I have a question for Howard Hills.
What are you even doing here?
I have spent more time than I ever imagined reading Howard’s emails, watching Board meetings, requesting records, and writing about his conduct. I have tried to understand what he wants for Laguna Beach Unified. I’ve listened to his incessant arguments about governance, budgets, employee contracts, superintendents, and the First Amendment. I have watched him insist on accountability from practically everyone around him.
And each time I think I have reached the limit of what one school board trustee might say about his own community, another email arrives.
On October 16, Howard sent one about the May 14 protest at Thurston Middle School. He included his own recorded videos and photographs featuring Laguna Beach children and made clear that he wanted the material circulated ahead of the election: “We have been asked over and over to re-send to the community as widely as possible before the election.”
As widely as possible. Before the election.
As I read it, the purpose was to revisit a demonstration that took place five months ago and persuade readers to see the participating parents and children through Howard’s accusations. He calls them manipulated, assigns their behavior to school board candidates, questions district employees, and treats his interpretation of his own recordings as proof of a conspiracy.
I am at a breaking point with this man’s public conduct. And this email is why.
These are children, Howard.
In the email, he describes “Shaheen’s loyalist parents” who were “unable to control frenzied children.”
He calls the students “JOAN’S KIDS,” “SHAHEEN’S KIDS,” and “KIMBERLY’S KIDS,” as if the children belong to three school board candidates rather than their own families. Notably, Joan’s and Kimberly’s kids were not at the protest. Specifically calling out candidates’ kids in this protest in this way really seems like he is asking people to target them.
He writes: “This is the face of FUEL, hiding behind kids, the face of the new Laguna.”
He describes an image of Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal speaking with the Thurston principal as a “secretive meeting.” Then comes a fact: “Who knows who was saying and doing what.” A few sentences later, he concludes that her explanation of her involvement in the protest “was a lie.”
Think about that sequence. He doesn’t know what people were saying or doing. He says so himself, but he still confidently assigns motives, roles, and blame.
Elsewhere, he calls a student’s question “Obviously scripted by FUEL.” He says, “Staff left the door open and commingled with students screaming at Board Members without any interference or indication of disapproval.” He faults employees for not assisting a trustee “in distress.” Each is Howard’s interpretation of a few minutes of an already-professionally-investigated public event. He uses those interpretations to cast parents as organizers, students as props, and staff as complicit. His account leaves remarkably little room for children to exercise autonomy or for employees to try to manage an unpredictable crowd.
I reviewed the videos he referenced, and I refuse to republish the children’s images here.
I understand that people at public demonstrations can be recorded. Participants have limited privacy expectations in public spaces, but Howard asserts that the children were somewhere they had “no right of privacy.”
But he’s a trustee. He is one of five adults responsible for governing a district that educates these very children. Why is he circulating identifiable footage of minors in an election-charged email? Why is he attaching specific candidates to their faces? What purpose does that serve for their education, safety, or well-being?
Some children may have shouted, some signs may have crossed a line, and maybe some adults may have handled moments badly. I have no problem acknowledging any of that where the evidence supports it.
Children, however, are learning how to express themselves. Sometimes they make decisions adults wouldn’t make. Sometimes they say things they later regret. We teach them to take responsibility, consider other people’s feelings, and understand their rights.
Howard could have turned this into a teaching moment by explaining the difference between forceful protest and disruption, or by asking how to prepare students for civic participation. He could have criticized behavior without trying to turn children into political pawns.
Instead, their faces and alleged motives have become material to distribute “as widely as possible.”
With screenshots, facial recognition, and AI making images easier to preserve, search, alter, and recirculate, that choice troubles me even more. The fact that you can record a child does not answer whether you should put their image into an election-season argument.
Also, we already investigated May 14.
I wasn’t at the protest and have never pretended otherwise. But I know people who were there, I reviewed footage, and I have read the district’s outside investigation and followed the Board’s ensuing discussions.
The investigation found no evidence of criminal conduct or intent to physically harm anyone. It stated the demonstration was nonviolent and recognized the participants’ First Amendment protections. It also documented a loud, sometimes disruptive event and legitimate concerns about crowd management and how Board members entered the meeting.
None of this gives anyone permission to replace the investigator’s findings with whatever account best suits a political argument.
The meeting went forward. The district examined security procedures. Parents and students had protested decisions made by three elected officials: Howard Hills, Sheri Morgan, and Dee Perry.
