Breaking: Gateway Board President Resigns Amidst New Allegations From Attorney Tracy Henderson

Update: 2/7/23 12:41 pm: We have corrected this article to clarify Henderson’s statements about her educational law experience.

Update: 2.7.23 12:20 pm: This story has been updated to include information on how the vacant Gateway Board seat will be filled.

Newly-elected Gateway Unified School District Board President Cherill Clifford has resigned, effective immediately.

That information was shared by Gateway’s Executive Assistant to the Superintendent Debby Boontjer, in response to an email from Shasta Scout sent this morning. Boontjer said Clifford delivered a resignation letter to Interim Superintendent Steve Henson at approximately 4pm yesterday, February 6th.

Clifford’s resignation comes amidst new allegations against Clifford shared with Shasta Scout yesterday by Tracy Henderson, one of three attorneys interviewed last week by the Board as candidates for the District’s new legal representative.

To many, Henderson was a surprising candidate. Unlike the other two attorneys interviewed, Henderson is not part of a firm that specializes in educational law. But she says she has been working in the area of educational law almost exclusively for the past two years. For areas of educational law where she has less experience, she explained during her video interview, she relies on her training and experience as a civil litigation attorney to tackle educational issues the same way she handles other legal challenges, with deep research and out-of-the box problem solving. 

Henderson is best known as the founder of California Parents United and the California Parents Union, two related organizations that work to oppose “woke” educational “ideologies,” including COVID mandates, in California’s public schools.

It was her role with California Parents United, Henderson says, that led a Shasta County community member to connect her with Gateway Board President Cherrill Clifford, for consideration as a possible candidate for the District’s legal representative.

Speaking to Shasta Scout by phone yesterday, February 6, Henderson said she communicated with Clifford before last week’s interview saying Clifford told her that if she applied to serve as the District’s legal representative, she was guaranteed three Board votes. 

Shasta Scout has reached out to Clifford for comment on Henderson’s statements via two emails and two voicemails sent over the last day but has not yet received a response.

Henderson says Clifford hoped to gain access to her legal services because she “wanted to hire a superintendent that had been fired for not enforcing all the crap on the kids,” clarifying that she was referring to what are known as COVID mandates.

The role appealed to Henderson, she says, in part because of her familiarity with Shasta County “freedom fighters,” and her interest in “taking down” some of California’s more established legal firms.

“A lot of the community members know me because I work with the freedom fighters up there, including Authur Gorman,” Henderson said, and “one of my personal missions is to take down (legal firms) Lozano Smith and AALR&R because of the bad advice (about COVID mandates) they’ve been giving school districts for two years.”

But Henderson didn’t get the job. Instead, with very little discussion, the Board voted 5-0 to hire the small Folsom-based legal firm Kingsley Bogard, whose attorney Lindsay Moore appeared in person for her interview.

Henderson acknowledged that the relatively high fees she suggested in her application were likely a factor in the Board’s decision. But those fees, she said, were always negotiable and were never intended to become public.

“What the president did was send me the old contract,” Henderson explained, “but I don’t usually do retainers, I do hourly. When you look at the three of us, based on the cost, I wouldn’t hire me either.”

Henderson has also been criticized for how she presented herself during her interview, including her late arrival, and the ongoing argument she seemed to be having with her teenager in between statements to the Board. 

But those factors shouldn’t change the value she would have brought to the Board, Henderson said.

“I was out of the box. It’s not that I was not concise or that I botched it. I was out of the box and I think that’s what the Board members wanted.”’

Henderson says now she feels her time and energy were wasted by a Board that ultimately chose another legal firm, saying it seems like she was “set up” by the Board President.

“I bent myself into a pretzel to go to this interview,” Henderson said, “because (Clifford) needed me yesterday.”

She also worries that the way the media has portrayed her since her interview may reflect badly on the two statewide parent organizations she’s building. 

“The truth is,” Henderson said yesterday, “that school district is a mess. The president is probably going to resign  . . . she was trying to get legal advice from me before I was contracted to give it to her.”

Clifford was elected during the November 2022 general elections. As part of a newly-seated Board majority, she’s faced a number of legal warnings over violations of California transparency law. She and two other newly-seated Board members were sued last week over their votes to “bypass” a District policy on how to recruit and select a new superintendent for the District.

Gateway District staff member Boontjer said Clifford’s Board seat will be filled by provisional appointment explaining that the process includes a 60-day time period where the open Board position is advertised and residents of the Gateway Unified School District’s Area 2, known as the Shasta Lake area, can apply.

Once that time period has closed, Boontjer said, the remaining four Gateway Board members will hold an open-session interview and vote to fill the fifth Board position. She said the District has already notified Shasta County’s Office of Education of the Board vacancy and are awaiting a letter from SCOE outlining these steps, including timelines.

This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the Gateway Unified School District Board. Find the series here.

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