Please excuse SO MANY new stories about the Placentia-Yorba Linda USD, but so much is happening so rapidly there since the Normal People’s election victory! And the Orange Juice Blog seems to be the new favored outlet of the district’s reformers. This report from Thursday’s meeting is from activist Sam Myovich. – Vern.
A Shocking Night at PYLUSD
In a stunning turn of events at the Special Meeting of the PLYUSD Board of Education on Thursday, December 19, the five board members returned from their three-hour closed session and proceeded on 5-0 votes to place seven managers on paid administrative leave.
These included the current superintendent, Dr. Alex Cherniss, and deputy superintendent, Dr. Issaic Gates. All five members returned from the closed session looking like they had just seen some horrific ghost. Newly elected Board President Marilyn Anderson somberly announced that the board had unanimously agreed to placing the following seven individuals on paid administrative leave: Superintendent Alex Cherniss, Deputy Superintendent, an Assistant Superintendent, two Executive Directors, a Director, and a Principal. At least some of the seven had been escorted from their offices earlier in the day by the district’s legal officials.
The unprecedented placement of seven employees on paid leave represents the first step of what will likely be long and costly litigation. The taxpayers and students of the PYLUSD will be paying over many years for the corruption and dishonesty spawned by the following three board members: Shawn Youngblood, Leandra Blades, and Todd Frazier.
Three Days that Shook the District
It’ll probably help to chronicle the 48 hours leading up to Thursday’s emergency meeting: On Tuesday evening Dec. 17, Superintendent Alex Cherniss swore in the new board. The board now includes a majority of members opposed to the hirings, firings, programs, and culture wars of the previous majority. The superintendent had openly campaigned against two of the trustees now sitting on the board – awkward! The new board immediately elected Marilyn Anderson to be its President on a 3-2 vote. Then, on Wednesday afternoon, President Anderson suddenly announced that a special session had been scheduled to address several vital concerns. It remains unclear whether something happened on Wednesday that triggered the decision to hold the special session or whether this had been in the works for some time. This entire situation will remain a puzzle for now, as confidential matters of closed session information remain out of the purview of the public.
The board agenda for the December 19 session provides some of the key pieces of the puzzle. The first item on the agenda was the approval to contract legal services with the firm that had represented the district prior to the extremist takeover of the board. The firm is Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo (AALRR). Approval of this item occurred in the public portion of the meeting and was thus the focus of extensive criticism by the two remaining extremist board members.
Blades came to the meeting in a manic state, guns blazing in the usual “READY – FIRE – AIM” manner that has characterized her life. She came prepared with a litany of accusations against the AALRR, apparently provided by her own preferred legal counsel. (Leandra apparently shares the same retinue of attorneys as her friend OCBOE extremist Mari Barke.)
- Blades accused AALRR of various corrupt and improper activities when it previously represented the district.
- She charged Anderson and AALRR with conflicts of interest and collusion in relation to legal claims against Cherniss in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District.
- She claimed that it was illegal to even place this on the agenda because it had not met the Ed Code requirements for public notification and review.
- She questioned the legality of providing AALRR details on the closed session items prior to the firm having been approved to represent the district.
President Anderson (damn, feels nice to write that) responded that she had tried to get it on the agenda Tuesday evening, but that Blades had refused to allow it. Anderson also indicated that the urgency of the issues involved gave her no choice. It was a complicated exchange, bedecked by Blades’ fury.
Meanwhile Blades’ ally Frazier complained about the slightly higher fees AALRR charges in comparison with their preferred firm, Orbach, Huff, and Henderson (OHH). He pored over the contract details with a fine-toothed comb, exactly as he NEVER did with the RFP for the Universal Sports Institute. What he didn’t mention was how the price for good legal counsel saves you the greater costs you incur without it. That, perhaps, may be what this entire evening was about. It’s due to feckless legal counsel that the district now appears to be headed for years of costly litigation that will come at the expense of our schools.
Blades and Frazier don’t seem to have been aware of it, but was likely on the advice of AALRR that at least some of the seven district managers had been removed from their offices earlier that morning, including the superintendent and deputy superintendent. The fact that they eventually voted to follow the advice of the new firm in the closed session after trashing it in open session indicates that they’d at least begun to understand the gravity of the situation that Cherniss had created.
Indeed, it’s possible nobody knew about the managers having been removed from their office earlier that day. We the public still aren’t sure why seven managers were put on paid administrative leave. The agenda seems to point primarily to a human resource issue and nothing yet related to the boondoggle programs of the Universal Sports Institute (USI) or the Orange County School of Computer Science (OCSCS).
Reading the Closed-Session Tea Leaves
The core legal issue appears to be existing litigation in the matter of terminating the contract of Richard McAlindin (right) in the case of McAlindin v. PYLUSD [lawsuit here.] McAlindin had been the Assistant Superintendent of Executive Services and a highly regarded educator in the PYLUSD for 23 years. Last year he had to go on medical leave with a serious illness. While on medical leave, the superintendent changed the title and framework for the position McAlindin had held and appointed Renee Grey to the new post. The superintendent placed McAlindin on administrative leave once he finished his medical leave, with the understanding that his contract would not be renewed in the district for the next year.