I keep returning to that last part because it seems to get lost. The protest did not materialize out of nowhere — it followed the Board majority’s decision to separate from Superintendent Dr. Jason Glass just weeks before the school year ended. Parents disagreed, some intensely. Children were upset, and some were friends with his children too. They expressed that anger in public.
Howard, who calls himself a constitutional lawyer and civil rights attorney who has been a political protester since 1969, should know protected speech doesn’t have to be quiet, agreeable, or flattering to those in power. At the September 24 meeting, he said what he heard from protesters was consistent with their free speech rights, even when offensive. He also maintained that Board members’ assembly rights were infringed, a contention he repeats in this email, and I fundamentally do not agree with. To be very clear, the meeting went forward, so his right to assemble was not infringed.
People can assess that dispute against the actual evidence. What I cannot understand is why, five months later, the response still needs to involve naming and shaming children.
But then one passage in the email stunned me completely.
Criticizing district investments in student wellness, empathy, and anti-bullying programs, Howard wrote: “Too bad that massive budget was not used for math and science during pandemic, so that more than 50% of students at LBHS today had a sense of well-being, self-confidence and pride in academics, instead of needing AI, recreational drugs and tutoring to graduate and succeed as college freshmen.”
I’m sorry, what?
A sitting trustee is invoking a claim about more than half of Laguna Beach High School students and suggesting they need AI, recreational drugs, and tutoring to graduate and succeed in college. Where is the evidence for that assertion? What do those words communicate to the teenagers attending the district’s schools?
I care about academic achievement, and I want honest conversations about learning outcomes in math, science, and reading, and how our district spends money. If students need support, I want to know what support works. I also know tutoring isn’t some shameful failure. Neither is needing help with mental health.
The district can invest in academics and in the people doing the learning. This isn’t a contest in which concern for mental health cancels out concern for math.
But what an extraordinary way to talk about students while accusing other people of misinformation. If Howard believes a specific program is ineffective or a measurable academic outcome has deteriorated, show the figures. Make the argument. Explain the trade-offs.
Why reach instead for a sweeping, insulting claim about our children?
I’m not surprised, as this isn’t his first time using language like this.
The October 16 email is the latest in a long record dating back well before Howard (barely) won his Board seat in 2024.
In a 2013 guest column, he criticized LBUSD leadership and called for accountability from school officials. He had every right to do that. By February 2019, in an email to former trustee Jan Vickers, he described her reply as “incoherent and consequently unintelligible.” In 2021, he called a district governance document “embarrassingly illiterate, even juvenile.”
The targets and contexts differed, but his continued reflex to describe people or their work as unable to understand, dishonest, or beneath serious consideration is worth examining.
After taking office, Howard raised the possibility of “adversarial personnel actions” against staff in correspondence in February 2025. In September 2025, his emails to Superintendent Glass included: “Your confused iteration of law appears to be yet another mistaken interpretation of the Brown Act.”
Then there are the teachers, staff, and their unions. Howard says he stands by teachers, yet in his May 8, 2026 paid newspaper advertisement, he suggested that teachers who let Board politics affect classroom performance should get “professional counselling and/or retraining” and face accountability if that effect was real rather than rhetoric.
Imagine telling an elected official that his conduct is creating stress at work and seeing him float counseling or retraining in a full-page newspaper ad.
He repeatedly accused union leaders and critics of misinformation during the healthcare contribution dispute. During the July 9 discussion of the teachers’ negotiated contract, he referred to “political gossip columnists” who, he said, misrepresented the deal. He did not name me, but I had written about the agreement and clearly understood the comment in the context of the public criticism he was responding to.
At the May 14 meeting, after I questioned the ethics of his paid advertisements and unofficial communications, he called the expressed view during the discussion “illiterate.” Again, he did not use my name, but I was the only one questioning his ethical behavior.
On July 23, I again spoke about what I saw as a broader pattern in his exchanges with constituents and asked the School Board to hold him accountable.
That was nearly three months ago. I stood at a microphone and asked the trustees to hold themselves to the professional standards they expect of employees and students. I didn’t expect unanimity, but I did expect them to take the concern seriously. Watching this October email arrive after those meetings only makes that request feel more urgent.
I’ve heard from other residents who felt mocked or dismissed after contacting him. Howard’s record clearly shows language that repeatedly turns disagreement into an argument about the speaker’s intelligence, honesty, or motives.
And now that language has reached children.
At the April 9 meeting, Howard offered a revealing explanation of how he views the institution he governs: “The district is the board.”
