As Legal Concerns Mount, Gateway Board Unanimously Chooses Legal Firm
The decision came just one day after the Gateway Citizens Committee filed a lawsuit against three of the Board members to compel them to follow Board policies.
In a rare show of unity, the Gateway Unified School District Board voted unanimously on February 3 to select the small Folsom-based legal firm Kingsley Bogard LLP to represent the District’s legal interests.
In response, the approximately seventy community members present broke into cheers. Some had come to the meeting fearing that the Board had already pre-selected civil litigation attorney Tracy Henderson, best known as the founder of the organizations, California Parents United and the California Parents Union.
During public comment, some audience members, including community resident and militia member Jesse Lane, advised the Board against hiring Henderson. Lane felt that Henderson presented herself unfavorably to the Board, arriving late to her video interview and fielding repeated interruptions from her teenager during the interview process.
Henderson’s contact terms may also have been problematic. Her proposed fees included a monthly legal retainer of $12,000 and total annual fee estimates almost three times those of the other two legal firms who applied for the position. She told the Board during her interview that she was unaware that the contract information she had submitted would become public and said that her rates were negotiable.
It’s unclear if a Board majority favored Henderson prior to her interview. During the Board’s brief discussion of applicants, members agreed that the small legal firm Kingsley Bogard would best provide both the personalized services and educational law expertise they felt the District needs.
Kingsley Bogard’s services are expected to cost the District around $90,000 annually. Gateway School District was previously represented by the legal firm Lozano Smith, at a rate that’s averaged around $70,000 annually over the last six years. Lozano Smith withdrew legal services from the District on January 13 for unknown reasons.
The Board’s February 3 unanimous decision for legal representation came just one day after a lawsuit was filed against three newly-seated Board members: Board President Cheryll Clifford, Vice President Lindsi Haynes, and her husband, Clerk of the Board Elias Haynes, who were served with paperwork in the District Boardroom just before the meeting began.
A newly-formed grassroots organization known as the Gateway Citizens Committee (GCC) filed the lawsuit in hopes of compelling the three Board members to rescind their January 18 votes to “bypass” a District policy on how to recruit and select a District superintendent.
According to the GCC, that Board decision places students at risk by enabling the Board to act in an “arbitrary and capricious manner” by appointing a new superintendent without the public’s involvement. GCC’s lawsuit could cause the court to order Clifford, Haynes, and Haynes to rescind their votes.
The lawsuit was filed to spur quick intervention by the courts, in order to prevent the Board from hiring a new superintendent without following the required process.
Gateway’s next regularly scheduled Board meeting will be held February 15. It’s unclear whether members of the Board continue to consider appointing failed candidate for county Superintendent of Education Bryan Caples, whose teaching and administration credentials have been temporarily suspended with the state, but are scheduled to be restored on February 13.
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