, while Newport-Mesa transports about 11%.

I have worked in transportation planning for over 15 years, so I probably think about school buses differently than most parents. There is the route design, driver availability, passenger capacity, service reliability, vehicle trips, public funding, and what happens when a family does not have a parent available to fill every gap in the system.

Last August, however, I was also simply a new District mom putting her 4-year-old on a school bus for the first time. While I was nervous, it wasn’t because of the big yellow bus, but just because my little “baby” was now in elementary school.

School buses are extraordinarily safe. They are extremely regulated and designed specifically to protect children through their size, visibility, reinforced construction, protective seating, flashing lights, mirrors and stop arms. Federal safety research has found that students are nearly eight times safer riding a school bus than traveling with their parents or guardians in cars. In fact, it’s been 31 years since a child has died in an accident on a traditional school bus.

I understood all of that when I watched my son climb aboard, but what I did not know was how much he would love it.

The bus became one of the best parts of his day, and a huge part of that was the drivers. They learned his name, greeted him every morning, established a routine, and made him feel safe. A school bus driver does so much more than operate a large vehicle through traffic — they are the trusted adult who receives our children from us in the morning, delivers them safely to school, and brings them back at the end of the day.

Our drivers are the best, and their role should not be treated as incidental to the service. For young children especially, the driver is the face of the entire transportation system.

The bus stop also became something I did not fully anticipate: an easy way to meet other parents and get to know our neighbors. Instead of passing one another anonymously in separate cars, we see the same families each morning and afternoon. Children get to know students from different grades, while parents exchange information, help when someone is late, and build friendships with people they might otherwise never meet.

These things do not appear in a transportation budget, but they are real. The bus gives children independence, creates a small neighborhood community, and makes the school system feel more connected to where families live.

That connection is especially important for families in Laguna Audubon and Newport Coast.

Laguna Audubon is located within the City of Aliso Viejo, but it is fully part of LBUSD. Families there belong to the District every bit as much as families living inside Laguna Beach proper. The same is true for LBUSD families in Newport Coast.

Still, I understand why living slightly outside Laguna Beach can sometimes make the District feel more difficult to access. The schools, meetings, activities, and much of the social life surrounding LBUSD are centered in Laguna Beach, and families may not already be driving into town for the rest of their daily lives.

Transportation helps shrink that distance.

For the last four years, the District has had about 465 students in Newport Coast, Laguna Audubon, and Laguna Beach communities on El Toro Blvd. Those students attend every school in the District, including about 150 at Laguna Beach High School, 110 at Top of the World, 105 at El Morro, and 100 at Thurston.

I believe transportation is part of educational opportunity, as it affects whether students arrive reliably, working parents can maintain their schedules, and older students can participate in programs with some independence. It also affects whether students can stay for CTE, academic support, clubs, athletics, enrichment, and other opportunities that do not fit neatly between the morning and afternoon bells.

In transportation, the existence of a route is only the beginning; it has to operate when people need it, reach the destination they are actually trying to access, provide a reasonable way home, and communicate clearly when something changes.

Laguna Beach’s location makes that unusually difficult.

We have steep neighborhoods, canyon communities, coastal congestion, limited road connections, and only four primary school campuses. Walking and bicycling should always be supported where they are safe and realistic, but neither can provide a complete transportation solution for many LBUSD students.

California is already built around personal vehicles, and Laguna is particularly isolated. When PCH, Laguna Canyon Rd, or El Toro Blvd becomes congested, families have very few meaningful options. That makes every credible alternative to driving alone in a car for every trip extremely valuable.

School buses are one part of that system, but the City has also done a great job pursuing funding and developing public transportation around Laguna’s unusual geography. While OCTA provides regional connections and Youth Ride Free passes, the City operates fully subsidized trolleys and Laguna Local microtransit.

In 2024, Laguna Beach secured $7.2 million through OCTA’s Project V program to support and expand local trolley and Laguna Local service. Project V exists because conventional regional transit cannot efficiently meet every local mobility need, particularly in communities with unique geography and travel patterns.

These services each have a different role: school buses provide scheduled transportation for students, OCTA connects Laguna with the wider region, trolleys serve predictable corridors and community destinations, and Laguna Local helps fill gaps in lower-density neighborhoods.

Laguna Local microtransit cannot replace scheduled school transportation for every student, particularly younger children or families who need a guaranteed arrival time. The on-demand service is inherently different from a bus that arrives at a designated stop on a school schedule; however, it remains an important part of the larger network and offers older students and families another option when their needs fall outside a traditional school bus route.

Together, these services provide a public benefit that extends well beyond the individual rider. Bus-pass revenue helps offset the cost of school transportation, but the program also supports attendance, educational access, working families, student independence, and safer school circulation.

They also reduce vehicle trips, which is one of the most important benefits for the Laguna Beach community.

A well-used school bus consolidates many individual drop-offs and pickups. Not every student riding the bus represents one eliminated car trip, because some parents would carpool or combine school runs with work or other errands. Collectively, however, school buses reduce vehicle miles traveled, idling, curbside congestion, parking demand, and the number of cars moving around our streets during the busiest parts of the day.

Fewer vehicles also result in fewer conflicts with children walking or bicycling near schools.

It goes to show how families who never buy a bus pass still benefit from school transportation. They get to have shorter drop-off lines, safer arrival areas, less competition for curb space, and fewer vehicles entering already-constrained roads.

This does not mean the District should accept poor performance or unclear spending. Transportation can be a publicly subsidized service and still be expected to operate efficiently. LBUSD should know what it is paying for, monitor contractor performance, and expect reliable vehicles, functioning air conditioning, clear communication, accurate information, and timely responses when problems occur.

Families should also understand that routes are not set permanently. Enrollment changes, children move between schools, program schedules shift, and neighborhoods gain or lose riders.

The late-start TK families in Laguna Audubon are a good example of why parents should speak up when a route does not reflect the trip students actually need.

The school bus service was already operating from the Boys & Girls Club to Top of the World Elementary for late-start TK students, but every child riding that bus lived in Laguna Audubon. Their parents were driving them from Laguna Audubon to the Boys & Girls Club, almost a halfway point, just so they could board the bus.

Families explained why that did not make sense and advocated extending the route into Laguna Audubon. The District reviewed the service and made the change.

The route continued to use a full-size bus, which may initially sound excessive for only a few young students, but the driver and service time are generally the highest operating costs. Once the driver and bus are already performing the trip, replacing the vehicle with something smaller creates little meaningful savings. Expanding this particular route allowed the service to reflect where the riders actually lived and left room for future demand.

Not every request can be accommodated, and route changes must take into account staffing, timing, vehicle availability, cost, and the effect on other riders. Families can still advocate for themselves, particularly when several students share the same transportation barrier. The District cannot evaluate a need it does not know exists.

Several improvements developed over the past year should also be visible during 2026–27.

The buses have upgraded their cameras, which improves coverage and makes recordings easier to retrieve when a safety or behavioral concern needs to be reviewed. Paid bus monitors have also been approved for funding, adding another adult who can focus on students while the driver focuses on safely operating the vehicle.

A replacement for the BusZone app is also being tested. I am encouraged that the District is trying another option, but I also want to see how it performs in the real world before assuming it solves the problems families had last year.

A transportation app should not require parents to become experts in the technology and should be able to identify the correct bus, provide accurate location information, and deliver meaningful updates when a route is delayed, detoured, or changed. Passenger information is part of the transportation service itself. Families are less likely to trust and use the bus when they cannot confidently say where it is or whether anything has happened to it.

Laguna Beach Unified’s next major transportation challenge will be electrifying the fleet.

Alongside the District’s 2030 carbon-neutrality commitment, California will require newly purchased or newly contracted school buses to be zero-emission, where feasible, beginning in 2035. Because LBUSD contracts with Durham, the transition must be addressed through future agreements as well as utility and infrastructure planning.

California’s newer school buses are already much cleaner than older diesel models, but electric buses would eliminate tailpipe emissions while preserving the vehicle-trip reduction that makes shared transportation valuable in the first place.

This transition is more than buying buses, as LBUSD and Durham will need to account for route mileage, hills, heating and air-conditioning demand, charger placement, electrical capacity and enough reserve vehicles to maintain reliable service. A fleet using roughly 15 buses each day cannot operate without backups for maintenance, charger failures and changing assignments.

Grants will likely offset much of the cost of buses and charging infrastructure, while electricity used for charging can generate revenue from Low Carbon Fuel Standard credits. The contract details will determine who owns the chargers, receives grant funding and LCFS revenue, pays utility costs, and retains publicly funded infrastructure if Durham is no longer the operator.

Those decisions will determine whether electrification becomes a lasting District asset or simply another contractor expense.

Now, my child does not think about fare recovery, vehicle-trip reduction, passenger information, route capacity, charging infrastructure, or LCFS credits when the bus arrives.

He sees his driver, his friends, and one of the best parts of his day.

I believe in school transportation because I have seen what it does for the community. I understand the operational and public value of moving children together rather than adding more cars to already constrained roads, and I know the personal value of watching my son gain independence, build relationships with his drivers, and look forward to the trip every day.

For families considering the bus this year, LBUSD’s transportation webpage is an excellent place to begin. The larger goal should be a system that is safe, reliable, well-funded, and flexible enough to meet changing student needs, while giving more children access to school and their community without every trip depending on a parent behind the wheel.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

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Laguna Beach Unified is getting another independent review, and I think that is a good thing.

As I have shared before, the employee healthcare contribution issue was serious because public funds were involved, collective bargaining agreements were not followed, and the District paid more for employee benefits than required. The District must understand how it happened, correct it, strengthen controls, and provide the public with an honest accounting of what went wrong.

Now the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE) has asked the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) to conduct another formal review in response to requests from members of the Laguna Beach community. LBUSD will be providing the records and information FCMAT requests. OCDE has made it clear that initiating the review does not indicate fraud, misappropriation, or illegal fiscal practices, and that the purpose is to conduct an independent assessment and determine whether the evidence requires reporting under Assembly Bill 139.

The questions now are what FCMAT finds, how the District responds to those findings, and whether Board members who spent months demanding this scrutiny will consistently apply that same respect for public accountability when community members raise documented concerns about the Board itself.

OCDE supports Orange County’s 28 school districts while overseeing state-mandated fiscal matters. It reviews budgets and financial reports, provides operational and legal support, assists with countywide services, and has statutory responsibilities when concerns develop about a district’s financial procedures.

FCMAT operates statewide and was created to help California school agencies identify and resolve financial, operational, and data-management problems. Most of its work is preventive management assistance intended to improve systems before a fiscal crisis develops. At the same time, a smaller portion involves assignments from county and state agencies, including extraordinary audits conducted when there is reason to examine whether fraud, misappropriation, or other illegal fiscal practices have occurred.

The name sounds alarming because it includes “fiscal crisis,” but the organization does more than respond after a district’s finances have failed. FCMAT reviews staffing, contracts, purchasing, internal controls, special education, organizational structure, data management, and other areas where an outside team may identify problems a district has missed or tolerated.

Laguna Beach Unified has worked with FCMAT before.

In September 2017, the District agreed to have FCMAT review LBUSD’s special education program. The Board approved the study unanimously, with staff describing it as voluntary, proactive, and part of continual improvement. Board members clarified that LBUSD requested the assistance and was not facing a fiscal crisis.

FCMAT conducted interviews and reviewed records in January 2018, then issued its final report that May. The study examined general education supports, special education staffing, paraeducators, related-service providers, identification rates, outside placements, organizational structure, due process, and the District’s financial contribution to special education.

The report identified areas for improvement, including student-support processes that varied across school sites; some special education and paraeducator staffing levels exceeding FCMAT standards; inconsistent procedures for assigning certain individualized supports; and an increase in the District’s unrestricted contribution to special education. FCMAT recommended stronger coordination among special education, business services, and human resources. It also suggested a closer review of outside providers and placements, as well as a formal process for resolving parent disputes.

These important findings affected some of the District’s most vulnerable students and involved substantial public resources, complicated legal requirements, and decisions likely to shape a child’s entire school experience. The report did what an outside management review is supposed to do: it examined systems, identified variances and financial pressures, and provided the District with recommendations to improve them.

Sometimes a school district asks FCMAT to help improve a program. In other cases, a county office requests an examination after employees, parents, or community members raise concerns. Sometimes the findings support serious allegations, while at other times a lengthy investigation concludes that the evidence does not establish intentional wrongdoing, even though policies and internal controls still need substantial work.

The current LBUSD review falls into a different category from the 2018 special education study.