Reconfiguring the position McAlindin had held while he was on medical leave was a disingenuous way of firing him while he was on medical leave. This represented numerous potential circumventions of state law that OHH, the previous legal counsel, had possibly authorized. McAlindin’s case against the district appears to be a strong one and may provide the broad context for understanding the other components of the special board agenda.
The second item on the closed session agenda was conference with legal counsel pertaining to anticipated litigation. The agenda is quite explicit: there are two potential cases involving complaints against Cherniss and Gates. Might these complaints be additional elements of Mr. McAlindin’s claims that target the culpability of these two individuals as named parties related to the claims against the district?
The third item on the closed session agenda involves the potential penalties to a public employee who has violated the terms of the Brown Act. It appears from the wording of the agenda that this violation might eventually provide the foundation for terminating the superintendent and deputy superintendent with cause. The state legislature amended section 35150 of the Ed Code to require cause as a basis for immediate termination of an administrator by a newly elected board because of what had happened to Superintendent Gunn Marie Hansen in the Orange Unified School District two years ago. There, a newly elected extremist school board majority terminated the duties of the highly regarded Hansen in an effort to find a superintendent more inclined to accommodate their charter school obsession and culture wars mania. Included on the Orange school board had been the then recently elected and subsequently recalled Madison Klovstadt Miner. Ms. Miner is close friends with Trustee Leandra Blades.
These first three items on the closed session agenda all led to the fascinating yet entirely mysterious fourth item: the potential need to appoint an acting superintendent. It was fully expected that a new superintendent from outside the district would be appointed, as he was literally waiting outside the building for much of the evening.
During the three-hour closed session, those plans evidently changed. At a certain moment, this potential hire appears to have received a text message just before the closed session ended and he went home. Instead of him, the board voted 5-0 to appoint as Superintendent the person who replaced Mr. McAlindin in the newly created Student Support Services Office. The appointment of Renee Grey is almost certainly a stop-gap appointment, suturing the wounds of a district that has just lost seven of its top-level managers.
The Big Picture.
Apart from the leadership crisis the district currently faces, it will also likely be facing years of costly and debilitating litigation involving numerous hours of depositions for people who should be attending to their duties supporting our schools. Superintendent Cherniss has some very deep-pocketed supporters in the Orange County charter and home school rackets. The plutocrats that support him and the extremist board majority know that litigation is part of a war of attrition that can wear down the opposition, even when the opposition has the weight of law on its side. People who do the kinds of things that Cherniss does don’t care how much money the district is losing as long as he is not losing any of his own. Their goal is to destroy public education, in part by draining it of funds through frivolous and persistent litigation.
Since Cherniss and Gates appear to be personally named as defendants in at least one case, however, their path might not be so easy. If they lose in such a case where they are personally identified as defendants, they can be individually liable for compensating the plaintiff. Hopefully, there are many such claims in the works.
The really good news is that Cherniss is gone, and there does not appear to be a path for him to come back. Blades and Frazier returned from the closed session in a completely defeated state. The 5-0 votes on all matters said everything. The new law firm clearly had devastating and unquestionable evidence to present to the board. Indeed, all five members appeared stunned.
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This past Election Day led many people, including myself, to question whether we still live in a nation where law matters. If someone had suggested to me three days ago that Cherniss would no longer be superintendent by the end of this week, I would have been gobsmacked. Thursday night reminds us that law may still matters; that elections may still matter; and that the rebuilding of our political culture may occur in the most foundational institution of our society: the local school board.
Thank you, trustees Quintero, Anderson, and Buck, for your courage and persistence!
[The Register covered this story a couple of days ago, including lots of bitching from Cherniss.]
Watch the board meeting if you want to see what the Trump cult looks like at the local level.
https://pylusd.new.swagit.com/videos/323264
Great article, Sam!
Stop paying ’em and you have three mil in the old General Fund just like that.
Public education needs to get out of the business of politics on both sides. It needs to leave choices about how families raise their kids up to the parents. Issues of gender identity and political preferences are private choices that the school district must strictly stay out of.
Hopefully in the future the all political entities will stay out of the business of the families accepting cases of abuse and we won’t have problems like this.
Both are he woke left extreme and right should stay out of the schools.
I guess these two responses, from John & Joan Q Public, look like a little bit of progress.
Although all of this has nothing to do with “wokeness” or the culture wars that worry them. It’s all the grasping lawless greed of the charter school kleptocrats.
Rational thought of the majority like this will not be tolerated!
“Cherniss roasting on an open fire
Leandra nipping at his nose…”
Cherniss will be hired at OCDE in 3….2….
I hope so. That might hasten the legislature’s finally busting OCDE up.