Dee Perry’s Long Fight With Power at LBUSD

The lawsuits, allies and governance battles that followed one Laguna Beach School Board trustee from the minority into the majority.

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.