OCDE says it initiated this process after receiving requests from members of the Laguna Beach community, and the scope includes employee health-benefit contributions, associated contracting decisions, and the use of District resources. The people who submitted those requests have not been publicly identified.

Howard Hills has spent months pressing substantially the same issues, describing the healthcare contributions in the most alarming terms available to him, questioning the conduct of former District leadership, reviewing potential action by county and state authorities, and arguing the Board should continue pursuing the issue whether the district attorney or another outside agency acts or not.

His public campaign around healthcare has included paid advertisements, communications with outside allies, repeated use of the larger $1.77 million figure, and an email titled “CONFIDENTIAL: Unofficial Communications Management,” where he discussed media coverage, op-eds, full-page advertisements, and the need for someone to coordinate press around District issues, yet somehow he’s calling people he disagrees with “political gossip columnists.”

Given that record, it is reasonable to wonder whether Howard, one or more of his colleagues, or people in his “communications circle” submitted the requests that led to OCDE’s decision. It also matches his stated strategy and the work he has done to extend the healthcare issue beyond LBUSD.

Still, OCDE has not named the requesters, and reasonable suspicion does not turn speculation into fact just because it fits neatly. Until those requests become public, I cannot say Howard submitted them.

I will say he is probably pleased.

He wanted a state or county agency to examine the healthcare issue, and one is now doing that. He has argued the District’s own review and corrective actions were insufficient. FCMAT will request records, examine the underlying processes, and decide whether the evidence supports the level of wrongdoing Howard has repeatedly suggested.

He should celebrate the review if he believes in it, and the District should not treat his satisfaction as a reason to resist the process. Public officials, employees, and community members should be able to request outside scrutiny without being accused of disloyalty merely because the eventual finding may be uncomfortable.

The same principle applies when the request comes from people Howard disagrees with.

Over the last year and a half, community members, employees, and advocacy organizations have signaled concerns about LBUSD’s closed-session practices, agenda control, public-comment procedures, trustee communications, and growing uncertainty about where Board governance ends and District operations begin. Some concerns resulted in formal Brown Act cure-and-correct demands. These allow a public agency to review an alleged open-meeting violation and correct it before the dispute proceeds to litigation. A couple of these demands have been made public, and I know of a few more that have been submitted privately.

A cure-and-correct demand does not prove a Brown Act violation any more than a community request to OCDE proves someone committed financial misconduct. Each begins with an allegation supported by whatever facts, records, and legal arguments the person submitting it believes justify further examination.

The receiving agency is then responsible for fully reviewing the complaint, responding through the appropriate process, and correcting the conduct when warranted.

I think Howard cannot reasonably support community requests that trigger an outside examination of District employees and financial procedures, then dismiss other community complaints as political theater when they ask whether the Board majority followed open-meeting law. He can disagree with the claims, challenge the evidence, and defend the Board’s conduct, but the legitimacy of the process cannot depend on whether he likes those who use it.

The Board’s response to the FCMAT review will tell us a great deal about what its members actually wanted from this process.

Will they allow FCMAT to conduct the review without changing every records request into another public accusation against staff? Will they wait for the findings before announcing what they may prove? Will they accept a conclusion identifying administrative weaknesses without validating Howard’s more extensive narrative of corruption? Will they implement recommendations even when those are technical, procedural, and less dramatic than the story Howard has been selling?

When a complaint involves closed session, trustee communications, or the Board’s use of power, will they show the same patience and respect for the process that they now expect from the employees being reviewed?

Based on several FCMAT reports, Mountain View Whisman School District appears to offer the closest recent comparison to what may happen here.

In 2024, the Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools requested an AB 139 extraordinary audit after parents, employees, and community members raised concerns about business relationships, contracts, transactions, travel, and reimbursements involving the school district’s former superintendent. FCMAT conducted a broad review of expenditures, internal controls, vendor payments, board approvals, travel, credit card purchases, and reimbursements.

The public debate surrounding that school district became intense, with disputed contracts and spending decisions presented as possible evidence of corruption. After reviewing the transactions, FCMAT concluded it had insufficient evidence to establish fraud, misappropriation, or other illegal fiscal practices. The report still led to improvements in contract procedures, written documentation, credit-card controls, travel policies, and delegated purchasing authority.

Mountain View Whisman shows how an outside review can validate stronger systems without validating every accusation behind it. Community members were entitled to raise questions, the county was entitled to examine them, and FCMAT’s conclusion depended on evidence rather than on the intensity of the public campaign.

Based on the records we have available so far, I think Laguna Beach may end in a similar place.

The healthcare issue showed that agreements were not administered correctly, the District paid more than required, and controls needed strengthening. Michael Bishop & Associates examined spending variances, collective bargaining compliance, and internal controls, while leaving legal impropriety outside its scope.

The District eventually proceeded with a corrective-action figure of about $1.04 million and decided against recovering that money from employees who did not establish the contribution rates or administer the benefit structure. Howard continued to cite the larger $1.77 million figure and framed the issue in terms of staff oversight, unions, and former District leadership.

FCMAT will likely obtain documents the public has not seen, interview people who provide important new information, or identify a contracting problem beyond the contribution calculations already discussed. An independent review has value because the conclusion must remain open until the work is finished.

Even with that possibility, the evidence currently available looks more like an administrative, contractual, and internal-control failure than an intentional scheme to steal public funds or improperly enrich employees. I expect FCMAT will confirm that the contribution process was flawed, identify weaknesses in documentation and oversight, recommend clearer delineation of responsibilities and more frequent reconciliation, and find insufficient evidence to support the larger claims of deliberate fraud or malfeasance.

Howard may say procedural failures proved him right, while others may say the absence of corruption proved him wrong. Both reactions would oversimplify what will likely be a more complicated report.

The healthcare problem required correction, but the evidence has never supported treating teachers and staff as suspects for receiving benefits calculated and administered by the District. Howard was right to ask how the error occurred and how to prevent it. His public campaign against staff, unions, former leadership, and anyone rejecting his framing also remains part of the record.

What happens next will reveal whether Howard and his “colleagues” wanted independent answers or public validation for conclusions they had already reached.

If FCMAT finds misconduct, the District needs to address it directly and publicly. If it identifies weak controls, administrative failures, or poor documentation, the District should implement the recommendations and explain the changes. If FCMAT finds insufficient evidence of fraud or malfeasance, the Board owes the public the same clarity and should not stretch procedural failures into unsupported allegations.

The Board should remember the standard it helped establish. OCDE took community financial concerns seriously, and FCMAT will examine the records before reaching a conclusion. Documented concerns about closed sessions, trustee communications, agenda control, and the Board’s use of power deserve the same review and respect for evidence, even when those under scrutiny sit on the dais rather than work in the District office.

Howard has spent months insisting that outside scrutiny is necessary when the allegations involve employees, unions, and former District leadership. He cannot reasonably celebrate that process while dismissing cure-and-correct demands and other governance complaints as meaningless simply because they involve his own Board majority.

The community should pay close attention to what FCMAT finds, but the Board’s response may tell us even more. Howard wanted someone outside LBUSD to look closely at what was happening inside the District, and now that review is here. The harder test will be whether his circle still believes in transparency when the call for accountability comes from inside the house.

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The Laguna Beach school board voted 5-0 at the July 9, 2026 meeting to place a school facilities bond on the November 2026 ballot, giving the community the final say on whether to continue investing in local school campuses without increasing the current tax rate.

As a young parent in this district, I feel this one is personal to me.

Much of what I have shared over the last few months has been about governance, transparency, legal bills, closed sessions, public faith, board dynamics, and other issues that turn a school board meeting into a local endurance sport. Still, this particular question goes beyond the latest controversy because it is about the buildings our kids walk into every morning and the kind of district we are choosing to leave them in.

The measure will authorize up to $83 million in general obligation bonds for school facility repairs and upgrades, including aging classrooms, science labs, career technical education facilities, roofs, plumbing, electrical systems, safety systems, and other infrastructure needs identified through the district’s facilities planning process. The tax rate is $8.85 per $100,000 of assessed value, which extends the current rate rather than increasing it.

For me, that is one of the most important parts of this proposal. The measure asks voters to maintain the existing school bond tax rate, not raise it, so the community can continue investing in school facilities at the same rate local property owners are already paying.

The last time this went to a vote, in 2001, Laguna’s facilities bond was approved with 80.3% voter support, helped fund school improvements many current families are still benefiting from, and is scheduled to expire in 2028.

Many of us raising young kids in Laguna today benefit from decisions made by those who came before us, including residents whose children may be grown, residents who never had children in the district, and families who believed strong public schools make a community worth investing in.

They made a small annual investment that helped shape the campuses our children use now.

Now we must decide whether we are willing to preserve that same small investment for today’s students and those who come next.

Some people will be cautious about any school bond, especially when public faith has been strained. The district has not been very transparent at every turn. Still, this proposal should feel more reassuring because it includes guardrails that are more concrete than a general promise to improve schools.

The bond language includes a specific project list, annual independent financial and performance audits, and an independent citizens’ oversight committee composed of residents to review whether bond dollars are spent on the facilities projects that voters approved. The district’s resolution also says bond funds cannot be used for administrator salaries, pensions, or regular operating expenses, which means the money is tied to physical school improvements rather than absorbed into the district’s general budget.

For voters who remember the 2001 bond as a successful investment that many current families still benefit from, this proposal feels like an extension of that same community responsibility, with better-defined public-facing expectations about what gets built, how the money is tracked, and who oversees the process on taxpayers’ behalf.

That should be reassuring.

It does not mean the public should stop asking questions, but it still does mean that voters are being asked to consider a bond with a defined purpose, a list of tangible projects, and accountability requirements that offer more than “trust us” as the plan.

Supporting school facilities does not require anyone to ignore recent concerns about district leadership or board governance.

People may want stronger oversight and still recognize that aging roofs, pipes, electrical systems, classrooms, labs, accessibility needs, and safety infrastructure must be addressed.

People can be frustrated by the board and still believe students deserve safe, modern, well-maintained schools.

People can disagree on politics, personalities, and priorities but still find common ground in the basic idea that a community should care for the places where its children learn.

For young families, this is about the schools our kids are growing up in right now. For longtime residents, this is about protecting the quality of a district they helped build. For homeowners, this is about maintaining one of the civic assets that increases property values and supports community stability. For people without children in the district, this is about whether Laguna Beach remains the kind of town that treats public education as a shared responsibility.

There are fair questions voters should ask between now and November.

Which projects come first? How will the district publicly track progress? How will costs be controlled? Who will serve on the oversight committee? How will the district ensure urgent infrastructure needs are prioritized over shinier wishlist items that often arrive with glossy renderings and suspiciously perfect trees?

At the same time, I do not want cynicism to become a reason to stop upkeep of the schools our kids rely on every day. Laguna Beach has exceptional schools because previous generations invested in and protected them, and understood that even a small district with a strong reputation must keep up with aging facilities, changing safety standards, modern instruction, science labs, technology needs, and the wear and tear that comes with buildings full of children.

Excellence does not maintain itself just because we live somewhere beautiful.

The Board put the question to voters. The community will now have time to read the measure, understand the costs, ask hard questions, and decide whether continuing the current tax rate is the right investment for Laguna Beach.

For me, as a parent, this comes down to a simple belief: our kids should inherit schools that were cared for as thoughtfully as the schools we inherited from the families before us.

Laguna benefited from the last generation’s investment.

Now Laguna gets to decide what we pass on.

More reading on school bonds

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I was not at the May 14 protest, but the people there were not strangers to me.

They were my friends, neighbors, my kid’s coach, and the parents I see at school events, on the sidelines, in parking lots, and around town. They were the people who talk when something feels wrong, show up when it matters, make signs in someone’s kitchen, buy snacks at Costco, bring the kids, and somehow turn a group chat into civic action before dinner.

In other words, they were acting the way people in Laguna Beach often act when something feels wrong: they showed up to exercise their First Amendment rights.

Of course, this is the part the Board majority now seems very keen to blur.

On July 7, the ACLU of Southern California sent a letter to LBUSD alleging the Board violated the Brown Act by discussing the May 14 protest in closed session. The letter was sent on behalf of local parent Meredith McMahon, who helped spark the protest and, from what I can tell, felt a duty to defend what that protest actually was.

To be clear, Meredith is not suing the district for personal financial damages, nor is she seeking a payout. The ACLU letter clearly asks the Board to fix the alleged Brown Act violations and commit to not repeating them. If litigation ever follows and attorney fees become an issue, that would be about legal fee recovery for the ACLU under the Brown Act, not money going to Meredith.