He was making a legal and governance argument: the Board holds authority and delegates duties to administrators and staff. While the governing role matters, there’s a difference between holding legal authority and remembering what that authority is for.
Our children are in classrooms learning every day. Teachers build lessons, teach curriculum, and help children gain their footing. Classified employees prepare meals, work with students, maintain facilities, and keep campuses operating. Administrators make sure the many parts of a complicated system work together. Parents raise the children who walk through those doors, and volunteer, ask questions, disagree, and care deeply about their schools.
A district is more than five adults sitting on a dais. We elect trustees to bring judgment, patience, perspective, and restraint to this system. We expect people who can discern a legitimate question from a personal attack; who know how to listen even when they dislike what’s being said; and who understand that teachers, students, staff, and parents are constituents, not obstacles.
Howard has spent years challenging past Boards, superintendents, administrators, and district decisions. He finally obtained the authority he spent so long criticizing, but I keep wondering what he intends to do with it besides relitigate the same fights from a different chair.
Here is the part I cannot get past. October is National Bullying Prevention Month. At the October 8 meeting, student representatives discussed kindness and anti-bullying efforts. The October 22 Board agenda includes an informational presentation on schoolwide kindness and bullying prevention.
Meanwhile, Sheri Morgan and Dee Perry have spent months expressing concern about how the community is treating them, how protesters spoke to Board members, and what children learned from this behavior.
At the September 24 meeting, Sheri called the May 14 demonstration “angry, intense, loud, hostile, and targeted.” She offered this definition: “Targeting is defined as a specific process a bully uses to single out an individual to abuse, harass, or marginalize them.” She said she worried children would see intimidation as a normal response when things don’t go their way.
Dee invoked the district’s No Place for Hate program while describing protest signs she said contained statements of hatred toward trustees. At the October 8 meeting, district mom Meredith McMahon disputed that account, saying she had helped make most of the signs and had retained and photographed them. She asked Dee to correct the record.
At that September meeting, Sheri also said, “I am responsible for how I respond; I am responsible for my actions and my votes.” Exactly. Responsibility does not stop at the edge of a protest crowd. It applies in the Boardroom and in the emails sent afterward.
Sheri and Dee are allowed to feel intimidated. They can object to signs, shouting, and disruptions. They can ask for safer meetings and expect the rules to be followed. But if the adults on the Board want to talk about bullying, they also have to examine their own language.
What standard applies when a trustee circulates children’s images and calls them “frenzied”? When he attaches school board candidates’ names to minors? When he says students need recreational drugs and AI to make it through school?
If a student holds a nasty sign, the Board tells us it shows a failure of civility. If a parent raises their voice, we hear about targeting. What happens when a trustee uses his email list to disparage students and parents?
I am not claiming Sheri or Dee signed off on Howard’s October 16 email or approved its distribution. But they have made the ethics of public behavior central to their Board work, so it’s fair to ask how they’d respond regarding this email.
Do they agree with his descriptions of our students? Do they believe circulating the footage in this way reflects the district’s commitment to kindness? If not, will they say so?
At the October 8 meeting, Joan Malczewski requested legal review of Howard’s disparaging social media comments about Dr. Glass and evaluation of a later censure vote. This at least shows the community that Joan is concerned about his words.
Now the Board is preparing to discuss kindness and bullying prevention while another communication from one of its own trustees is circulating through the community. I want to know whether those standards are principles or merely language used to criticize people who challenge the Board majority.
So, Howard, what are you even doing here?
I have watched you question the work of past trustees, administrators, superintendents, teachers, union representatives, and parents. I have read the words you use when they disagree with you. I have seen you return to conflicts that predate your election by years.
A typical trustee should scrutinize spending, ask difficult questions, and call for accountability, but being elected means accepting responsibility for the whole district, including the people who criticize you.
This latest email makes me wonder whether Howard sees his Board seat as a chance to center students in the conversation or as a platform from which to relitigate twenty-plus years of grievances.
We can debate the May protest, the contract, the budget, the superintendent’s departure, and the Board’s legal authority. None of that requires turning children into characters in a political narrative or making sweeping claims about their abilities and well-being.
Howard was elected to help govern their schools: So what are you even doing here if you aren’t doing that?
And Sheri and Dee, I have a question for you, too: Will you expect the same restraint from your colleague that you expect from the children and parents who criticize you?
Hopefully, we’ll find out.
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