If you started paying attention to Laguna Beach Unified this summer, I can understand why it feels impossible to follow.
There have been two superintendent transitions, teacher rallies, seven-hour Board meetings, repeated closed sessions, bylaw changes, a federal lawsuit, a parent protest, an outside investigation, an ACLU cure-and-correct letter, a county financial review, public records requests, lawyers, more lawyers, and enough competing versions of events to support several different Laguna Beach realities.
The useful place to start is November 2024.
That election changed two seats on a five-member School Board. Sheri Morgan and Howard Hills were elected and joined Dee Perry, James Kelly, and Joan Malczewski. Sheri and Howard remain in office through 2028; Dee, Jim, and Joan’s terms expire this December.
Very quickly, another change became visible.
On many of the Board’s most consequential decisions, Sheri, Howard, and Dee formed the majority, with Jim and Joan on the other side. That is not unusual on a five-member board, as governing majorities work that way.
What followed from that majority is the more interesting part.
Sheri and Howard came into office after an election defined by concerns about transparency, Board authority, facilities decisions, and whether the previous District leadership had become too insulated from the community. Superintendent Jason Viloria had become entangled with that debate, and before the new trustees were seated, the outgoing Board unanimously approved a separation agreement ending his tenure on December 31.
That gave the new Board something most newly elected majorities do not immediately inherit: an open superintendent position.
At the December 16 organizational meeting, the Board was scheduled to discuss interim leadership. Instead, Howard moved to advance closed session before that public discussion. Joan objected that the Board had not openly addressed basic questions, including what kind of interim it wanted and how it would consider candidates.
The motion passed 3-2.
After closed session, the Board announced another 3-2 decision directing staff to prepare an agreement with Joanne Culverhouse as interim superintendent. Joanne withdrew, and the Board later unanimously appointed Jeff Dixon as acting superintendent.
That early episode is easy to forget because of the larger things that happened later, but the new majority’s first superintendent decision established a familiar pattern: the governing bloc resolved major process questions, carried out major discussion in closed session, and Jim and Joan argued that outcomes were taking shape before the full process was publicly worked through.
Thankfully, the permanent superintendent search was much more traditional. LBUSD hired a search firm, collected community input, and eventually selected Jason Glass. Glass began work in July 2025.
One of the first complicated problems he faced was healthcare overpayments.
LBUSD’s employee agreements set maximum District contributions toward health benefits, with employees responsible for costs above those caps. From 2022–23 through 2025–26, employee contribution rates were not set according to that language, so the District paid a larger share of healthcare premiums than required.
The benefits year and District fiscal year did not match, and as healthcare rates changed and employees moved among plans and coverage tiers, Human Resources and Business Services had to reconcile rates against negotiated caps continually. The independent review found those controls and coordination needed improvement.
By December, the District identified approximately $1.04 million in cumulative excess contributions and chose to absorb the cost rather than recover it from employees, while beginning corrective work.
That made the next question fairly practical: fix the system and prevent it from happening again.
Howard had other ideas.
He repeatedly used the larger $1.77 million figure, asked who knew what and when, tied the issue to former leadership and employee organizations, bought full-page ads, and kept pressing for outside scrutiny.
The healthcare overpayment became one of Howard’s central arguments about LBUSD. Then, almost by accident, a Public Records Act request gave the community a look at what was happening offstage.
An email titled “CONFIDENTIAL: Unofficial Communications Management” surfaced among records responsive to an unrelated request. Howard had written to Sheri and several outside allies (he called them his “colleagues”) about frustration with media coverage, Steve McIntosh’s op-eds, Howard’s full-page ads, and the need for someone “coordinating press.”
He also wrote that even if LBUSD developed official messaging support, it would still need a community-based team to handle what he called the unofficial press. That changed the context of months of supposedly organic outrage.
Howard was buying advertisements, discussing op-eds with allies, complaining about media coverage, and talking about coordinating outside communications around District business. Sheri was included in the email.
That does not mean Howard directed everyone who criticized LBUSD, but it does show that a sitting trustee was actively discussing public communications around the issue, the Board president, and outside allies instead of doing it independently.
The unofficial communications effort around LBUSD became another piece of the puzzle in understanding how Board politics increasingly moved beyond the dais.
Meanwhile, one of the most consequential formal changes sounded almost aggressively boring: who controls the agenda.
The Board president and superintendent traditionally worked together to develop meeting agendas. In early 2026, Sheri, Howard, and Dee approved a revision to Board Bylaw 9322 giving the Board president final authority when the president and superintendent could not agree, subject to the Board’s will. Jim and Joan opposed it. Both employee unions objected.
Agenda control is the kind of phrase that can end a dinner party, but it determines which issues reach the dais, when they appear, and what a Board gets the opportunity to decide.
The rules around who could shape the Board’s agenda changed in a way that gave Sheri more authority, backed by a reliable majority.
Then the Board took up graduation.
For several years, Laguna Beach High School held graduation at Guyer Field. A campaign to return it to the Irvine Bowl received considerable support, and the issue ultimately came before the full Board rather than remaining with school-site administrators.
The Board moved the 2026 ceremony back to the Irvine Bowl over objections that the decision belonged at the operational level. Jason recommended leaving the venue decision to administration. It became a clear example of the changing boundary between Board oversight and District operations.