The ACLU letter is bigger than one parent, one protest, or one very Laguna group-chat mobilization. It asks whether the Board majority can take public criticism, reframe it as a safety threat, send it to legal counsel, and then hide the response from the public.

The May 14 protest grew out of the Board majority’s sudden separation from Dr. Jason Glass, which the district described as mutual, even though many parents did not see it that way.

So parents showed up publicly to object.

They had signs. They chanted. They were loud. They were angry, and definitely not subtle. There were “shame” signs, handmade posters, kids, snacks, and even pom poms, because apparently Laguna moms can turn constitutional expression into a spirit squad if given enough notice.

Was it uncomfortable for the Board? I am sure it was.

Was it embarrassing? Probably.

Was it public criticism of elected officials? Absolutely.

And that is protected speech.

The First Amendment is not a feelings-management policy for public officials. It does not protect only soft voices, flattering signs, and calm comments delivered at a podium by the dais. It protects speech, assembly, and petitioning the government, including signs, chants, criticism, and public pressure elected officials may find deeply unpleasant.

Public agencies can enforce reasonable rules about safety, access, noise, and keeping meetings functional. However, this is about the Board majority appearing to take a loud but peaceful protest and recast it as something more troubling.

After the protest, the Board majority’s storyline started to shift. Trustee Dee Perry stumbled while trying to enter the building. Available videos show Perry struggling to enter, with Ketta Brown helping her inside. These videos do not show protesters pushing her, and Perry later stated in the Laguna Beach Independent that she was not pushed.

Shouting, chanting, holding signs, or criticizing elected officials may feel intense, uncomfortable, and even overwhelming. Absent a physical act, an attempt to apply force, or a direct threat of immediate violent injury, fear alone does not turn protected speech into assault. For example, a stumble near protesters does not automatically render a threat to public services or facilities.

But Dee Perry’s fall became the Board majority’s permission slip to reframe the May 14 protest.

A parent protest over Dr. Glass’s sudden exit escalated into a “safety incident,” which then became a legal matter. Then the legal matter became a closed-session discussion the public was not allowed to hear.

By the June 4 meeting, the Board’s posture had visibly changed, with notice-restriction signs and stanchions appearing. Then came the June 8 closed session.

According to the ACLU letter, the Board discussed the May 14 protest under a closed-session item related to “threats to public services or facilities.” Afterward, Board President Sheri Morgan reportedly stated that no reportable action had occurred. She also said safety concerns had been raised after the May 14 rally and that the Board had requested legal counsel or a designee to look into the rally, including what occurred, whether safety protocols were followed, and whether Board policy or law had been violated.

That is the kind of sentence that makes normal people blink twice.

No reportable action occurred, but the Board requested legal counsel or a designee to investigate the rally?

The ACLU argues that LBUSD improperly used closed session to discuss a public protest under a narrow Brown Act exception meant for actual threats to public services or facilities. The letter also argues that the public agenda did not give people fair notice that the Board would discuss the May 14 protest or whether to investigate it.

The Brown Act exists because public agencies must conduct business in public unless a narrow exception applies. Closed session is not where elected officials process feelings about criticism, nor is it a panic room for uncomfortable public feedback.

The ACLU’s point, as I read it, is simple: the Board cannot take a public protest, call it a threat, discuss it privately, and then tell the public there was nothing to report.

Especially when the “threat” appears to be parents speaking up.

That is how public speech gets silenced — it is not always by a direct order to stop talking. Sometimes it happens through vague safety language, shifting narratives, closed-session agenda items, and lawyers looking into what parents did.

I am not a lawyer, but I work at a public institution and follow First Amendment regulations in public spaces. I know the difference between protest and disruption. I know access and safety are important. I also know public agencies cannot use “safety” as a cover for viewpoint control.

The government does not get to treat public criticism as a threat just because the criticism is loud, embarrassing, or effective.

If the Board had legitimate safety concerns, it could have addressed them openly. If protest logistics needed better management, it could have said so in public and allowed the community to respond.

Instead, the Board used closed session to discuss the protest under a “threat” exception and then reported that legal counsel or a designee had been asked to look into it.

The protest was public, so the Board’s response should have been public.

The First Amendment does not just belong to the Board majority — it belongs to us, too.

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I did not react to Dr. Don Austin’s hiring by thinking, Man, what a terrible résumé.

The résumé is obviously impressive. He has led Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified, spent eight years as superintendent in Palo Alto Unified, and now serves as president of CalSupts. He also has more than three decades of experience in California public education and already knows Laguna Beach from his five years as principal of Laguna Beach High School.

My reaction was more along the lines of: We have a new superintendent already? This is because less than 48 hours after the Board approved Dr. Jason Glass’s separation, Austin was announced as his replacement. There was no public search, no community input, and very little explanation beyond the Board majority’s apparent confidence that it had found its person.

I have already written about the process and legal questions surrounding it, so I will not reassemble that entire crime-scene board in this article. The short version is that the speed was shocking, transparency was lacking, and the process did not follow the superintendent selection policy our district previously approved.

None of that was Austin’s doing.

The Board majority owns the process that brought him here, but Austin now owns what he does with the job.

That distinction is important because it is possible to object strongly to how someone was hired and still sincerely want that person to succeed. In this case, I need him to succeed; LBUSD cannot afford another broken superintendent relationship, another leadership exit, or another year of teachers and staff holding the district together while the adults above create fresh material for closed session.

So I reached out to Austin.

Many current LBUSD parents were not here when he was the high school principal (in fact, lots of parents were in high school when he was principal). I want them to hear directly from him, not just through a district announcement that focuses more on rankings than on explaining who he is and how he plans to lead.

His response was long, personal, and refreshingly human.

Austin wrote about moving to Laguna Beach in 2006 without knowing anyone. His three children attended LBUSD schools and often joined him at school and community events. He also described growing up in a blue-collar home in Chula Vista near the Tijuana border, his path through the Inland Empire, and the perspective he believes that background gave him in the high-achieving districts he later served.

He also made clear that he is not returning to recreate Laguna Beach as it existed when he left, nor is he arriving with plans to turn us into Palo Alto-by-the-Sea.

“I only wish to see Laguna Beach as the best possible version of Laguna Beach,” he wrote.

I liked that answer.

Laguna Beach does not need to turn into someone else’s district. It also does not need rescuing from academic collapse because that is not happening here. Our teachers, staff, and administrators continue to deliver strong outcomes while handling extraordinary leadership turmoil. The district needs stability, clarity, and enough breathing room for the people doing the work to do it without wondering who might be investigated, criticized, or reorganized.

Austin appears to understand that structure.

“In the simplest way of looking at things,” he wrote, “the school board governs, the superintendent is responsible for implementation and operations, and our staff members do the hard work with our students and families each day.”

There it is.

The Board governs. The superintendent runs the district. Staff members educate and support students.

This should not feel like a breakthrough concept, but after watching LBUSD governance over the past year and a half, I have seriously considered having it printed on a yard sign.

While Austin’s answer reassured me, it did not surprise me. He is a highly experienced superintendent who works with other superintendents across California on leadership and governance, which means he knows what his job is supposed to be.

What we do not know yet is whether this Board majority will allow him to do it.

Governance boundaries are easy to support when the superintendent agrees with you. The real test comes when he does not.

What happens when Austin defends a staff recommendation the Board majority dislikes? What happens when he says an operational decision belongs to his administration? What happens when he asks trustees to slow down, accept greater context, or recognize that an individual board member’s priority is not the same thing as collective Board direction?

Austin wrote that one of his former board members used to say most problems benefit more from an eraser than a pencil. That may be the most useful philosophy anyone can bring to LBUSD in this climate.

This Board majority has often reached for the pencil.

When Dr. Glass did not agree to place a discussion of graduation location on the agenda, the response was not simply to accept the superintendent’s judgment or work through the existing process. Instead, the Board moved to change its agenda-setting bylaw.

When district communications did not satisfy Howard Hills, he criticized the work publicly and privately, even though the district’s communications remained professional, timely, and substantially better than the political messaging swirling around them.

The pattern concerns me; when professional judgment becomes inconvenient, the process suddenly needs revision. If staff members do not deliver the preferred answer, their work becomes the problem.

Those are big red flags for any superintendent entering the district, even one with Austin’s experience.

His response suggests he knows where the lanes are, and I hope he is prepared to hold them.

Austin said he intends to work with the Board to establish its “collective goals.” Those two words matter.

The superintendent works for the Board as a whole. He does not work separately for the Board president, the loudest trustee, or three members carrying their own operational wish lists. The Board should set priorities publicly and collectively, then allow Austin and his staff to determine how to implement those priorities.

That is the difference between governance and management. It may also determine whether Austin lasts.

The first few months should not be about dramatic restructuring or proving that the new administration has arrived by moving furniture and eliminating positions. LBUSD has had enough drama presented as decisive leadership.

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Austin should, and likely will, begin by listening to others.

He should meet with teachers, classified employees, administrators, parents, and students. The listening sessions need to lead somewhere. People have participated in enough surveys, meetings, and strategic exercises to know that “we heard you” can sometimes mean “thank you for providing content for the appendix.”

Austin should report back publicly. What did he hear? Where are the clearest points of agreement? What concerns require immediate attention? What needs more review? What will change, and what should remain stable?

That last question matters.

Cabinet stability will be one of the first things I watch. A superintendent has the right and responsibility to evaluate his leadership team, but there is a difference between Austin deciding a change is needed and the Board pressuring him to remove people it has already labeled part of the problem.

By December, success would look remarkably uneventful: the current cabinet still in place, no key staff departures, and no sudden cuts presented as proof that someone is supposedly rooting out a conspiracy certain trustees have suspected exists inside the district.

At this point, boring would be a triumph.

Special education also needs attention, though not another abrupt reinvention. My children are not in special education, but I regularly speak with parents whose children are, and many are nervous about what leadership instability could mean for services, staffing, and continuity.

Austin does not need to arrive with a grand solution before he has listened and reviewed the work. Families need to know who is responsible, what the priorities are, and whether the district plans to build on existing work rather than start over just because starting over looks good.

Teacher and staff morale should be another early measure.

Our employees have continued to show up for students while the leadership above them has been engaged in conflict, investigations, legal disputes, and public criticism. They have kept the district functioning through conditions they did not create.

Austin will need to rebuild trust with people who may reasonably wonder how long the next period of stability will last.

Compensation negotiations will be part of that. Success does not mean the district agrees to every proposal, but it does mean the process becomes credible again: honest numbers, professional relationships, and employees who do not feel they must fill Board meetings to make their concerns visible.

And then there is the lawyer.

One of my personal early signs of improvement will be seeing legal counsel leave the dais.

This is not because LBUSD should stop consulting attorneys. Given recent events, I assume the legal invoices have developed their own gravitational field. But counsel should advise the district only when legal advice is needed. The attorney should not appear as a permanent member of the governing team or the Board’s most consistent public partner.

Like all other school boards, the superintendent should be the primary professional voice sitting beside the Board. Cabinet members should speak to their areas of expertise, and legal counsel can remain available without making it look like we have entered season three of a school-board-drama television show.

Austin’s arrival should give the district a chance to reset that dynamic.

He has said he believes in organizational clarity, defining success, working backward from shared goals and reporting progress publicly. Those are promising commitments. They also create standards by which the community can judge his leadership.

What are his priorities for cabinet stability and special education? What did he hear from teachers and staff? How will that feedback shape his decisions? How will the district explain its budget and compensation choices more clearly? When he disagrees with the Board, how will he protect the organization and employees while maintaining a productive working relationship?

Those are difficult questions, but answering difficult questions is part of rebuilding trust. Austin should be held accountable, but so should the Board.

Supporting his success does not require pretending the hiring process was acceptable. Watching the Board closely does not mean hoping Austin fails so critics can declare themselves correct. Parents and community members can hold two thoughts at once, even if some Board trustees have not modeled that skill.

We can give Austin a fair opportunity to lead while insisting that the Board stay in its lane. We can hope he succeeds while expecting him to explain his priorities and decisions.

We can recognize that the district remains strong because teachers and staff have continued doing excellent work, not because the governance turmoil somehow improved classroom instruction through exposure.

The community has a role in what happens next, which means attending meetings, submitting public comments, and paying attention to what happens after major announcements are removed from the district website’s front page.

It also means thinking carefully about November.

