Shasta school board member Jackie LaBarbera faces new legal threat

For a second time this year, a Shasta County school board member has a complaint against her pending before the California Attorney General’s Office. 

Jackie LaBarbera has been an Anderson Union High School District school board member for almost four years and a Shasta County Office of Education Board member for nearly two. Holding both seats at the same time is illegal, some community members maintain, though LaBarbera firmly disagrees.

One of those community members, Jeff Carr, submitted what’s known as a quo warranto to the state earlier this year, asking permission to sue LaBarbera over the dual seats. His request was filed shortly after LaBarbera took up a third seat, serving as an appointed school board member for the Cascade Union Elementary School District. 

The state granted Carr permission to take LaBarbera to court over her dual seats, but no lawsuit has been filed in the Shasta Superior Court.

Now, the state is considering a second request for permission to sue LaBarbera, this time by Tamara Pellow, who’s represented by two attorneys with the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union. 

Pellow is a teacher at West Valley High School and the president of the Anderson Union High School District branch of the CTA. She’s filed a complaint with the state alleging not only that LaBarbera’s dual roles in office are illegal, but also that she illegally held her seat at AUHSD long after having moved out of the district. The state has picked up Pellow’s complaint and is expected to respond in the coming months. 

LaBarbera contends that she’s in the right in both the matter of her dual roles and her residency. In a response to the new quo warranto, LaBarbera’s attorney, Tracy Henderson, noted that she is already planning to step down from her AUHSD seat on Nov. 19, the result of a contract between her and Carr after he was authorized by the state to sue over her dual roles. 

Authorizing a second lawsuit against LaBarbera now, Henderson wrote, “would not vindicate any public interest beyond what has already been achieved.”

Pellow said she’s aware that LaBarbera is already slated to leave the AUHSD board in November. But she explained that removing LaBarbara is only part of her motivation, adding that she also wants to set a precedent to make clear that the law applies to everyone and can’t be circumvented.

“It’s a little bit of righteous indignation,” she admitted.

LaBarbera contended in a statement to Shasta Scout last week that Pellow is acting as a representative of the CTA, saying the labor group is trying to force her off the board for a second time.

“The same statewide union that tried to force me off this board after we passed a parental notification policy, that sent a cease-and-desist, that threatened legal action over basic classroom policies, is now back again,” LaBarbera wrote.

Pellow said she’s acting as a community member with the assistance of the union, which is providing legal support because she is a member. Her challenge to LaBarbera was filed in August, about two months after a school board meeting where LaBarbera publicly admitted that she’s not been an AUHSD resident since January 2025, something that violated board bylaws.

The board responded by changing its bylaws to allow board members to continue to serve while living outside the district, a move that LaBarbera’s legal response noted in its response to the state. But maintaining her seat after moving from the district also appears to have violated state law during the 18 months the bylaws remained in place after her move out of the district, something LaBarbera’s response did not address.

As a West Valley teacher, Pellow said she believes LaBarbera has been a detrimental influence to AUHSD since taking her seat, naming her role in withdrawing the district from the Shasta County Office of Education community schools grant as a primary example. She noted her belief that LaBarbera’s vote on that issue was also a conflict of interest given that she served both on AUHSD’s board and on the SCOE board at the time. 

LaBarbera’s attorney contested that claim, writing in her formal response to the state that “no conflict of interest or interruption to district business has occurred” during LaBarbera’s dual roles in office.

---

Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.