By June, the graduation decision had become a federal civil-rights case alleging that disabled guests would not receive equal access at the Irvine Bowl and that proper protocols to ensure access were not completed. A federal judge declined to order the ceremony moved back to Guyer Field, and graduation went forward at the Irvine Bowl.
Meanwhile, the relationship between the Board and its employees was deteriorating quite publicly.
Teachers and classified employees had expressed concerns about governance, closed sessions, employee discipline, and what they described as an erosion of trust. On April 16, LaBUFA and CSEA organized a large rally that brought teachers, classified staff, students, and parents into downtown Laguna Beach.
Union leaders criticized the agenda changes, closed-session business, and what they viewed as retaliation against employees who spoke publicly. Sheri described the District as facing serious challenges involving spending, accountability, and communication.
The significance of what Laguna’s teachers and staff were saying publicly is easier to see in hindsight because this all happened before the biggest rupture of the year.
Jason was still superintendent.
Then, on May 12, he wasn’t.
The Board approved a separation agreement with Jason after just ten months on the job. Sheri, Howard and Dee supported it; Jim and Joan opposed it. The District described the departure as a mutual agreement concluding Jason’s service on May 31.
The District had not announced another superintendent search. Just forty-eight hours later, the Board announced Don Austin as its choice for the next superintendent.
Don had previously served as principal of Laguna Beach High School before becoming superintendent in Palos Verdes and later Palo Alto. He formally became LBUSD superintendent on July 1. He was not the controversy; the process was.
The District spent months conducting a national search before hiring Jason. Less than a year later, Jason was gone, and the District identified a successor within 48 hours.
Joan said she did not know Don was being considered until the May 14 closed session. Questions followed about when conversations began, who participated, and how the permanent successor emerged so quickly.
Sheri argued that LBUSD had completed an extensive superintendent search less than a year earlier and that repeating it would unnecessarily cost time and money. Howard argued that Board policy did not require a new formal process and that the Board had broad legal authority to choose its superintendent.
Don’s contract came back June 4 and passed on the same 3–2 split.
That sequence is the clearest place to understand the current Board.
The same trustees who spent years emphasizing governance, transparency, and process were now defending a permanent superintendent appointment that two Board members said they had not helped develop. The conflict between LBUSD’s written governance processes and how Don was selected became much bigger than Don’s qualifications.
By then, the argument over Board power was no longer subtle, and Jason’s departure triggered immediate community backlash.
Two days after the separation vote, parents and community members gathered outside the May 14 Board meeting carrying signs and chanting as trustees entered. Students and children were there. So were teachers. So were pom-poms, because Laguna Beach remains devoted to making even a constitutional crisis aesthetically coordinated.
Board members described the experience as intimidating. Dee stumbled entering the building but later said no one had pushed her.
The District commissioned a $15,000 outside investigation. It found failures in planning and crowd management but no evidence of criminal activity or intent by protesters to harm anyone physically.
What actually happened at the May 14 protest eventually looked considerably different from some descriptions that circulated immediately afterward.
Before that investigation was complete, the protest itself had become Board business.
The Board discussed May 14 in closed session under an exception involving threats to public services or facilities. The ACLU of Southern California later challenged that decision, arguing that the Board improperly took discussion of protected public protest behind closed doors.
That made the Board’s handling of the protest behind closed doors another chapter in the same story: who controls information, when the public gets to hear a discussion, and how broadly the majority uses its authority.
The political culture around the Board also became increasingly personal.
Howard had dedicated years to criticizing LBUSD governance before his election. Over time, his public commentary from the dais has expanded beyond Board policy to harsh descriptions of parent organizations, employees, union leadership, and eventually Jason himself.
By September, Howard was calling Jason a failing superintendent who had been in over his head and describing his departure as justified, language considerably different from the District’s May announcement of a mutual separation.
The wider pattern of Howard’s comments about Jason, teachers, staff, and parents matters because the Board exercises power beyond a roll-call vote.
Sheri and Howard receive much of the attention because they are the most visible voices associated with the current majority.
But they do not govern alone. Dee has joined them on many of the Board’s most significant actions.
Her role may look quieter, especially when Sheri or Howard drives the discussion, but Dee’s history on the Board and her role within its current majority help explain how the governing coalition came together after 2024.
The healthcare issue eventually moved outside LBUSD.
Over the summer, the Orange County Department of Education engaged FCMAT to independently review employee health-benefit contributions, related contracting decisions, and the use of District resources. OCDE explicitly said opening the review is not a finding or indication of fraud, misappropriation, or other illegal fiscal practices.
The District had a real administrative and contractual problem. It acknowledged it, absorbed the excess contribution, strengthened controls, and is now under an outside review that can determine whether anything more serious occurred.
The FCMAT review remains open. Everything else can wait for the findings.
And all of this has happened in a District whose students have continued producing strong academic results. That context is easy to lose because functional schools are less interesting than dysfunctional Board meetings.
Now we are back at an election.
Two years ago, Laguna changed two seats. Since then, the majority that emerged from that election has repeatedly shaped who leads the District, what reaches the agenda, how far the Board reaches into operations, what moves behind closed doors, and how it handles dissent.
Joan Malczewski, Shaheen Sheik-Sadhal, and Kimberly Smith are running to change the board majority, and Dee Perry and Elizabeth Bates are running to keep it. This November our vote will tell the teachers, staff, students, and parents what we think of this behavior.
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.