Voters will have to decide what kind of school district they want and what kind of Board behavior makes that district possible. Do they want trustees focused on policy, outcomes and accountability? Or do they want board members scrutinizing staff work, inserting themselves into operations and treating every professional disagreement like evidence of something darker?

The answer will shape Austin’s ability to succeed as much as anything he does himself.

I have spoken with many parents and community members who are concerned about what comes next and have asked what I think.

I think Austin’s response gave me a reason to be hopeful. He understands the distinction between governance and operations, speaks about the Board’s collective goals rather than individual demands, and values organizational clarity, public reporting, and taking the time to understand complex problems before adding another solution.

He also brings enough experience that he should not need the Board to explain how a superintendent’s job works.

Now the Board needs to show that it understands its own.

It owes Austin space and trust. Not unquestioning loyalty, not freedom from oversight and not automatic agreement, but it owes him the opportunity to exercise the professional judgment it supposedly hired him for.

I hope he can hold his ground when that judgment is tested.

I hope the Board can hear “no,” “not yet,” or “that is an operational decision” without deciding it has another superintendent problem.

I hope that by December, the cabinet is intact, morale is improving, special education families feel more secure, and the lawyer has rediscovered the audience seating.

Most of all, I hope Austin works out because LBUSD cannot afford for him not to.

Like many parents, I find this appointment high-stakes. My children still have over a decade ahead of them in these schools. Teachers and staff will still be here after the latest controversy is replaced by the next one. Families need the district to become steadier, not simply better at announcing that it is.

Austin said he wants Laguna Beach to become the best possible version of Laguna Beach.

So, right now, I am rooting for him.

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One of the most important things I have learned from studying school board governance is that poor governance rarely announces itself and will usually show up under a much nicer name: responsiveness, urgency, efficiency, transparency, and community input.

I have spent the last couple of years watching Laguna Beach Unified board meetings, reading agendas, and trying to understand how an idea becomes a district decision. Somewhere along the way, the California Education Code and board bylaws became recreational reading. This has done very little for my social life (thank you to my friends and family for listening to my newfound knowledge), but it does satisfy the part of me that wants to know how public systems are supposed to work, where authority ends, and why certain procedures were put in place before someone decides they are inconvenient.

As summer break begins, LBUSD is heading into another superintendent transition, a new budget cycle, and a board election in November. We do not yet know the full field of candidates, but before the mailers arrive and everyone discovers a passionate commitment to transparency, it seems worth deciding what the job actually requires.

What kind of school board would serve this district well?

We do not have to answer that question on instinct, since California law provides a solid framework. The California School Boards Association offers guidance, and LBUSD already has policies and bylaws that define responsibilities. Other districts have built governance systems that Laguna Beach can learn from.

The harder part is finding trustees who believe those rules still matter when they slow down something the board wants to do.

The California Education Code gives school boards broad authority. Section 35010 places school districts under the control of a governing board. Section 35160 gives boards wide latitude, provided their actions are consistent with the law and the purposes of public education. Section 35161 allows boards to delegate responsibilities while still holding ultimate accountability.

That authority belongs to the board collectively, but it does not make board members district administrators.

The board governs through policy, budgets, contracts, goals, superintendent hiring and evaluation, bargaining direction, accountability systems, and public votes, while the superintendent and staff run the district. Education Code Section 35035 identifies the superintendent as the board’s chief executive officer and assigns responsibilities involving implementation, budgeting, staffing, financial reporting, and carrying out district plans.

Essentially, the board sets the direction, the superintendent carries it out, and then the board monitors the work and evaluates the results.

This arrangement is not complicated, but it can quickly become messy when individual trustees act as though they have their own chain of command. Staff should not have to sort through competing instructions, and the public should not have to guess whether a decision came from the board, the superintendent, a site administrator, or one notably persistent trustee.

An engaged board should ask difficult questions, demand reliable information, examine budgets, evaluate the superintendent, and push for better results without taking over the work. The line gets crossed when trustees begin deciding which employee should handle a task, which vendor should be selected, which venue should be used, or which public complaint should be assigned to staff immediately.

For LBUSD, that distinction stopped being theoretical this year.

In January, the board introduced a change to Bylaw 9322, which controls how meeting agendas are developed. The existing language called for the board president and superintendent to work together, but the revision gave the board president final approval.

That may sound like a small procedural adjustment, but it wasn’t.

No history of repeated agenda failures had been presented to explain why such a change was necessary. At the time, Dr. Jason Glass said the existing system followed normal practice and that he had always had a productive working relationship with the board president—until a disagreement arose over one particular agenda item with the new board president, Sheri Morgan.

Staff, both employee unions, and hundreds of written and in-person public comments opposed the change. The majority moved forward anyway.

Agenda control is easy to dismiss as board policy minutiae until it determines which issues make it onto the dais and which decisions the board can take into its own hands.

The revised bylaw was passed on February 12. That same meeting included a lengthy discussion about the graduation location, and the item returned for action at the board’s very next meeting on February 26.

I am not claiming that the bylaw change caused the graduation vote, but the sequence shows why the change mattered. Almost immediately after the board president gained final agenda authority, a decision traditionally handled at the school-site level was brought to the full board for a vote.

Glass told the board that graduation locations had historically been site decisions and recommended leaving the matter there. Dee Perry also said she wanted it to remain “a site decision,” while arguing that community concerns deserved more attention.

That was a reasonable concern. Families should be heard, and students should be consulted. If the process was too narrow, unclear, or closed prematurely, the board had every right to ask questions and require something better.

It could have directed the administration to explain how the initial decision was reached, gather broader feedback, set clear criteria, and return with a recommendation.

Instead, Dee, along with Sheri Morgan and Howard Hills, voted to move graduation to the Irvine Bowl.

The board did not improve the site-level process—it replaced it.

That is the difference between oversight and management. Oversight would have required a better decision-making process, while management was the board selecting the venue itself.

Once public pressure is sufficient to bring an operational decision to the board, the same reasoning can be applied to transportation, facilities, staffing, discipline, communications, curriculum, or student services. A board does not have to make every decision itself to prove it listens; sometimes, listening should lead to a better process, not a board takeover.

The same preference for a desired outcome over a clear process has appeared in the board’s handling of superintendent appointments.

At the new majority’s first meeting in December 2024, the board voted 3–2 to direct staff to prepare a contract for a specific interim superintendent candidate. That effort fell apart when the candidate declined.

In May 2026, forty-eight hours after approving Glass’s separation, the same three-member majority voted to appoint Dr. Don Austin as the permanent superintendent without presenting a new public search process.

The circumstances were not identical, but the pattern is hard to miss. In both cases, the majority identified the person they wanted and attempted to move directly toward a contract. The December 2024 effort failed because the candidate said no. On May 14, 2026, the candidate said yes.

I have already written in detail about Austin’s appointment and the Orange County District Attorney’s request for answers, so I am not going to rebuild that full timeline here. The point I am making here is simpler: policies, bylaws, notice, consultation, and equal access to information matter most when the people with the votes already know what they want.

Howard Hills offered a very different view at the June 4 meeting, saying the board could appoint a superintendent “any way the board wants to do it and any time.” He was stressing the breadth of the board’s legal authority, and that authority is broad, but authority is only the beginning of the question.

A responsible trustee should also ask whether the process is fair, whether all board members have the same information, whether the public has been given an honest account of what is happening, and whether the decision will still look credible once the immediate excitement has passed.

Having the legal power to do something does not automatically make it wise. Moving quickly does not mean the work was carefully considered, and a policy does not lose its value because following it has become inconvenient.

A district that prides itself on excellence should be looking for the best way to govern, not treating the legal minimum as an impressive achievement. Of course, governance is about much more than the controversies that fill meeting rooms.

California’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) requires districts to assess achievement, attendance, facilities, school climate, family engagement, course access, staffing, special education, mental health, safety, and whether different groups of students are being well served.

Good trustees should be able to ask whether a program is working without trying to redesign it from the dais. They should be able to recognize a disturbing result without turning one number into a districtwide catastrophe, and they should also be willing to look honestly at areas that need attention rather than hide behind LBUSD’s overall reputation.

Being a strong district does not mean every decision is strong or every student is getting what they need.

Labor relations require the same kind of judgment. Support for teachers and classified staff is not measured by appreciation posts or friendly comments during meetings. It shows up in bargaining priorities, workload, staffing, compensation, benefits, communication, and whether the board respects the people who actually do the work.

Trustees need to understand the district’s financial position, retention challenges, staffing needs, and long-term obligations. They should give clear and lawful direction to the bargaining team while avoiding side promises, public freelancing, or informal efforts to influence negotiations outside the established process.

A person can genuinely care about teachers and still be terrible at labor relations. Caring is important, but knowing how the process works is also important.

The board’s relationship with the public requires a similar balance.

A board meeting is not an open-ended town hall. The board has an agenda to complete, decisions to make, and legal requirements to follow, but public comment is still part of the meeting’s real work. It is not a formality everyone has to sit through before the important people begin talking.

The community does not get to direct staff or control every decision. At the same time, these are public schools, and the public has every right to question how they are being governed.

Trustees need ways to hear from people without assuming that the fullest room represents the entire community, but they also need to avoid the opposite mistake of treating criticism as an annoyance or a threat.

Public opinion is information, and it belongs in the decision alongside law, data, professional expertise, student needs, and financial realities. The board then has to explain what it decided and why, especially when the answer is not what the loudest group wanted.

None of this works well without the right temperament.

Trustees will disagree. That is normal and often healthy. The issue is whether they can disagree without making every conflict personal, ask hard questions without humiliating staff, and accept a vote without spending the next several months trying to undermine the result. They also need to resist the urge to turn every complaint they agree with into a direct assignment for the superintendent.

Winning an election also does not make someone an instant expert in finance, instruction, law, facilities, transportation, labor, special education, and every other corner of district operations. There is nothing wrong with admitting you need to learn something before deciding it.

Humility is not a side benefit of this job; it is part of being competent at it.

Other districts offer useful examples. Ohio’s Cleveland Metropolitan uses goals and guardrails to distinguish between the outcomes the board monitors and the operational boundaries staff must follow. Washington’s Issaquah uses written expectations and public monitoring reports. Virginia’s Fairfax County has invested in explanations that help the public understand complicated decisions.

None of this is revolutionary; it is simply more organized than waiting for a controversy and then deciding where the boundary should have been.

LBUSD already has some of the right pieces. The district uses public bargaining proposals, fiscal disclosures, hearings, and ratification procedures.

Those processes can feel slow and tedious when everything is moving smoothly. Their purpose becomes much easier to appreciate the moment someone wants to bypass them.

This is the foundation I plan to use when evaluating future board candidates.

Can the person explain the difference between governance and management without giving a vague answer about “leadership”? What would they do after losing a vote? When should the board defer to professional staff? How should the board respond when the loudest public demand conflicts with legal obligations, budget realities, student needs, or a staff recommendation? Do they believe adopted policies still apply when those policies slow the outcome they prefer?

Those answers will tell us far more than another campaign statement about transparency, excellence, or putting students first. Nearly every candidate will claim those values. The revealing part is what they do when those values pull in different directions.

Some warning signs are easier to spot.

A candidate talks much more about what the board is legally allowed to do than about when restraint is appropriate. Policies and bylaws suddenly become flexible whenever they interfere with a preferred outcome. The candidate promises to fix operational problems without showing any understanding of the board’s actual role. The superintendent is discussed as though each trustee personally supervises the position.

Other warning signs are quieter. A candidate uses the word transparency constantly but cannot explain confidentiality or public-meeting law. One isolated data point becomes the entire story of the district. Uncomfortable information is dismissed because LBUSD remains strong overall.

I will be listening closely to how candidates talk about staff. Praise is easy, but respect shows up in how someone discusses workload, morale, bargaining, professional expertise, and the limits of their own authority.

Poor governance has a very good publicist: role confusion becomes responsiveness, an incomplete process becomes efficiency, and meeting the legal minimum becomes transparency. The label changes, but the underlying habit remains the same: use the power first and explain it later.

My children are at the beginning of their time in this district, so I am less interested in who wins a board argument this month than in whether LBUSD remains stable, trusted, and well run for the next decade.

I am looking for trustees who understand the law and use their authority responsibly. I want people who value public input without allowing whoever fills the room to govern by volume, who provide serious oversight without directing day-to-day operations, and whose support for staff lasts through bargaining season.

I also want transparency before decisions are made, not only after the result has been announced.

Before deciding whom to support, I want to know whether candidates understand the responsibilities of the role and have the judgment to exercise them well.

