Cascade Union Elementary School District fills two of three vacancies, restoring a working board

Over the past two weeks, the Cascade Union Elementary School District has been making progress on filling the leadership void left behind by a wave of resignations in late March. As of the May 13 school board meeting, two of the three vacancies have been filled.

New board members include Jayme Webb who was selected and sworn in on May 6 and Shelby Stutesman, who was selected and sworn in last night. 

The CUESD superintendent’s office told Shasta Scout that as of this week the district has received no new applications for the last vacant seat, which falls in an area of the school district known as Trustee Area 3. If CUESD receives an application before May 29, the district will schedule a special meeting to hold interviews.  

But the board already has a quorum, with all five seats filled. One of those seats is being filled by Jackie LaBarbera, who is provisionally appointed to the role in April after a slew of board resignations left CUESD without an operational board.

According to California law, the board requires at least three members to function. That’s why LaBarbera was originally appointed by SCOE Board President Michael Orlicky last month. Now with four duly elected or appointed board members from the district in place, the question of how much longer LaBarbera will serve on the board is still up in the air. At the May 13 board meeting, there was no discussion of whether or not LaBarbera would be vacating her role now that she’s no longer needed to provide a quorum to appoint new members. 

CUESD met the quorum threshold of three last week when Webb was appointed, and legally speaking, no longer required LaBarbera’s participation to hold meetings. But the board discussed keeping her on as a fourth trustee anyway, in the event that one of the other three trustees was absent, so that the board could still hold meetings. 

Now CUESD has four members without LaBarbera, but CUESD Board President Diane Kimball continued to float the idea of keeping LaBarbera on board until they appoint the fifth and final member. 

“If she could stay on, that would be nice,” Kimball said in a conversation with a reporter after the meeting, explaining her current reasoning by saying that she would prefer the board to have an odd number of trustees to avoid the potential deadlocks that could come with four board members voting on issues — creating a two versus two scenario. 

Asked about the stipulations of LaBarbera’s provisional role, SCOE Board President Orlicky, who appointed her to the CUESD board, told Shasta Scout that he was “confident that [LaBarbera] will step down when the Cascade board has the necessary membership to ensure a quorum at all its meetings.” 

LaBarbera did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier this week she told a reporter that she would not be providing comments to a “fake” journalist.

When is LaBarbera supposed to step down?

California Education Code outlines the process for establishing a quorum in situations like what happened at CUESD last month, where a district finds itself without a board quorum. The law stipulates that the Shasta County Board of Education president should appoint a member of the SCOE Board to fill the role. The law says the appointment should last “until new members of the governing board are elected or appointed.” 

The intent of the law appears to indicate that once enough new members of the board are appointed to form a majority on the board, those provisionally appointed by SCOE would step down. But the law doesn’t clearly define the issue. And Shasta Scout’s queries to various agencies at both the local and state level failed to produce any clear answer.  

The California Attorney General’s office did not respond, and the California Secretary of State’s office deferred the issue to the Shasta County Elections Office as a local matter. Shasta County Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis did not respond to requests for comment sent both when the vacancies originally occurred and this week.

SCOE Board President Orlicky also chose not to address the legalities of how long LaBarbera is allowed to stay on the CUESD Board saying instead that from his understanding, “the administration and new board members would like her to stay on until there is a full board.” 

It’s unclear when LaBarbera’s seat on the board might be filled by a new appointment. Staff at the district said so far there have been no applicants for the position which is only open to residents of a specific area within CUESD’s boundaries.

The board, including LaBarbera, has interviewed a total of four candidates for the other two open roles asking questions that included their views on parental notification —  a hot-button issue about which LaBarbera has been historically outspoken — and their connections to the teachers union. Both candidates who were passed over by the board, along with a third applicant who withdrew his application after witnessing what he experienced as an off-putting interview process, said the board probed some applicants harder than others on the issue of parental rights. The two applicants who interviewed also noted that the board publicly discussed not choosing them because they were union members. 

CUESD’s original vacancies stemmed from anger by former board members over the superintendent’s “regressive bargaining” while negotiating a pay raise with unionized teachers, a tactic used without board authorization. Since then, union-represented staff have issued a vote of no confidence in Superintendent Jason Provence.  

Board President Kimball said yesterday that some interviewees may have faced more questions than others on the issue of parental rights, but denied that union involvement came up during the public board discussion, at least as she remembers it.

“That is not my perception,” she said.

LaBarbera’s multiple school board roles 

LaBarbera herself has not provided public comment on how long she believes she can legally hold the seat. It’s one of three local school board seats she currently holds, a situation which has already resulted in a legal challenge.   

Last month, community member Jeff Carr filed what’s known as a quo warranto over LaBarbera’s dual roles on both the SCOE and Anderson Union High School District boards. He alleged that she is violating California laws that prohibit elected officials from holding simultaneous “incompatible” positions in which one can audit the other, or one has jurisdiction over the other. If found to be true, the same issue would apply to her role on CUESD. But LaBarbera has long maintained that her joint roles are legal.

Both Carr’s early April filing challenging LaBarbera’s multiple seats and LaBarbera’s opposition to the challenge were provided to Shasta Scout by the Attorney General’s Office. An AG spokesperson said that the office will review the filings, and make a final determination on whether Carr is entitled to sue LaBarbera in the Shasta County Superior Court. If so, a judge will make a decision about the legality of LaBarbera’s multiple roles.

5.15.2025 8:21 a.m.: We have updated the story to clarify that no new applications for trustee area 3 have been received as of this week.

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