Howard Hills, In His Own Words

Howard Hills keeps finding new villains in Laguna Beach’s parents, teachers, staff, and now the former superintendent of the district he was elected to govern.

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.