Laguna Beach will be better served by a board that can work collectively, respect professional roles, follow its own processes, and keep the district’s long-term health in view.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

Subscribe now

Sources

• California Education Code: 35010, 35035, 35160, and 35161

• California School Boards Association: Board Roles and Responsibilities

• LBUSD Board Meetings and Public Records

• Governance examples:

  • Cleveland’s Goals and Guardrails

  • Issaquah’s Governance Policies

  • Fairfax County’s Governance Manual.

On January 22, I put my young kids to bed and turned on the school board meeting from home.

As a parent, I had already spent months watching meetings, reading agendas, talking with other parents, and trying to understand what was changing inside Laguna Beach Unified. I had also promised my husband I would be selective about attending board meetings in person because we have two littles, full-time jobs, and, theoretically, interests and activities outside school board governance.

So that night, I planned to stay home.

Then I listened to Board Member Howard Hills speak to Superintendent Jason Glass, a tone I found condescending and unnecessarily combative, during a discussion about who could place items on the Board’s agenda.

I got in my car and drove to the meeting.

Howard was still talking when I arrived, which, for once, worked in my favor.

The exchange was not the beginning of my interest in the district, but it was the moment I realized how easily important details could disappear. A few changes to a board bylaw could reshape who controls the agenda, yet most families or community members would never have the time or desire to read it.

Frankly, “school board bylaw” is the kind of phrase that makes a normal person’s eyes glaze over.

But for what was happening to our district, the details mattered, and I wanted somewhere to keep track of them. A week after that meeting, I started A Public Record for Laguna Schools.

There was no plan, as I basically expected a few friends and neighbors to read it, perhaps share it in a parent chat, and maybe people could return when they needed context.

Since then, many more community members have found the site, including people who do not know me personally. So this seems like a reasonable time to explain who I am and where I am coming from.

My husband and I chose to purchase a home in the Laguna Beach Unified School District before we were married or had children. He wanted to live near the beach, and I wanted a small, high-performing public school district. So this was the best of both worlds.

I grew up in a similarly sized town with excellent schools and highly educated teachers. I valued being in a district where children did not disappear into a massive system, staff knew families, and parents could meaningfully advocate for their children.

Even before I had a child enrolled in LBUSD, I paid attention, even if from a distance. I asked neighbors about their experiences, followed the pool debate, and appreciated the district’s investment in academics, athletics, the arts, mental health, and the whole child.

As my oldest approached school age, I began following the district more closely. During the 2024 election, I was concerned by some of the rhetoric about schools, the Board’s role, and the expectation that trustees should intervene in operational matters.

When the results came in, I had the distinct feeling that much of the community had been despondent, and it was time to get people to pay attention.

I started talking with other concerned parents. Someone invited me into a group chat where parents, retired teachers, and community members shared meeting information and tried to grasp what was happening and what the ramifications could be. Some people in that chat later helped form Families Unified for Education in Laguna, or FUEL.

My first introduction to formally writing about district issues was a letter to the editor that was published in April 2025, after I felt the public conversation about LBUSD’s test results was missing important context. I continued writing letters when complicated district issues were reduced to a few talking points, but the format left little room to follow the questions in great depth wherever they led.

Since FUEL has become a recurring question for me, here is the uncomplicated answer: I often agree with the organization. I am not on its board, and I hold no position within it. FUEL does not have a membership card-carrying program, and I receive its emails like anyone else.

No organization, trustee, teacher, staff member, union, or community group directs or approves what I publish. Most people do not know what I am writing until it appears, including my husband!

However, People do reach out to me, sharing experiences and suggesting subjects they believe deserve attention. I am still considered “new” by Laguna Beach standards, so I have also received an extensive education in who has been fighting with whom since approximately the creation of Laguna Canyon Road.

I appreciate people trusting me, and want to iterate that I do not publish something simply because someone tells me it is true. I do not want this site to become a home for rumors or anonymous accusations. Information needs to be supported. Even when I have a hunch that something is happening, instinct is not evidence. However, people are significantly less subtle than they believe, so I find it easy to follow the breadcrumbs.

I am also open to correction. If I get a fact wrong or miss important context, I want to know. My perspective is mine, but the facts still need to hold up.

And by the way, I do have a perspective or “bias.”

I am a mother whose children are just entering this district, not on the cusp of leaving it. I studied political science because I genuinely enjoy understanding how systems of government work, even when the people within those systems seem determined to make it difficult.

I grew up in a politically active family where people spoke frankly and debated openly about all kinds of topics. I care about equality, mental health, strong academics, small classes, athletics, the arts, and whole-child development. Those values influence what I notice and what I believe deserves attention.

That is bias in the basic human sense: I have experiences, priorities, and opinions. Everyone does.

I am not a trained journalist, and A Public Record is not a traditional newspaper. I write from my own point of view rather than disguising it as a “watchdog” publication or perfect objectivity.

That does not give me permission to invent facts or to omit context that changes the story purposely. I will always try to be fair, and fairness requires representing the information honestly and correcting the record when necessary.

People are free to disagree with my conclusions. They are also free to start their own Substack, website, or Instagram account. In fact, several already have. I welcome more people paying attention, particularly if it means more people read agendas and attend meetings.

I started writing because there is a lot about LBUSD worth protecting.

The district offers small classes, after-school opportunities, plenty of AP courses, transportation accessibility, athletic programs, visual and performing arts, mental health support, and even a valuable partnership with the Boys & Girls Club that goes back generations. Teachers and staff also do an enormous amount of work that most families never see.

I will say, my child loves the bus so much that it outranks me.

The district also faces declining enrollment, aging facilities, challenges with tech approach, leadership changes, and governance decisions that may affect it for years to come. My children are at the beginning of their time here, so I have a long-term interest in how those issues are handled.

I am hopeful that what I cover broadens over time. I want to write less about board issues and more about teachers, staff, students, programs, and the parts of the district that families may not see. I also want to help parents understand systems that can feel unnecessarily complicated.

And I promise, I think about things other than board bylaws.

This is not a temporary campaign project, and I look forward to sharing issues well past November. The district will still matter when the ballots are counted, and my children will still have many years ahead of them in LBUSD.

So that is the basic introduction to A Public Record for Laguna Schools.

I am a parent who cares deeply about public education, governance, and the community my children are growing up in. I have a point of view, and I do not hide it. I also take seriously the responsibility to corroborate information, avoid spreading rumors, and correct factual mistakes.

You do not have to agree with everything I write, but at least now you know who is writing it.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

Subscribe now

On Tuesday, May 12, Laguna Beach Unified’s board majority voted to approve Dr. Jason Glass’s separation less than a year into his four-year contract.

A superintendent who had just moved his young family here was suddenly on his way out. Staff and teachers still had to walk into classrooms the next morning, while students still needed adults to be steady. Families were left trying to understand what had happened, while the board seemed ready for everyone to accept the outcome before it had even explained the process.

Now the Orange County District Attorney’s Office has asked LBUSD to respond to Brown Act complaints tied to Dr. Glass’s termination and Dr. Don Austin’s hiring.

The board wanted the community to move on, but the timeline did not.

At the May 12 special meeting, the board went into closed session and emerged with a 3-2 vote approving Dr. Glass’s mutual separation agreement. Howard Hills, Dee Perry, and Sheri Morgan voted yes. Jim Kelly and Joan Malczewski voted no.

Two days later, the closed-session agenda listed public employee appointments, including the acting, interim, and permanent superintendents. Many people expected the board to discuss temporary leadership following Dr. Glass’s departure and begin the search for a new superintendent.

Instead, Sheri announced that Manoj Roychowdhury would serve as interim superintendent and that Dr. Austin would become the next superintendent of Laguna Beach Unified.

The reaction in the room was immediate. After days of rumors, concern, and public pleas not to remove Dr. Glass, a permanent successor was being presented as a completed decision.

Joan later described what happened from inside the board.

“I was not informed at any point that Don Austin was a candidate,” she said at the June 4 meeting.

She had been “given a motion with no prior information about Don Austin” and had “no information that negotiations had been ongoing.”

If a sitting trustee did not know Dr. Austin was under active consideration until a motion appeared, imagine how the announcement landed with everyone else.

Forty-eight hours separated the removal of one superintendent from the appointment of another. No recruitment timeline had been presented. The public had not seen the selection criteria, candidate qualifications, evidence of candidate review, or an open-session explanation of how the district’s superintendent search process applied.

For a board majority explicitly elected on transparency, it was an extraordinary amount of public darkness.

During public comment on May 12, one parent noted that Dr. Glass had not even been given “a full school year.” She called him “thoughtful, measured, student-focused, genuine, and highly qualified,” then asked the board to “choose stability for our children and the amazing teachers and staff who support them every day.”

A man who spoke next said he had talked with Dee the day before. According to him, she had previously described Dr. Glass as “a great and honorable man, a man of character who could do great things for our district,” and still believed that. He also said Dee agreed when he called the way Dr. Glass had been treated by certain board members “utterly disgusting.”

Then he said Dee had implied she was “powerless to stop what was happening.”

Powerless? Dee Perry is an elected trustee. Her vote supplies the majority.

The same commenter told her that if she felt powerless to stop something she believed would harm the district, “then you should resign.”

I had also pleaded with Dee before the vote. I wrote privately and asked her to consider the damage LBUSD would absorb by removing a superintendent so early in his tenure. My concern was larger than one employee. It included staff morale, leadership stability, family confidence, and the future of the district my children attend.

Her response acknowledged Dr. Glass’s strengths.

“I agree with you that Dr. Glass is intelligent, capable, and caring, and I am very sorry this has not worked out,” Dee wrote.

She referred to “difficult circumstances that are confidential,” then added: “I know it looks like I am not listening, but I am. If you were in my shoes with inside knowledge, I wonder what you would do?”

There may be confidential personnel information that the public cannot see, and I am not asking Dee to disclose it.

But that question makes me wonder whether all five trustees received the same material information through the same proper process before they voted.

According to a public commenter, Dee felt powerless despite continuing to regard Dr. Glass as honorable and capable. In her message to me, she pointed to inside knowledge. Later, while discussing Dr. Austin, she said she had been “a little bit in the dark” but was “thrilled” when she learned he might be available.

Those explanations deserve scrutiny because her vote carried the outcome.

Did every trustee receive the same confidential information about Dr. Glass? Was the full board included equally in any lawful closed-session discussion? How did the district move from separation to permanent replacement so quickly?

Why did Dee support Dr. Austin’s appointment while describing herself as partly in the dark about how it came together?

Those questions are no longer only matters of public trust and board governance. They are now part of a formal legal challenge.

The challenge is called a Cure and Correct Demand.

Under the Brown Act, a written demand allows a public body to address an alleged violation of the open-meeting law before a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the action is filed. It is neither a court ruling nor a finding that a violation occurred. It presents specific actions and alleged defects to the agency and requests a response.

The demand sent regarding LBUSD questions the board’s actions at the May 12 and May 14 special meetings. It challenges the 3-2 vote to appoint Dr. Austin, any approval or implementation of an employment agreement, and related actions involving negotiation, appointment, compensation, or contract terms.

It also questions the missing public process. According to the demand, the public was never shown a recruitment timeline, a defined search method, candidate qualifications, selection criteria, evidence of candidate review, or a public explanation for bypassing the district’s adopted superintendent-search procedures.

Another allegation concerns whether the agendas gave adequate notice of the full scope and intended finality of the board’s actions. The public did not walk into May 14 expecting a permanent superintendent appointment to be announced as a done deal.

The requested cure includes rescinding the appointment and related actions, properly re-noticing the recruitment and selection process, and publicly disclosing the process used to appoint Dr. Austin.

To be clear, these remain allegations that LBUSD now has an opportunity to answer.

But the legal questions developed after the meetings. The public’s reaction began in real time.

Before the May 14 meeting, families, staff, students, and community members gathered outside Thurston because they already understood the ramifications of a sudden superintendent departure.

Much of the organizing came from moms using ordinary networks: texts, neighborhood chats, school pickup conversations, phone calls, and friends telling friends. There was no elaborate operation behind it. People showed up because what happened on May 12 felt abrupt, unclear, and, most of all, deeply wrong.

Inside the meeting, public commenters criticized the board, and the audience cheered in support. Sheri interrupted those reactions.

“This is a business meeting,” she said. “This is not a rally. It is illegal to rally on campus.”

The sentence captured the problem perfectly. A majority that campaigned on public engagement had removed a superintendent, prepared to announce his permanent successor two days later, and then treated visible support for criticism as something to control.

Howard Hills, of all people, should understand the principle.

