After the resignations of three board members, Cascade Union Elementary School District gains a new one: Jackie LaBarbera
Following a dispute with the superintendent, the majority of CUESD board members resigned over the last week. Shasta County Office of Education Board President Michael Orlicky has appointed SCOE Board Vice President Jackie LaBarbera to fill one of the empty seats, ensuring a quorum.
Over the last week, three of the five trustees on the board of the Cascade Union Elementary School District have resigned.
The district serves about 1,100 K-8 students at Anderson Heights Elementary School, Anderson Middle School, Meadow Lane Elementary School, and North State Aspire Academy.
Former board president Rod Hayes and former trustees Tye Burgess and Sydney Figone all left CUESD after Superintendent Jason Provence allegedly strayed from trustees’ directives when negotiating pay raises with a teachers’ union last week. CUESD’s only remaining board members are Diane Kimball and Crista Munns.
Now without at least three members, the board cannot form a quorum, meaning there are too few members for the board to legally function. The California Education Code has a remedy for this situation, said Kerri Schuette, a press person for the Shasta County Office of Education.
When a school district board loses a majority of its members, the president of the county board of education is given the authority to appoint an interim trustee for the school district so it can function as intended to appoint other community members to fill the remaining vacant seats.
In Shasta County, the SCOE Board president is Michael Orlicky. Since Figone’s resignation Monday night he’s moved quickly to make the CUESD board functional again by appointing a temporary member to fill one of the three vacant seats. Orlicky has selected SCOE Board Vice President Jackie LaBarbera for the role.
In comments to Shasta Scout, Orlicky said he chose LaBarbera because she is “an experienced and seasoned board member with long-standing ties to the community,” explaining that he has full faith and confidence she will do her due diligence in her role.
LaBarbera said that she is honored to have been appointed to the interim position. “As a county board member,” she wrote by text, “the Education Code both permits and, in circumstances like this, expects us to step forward and serve on a local district board when needed to protect the continuity of governance.”
The new role makes LaBarbera a school board member in three different jurisdictions. She was elected to the Anderson Union High School Board in 2022, and to the Shasta County Board of Education in 2024. She opted to keep both positions, prompting some community members as well as the California Teachers Association to suggest she should step down from one, alleging that she was serving in two “incompatible offices.”
Then and now, LaBarbera has maintained that her roles at AUHSD and SCOE are not incompatible. “For almost two years, I have faithfully served simultaneously as a member of the Shasta County Board of Education and Anderson Union High School District,” she said, “in full compliance with all applicable California laws and the California Education Code, with no issues of any kind.”
As Labarbera begins her role at CUESD, the district has also released information about how community members can apply to be appointed to fill the two remaining vacant seats. Applications are due April 15, after which CUESD trustees Kimball, Munns and LaBarbera will decide which of the applicants to appoint.
Under California Education Code, appointed trustees typically serve until the election of a new trustee, something that’s likely to occur in November. Since Hayes’ term ends this year his seat was already up for election this fall. As for the other two vacant seats, the newly-elected board members would likely serve through the end of Burgess’ and Figone’s terms, which both end in 2028. Shasta election official Clint Curtis did not respond to a request to confirm this information.
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What a disaster….
What a shame for Gateway to be stuck with the Moms for Liberty option, (aka Proud Girls).
Extremist Christian nationalists are crawling like lice all over the public boards in Shasta county.
Even setting aside the fact that LaBarbera is a Moms for Liberty extremist, this is too much power for one person to have.
Selah
Jackie BuhBarbara has about two or three dozen more brain cells than Cherrill Clifford, the former Gateway Unified School District board president who—with MAGA allies Lindsi and Elias Haynes—fired district superintendent Jim Harrell, intending to replace him with Bryan Caples, who had been shit-canned from three previous stints as a school superintendent. Clifford even signed a contract with Caples without informing her fellow board members. Then she pulled a similar stunt, trying to unilaterally hire a conservative parental rights attorney to defend herself. Her actions drew a lawsuit from a parents’ group, and facing potential personal liability, she resigned in disgrace.
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BuhBarbara is a fellow Moms for Libbity Bibbity right-wing Christian nationalist but isn’t quite as dumb and reckless as Clifford and the Haynes dyad. She has a better sense of what she can get away with while avoiding drawing lawsuits and recall elections—unfortunately, better self-preservation skills. But make no mistake: When deranged Orange Mussolini says that children go to school and come home several days later having undergone sex reassignment surgery paid for by the same schools that beg parents for art supplies the school can’t afford, BuhBarbara is the kind of delusional MAGA dim bulb who accepts his claim on faith and sees herself as his Great Guardian of Godliness.
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As the saying goes: Crazier than a fish with titties.
This raises a few questsions as to the wisdom of appointing LaBarbera to the board when she is already serving on the Anderson Union High School Board. Is there not another qualified educator in Shasta County who is not associated with Moms for Liberty to the Cascade board? According to an article in anewscafe.com,
Shasta County School Board Follies: Moms for Liberty Infiltrates Local Districts, Chaos Ensues
A summary of the article shows that LaBarbera fell for an online video stunt by four Anderson High School students appearing to dunk a student in a toilet. Her spreading of the hoax video got Anderson High School principal Tom Safford temporarily suspended following LaBarbera’s publicity on social media and at a meeting of a Moms for Liberty meeting, of the false prank by high school fiends. Fortunately at an Anderson board meeting follwing outrage by Anderson parents, Safford was reinstated.
Is LaBarbera the best candidate in Shasta County that SCOE Board president Michael Orlicky could find or was this a political decision?
The district needs someone who will get their facts straight, not jump to conclusion and push their political beliefs into what should be educating students.