Finding Dr. Right: The LBUSD Superintendent Search

How Laguna Beach Unified Board of Education turned a leadership search into a trust problem

A school board has one employee: the superintendent.

The board sets direction, adopts policy, approves budgets, hires and evaluates the superintendent, and represents the public. The superintendent runs the district. Staff operate the schools. Students learn. Nobody needs a 45-minute PowerPoint to understand that, though naturally, we got one.

Closed session is not automatically suspicious. California law allows boards to discuss superintendent appointment, employment, evaluation, discipline, dismissal, and release privately. Personnel issues can involve privacy, contracts, and legal exposure. But closed session is the legal floor, not the trust ceiling.

And LBUSD has managed to turn that distinction into the entire problem.

In November 2024, the previous board voted 5-0 to enter into a separation agreement with Dr. Jason Viloria, ending his contract effective December 31. Howard Hills and Sheri Morgan had not yet taken office, so it is not accurate to say they removed him directly. Dee Perry, however, was part of that unanimous vote.

The district said the decision was not based on Viloria’s performance and that his evaluations had “regularly demonstrated exemplary results.” The stated reason was anticipated changes to the governing board. In plain English, we have a superintendent we say is doing excellent work, but the incoming board dynamic may make this impossible.

That was the first crack.

Then came the Dr. Joanne Culverhouse episode. The district needed interim help, which is understandable. What was not reassuring was the report that the board majority voted in closed session to offer Culverhouse the interim superintendent role despite objections that the process was rushed, preordained, and nontransparent. Culverhouse ultimately declined.

Around the same time, Board President Dee Perry was reportedly working out of the superintendent’s office during the leadership gap without a public board vote. Perry later apologized for the optics and said she was not taking over superintendent duties. Trustee Joan Malczewski said the move was not good governance and should have been approved by the board.

This is where mistrust began to grow. Not because anyone expected perfection during a messy transition, but because the line between board governance and district operations looked blurry. Blurry is exactly what you do not want when the superintendent’s chair is empty.

Jeff Dixon then stepped in as acting superintendent. He served as a stabilizing presence because he knew the district, understood operations, and was not publicly auditioning for a crown during a crisis. But even that process became messy. Dixon began performing superintendent duties on January 9, 2025, while the proposed contract terms were not announced until March 24 and scheduled for board consideration on April 17.

At a time when the district needed clean, boring stability, even the acting superintendent contract became another process drama.

Then LBUSD seemed to reset.

The district conducted a real superintendent search. OCDE described Dr. Jason Glass’s appointment as the conclusion of a four-month nationwide search. Glass had more than 25 years of experience, and the board reportedly selected him from about 40 interested candidates. Dee Perry publicly said the board was “100% behind Dr. Jason Glass.”

That is why what happened next is so hard to reconcile.

Glass was not a placeholder. He was not an emergency appointment. He was not pulled from a drawer labeled “break glass in case of superintendent,” no pun intended, though the district really wrote that joke for us. He was hired through the process that a district is supposed to use. He moved here with his family and brought the kind of experience LBUSD claimed it needed.

Then came February 26. On this day, the board held a superintendent performance evaluation that union leaders described as “off-cycle.” The same day, LBUSD received governance training from Jonathan Pearl of Dannis Woliver Kelley on board and superintendent roles, collective authority, confidentiality, and the principle that individual board members do not direct the superintendent or staff.

The board received training on the boundary between governance and operations, and immediately afterward, the Glass situation escalated rather than calmed.

There were six consecutive closed-session meetings with “employee discipline/dismissal/release” on the agenda. On May 12, 2026, LBUSD announced that Glass and the board had reached a mutual agreement to end his service effective May 31. The Daily Pilot reported that Sheri Morgan, Dee Perry, and Howard Hills voted to terminate Glass. At the same time, Jim Kelly and Joan Malczewski dissented. Glass was placed on paid administrative leave through his resignation date.

The public may never know what happened in closed session, and personnel matters are confidential for a reason. But the public timeline is fair to examine: a superintendent hired through a full search, publicly supported by the board, relocated with his family, and then separated less than one school year later after repeated closed-session personnel items and a 3-2 vote.

Maybe the paperwork is clean. But when someone moves across the country for a four-year contract and is gone in ten months, “mutual” does not exactly feel warm and fuzzy. It lands more like a hostage note written in board counsel font.

Two days later, LBUSD announced Dr. Don Austin as the next superintendent, effective July 1. The district said the action “quickly follows” the May 12 separation agreement with Glass. The same board majority that separated Glass voted to approve Austin, 3-2.

Morgan explained that Austin had already been part of the prior Leadership Associates search process, the district had recently gathered stakeholder input, and the district’s needs had not changed. But that creates the obvious question: if Austin was vetted last year and the board chose Glass, why is Austin the immediate answer now?

If the district’s needs had not changed, why did the selection change? If Glass was the right choice after a full search, what changed so quickly? If Austin was the better fit, why was he not selected the first time? These are not conspiracy questions. They are obvious questions created by the district’s own timeline.

Austin also arrives with a recent history of his own. In February 2026, Palo Alto Unified announced that Austin and the board had reached a mutual separation effective immediately, while Austin would continue as Superintendent Emeritus through June 30. Palo Alto said it was not a retirement or termination. At the same time, Palo Alto’s teachers union described the leadership change as a significant step toward healing a strained culture, citing top-down mandates, damaged morale, and declining professional trust.

That does not mean Austin cannot succeed in Laguna Beach. It does not mean people who remember him fondly are wrong. It does mean newer families will do what people do in 2026: Google him. What they find is much more than a glossy welcome announcement.

This is what LBUSD’s board keeps missing: trust is not restored by saying the correct legal words. Trust is restored by explaining the process clearly enough that people do not feel they need a public records request, a law degree, and a strong drink to understand what happened.

Viloria was released despite public praise and strong evaluations because of anticipated board changes. Culverhouse raised transparency concerns. Dixon stabilized the district while the contract process lagged. Glass was hired through a full search, publicly supported, and gone within less than a year, following repeated closed-session meetings and a 3-2 vote. Austin was announced within 48 hours, following a prior search that did not select him the first time.

That is a lot of superintendent turnover for a small, high-performing district.

The concern is not that every leadership change is illegal. The concern is that LBUSD’s recent superintendent timeline shows instability at the top, limited public explanation, and repeated decisions that may meet the legal minimum while still damaging public trust.

Dr. Austin should succeed. Students and staff need him to succeed. But he is walking into a district where trust has been badly damaged, much of it by the same board majority that appointed him.

Public education requires more than “we were allowed to do it.” It requires judgment, restraint, transparency, and respect for roles. Right now, LBUSD’s superintendent timeline does not tell a story of stability. It tells a story of a district repeatedly trying to recover from decisions that create the next crisis.

That is the problem the board majority created, and the one Dr. Austin inherits on July 1.