He has publicly insisted that when someone out in public claims to know what a trustee knows or should know, the trustee has “the right to state corrections.”

Fine. But then the standard runs in both directions.

Board members may defend themselves from the dais. Families may criticize them in front of the audience and at public meetings. Speech rights do not become less important when the speech is loud, well-organized, or deeply inconvenient to those holding power.

The First Amendment cannot function as a personal umbrella for elected officials and a rain delay for everyone else.

There is a special condescension reserved for mothers who notice things. Quiet participation earns the label “engaged.” Visible anger becomes “emotional.” Organization suddenly triggers lectures on tone, decorum, and safety.

After May 14, the story began shifting away from the superintendent transition and toward the people who protested it.

“Safety” became the new frame. President Morgan said the district was investigating the events of May 14. At least briefly during the June 4 meeting, yellow-and-black retractable belt stanchions separated the board area from the public beside a sign reading, “No public access beyond this point.”

Families were exercising their right to criticize elected officials and participate in public life. Police were present, and no citations, arrests, or documented unlawful conduct have been issued.

If records document a specific safety incident, release them. Any law-enforcement contact, investigation, security change, legal review, consultant work, or cost connected to May 14 should be disclosed.

The public should not have to fund a fog machine.

At the June 4 meeting, one speaker rejected descriptions of protesters as “out of control,” “hateful,” or an “angry mob,” along with claims that Dee had been assaulted, pushed down, blocked, or intimidated.

She described families with signs, pom-poms, and chants participating in a protest that was “visible,” “energetic,” and “peaceful.” She also read what she described as Dee’s email from the following morning: “No one pushed me or anything. It was just my knee and fear of being shoved. My fault. I really appreciated your assistance.”

Should the district possess evidence to the contrary, it should produce it. Vague safety language cannot substitute for records.

As another parent explained, “Trust is not built that way. It’s built through transparency during process, not explanations after the fact.”

The June 4 discussion made the original process look worse.

Sheri defended the sudden superintendent appointment by pointing to the superintendent search conducted the previous year. Dr. Austin had reportedly participated, she said, and there was no “statute of limitations” or “expiration date” on that search. Starting over would be fiscally irresponsible because the prior process cost more than $50,000 and took four months.

Joan explained why a process still mattered. It protects against bias, generates better information, safeguards the institution, clarifies governance roles, creates buy-in, and protects the person being hired.

She then returned to the central problem.

“I was not informed at any point that Don Austin was a candidate.”

Joan said she had no prior information about him, no knowledge that negotiations had been underway, and no notice that a start date had been discussed.

“So I’m very curious,” she said. “Who made that determination and why?”

Then came the sentence that deserves to sit on its own:

“Somebody is making decisions and negotiating on behalf of the board with no direction from the board.”

The public record does not yet identify who initiated the discussions, who conducted negotiations, or who decided the prior search could be revived without first bringing the question to the full board.

What it does show is that no new public search process or open-session explanation had been presented. Dr. Austin was suddenly available. A start date had apparently been discussed. A motion appeared. Three votes were there.

Joan and Jim shared they had been left outside the process. Dee said she had been “a little bit in the dark.”

A school board is supposed to act collectively, not through a process that leaves elected trustees learning about a permanent superintendent candidate only after a motion is placed before them.

The question is not only who voted yes.

Who was moving the pieces before the vote happened?

Howard responded by saying people had gotten into the habit of alleging Brown Act violations and that determining a violation was “far more complicated” than commenters suggested. Dee called Dr. Austin a great candidate and said she was thrilled he was available.

Neither response answered Joan.

And now the Orange County District Attorney’s Office has written to LBUSD’s attorney.

Its letter does not find a Brown Act violation and expressly says the office is not opining on potential violations “at this time.” It does say the OCDA received numerous complaints alleging Brown Act violations connected to Dr. Glass’s termination and Dr. Austin’s hiring. The office also received the formal Cure and Correct Demand concerning the May 12 and May 14 meetings.

A senior deputy district attorney in the Special Prosecutions Unit asked LBUSD’s attorney to provide the district’s proposed course of action within seven business days.

For once, the questions have moved beyond public comment silence.

I am relieved the DA’s office has asked the district to state its proposed course of action, even though I do not know how the legal issues will ultimately be resolved. The community deserves clearer answers than the board majority has provided.

How did Dr. Glass’s separation happen? How did Dr. Austin’s appointment come together? Who held discussions, negotiated terms, or made decisions? Were all five trustees given the same information before voting? Which actions, if any, must be cured or corrected? How much public money is being spent reviewing the rally instead of explaining the decisions that caused it?

This board majority repeatedly pushes the legal and practical boundaries of governance, then acts surprised when the community notices. Policy becomes flexible when it is inconvenient. Closed session absorbs decisions the public cannot reconstruct. Transparency arrives after the vote, dressed as explanation.

Three votes can produce an outcome. They cannot manufacture legitimacy.

Dee has a particular responsibility here. She is the longest-serving trustee and knows how a superintendent search and lawful board process should work. Confidential information may have influenced her May 12 decision, but uncertainty about what would come next should have led her to slow the process.

She voted with Howard and Sheri on May 12, seconded the motion to appoint Dr. Austin on May 14, and voted with them again on June 4.

Claims of powerlessness or being “a little bit in the dark” lose credibility when the same vote keeps making the outcome possible.

The board can still release records, explain the timeline, publicly answer the Cure and Correct Demand, and disclose the cost of any investigation, legal review, security response, or consultant work connected to May 14. It can tell the community who knew what, when they knew it, and whether all five trustees received the same information before decisions were made.

Dee still has a choice about the legacy she leaves behind: she can be the trustee who broke with the majority before more damage was done, or the decisive vote that enabled its actions when it mattered most.

She cannot continue wielding power while claiming she has none when the consequences are unfolding in real time.

The third vote is what makes these actions possible, and with every decision it enables, the stakes grow.

History will remember who had the power to stop it and who chose not to.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

Subscribe now

Despite what you may have heard, Laguna Beach Unified and Palo Alto Unified did not officially swap superintendents.

LBUSD pushed out Dr. Jason Glass, then hired Dr. Don Austin, the former superintendent of Palo Alto Unified. A few weeks later, Palo Alto selected Glass as its next superintendent.

It is not a formal trade, but it sure feels like one. And that makes the comparison hard to ignore.

When Austin was announced in Laguna Beach, the district leaned hard on his Palo Alto résumé. The message was not subtle: LBUSD had landed a superintendent from one of California’s top-ranked school districts. Board President Sheri Morgan called the hire a win for Laguna Beach.

Then, the same school district that had been used to validate Austin turned around and chose Glass.

So now the question is not just who Laguna hired, it is what Laguna thought it was buying.

At the March 6, 2025, superintendent search meeting, LBUSD named values and desired qualities for its next superintendent. They were not framed as a single, clear, defining priority, but rather as a broad composite: experienced, ethical, student-centered, collaborative, innovative, communicative, humble, and able to work with a divided or newly configured board.

Howard Hills wanted proven executive experience and a demonstrated record of success that could be explained, sustained, corroborated, and substantiated. He also named ethical high standards.

Jim Kelly wanted someone “sane, even-handed, and collaborative.” Dee Perry wanted someone who truly cared about students and staff, had a record of success, understood how that success happened, and did not have a “really big ego.” Joan Malczewski emphasized communication, accessibility, empathy, engagement, vision, innovation, and collaboration.

Sheri Morgan said she wanted humility, innovation, out-of-the-box thinking, honesty, collaboration, and someone who understood that LBUSD schools are not a “little bubble,” but part of a larger community.

So, when Morgan later suggested the criteria stayed the same, the obvious question is whether Austin clearly met that same profile.

After everything that happened at Palo Alto Unified, does Austin’s full record match the values LBUSD said it wanted? Proven experience, yes. But what about steadiness? Collaboration? Humility? Staff trust? Communication? The ability to work through board tension without becoming part of it?

“From the #1 school district” is a résumé line, not an answer.

Palo Alto appears to have been clear about what it wanted in its next superintendent: a leader who listens, rebuilds trust, supports students and staff, and understands the needs of the whole community. PAUSD also has a publicly stated commitment to LGBTQ+ students and inclusive school environments.

That makes Glass’s selection notable. Glass has been a visible education leader on student inclusion, whole-child development, and LGBTQ+ student rights. Palo Alto did not seem confused about what kind of leader it wanted.

Which raises the question Laguna Beach School Board still has not fully answered: what kind of district are you trying to build?

When Glass was selected by LBUSD, the public rationale aligned with the search profile. Dee Perry said Glass had championed student-centered learning, innovation, and whole-child development. The district pointed to experiential learning, early college access, innovation and instruction, and artificial intelligence. The search was described as a four-month nationwide process. Perry emphasized the Board was “100% behind Dr. Jason Glass.”

That statement did not exactly age well.

The public pitch for Austin focused more on experience, rankings, prior ties to Laguna, and familiarity with the community. Those are not meaningless; Austin has real experience throughout California and was once the principal of Laguna Beach High School. His children even attended LBUSD schools.

But experience is not the same thing as values. A résumé is not a vision. And “he came from the #1 district” gets more awkward when the #1 district immediately hires the superintendent Laguna paid to leave.

The contract comparison does not make this story cleaner.

At the June 4, 2026, meeting, the framing around Austin’s contract seemed to suggest LBUSD had negotiated a less expensive agreement than Glass’s. That may work if the comparison stays narrow and mostly first-year, as Glass’s Laguna Beach contract included visible recruitment costs: relocation, temporary housing, and mentor support.

But Glass moved his young family across the country into one of California’s most expensive housing markets. He had every right to negotiate those terms, and the Board had every right to reject them. Instead, they approved his agreement 5-0.

So if we are going to talk about Glass’s contract, we should also talk about the Board that approved it.

Over the full four-year structure, Austin’s LBUSD agreement is not cheaper.

To note, health benefits are excluded because the public does not know which plan or coverage level either superintendent selected.

Glass’s contract had the obvious first-year recruitment costs. Still, Austin’s contract has quieter costs built into the structure: a higher base salary, a recurring annuity contribution, and optional paid days.

The daily-rate comparison is sharper.

Austin is paid more per required workday because his salary is spread over fewer required days. His agreement says he receives no vacation days, which sounds disciplined until you notice his required work year is already 21 days shorter than Glass’s.

Austin’s agreement also allows up to five additional paid workdays each year at his current daily rate, which adds about $10,044.64 per year, or $40,178.56 over four years. If his salary is increased or if additional paid days beyond those five are ever authorized, the cost will rise even further.

That comparison is especially hard to ignore, given that teachers and classified employees are looking at a 1% raise in 2026-27 and some healthcare premium increases that will eat into that gain. If staff is being asked to absorb that reality, LBUSD should be able to explain why its superintendent contract needed a $450k salary, a 4% annuity, fewer required workdays, and optional paid additional days.

The Palo Alto comparison adds one more twist.

Glass’s proposed PAUSD agreement has a lower base salary than Austin’s LBUSD agreement. However, PAUSD’s contract also recognizes the real cost of recruiting a superintendent into a high-cost area: housing support, moving expenses, paid transition days, and, like Austin, annuity and optional additional paid days.

So the story is not “Glass had more perks, and Austin did not,” it is that superintendent contracts hide costs in different places. Glass’s contracts show the cost of recruiting someone into an expensive community. Austin’s LBUSD contract shows the cost of paying a higher salary over fewer required workdays, with recurring add-ons.

The leadership stories are just as intertwined.

In Laguna, Glass’s exit felt board-driven by the constant employee-review items, the public tension, the healthcare audit blame-shifting, and the speed of his separation. All of that created the impression of a superintendent being squeezed out.

In Palo Alto, Austin’s exit had a different texture. His tenure included strong district performance, but also repeated public controversy and strained relationships. His departure looked less like a sudden collapse and more like a relationship that had worn down.

Now Laguna has Austin. Palo Alto has Glass. So yes, this means I will be watching closely at both performances this year.

Which superintendent can stabilize a board? Which one can keep staff? Which one can build trust? Which one can improve student outcomes without reducing children to test scores? Which one can protect whole-child development, inclusion, and the daily experience of students and staff?

And for LBUSD, the more immediate questions are simple.

If the search criteria stayed the same, how did the Board evaluate Austin against the qualities it named in March 2025? Where was the public discussion of collaboration, humility, staff trust, student-centered leadership, communication, and the ability to work within a strained governance environment? Did LBUSD weigh the end of Austin’s time in Palo Alto against those criteria, or did the “#1 school district” label do most of the work?

