Parents, school officials clash in St. Helena

Both sides seek legal probe after resignation demand aired

By JESSE DUARTE
For the Register

A group of St. Helena parents has accused the school board and top administrators of misconduct in the awarding of retirement packages to St. Helena Unified School District Superintendent Allan Gordon and high school principal Jim Zoll.

School officials deny the charges and say the parents have improperly pressured them to resign their positions.

The tension is part of an escalating series of conflicts in St. Helena related to Gordon’s retirement, the school board’s decision not to perform an executive search before naming an assistant as his replacement, and the resignation of one school board member who has said the public should have had a greater voice in the school board’s actions.

Four organizers of the recall campaign against the St. Helena school board are demanding the immediate resignation of board members and the removal of top district officials.

The recall proponents charge the district with misconduct in the rewarding of retirement packages to two administrators.

The four parents say Gordon had a conflict of interest when he approved the extension of the Public Agency Retirement Services retirement packages to all certificated employees — not just “certificated non-management employees,” i.e., teachers and counselors only — as the board had originally approved. The parents say that Gordon profited from his actions because he accepted the PARS package when he announced his retirement in April.

Gordon couldn’t be reached for comment.

The accusations were spelled out in a nine-page letter by Kevin Alfaro, Jeanne DeVincenzi, Sharon Harris and Katherine Zelazny, calling themselves Citizens for Quality Education.

On June 18, the letter was sent to trustees, administrators, Napa County District Attorney Gary Lieberstein, the California Fair Political Practices Commission, Napa County Office of Education Superintendent Barbara Nemko, state Sen. Pat Wiggins and the local media.

Napa County Chief Deputy District Attorney John Goold said his office is investigating the letter, as well as complaints from school officials that the parents improperly offered to conceal their allegations if the targeted officials would resign.

Nemko said she’ll work with the DA’s office to determine what role, if any, she has in investigating the allegations.

FPPC Executive Director Roman Porter said the FPPC won’t  investigate unless it receives a sworn complaint under penalty of perjury.  During the June 18 school board meeting, and in an interview, district officials and trustees strongly rejected the accusations of wrongdoing.

“Our lawyers tell us categorically the district has acted legally,” said SHUSD Trustee Cindy Warren.

“Based on my initial review of the correspondence and the district’s records, I have found no legal irregularities in any of this process,” said the district’s attorney, Larry Schoenke of Miller, Brown & Dannis, at that school board meeting.

However, at Schoenke’s suggestion, the board has scheduled a special meeting for 6:30 p.m. Monday at Vintage Hall to finalize the details of the PARS plan and give the plan a full public airing.

Trustees took issue with the way the accusations were presented, which Warren said was intimidating and at least bordered on extortion.

Warren said she and Trustee Cynthia Lane met with the four authors of the letter at Warren’s home on June 17. She said the authors had insisted on a private meeting. The four parents read their letter and said that if trustees didn’t resign before the June 18 meeting “they would go public with this information,” said Warren.

“It’s up to the DA’s office to determine if their heavy-handedness rose to the legal level of extortion or if it was just an incredible case of bullying and bad manners,” she said.

“To think that these four people could come to Cindy and me and threaten us with public embarrassment and accusations of wrongdoing in order to get us to resign just stuns me,” Lane said.

Cindy Warren’s husband, Jeff Warren, who was at the meeting, described the encounter to the DA’s office and asked them to investigate.

“We’re looking into the whole thing,” said Goold. “Once we get all the information together we’ll see who’s making what claims and whether or not there’s any basis for them.”

DeVincenzi disputed Warren’s and Lane’s account of the June 17 meeting.

The parents’ letter argues that Gordon had a conflict of interest when he signed the addendum that made the PARS retirement plan available to administrators, and that as a result both he and Zoll are ineligible for PARS.

The PARS package awards employees one full year’s salary, paid out over five years. In addition to Gordon and Zoll, six certificated employees, mostly teachers, accepted the package. Gordon elected to take only 81 percent of his salary.

School districts have to be able to prove that their retirement packages save money. Both sides acknowledge that the PARS packages will save the district about $1.2 million over the next five years.

But the parents argue that including Gordon and Zoll in the plan cost the district $345,000 more than if the plan had been offered only to teachers.

The letter demands the acknowledgment that Gordon and Zoll are ineligible for PARS, the immediate resignations of all four board members, the removal of Assistant Superintendent and Superintendent-designate Robert Haley for his alleged complicity in what the letter characterizes as Gordon’s misconduct.

Former Trustee Jim Haslip, who resigned in May amid a flap over how to replace Gordon, said he supports the authors of the letter. “One of the reasons that I resigned was I felt that Gordon had pulled a fast one on the board and I didn’t catch it,” he said.

The PARS plan was offered to “certificated non-management employees” last October. Six staff members accepted it. In January, Gordon signed an addendum that retroactively made all certificated employees eligible.

The parents charge that Gordon and Zoll then announced their resignations and, with the board’s approval, claimed their own PARS packages.

However, public documents indicate that Zoll announced his resignation in a letter to Gordon and the board dated Dec. 12. In the letter, Zoll said he was resigning at the end of the year “to accept the PARS Supplementary Retirement Plan approved by the School Board on December 11, 2008.”

According to Haslip, Zoll’s offer to leave was contingent upon getting the same PARS package as the teachers.

Haslip confirmed that trustees had Zoll in mind when they approved extending the PARS plan to administrators. According to Haslip, Gordon said “he wanted Zoll to retire, and this would be a way to make it happen.”

“No mention was made of (Gordon) or anybody else for that matter,”  Haslip said.

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