Laguna Beach did not just hire a résumé; we hired a leadership style, a history, and a contract.

If the LBUSD Board believes Austin is worth more than Glass over the long term, it should say why plainly. Not just that he came from Palo Alto, or that he knows Laguna, or that he is experienced.

What problem was he hired to solve?

What values are he expected to protect?

How will our Board measure success beyond rankings, optics, and politics?

Because the district LBUSD used to sell Austin just chose Glass. If the #1 school district picked up our ex, Laguna residents are allowed to ask what Palo Alto saw that our own Board chose not to keep.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and the issues affecting our schools easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the time, research, writing, and platform costs required to keep this information organized and accessible. I am deeply grateful for anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way, and the site will always remain fully accessible to all community members.

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After everything that has happened in our school district over the past few months, it is worth revisiting where this all began: the current board majority’s first superintendent transition.

Some may point to November 21, 2024, when the old board approved Jason Viloria’s separation agreement, as the start of that transition, but really the roots go back much further.

The transition began during the 2024 school board election campaign, through public comments, debates over the pool, and repeated claims that Laguna Beach Unified had become too closed off, too administration-driven, and too dismissive of community input.

By the November election, LBUSD was already in a political trust fight. It was not just about the pool, academic data, bylaws, public comment, or even the superintendent. It was about whether the community trusted the district’s leadership structure at all.

Sheri Morgan and Howard Hills ran against that structure. Morgan argued LBUSD had become too top-down, transparency was at an all-time low, and the old board had adopted a weak-board posture. Hills spent years criticizing LBUSD governance, legal interpretations, bylaws, understanding of the Brown Act, and the balance of power between the board and administration. Their message was simple: LBUSD’s governing culture was broken.

At the center of that debate was Superintendent Jason Viloria. Supporters saw him as a stabilizing leader with strong district outcomes; critics saw him as the symbol of an administration-led system that had become too insulated from community concerns. By 2024, criticism of district governance and of Viloria had become closely linked, allowing the conflict to build over time. At the March 14 board meeting, Sensible Laguna co-founder Steve McIntosh criticized district messaging, cited academic data to argue LBUSD was failing students, and spoke of recalling the board, taking back the district, cleaning house, and making a change at the top. The pool controversy then became the clearest symbol of whether the district was listening.

Speakers accused leadership of refusing to compromise, while Morgan tied the issue directly to district leadership and argued it was time for change.

Other disputes included facilities planning, community distrust, and student-related controversies, which were folded into the same broader narrative. By September, the divide was clear: supporters framed the pool as an investment in students and families, while critics focused on cost, transparency, and responsiveness.

So when people describe the superintendent separation as something that suddenly appeared after the election, they skip the very obvious context. The campaign was not only about policy disagreements; it was about replacing a governing culture.

Morgan and Hills won, joining Dee Perry to form a new 3–2 majority. Before the new board was seated, the outgoing board acted.

On November 21, LBUSD board members voted 5–0 to enter into a separation agreement with Viloria, ending his contract effective December 31. The district later said the decision was not based on performance and was intended to minimize disruption while allowing the incoming board to select leadership aligned with its vision.

Was it elegant? No. Was the timing fair game for criticism? Sure

But the cartoon villain version of November leaves out the reality of what was coming. For Viloria, the main target of Morgan and Hill’s campaign, having him stay on so the new majority could spend its first weeks humiliating him or firing him publicly would not have made the district more transparent. It would have made the district uglier, more unstable, and more personal.

So really, the outgoing board gave the incoming majority the leadership opening it had campaigned for. It removed the superintendent who had become the center of the political fight, avoided an immediate public firing battle, created a vacancy, and gave the incoming board the power to appoint an interim, run a search, and hire a superintendent aligned with its vision.

The majority keeps describing November as the thing done to them, but November handed them the opening they wanted.

The real story is what they did with it.

For context, a superintendent’s departure has two tracks: the temporary leadership bridge and the permanent superintendent search. A permanent search is supposed to create legitimacy. It should show the community that the board did not start with a preferred candidate and work backward.

An interim appointment is different because a district cannot sit around for months waiting for a permanent search to finish. Payroll, contracts, board agendas, staff direction, family communication, and daily operations still have to happen. That is why districts often appoint an internal acting superintendent first: someone already inside the system who can keep the district functioning. At the same time, the board develops the long-term plan.

But “interim” does not mean “anything goes.” Even a fast process should be clean. The board should identify the need, decide whether it wants an internal acting superintendent or outside interim, give trustees equal information, discuss candidates only after the process is clear, report out any action, and bring any employment agreement back in open session. A good interim process calms the district.

The new LBUSD board majority did the opposite.

The November 21 decision has also been criticized as a possible violation of California’s newer superintendent protections, but that argument overlooks timing. Education Code § 35150 applies after the first convening of the newly elected board. On November 21, Morgan and Hills had not yet been seated, and the new board had not convened.

A more specific concern involves reporting procedures. The open session began with “no report out of closed session,” yet it was announced later that there was a 5–0 vote to separate from Viloria. While the later written report was the legal minimum, questions about the process are reasonable. November was politically contentious and imperfectly handled, but it was not the event that most clearly tested the new majority’s governance approach — that came on December 16.

It was Morgan and Hills’s first meeting as trustees and the first major leadership decision facing the new board. Viloria’s departure was already scheduled for December 31, and the agenda included discussion of the interim superintendent process.

Rather than discuss the process publicly first, Hills immediately moved to advance closed session ahead of that discussion. Trustee Joan Malczewski objected, arguing that the board had not yet publicly addressed basic questions: whether it wanted an internal acting superintendent or outside interim, how candidates would be considered, what criteria would apply, or whether the interim could seek the permanent position.

Hills argued the board needed to move forward with appointing an interim superintendent, and Morgan attempted to cite legal authority for the closed-session discussion. But the disagreement was less about legality than process. People argued that transparency required the board to establish and discuss the process before considering candidates.

Malczewski then raised concerns that potential candidates had already been contacted before any public process had been discussed. Trustee Jim Kelly also objected, noting that moving the closed session forward delayed public comment. The motion nevertheless passed 3–2, with Morgan, Hills, and Perry voting yes and Kelly and Malczewski voting no.

After the closed session, the board reported a 3–2 vote directing the preparation of an employment agreement with Dr. Joanne Culverhouse as interim superintendent, effective January 1.

Culverhouse’s qualifications were not the central issue; the controversy centered on process. Kelly said he did not know Culverhouse and felt the board had been presented with a preferred candidate. Malczewski said she expected a discussion of the process first and would have preferred multiple candidates or, at least, broader board review.

Again, the board did not need a full permanent search to appoint an interim, but it did need a clean process. Instead, the majority started with a person and worked backward.

Then Culverhouse withdrew. The public record does not tell us her private reasoning, but the public effect was clear: she did not become the face of a process that had already lost legitimacy. From the outside, stepping away looked like the integrity move.

The majority moved quickly, split the board, and failed to make an appointment. The district still needed leadership.

On January 9, the board unanimously appointed Dr. Jeff Dixon as acting superintendent. Dixon was already serving within the district and provided an immediate operational bridge while the board prepared for a permanent search.

By January 23, speakers cited more than 70 written comments in support of Dixon and described him as qualified, respected, and trusted. The interim leadership question had largely been resolved, but the December controversy continued to shape perceptions of the superintendent search.

Leadership Associates became part of that discussion because of Culverhouse’s affiliation with the firm. Questions persisted about who had been contacted, when conversations occurred, and whether the board had followed a shared process or begun with a preferred outcome.

As the permanent search moved forward, Malczewski emphasized that community acceptance and trust would be essential. By March 2025, the district was gathering input, extending surveys, and hosting community sessions, all steps intended to build legitimacy for the eventual selection.

The distinction between November and December matters because it shows what changed. Under the old board, critics were loud and sometimes furious, but the district still largely functioned with the proper guardrails in place. The superintendent managed the district, so staff were not constantly pulled into board politics. Meetings were not perfect, but they were more efficient and less consumed by board-member interference in operations.

The new majority inherited a working system and treated the vacancy as permission to centralize control.

Viloria became a campaign symbol. For critics, he represented the old governing structure; for supporters, he represented continuity and district success.

Regardless of perspective, turning a person into a recurring political weapon is ugly, and it does not help students.

The separation agreement allowed Viloria to leave without being dragged through a public firing spectacle. From my perspective, the outgoing board may have spared the district an even more damaging public fight.

The principal figures eventually moved on. Viloria entered school-leadership consulting. Dixon later joined Newport-Mesa Unified. Culverhouse continued her work with Leadership Associates.

LBUSD was left with the damage, and that damage came from choices.

That is why Dr. Don Austin’s recent appointment process may feel familiar. Of course, Culverhouse was considered during an interim transition, while Austin was selected as permanent superintendent after the district had already completed a prior search.

Despite those differences, both situations raise the same question: when an experienced administrator is approached through a process the public has not fully seen or understood, what responsibility does that administrator have to insist on transparency and legitimacy before accepting the role?

The key distinction came afterward: Culverhouse ultimately did not remain attached to the appointment while Austin did.

December 16 continues to play a part with this board majority because it was the first public demonstration of how they would exercise power. The campaign had emphasized transparency, accountability, community voice, and governance reform. Many people argue that placing closed session ahead of a public discussion on the district’s most important leadership decision sent the opposite message.

That is why “it was legal” is not enough for many observers. Legal authority and good governance are not always the same thing.

The majority started with control, not trust.

And that became the template of many major decisions.

In LBUSD’s proposed 2026–27 budget materials, one line immediately stood out to me.

The Budget Overview shows planned spending dropping from about $93.49 million to $90.15 million. Certificated salaries increase from about $35.57 million to $36.10 million, classified salaries increase from about $13.22 million to $13.58 million, and combined, salaries increase by about $892,000.

Employee benefits go down.

They decrease from about $21.60 million to $21.45 million, a drop of roughly $145,000. The budget shows certificated salaries up 2.1%, classified salaries up 2.7%, and employee benefits down 0.7%.

That is what sent me down the rabbit hole.

I know school district budgets are mostly people, as they should be. Public education runs on teachers, aides, counselors, office staff, custodians, specialists, nurses, administrators, and the people who keep the system functioning every day.

In California, roughly 80% of current school spending goes toward staffing and LBUSD is right in that range. The district’s 2025–26 budget stated that compensation accounted for 77% of the general fund. For 2026–27, LBUSD lists about $71.14 million in personnel and staffing costs against a $90.15 million spending plan. That is about 79%, with the caveat that overall planned spending is lower, which makes compensation a larger share of the budget.

So the issue is not that Laguna spends too much on employees, but what happens when a small raise meets rising healthcare costs.

LBUSD’s benefits line is not just health insurance. It includes STRS, PERS, Medicare, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, retiree benefits, OPEB, and health and welfare benefits. In the proposed 2026–27 budget, total employee benefits are about $21.45 million. Health and welfare benefits are about $5.50 million of that total, or roughly 6.1% of the district’s entire spending plan.

Healthcare costs themselves are moving fast. Nationally, the average employer-sponsored family premium rose 6% in one year, and single coverage rose 5%. California is even higher, with family premiums increasing 24% since 2022, outpacing both inflation and wages.

So when LBUSD shows a small salary increase and a decrease in benefits, the public should ask what employees are actually gaining.

A 2% raise can disappear very quickly when healthcare premiums increase. A raise on paper can become a wash in real life. For some employees, especially those covering a spouse or family, it can become a loss.

The Michael Bishop healthcare review helped me understand why this is so complicated.

LBUSD’s health plan year begins October 1, and the district’s fiscal year begins July 1. That means the district builds and adopts its budget before final healthcare renewal rates are fully known. The district is budgeting on one calendar while healthcare costs move on another.

Then there are the plans: PPO, HMO, individual, spouse, children, family. Employees get married, divorced, have babies, retire, change jobs, add dependents, lose dependents, and move between eligibility categories. Those changes do not always happen neatly at the start of a fiscal year.

I am not pretending to be a healthcare expert. I am learning this as I go because the budget number did not sit right with me. But the more I learn, the clearer it becomes that this system is easy to get wrong without serious guardrails.

The review found that from 2022–23 through 2025–26, employee contributions were not set in accordance with the collective bargaining agreements. The district covered a larger share of the total annual healthcare costs than it should have under the contract.

The review also points to a systems problem: timing issues, multiple plans, multiple tiers, changing employee census data, contribution caps, and the need for better coordination between Human Resources and Business Services. The recommendations focus on controls, communication, budget comparisons, review of the cap structure, review of plan design, and possible alignment of the plan year with the fiscal year.

But this should not become a quiet excuse to reduce benefit support.

Under the contract, the district pays up to a negotiated cap, and employees pay what is above it. For example, certificated PPO family coverage, the annual district cap is about $25k. The 2025–26 PPO family premium is about $39k, leaving the employee responsible for about $14k, or $1.4k per contribution period.

For Kaiser HMO family coverage example, the annual district cap is about $21k. The 2025–26 premium example is about $28k. That leaves the employee responsible for about $7k, or about $700 per contribution period.

Those are not small numbers, and that is why salary and benefits have to be discussed together. A district can offer a modest raise, hold to the cap, reduce its benefit costs, and still leave employees carrying a larger share of the burden.

That may be legal under the contract or clean on a spreadsheet, but it still deserves public scrutiny.

The 2021 MOU shows that the district has used bargaining to address healthcare pressure before. LBUSD and LaBUFA agreed to cover increased health and welfare benefits of about $350,000. To me, that says the pressure on healthcare costs was already obvious. The district and union saw the strain and reached an agreement to address it.

Now we are back in a similar moment, only with active negotiations.

I know the public is not privy to what either side is proposing and I understand bargaining has rules, which exist for a reason.

But the budget, review, caps, and board’s financial choices are public. So the community should come to the board with direct questions at June 8th’s meeting.

What is the board’s plan to protect employees from rising healthcare costs?

Is the district budgeting for a real compensation increase, or only a raise that gets eaten by premiums?

Will the board consider additional benefit support, a different cap structure, or better plan design?

How will the district address administrative failures without turning the correction into a cost shift?

What solution is the board willing to own?

LBUSD is not a district scraping by. Our proposed 2026–27 budget describes strong financials, full funding of LCAP goals, healthy reserves in other funds, and a AAA stable rating. Money is never unlimited, but choices exist.

This district prides itself on excellence. But excellence is expensive because good teachers, classified staff, counselors, specialists, and support employees do not stay because a district says nice things about them at board meetings. These people stay when compensation reflects the cost of living, healthcare costs, and the value of the work.

I started with one line in the budget and ended up with a much bigger concern.

Healthcare benefits are complicated, and the review proves that. Rising healthcare costs are real, and the state and national numbers prove that too.

Now the board needs to prove that fixing an administrative problem does not mean lowering support for employees and that a small raise will not be allowed to disappear into healthcare costs.

They need to prove that Laguna Beach Unified is still willing to invest in the people who make the district worth bragging about.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

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For nearly two years, Laguna Beach has been told that governance matters.

Our policies and bylaws matter.

Transparency and process matters.

At least, that was the pitch to help elect Sheri Morgan and Howard Hills. It justified all of their governance committees, policy reviews, legal questions, public criticism of district leadership, and hours of board meetings spent debating how LBUSD should operate.

The promise was simple enough: institutions are stronger when decisions are made through transparent, established processes instead of the preferences of a few people in power.

Then came May 14, 2026, when a new superintendent was appointed. Suddenly, the process has become negotiable.

This is not a story about whether Dr. Don Austin is qualified, and it’s not even really a story about whether the board had the legal authority to appoint him. School boards have broad authority to hire superintendents, and no one needs to pretend otherwise.

The question is not whether the board had power, but how they used it.

For Howard Hills, his governance obsession did not begin when he was sworn in. For more than a decade, he has shown up around LBUSD with questions about leadership, process, board authority, and whether the district was following the rules closely enough. Howard built a public identity around governance language.

Sheri Morgan’s record fits inside the same frame. Her political brand has been transparency, access, and community voice. She has presented herself as someone trying to pull LBUSD out of a closed-door culture and into a more responsive, public-facing one. Whether you agreed with her or not, the pitch was clear: the old way was too insulated, too controlled, too dismissive of the community.

In 2026, that governance language became formal board work. LBUSD approved an Ad Hoc Governance Committee to review the district’s governance processes, including the clarity, organization, and alignment of board bylaws and policies with CSBA models, statutes, and board-adopted norms. Howard led the charge to create this committee because he insisted that governance structure mattered.

LBUSD’s own Board Bylaw 9310 says board policies are adopted to set clear procedural expectations for district governance. It says policies are binding unless they conflict with law or collective bargaining agreements. The district’s policy manual is supposed to be the framework for how the board governs.

But then Board Policy 2120 became inconvenient.

On June 4, 2026, Sheri Morgan defended the superintendent appointment by arguing that the prior superintendent search had not expired. According to her, the district had already conducted an extensive search less than a year earlier, Dr. Austin had stated he was part of that process, and restarting the work would be unnecessary, expensive, and fiscally irresponsible.

“There is no statute of limitations,” Sheri said. “There is no expiration date on that search process from less than one year ago. Restarting that process and redoing that work is not required by law or policy.”

She also said repeating a search that cost more than $50,000 and took four months would be “fiscally irresponsible.”

That is one argument. However, Howard Hills made another.

He did not simply argue that the policy had been satisfied. He actually argued that the policy was not mandatory.

“The bylaw is not mandatory and it’s not compulsive,” Hills said. Then he went further, saying the board could appoint a superintendent “any way the board wants to do it and any time.”

After all the speeches, all the policy debates, all the governance lectures, all the concern about procedure and institutional standards, Howard suddenly announced that the superintendent-search policy was not compulsory and that the board could, essentially, however it wanted, appoint a superintendent.

Funny how flexible governance becomes when it finally applies to them.

If Howard had never spent years questioning governance, if Sheri had never built her case around transparency, if the board had not created a committee around policy alignment and board-adopted norms, this might read like an ordinary disagreement over how much process is enough.

But that is not the record.

The record is a board majority that used process as both sword and shield until the moment process pointed back at them.

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

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Dr. Joan Malczewski put the concern plainly during the June 4, 2026 board meeting. Search processes exist to help institutions protect themselves from the weaknesses of individual decision-making. They protect against bias, generate better information, create buy-in, and, most importantly, protect the institution and the person being hired.

A superintendent search process is not only about finding a good person. It is about creating legitimacy around the choice.

Joan was not informed that Don Austin was a candidate until the May 14, 2026 closed session, when she was met with a motion to hire him. She said she had no prior information that conversations were happening, no knowledge that negotiations were underway, and no role in determining a start date.

This was not a board-led process; it was a majority-led outcome.

There is a difference.

And that brings us to Dee Perry. Most conversations about the current board majority focus on Howard and Sheri, which makes sense. They speak the most, drive the arguments, and attract the heat.

But they cannot govern alone.

The majority is three votes, and their third vote is Dee Perry.

Dee’s role is quieter, but it is not smaller. She often appears surprised, uncomfortable, or only partially informed. She can seem adjacent to the controversy rather than central to it. But when the vote matters, Dee Perry is not a spectator; she seals everyone’s fate.

Howard and Sheri can argue, posture, explain, defend, and accuse. This allows Dee to remain aloof and pretend to be just a passenger along for the ride. And when she says she was “a little bit in the dark,” that does not make the vote easier for us to swallow. It should make it more concerning. If a trustee is unsure, uninformed, or surprised by how a major decision reached the board, that is the moment to slow the process down, not hand it the final vote it needs.

Dee may not be driving the car, but she keeps handing the keys to Howard and Sheri.

The board majority can keep saying this was about stability. They can say it was about saving money and avoiding another long search. They can say Dr. Austin was already vetted, so the policy was not mandatory. They can say the law allowed it.

Maybe some of that is true, but none of it answers the larger questions.

If governance mattered enough to build a political brand around it, why did it stop mattering here?

If policies matter when Howard and Sheri are criticizing district staff, former board members, or prior decisions, why do they become advisory when Howard already has the votes?

If transparency is the standard, why was the public asked to accept the explanation after the decision rather than being included beforehand?

And if Dee really was “a little bit in the dark,” why was she still comfortable becoming the light that turned the whole thing green?

This is about whether the board majority is willing to hold itself to the same governance standard it spent the last two years demanding from everyone else.

So far, the answer looks pretty clear.

Governance matters — until it gets in their way.

More reading…

The emergency filings are in, and LBUSD’s defense is revealing: the district is not only arguing that the Irvine Bowl will be accessible, but also that graduation planning is now too far along to move the ceremony back.

That may be a legal defense, but it is also exactly why this decision should have been fully evaluated before the board majority forced the change.

As I wrote when the federal civil rights case was first filed, this was never only a fight over scenery, nostalgia, or where seniors should toss their caps. The lawsuit asks whether LBUSD moved a public school graduation to a venue that may exclude disabled family members from attending on equal terms.

Read the first part in LBUSD’s Graduation Lawsuit…

In the plaintiffs’ emergency request to stop graduation from being held at the Irvine Bowl, they ask the court to keep the June 11 ceremony at Guyer Field instead. They argue they are not trying to cancel or delay graduation, but to maintain what they call the accessible status quo venue where graduation had been held for at least the previous five years.

In LBUSD’s opposition to that emergency request, submitted today, June 4, the district argues that the lawsuit came too late, that the Irvine Bowl has hosted graduations for decades, that the venue predates the ADA, and that the legal standard is whether the graduation program is accessible overall, not whether every part of the historic venue complies with modern construction standards.

That is the legal fight, but the governance issue is much simpler.

The board voted on February 26. According to Interim Superintendent Manoj Roychowdhury’s declaration, staff began site walks and accessibility planning in early March, families were surveyed in April, and the lawsuit was filed in June.

The board voted first, and the accessibility process followed.

In that declaration, LBUSD says it arranged accommodations including wheelchair and companion seating, accessible restrooms, courtesy wheelchairs by reservation, amplification, closer seating for hearing or visual impairments, service animals, security support, and livestreaming with captions. The district also says LBHS sent an accommodation form to families on April 17, received 265 responses, and had 83 families request accommodations.

Maybe that is enough for the court, maybe not, but it does not erase the obvious question: why was the board voting before this work was complete?

In the plaintiffs’ memorandum supporting the emergency injunction request, they argue the Irvine Bowl does not provide equal access for disabled family members, citing limited wheelchair-accessible spaces, limited companion seating, clustered seating locations, steep routes from parking and drop-off areas, and difficult circulation inside the amphitheater. Their filings also say LBUSD conducted no formal ADA accessibility evaluation before the board vote, and that this was confirmed through a LBUSD Public Records Act response.

LBUSD may have a legal argument based on older-facility and program-access law, including Ninth Circuit precedent involving school bleachers. But that legal argument is not a defense of the process.

Graduation logistics are not nostalgia projects for alumni. They involve staffing, transportation, student supervision, safety, facilities, family needs, emergency planning, accessibility, and legal compliance. When a board majority forces an operational change before those pieces are fully evaluated, staff are left to make it work after the fact.

And now LBUSD is telling the court it is too late to unwind.

In Roychowdhury’s declaration, the district says moving graduation back would require renting about 2,500 chairs, addressing audio-visual changes, possibly adding a second video display, obtaining an elevated stage, handling printed programs, and undoing bus arrangements.

That may be true, but it is exactly why the hard questions should have been answered before the vote.

The court could deny the emergency request and allow graduation to proceed at the Irvine Bowl, either because the judge decides the plaintiffs waited too long or because the judge agrees with LBUSD that the district has done enough to make the graduation program accessible.

The court could also stop LBUSD from holding graduation at the Irvine Bowl and force the district back to Guyer Field or another accessible venue, especially if the judge decides that the access concerns are serious enough, the harm is too immediate, or the district’s after-the-vote accommodations are insufficient.

I do not know what the court will do, but I do know this: no public school district should be litigating disability access days before graduation because a board majority wanted a symbolic vote before the operational work was complete.

If LBUSD wins, the board majority will probably call it vindication, but a legal win on timing or program-access standards would not prove the process was responsible. It would only mean the district survived the emergency motion.

If LBUSD loses, the consequences become immediate, with students, families, staff, transportation, seating, and logistics thrown into the exact chaos the district now says would be so difficult to manage.

Either way, the court is being asked to decide the emergency legal question, but parents should be asking the governance question: why was LBUSD put in this position at all?

A Public Record for Laguna Schools provides independent, community-focused coverage of LBUSD to help make district decisions, public records, board actions, and issues easier to follow. If you value this work, becoming a paid subscriber or patron helps make it sustainable by covering the research, writing, and platform costs that keep this information accessible to everyone. I am deeply grateful to anyone who reads, shares, subscribes, or supports this work in any way.

Subscribe now